This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.
The original was posted on /r/hobbydrama by /u/StabithaVMF on 2024-07-20 10:00:02+00:00.
Sometimes when there is a hobby that is so niche as to have a community in the dozens, you have no choice but to get along with everyone else.
And I’m not talking about a few dozen in your local scene, but a few dozen in the single online forum dedicated to this community in the world. It was mostly US based, with Canadians (French and regular), British, Russian, and even an Australian. Like I said, this was the only place online for this.
Back in 2006, I was part of one of these communities, dedicated to action figure customising. Not just any action figures, but a singular type that hadn’t been in production for over a decade outside knock-offs, and had its heyday in the 80’s. Since then it’s had a revival with high-end collector’s figures, new media and all that. But at the time it was limping along on fumes.
The forum was one of the main hubs for this community in general, as with no new products being released the customizers were the ones producing new stuff. There were resellers, collectors and other associated people who were part of the community as well, because it was an active forum and had a good admin.
So, this forum was run by Hank. He was, in my opinion, a good forum operator. He banned politics entirely, was clear on the rules and was active in the community. The main rub was the archive. See, people could submit their custom figures (customs) to his site to be archived. You could upload photos, notes on construction, or a bio.
People made customs to be more cartoon or comic accurate, to make characters who never receive an official toy, or their own characters. Some people made them “realistic”, updating them to modern sensibilities.
However sometimes Hank would reject submissions to the archive. Being an early 2000s website submissions were added manually, so if Hank didn’t like something he had the final say. This caused some friction as he would reject things for obvious reasons like being offensive, but also for rather esoteric reasons particular to the hobby.
As I mentioned this is not just any action figures, but a particular style. It is not limited to a singular brand, as copies were made to cash in. But they have a particular style. For example, if I say He-Man toy, you can picture it: huge muscly arms and legs doing that squatting pose, limited articulation and the hips and shoulders.
If someone went to submit a version of Skeletor made from Monster High parts, Hank would reject it. The reasoning is sure, it’s made to look like part of the property that spawned the hobby, but it’s made from something else so doesn't count.
After a few arguments about this, Hank relaxed the rules somewhat: other styles would be allowed, but they would have to be the same or very similar scale. All good, right?
Enter Doug.
Doug and Hank had beef. The core issue is that they just did not like each other. A severe clash of vibes. Cliques were formed. Doug thought Hank’s moderation of the forum was too strict, and he was unfair in applying it, going easy on his friends and harder on Doug’s. This is not an entirely untrue accusation.
See, the mods had a hidden board: The Bridge. This was where they would discuss moderation issues. It was also where they would gossip and bitch about Doug and his crew. Now this was mostly petty bullshit like Doug arguing a movie was bad when Hank liked it and that sort of thing. Sometimes it was saying if Doug didn’t like Hank’s site, he could just make his own. The most common reason for this was when Doug butted up against the no politics rule.
For the most part Doug was being annoying, but it was clear as day Hank hated Doug’s guts. Doug felt the same, and would often snipe about Hank and his cronies hiding away in The Bridge to gossip about everyone else. Hank would often let certain behaviours slide when performed by more popular members (ie being insulting to other members), where Doug would get pilloried for coming close.
One particular thing they clashed over was the yearly awards. A little awards show was held each year “hosted” by dioramas of figures, awarding community members for best customs, best dioramas*, best technique and the like. These awards were voted on by the community, and the awards show put together by Hank and the mods.
Doug and his crew felt slighted on occasion, claiming bias due to Hank rigging the voting at times (resulting in temporary bans), which in my opinion further inclined people to not vote for Doug. Things came to a head when, to try and foster community, a little online festival was held in addition to the awards, and a special prize was offered.
One thing to know is that the forum had its own, somewhat Byzantine, meme culture. There were certain characters from the cartoon who had special meaning in the forum, running jokes about something a particular poster said once etc. A particular badge of community was getting a flair under your username.
Unlike many forums which allow you to set your own flair, or assign one based on the number of posts you have made, here the only way to get one was for Hank to bestow one upon you. They were almost entirely silly, sometimes embarrassing, but something of a status symbol. Doug took umbrage that he and his friends did not get any, while Hank’s personal friends did.
So, this festival had quizzes, games, and a contest: A mod made a bunch of dioramas with their figures, and people had to caption them. The community would then vote for each picture, and the winner of each would get to choose a custom flair for themselves!
Entries were posted, and votes were tallied.
Doug and his friends did not win.
I did (lol). Doug complained it was nothing but a popularity contest, which one of the other winners pointed out that yeah no shit it was for whose joke was most popular. This member also set their flair to “Popularity contest winner”. I was jealous I didn’t think of that first.
Doug and Hank got into a huge fight, and Doug was banned for a month. This spurred Doug to go and make his own website, with its own gallery with looser rules for submitting (you may have been able to self-upload, but it’s been so long I can’t remember) and posting on its forum. A few people joined and posted to both archives and forums, or just both archives, but mostly just Doug and his friends left.
Doug and Hank fought again shortly after on the main forum, over Doug talking about how his new site was so much better and everyone should come join him. Since he had his own site and it would no longer be completely exiling him from the community, Hank permabanned him.
Now, around this time, I also got access to The Bridge as I was given mod powers. First thing I did was search my own username to see what they’d been saying about me. Thankfully not much, mostly about prospectively asking if I’d be a mod. But Doug was right, there was a LOT of shit-talking. Myself and a couple of the newer mods did push back on this, like if you wanted Doug to make his own site, why are you spending all this energy bitching about his site being inferior? Why are you talking about what Doug’s wife looks like?
I certainly should have done more, but I was young and these were my friends, you know? Lesson learned on that one.
Doug's site was, strictly speaking, worse. But it was new and had no experienced web designers and lacked the years Hank had. Hank's had a whole suite of custom emojis**, the archive, a news page, and years of content that had been refined over time, so of course it was better to use.
I also got annoyed with it all as honestly, without Doug & co, traffic was on the forum down because many of the other main members were mods, so would post to The Bridge where there were far fewer rules rather than the main forum. It honestly began to sour me on the whole site because The Bridge was turning to a secret clubhouse, and while Doug may have been an ass he was being proved right on this one.
Things still trundled along for a while with relations between the two sites thawing, so that the next year for the festival, Hank extended an olive branch to Doug. See, Hank was well aware that as the sole place for this community for years, he did have something of a responsibility to the community. That’s why he’d held off for so long on perma-banning Doug: he didn’t want to just remove someone entirely due to a personal grudge. He now wanted to mend fences, bring the two sites together at least for a week or two.
As part of this peace offering, Doug would be brought back and have mod powers over the special festival sub-forum, which until he proved he'd behave was the only place he could post. He was let back in a couple of days before the festival to help set up threads and the like, and all was going well.
Until it wasn’t.
It started when the forum’s web guy happened to glance at the list of online users, which also shows what section of the forum that user is looking at. And he saw Doug was browsing The Bridge. You know, the secret shit-talk and gossip board. And had been for several hours.
Web guy messages Hank: “Doug is in The Bridge!”
Hank realises that when he made Doug a mod for the festival sub-forum, it automatically added him to The Bridge, and he hadn’t remove him. Doug had spent the last couple of days going through years of shit-talking and sending the screenshots to forum members. He may even have let some log in to his account so they could see it themselves.
...
Content cut off. Read original on https://old.reddit.com/r/HobbyDrama/comments/1e7s6hl/action_figure_customisation_that_awkward_moment/