Hey,
Some of you may recognize me as the guy who started the topic that the OP linked to. I discovered this topic months ago with the intent of saying... well, the stuff I'm about to say right now. For some reason I got cold feet and decided not to, but at length I decided that you guys at least deserve an explanation.
Here's a thing: See, no matter how much I pretend otherwise, I'm actually very bad about seeking approval and trying to fit in, so I tend to parrot attitudes and opinions of those I see around me without much thought. Now, at the time I had seen a couple of threads where people had made passing comments about hating HG101, largely for the things you guys already picked up on--the notion that challenge is ALWAYS good.
In fact, I actually discovered shortly afterwards that several members of Shmups are actually... very much insane on that point (And its far from the only one. This is going to be a tell-all, so pack a lunch). Soon after the post OP linked, I got into a discussion where I briefly mentioned feeling that Ninja Gaiden for NES was unfair. This immediately got me accused of just wanting every game to be easy--this despite having beaten and never complained about other challenging games like Super Ghouls n' Ghosts, and these people were very much aware of my track record. It was suddenly irrelevent though just because I was criticizing Ninja Gaiden. In fact I didn't even criticize the difficulty--I simply hated that losing to the final boss sends you back so far. Even that, though, was unforgivable to at least two members. One member even supported me... only to find himself getting bullied and harrassed for doing so. The rest kept their silence (which I take as siding with the two fanboys). These same two also immediately wanted to play the Sega Genesis crapfest The Last Battle after hearing it was hard, despite that being a clear case of a game that's only hard due to bad design (basically its not so much "hard" as "you need to grind before reaching a boss or you can't win")
Now, don't get me wrong: I'm not here to say "I'm jumping ship! Shmups sucks, HG101 all the way!" because not all my complaints about HG101 were dishonest. I really did feel that sometimes your coverage tended to be inadequate--I really did, actually, notice a tendency to claim games were ridiculously hard that actually weren't all that difficult, and that wasn't the only problem, and I had recalled seeing posts on these forums that made me skeptical of joining. Then again, nowadays I'm not sure why I joined Shmups either, and that doesn't invalidate by belief that my actions warrant an explanation (not necessarily an apology, but an explanation nonetheless).
Point is, I titled that topic what I did specifically because I thought it would score me points with the Shmuppers. I was actually shocked to see people start to defend this site... that's one of those idiosyncrasies that keeps popping up about internet forums: You're constantly given that "the people here think X" due to casual comments in posts and its not until its advertised that you find the folks who will question it. Just what is the deal with that?
In retrospect, I'm kind of sickened that I ever wanted to "fit in" with these people. You see the "challenge is gooooooood" thing isn't the only point these guys were crazy on.
My big disconnect came when a user posted a political topic--specifically, a topic about guns and gun-related killings. Actually the topic had been running for a long time but I had only just noticed it.
Now, my thoughts on guns at the time--and this is EXACTLY what I said to them--was that I hate the things: They're loud, they're noisy, I can't even hold one because metal sets off my OCD something fierce (not to mention the powder that gets all over your hands) and they seem kind of stupid when you can just get a crossbow that lets you recycle the ammunition. Nevertheless I didn't see a point in calling for a ban (which everyone in the thread invariably was). Historically, bans had never ever worked in American history, and usually they just make a bad situation worse. Look at Prohibition for example.
Immediately, forking IMMEDIATELY, I had people calling me a paranoid delusional gun-nut who enjoyed shooting puppies (keep in mind I had specifically said
I don't even OWN a gun) and a ton of stalking and harassment began. Suddenly my blog went from getting no hits (because I basically don't advertise it) to getting hundreds of hits... from the shmups forum. And it wasn't just me--my best friend got a lot of shmups visitors too just because I had mentioned him once. One of the shmuppers even tried to flame me on said friend's blog, but friend caught it and edited it into something comical because, in his words "you don't come into my house and start shit. I might've let it fly if the guy hadn't been such a cowardly shit that he didn't even leave his real name."
Now, the guy who posted that flame--I'll call him BKR (though that might make it perfectly obvious who it is)--owned up to it but--and here is where I facepalmed--first whined about "free speech" and second, claimed that entering random letters into the name field wasn't an attempt to hide, it was just him "being lazy."
That second one caused a momentary lock-up. Had I literally seen someone use a USENET-ERA dodge in 2015? And specifically a dodge almost exclusively used by 13-year-olds?
It didn't end there though. BKR and one of his friends basically followed me from topic to topic and made every excuse to turn any topic I spoke in into an excuse to flame me. I even asked the Admin to do something about it, pointing out that it violates the Terms of Service--even pointing out the exact lines. Now, you're not gonna believe this part, but the Admin threatened to ban ME for complaining, and EDITED THE TERMS OF SERVICE so it no longer contained any reference to harassment being wrong! Then he said "you just have to accept that not everyone will like you" (because that's exactly what I was complaining about, not being liked, uh huh).
Now, one weird oddity of BKR's posts that I have to bring up is he repeatedly claimed I was a "Brony" and would fit references (usually derogatory ones) into it in every post he made towards me. He also liked to say "autistic manchild," but most actual autistic manchildren love that one. "Brony" was weird though, because the only connection I had to My Little Pony was having once criticized the hell out of it when it was brought up. I hate that show. That's pretty much the exact opposite of a brony. That's without mentioning the people there with actual MLP avatars that they proudly display which this guy seemingly never noticed or never had a problem with, but regardless, if I'm a brony, then Penn and Teller are devout catholics and J.R.R. Tolkien was an atheist who hated fantasy.
Here's why that's important, because this was the ultimate crazy that caused me to jump ship on the Shmups forum.
A few months back, a user named "DunlapDunlap" appeared (since this name was likely a sockpuppet anyway I don't see any harm in not disguising it). "Dunlap" was, according to the poster, a "successful" mother of two children with extreme feminist values who basically hated men and gamers.
Immediately three things struck me as suspicious about Dunlap:
One = She had posted within a day of me returning from a loooong hiatus, after herself having been a one-post wonder for months.
Two = Her first topic was about Bronies.
Three = When I made a comment in that topic, she proceeded to almost exclusively attack me.
Adding to the suspiciousness, a Star Wars topic I had begun months ago and which had died was suddenly bumped out of nowhere by another newcomer, a guy named Wasserkopp. DunlapDunlap also immediately jumped into this thread, and proceeded to bitch at me, SK, and BKR. And here's where the jig was up: She named us all... but "misremembered" BKR's name, as if trying to prove "she" didn't know who BKR was. Which, again, was an old Usenet trick people used to do which anyone older than thirteen immediately saw as "you just confessed who you are, dumbass."
And Wasserkopp? I'm almost positive he was SK. In fact if you read the actual topic, Wasserkopp and SK almost have the same posting style. Wasserkopp had even linked to an account he created on a Star Wars forum, and in those the similarities to SK's style are even more obvious (probably because he didn't expect anyone on that board to recognize him). I did NOT notice any of this "immediately," in fact was for awhile in a mood to attempt joining Wasser's side... but as soon as I was about to, I just got this feeling that something is wrong, like this argument was too scripted somehow. That's when I noticed the "its like he's talking to himself" feel of Wasser and SK's posts towards each other.
Now, of course, this is all speculation and there's no way I could prove this beyond a shadow of a doubt, but you're probably seeing what conclusion I reached: That BKR was DunlapDunlap and Wasserkopp was SK. Near the end before the topic got locked, BKR made this big post theorizing Wasserkopp's identity as being this article author who had been the subject of the original post (an accusation that nobody mentioned fails for two reasons: one because of that Star Wars forum Wass made an account at was one that said author was already a member of, and two because the posting styles are completely different, despite BKR's exortations to the contrary). Then suddenly Wasser--who had been accepted by the mods and community and was even pretending to have a serious interest in the shmup genre before this--got immediately banned without explanation (Dunlap had gotten banned much earlier) and the topic locked.
All of which made me glad I hadn't posted anything in that topic past page five or so, because I'm 99% positive the original plan had been to bait me in then try to claim both Wass and Dunlap were sockpuppets for me, and the "blaming the article author" thing was just a half-assed save when I didn't play ball. As for the rest... well, draw your own conclusions.
At that point though, I had seen just how obsessed these people could get. Over a topic I didn't even really disagree with them on. I mean the worst I had done was written a short story which was meant to illustrate how ridiculous they sounded (but which they misinterpreted as a "revenge fic" despite there being no revenge aspect, and made out to be proof of
my "craziness"). These people? They had harassed me onsite and off, harassed my friends, and if my speculation is correct had used sockpuppets to frame me and even tried to get other forums involved in their personal crusade using said sockpuppets. And they still thought they were just and right for doing so.
I guess that's the real reason I posted here. You guys are right that the shmups forum is insane. You just didn't know the extent of their insanity.