Something Awful and Friends - The roller-coaster train-wreck embarrassing downfall of a Web 1.0 giant and its tick offspring like from Cloverfield

[AnOminous]

Like what would goons even do?

Cry like the little bitches they are.

 

[Fatal Cardiac Infarction]

Which FFXIV Guild (there are 3 or 4, I think) and how? That sounds like a story into and of itself.



It's worth noting - the tranny/LGBTQIA+ stuff started really seeping in around 2015 - but those rules I outlined have been in place since ~2004, maybe earlier (for FFXI and Everquest). It's almost two full decades of tradition at this point.

True enough. Goons eat their own.

 

[X Prime]

The FFXIV goon guilds in general are infamous for policing of wrongthink.

For example, inoffensive left-wing goon and Let's Play guy The White Dragon did not get admitted into the guild because he posted in the "lol Trump's fine" thread in GBS.

Again, he's left-wing. Half his posts are about how he smokes weed. Since he shat on Democrats though he became a semi-pariah.

 

[Learned Hand]

It's worth noting - the tranny/LGBTQIA+ stuff started really seeping in around 2015 - but those rules I outlined have been in place since ~2004, maybe earlier (for FFXI and Everquest). It's almost two full decades of tradition at this point.

I agree, this is worth noting. Perhaps it's only my impression, but as someone who posted in the games section of the website almost exclusively, I was jarred when I finally left that section of the site and began reading other subforums -- right around the election, as I was curious what was going on in politics.

The things you outlined in your post are 100% accurate, the core rules were the same in almost every game for years:

1) Play with Goons.
2) Support whatever main guild the hive deemed "official."
3) Do not "goonfuck" which is a catch-all for being shitty to other goons I guess.

In 2015-2016 goons began to become obsessed with "safe spaces," so the holy trinity of standing rules began to be addled with five or six more revolving around being "LGBTQIA+ positive" and "inclusive" and so on. Before that point, I have visceral memory of goons calling each other "fag" and "retard" "big dumb gay" etc, and delight in being cruel to the population in games that fell outside their circle. As the politics on the site shifted though, taking the piss out of outsiders even became forbidden.

I don't want to reach too far on the limb, but as someone who usually namelessly played in these groups, I noticed that as BMW became more popular, these "safe space" rules became more pronounced and more strict. It is my view these were something of a soft litmus test to keep "undesirables" out of their spaces. When you're looking for specters and boogeymen you begin to see them anywhere, though, and no amount of exclusion for wrongthink seemed to satisfy or avail an increasingly paranoid and militantly leftist community.

I don't think it's unfounded to also believe that an extremely vocal minority of indivuals suffering from autogynephilia (thank you humble poster in this thread who introduced the concept to me) and other identity issues began invading traditionally non-political spaces and forcing their extremist views on otherwise apathetic individuals who just wanted to play games.

I firmly believe that groups like BMW became strawmen for the "other" and synonymous for "nazi" and fascist because the overton window on SA is so very small. It's worth looking at the prolific posters on the other side driving this madness: posters like Ben Smash or Dead Like Rev, who are to goons in games what Cascade Beta is to the site at large -- and, in my mind, no less responsible for driving posters off of the site in droves. The former has a devotion to reading KF and "hunting down" what he refers to as "sympathizers" which is an odd way of ascribing malice or ill intent to people otherwise simply caught up in a shit flinging contest they have no personal stake in.

 

[Tanner Glass]

I agree, this is worth noting. Perhaps it's only my impression, but as someone who posted in the games section of the website almost exclusively, I was jarred when I finally left that section of the site and began reading other subforums -- right around the election, as I was curious what was going on in politics.

The things you outlined in your post are 100% accurate, the core rules were the same in almost every game for years:

1) Play with Goons.
2) Support whatever main guild the hive deemed "official."
3) Do not "goonfuck" which is a catch-all for being shitty to other goons I guess.

In 2015-2016 goons began to become obsessed with "safe spaces," so the holy trinity of standing rules began to be addled with five or six more revolving around being "LGBTQIA+ positive" and "inclusive" and so on. Before that point, I have visceral memory of goons calling each other "fag" and "exceptional individual" "big dumb gay" etc, and delight in being cruel to the population in games that fell outside their circle. As the politics on the site shifted though, taking the piss out of outsiders even became forbidden.

I would also point out that 2015 also was the start of a very pointed shift as to what a "Goon Squad" was in video games.

Pre-2014 the "Goon Squads" largely were intentionally villainous to pubbies - they reveled in being "heels" like wrestlers and largely the antics made games more fun (or at least more fun for goons).

For example - A first person shooter - two goons join the game on opposite teams. On Team A, a goon is a medic and on Team B, a goon is infantry. They coordinate together and find a sniper on Team A on the outskirts of the map, by himself. Team B goon kills him and then Team A goon revives him, which then Team B goon kills him again. They repeat this the whole match (skyrocketing in points) and ruining the Team A sniper's K/D.

Another example - an MMO runs a small event where players are tasked to find a specific (admin controlled) player and kill them for a reward. Goons find the admin and then instead run a ~50 man bodyguard service on him for hours defending him to the death constantly.

Post-2015 Goons don't really seem to want to be "bad guys" anymore and do not engage in trolling, baiting, or even general nonsense anymore.

 

[Back me up!]

The FFXIV goon guilds in general are infamous for policing of wrongthink.

For example, inoffensive left-wing goon and Let's Play guy The White Dragon did not get admitted into the guild because he posted in the "lol Trump's fine" thread in GBS.

Again, he's left-wing. Half his posts are about how he smokes weed. Since he shat on Democrats though he became a semi-pariah.

FFXIV is gay as he'll but that is the gayest thing I have heard yet. The White Dragon literally made a game about a dragon smoking weed but I guess the one drop / one post rule is in effect.

 

[AnOminous]

Pre-2014 the "Goon Squads" largely were intentionally villainous to pubbies - they reveled in being "heels" like wrestlers and largely the antics made games more fun (or at least more fun for goons).

For example - A first person shooter - two goons join the game on opposite teams. On Team A, a goon is a medic and on Team B, a goon is infantry. They coordinate together and find a sniper on Team A on the outskirts of the map, by himself. Team B goon kills him and then Team A goon revives him, which then Team B goon kills him again. They repeat this the whole match (skyrocketing in points) and ruining the Team A sniper's K/D.

That's actual griefing, though, just making the experience miserable for everyone else for your own amusement. Now, I'm in no position to condemn anyone for doing shit I've done myself just for fun while laughing at the misery I caused, but this isn't in the least anything other than griefing.

Specifically, it is griefing because it is deliberately harming some random guy for no real strategic reason. It isn't just being a heel, it's being a dick.

 

[Trip Chesterton III]

That's actual griefing, though, just making the experience miserable for everyone else for your own amusement. Now, I'm in no position to condemn anyone for doing shit I've done myself just for fun while laughing at the misery I caused, but this isn't in the least anything other than griefing.

Specifically, it is griefing because it is deliberately harming some random guy for no real strategic reason. It isn't just being a heel, it's being a dick.

Griefing owns

 

[Never Scored]

I would also point out that 2015 also was the start of a very pointed shift as to what a "Goon Squad" was in video games.

Pre-2014 the "Goon Squads" largely were intentionally villainous to pubbies - they reveled in being "heels" like wrestlers and largely the antics made games more fun (or at least more fun for goons).

For example - A first person shooter - two goons join the game on opposite teams. On Team A, a goon is a medic and on Team B, a goon is infantry. They coordinate together and find a sniper on Team A on the outskirts of the map, by himself. Team B goon kills him and then Team A goon revives him, which then Team B goon kills him again. They repeat this the whole match (skyrocketing in points) and ruining the Team A sniper's K/D.

Another example - an MMO runs a small event where players are tasked to find a specific (admin controlled) player and kill them for a reward. Goons find the admin and then instead run a ~50 man bodyguard service on him for hours defending him to the death constantly.

Post-2015 Goons don't really seem to want to be "bad guys" anymore and do not engage in trolling, baiting, or even general nonsense anymore.

I remember all this incredible Second Life greifing. Shit like the simulated rape of the president of Nintendo of America when he tried to hold some press event in Second Life.

 

[Tanner Glass]

That's actual griefing, though, just making the experience miserable for everyone else for your own amusement. Now, I'm in no position to condemn anyone for doing shit I've done myself just for fun while laughing at the misery I caused, but this isn't in the least anything other than griefing.

Specifically, it is griefing because it is deliberately harming some random guy for no real strategic reason. It isn't just being a heel, it's being a dick.

The strategic reason was because it was funny.

No, you're right it was griefing - but that was, hard as it is to imagine now, something the Goon Squad specialized in. Locking people in spaces, baiting them into timeouts, throwing games, literal espionage and theft (EVE), "Deathmatching" on changeling servers, and so on - they drove a fairly inconsistent line for a full decade between "gigantic savage assholes" and "assholes who are fun to play against" across 50+ games and now seem to desperately want to shed that reputation.

 

[Aquinas]

Another example - an MMO runs a small event where players are tasked to find a specific (admin controlled) player and kill them for a reward. Goons find the admin and then instead run a ~50 man bodyguard service on him for hours defending him to the death constantly.

irrc this was some old ass wuxia mmo

 

[jackuu]

The strategic reason was because it was funny.

No, you're right it was griefing - but that was, hard as it is to imagine now, something the Goon Squad specialized in. Locking people in spaces, baiting them into timeouts, throwing games, literal espionage and theft (EVE), "Deathmatching" on changeling servers, and so on - they drove a fairly inconsistent line for a full decade between "gigantic savage assholes" and "assholes who are fun to play against" across 50+ games and now seem to desperately want to shed that reputation.

BMW continued that tradition in Rust: we created gas chambers for pubbies, shit on streamers (xyelz calling us streamsniping toolbags was some good shit), locked randos in their own homes, created massive big dick energy hell complexes around popular loot spawning zones, and coordinated a mass login/base camp on a server reset to then rocket a stubborn enemy rockbase into oblivion while the other team was logging in piecemeal.

Cheap tricks, asshole moves, offline raids, brute force with overwhelming numbers and Zero Fucks Given. We nay not have been the most skilled but we caused no end of shit for people.

Oh, and the original name for Detroit wasn't just because it was an overpopulated dilapidated settlement in Rust. the original location in Rust legacy was unofficially dubbed Resource Hole, and had a high zombie spawn rate, exclusively ferals and blacks which is why it was called Detroit on top of it being a shithole failed settlement. This was a name given to it by Goons in 2014, so even then there was a bit of casual racism being thrown around.

I actually miss rust legacy the most, because it was so poorly optimized you could build a city so big that a significant portion of players flat-out would crash if they attempted to even approach it. You can't get raided if someone's computer does a hard lock or crash to desktop every time they look at your city. It was a very special game at a very special time, and I don't think anything will ever truly replicate it again.

 

[robobobo]

I kinda loved just how dedicated goons in EVE were about their griefing. They would stream snipe the crap out of people, even ones who'd blocked out the name of the system they were in, by autistically keeping tabs on the nebula color of space, the planets/moons in the system, etc, then show up out of nowhere and tackle the poor idiots to suicide gank them on stream. That is not a small feat to pull off against a target that probably is moving off to a different system every half hour or so, you've got a pretty tight window to narrow down their location, get to it, and shoot them.

 

[Dan Abrams]

I made some posts in here about the neo Goon Squad in WoW Classic. The guild leader is some 300 pound monstrosity of a tranny from YOSPOS, and so are half the members - the guild MOTD was always stuff like "we will BAN you if you post ANYTHING tranphobic/ableist/racist/sexist. This is a SAFE space". People were getting kicked out for saying fag or retard, especially funny considering how badly the old Goon Squad trolled people.

 

[Fatal Cardiac Infarction]

I made some posts in here about the neo Goon Squad in WoW Classic. The guild leader is some 300 pound monstrosity of a tranny from YOSPOS, and so are half the members - the guild MOTD was always stuff like "we will BAN you if you post ANYTHING tranphobic/ableist/racist/sexist. This is a SAFE space". People were getting kicked out for saying fag or retard, especially funny considering how badly the old Goon Squad trolled people.

Ha! What a bunch of retarded faggots.

 

[tantric_depressive]

A lot of goon groups pretended to be their own mini-SA including an overbearing leadership team that expected you to suck their dick. Refusal to do so would just result in you being kicked. I remember getting kicked from WoW Goon Squad less than 1 hour after joining because I said "lol" in guild chat.

I never understood just how badly the 'kiss up to authority' streak ran through a lot of people til I started reading SA and would see goons dickriding mods and making posts begging for even harsher rules and penalties. I thought this mindset was rare and something I wouldn't encounter so obviously much outside reading a Stephen King book.

That's actual griefing, though, just making the experience miserable for everyone else for your own amusement. Now, I'm in no position to condemn anyone for doing shit I've done myself just for fun while laughing at the misery I caused, but this isn't in the least anything other than griefing.

Specifically, it is griefing because it is deliberately harming some random guy for no real strategic reason. It isn't just being a heel, it's being a dick.

I never really played games online, but the griefing examples he listed sounded pretty funny to me.

 

[Learned Hand]

I cannot think of any game I played with goons that had a guild die to boredom before it was destroyed by people vying for power at the top or by splinters, or whatever.

It's as though goons read "Lord of the Flies" and said "this is a good form of government we should emulate." Then again, many goons are also unironic believers in a bizarro-world form of Stalinist communism, so they're not exactly batting a thousand in that category.

I seem to remember the encouraging of funneling resources in games to one nepostically picked person who would invariably quit and steal everything.

Not unlike Rich and Logan's current relationship.

 

[Trip Chesterton III]

I never understood just how badly the 'kiss up to authority' streak ran through a lot of people til I started reading SA and would see goons dickriding mods and making posts begging for even harsher rules and penalties. I thought this mindset was rare and something I wouldn't encounter so obviously much outside reading a Stephen King book.

The suck-ups just want to be the mods they are sucking up to as well. When the basement crew was exiled from Something Awful and Saint Isaais Boner made the nazi hate site "Skullmund", a bunch of the members basically wanted it to be an SA clone. SIB would make people mods for the week or month or whatever, and they would get just ban people, even though the site had like 25 members. They wanted Gurf to be banned on site, because he was ban on site on SA, the website that did not want them either.

It was really weird. Most of those posters ended up fucking off to twitter in private groups.

 

[AnOminous]

I never really played games online, but the griefing examples he listed sounded pretty funny to me.

Griefing is fun.

 

[Tonto]

That's actual griefing, though, just making the experience miserable for everyone else for your own amusement.

Sure. The thing is, you would be much more appreciated if you figured out a really creative way to grief instead of just spamming "faggots" in chat. Like the one player who spent an inordinate amount of time on a custom permadeath Neverwinter Nights RP server. All new characters were expected to provide an one-page character description and at least 2 pages of background with several players writing reams of poor fantasy fanfic for the Gara-orn the Ranger with a mysterious past and rugged good looks. He spent his time grinding hard enemies outside the main RP areas to get gear the admins had simply forgotten in the game and that was way, way overpowered for the setting. Then he declared himself an outlaw, declaring war against the world and killing off over half the server before an admin logged in, got killed by an item that could kill invulnerable characters(!) and banned him. Since it was permadeath RP server, all the characters who died in the massacre were gone for good. All that (bad) lore, lost in time forever.