King Mickey · @KingMickeyKH
26th May 2021 from TwitLonger
Why I was fired from Toontown Offline (Bullying in the Toontown Community)
Hey there hi there ho there. How's it going? For me personally, not so great. But before I explain why I'm going to go a little in-depth about myself to the greater Toontown community. So, I had joined Toontown Offline's team about 8 or so months ago. Not long, I know but I was super estatic. Finally, to be apart of a Toontown team with some of the greatest and most talented members in this community who became my friends like Smokin, Benjamin, Boosor, Grainy, Mcmouse, so on and so on. Another perk was that this server had and actively used the Disney characters in it which I was a huge fan of because despite all the reasons, I never agreed with the other servers removing them. When I had joined this team, I was told from Day 1 that we are a friend group and not a corporation and things didn't need to be so serious. It was a pretty decently sized team at the time, and had members from other Toontown games working on it as well, this is important for later. We never had to be as uptight as a full blown server because we weren't. We were a project who could host servers. That's why it is incredibly unfortunate to tell you today that some other actual servers tried to force their tactics, and pressure and what led to just straight bullying take place to our team. Now, before I get into it. I am going to only put in name dropping when I feel there should be some responsibility given now. Not anything anyone has ever done in the past. Some of this information, admittedly will be biased and only from one perspective, but this is my story and accounts. Just letting you know to be as fair as possible.
A few months ago, in the staff Discord I had off-handedly mentioned if someone could send me the Litigator model so I could offhandedly make a meme. I hadn't ever played Clash before, and so I didn't know they were encrypted. One of our guests and contributors on the Discord server had just in the moment of conversation, cracked the model and decrypted it, not because I asked but because it was just part of the conversation at the time. I did not feel comfortable taking it at the time, and people in the Discord didn't either, so we really had just respectfully chosen to not use it out of respect for our fellow team members on the project who worked on Clash and the greater Clash community as a whole. Clash did not see it this way though. Someone had leaked that information over there and the whole Clash team got really upset at this contributor's actions. However, they did not do this "professionally" as they like to call it at all. Instead they targeted someone ENTIRELY DIFFERENT, A CREATIVE LEAD and blamed all of this on him, and demanded he gave a public apology. They literally had harassed and targeted this individual when he wasn't even the project lead or literally had anything to do with it. And I think they know that too, but their justification was quite literally because he was some sort of lead. This was the straw that broke the camel's back. This person, who was a veteran in the Toontown community for years, had a lot on his plate, and helped build Toontown Offline to what it was today was literally bullied out of the community and was demanded to take something up he had nothing to do with. This man was incredibly important and when he left it sent a shockwave to the greater parts of our team and made up to 5 or 6 people leave with him. This was incredibly disheartening and I felt incredibly sad to see a lot of my friends leave. Among those that left was Poppy Cheezycorn, who I will get into later. I had felt like I had done this simply because I asked to use a Clash model for a meme. This guilt had been sitting on me for months. With rearrangements and new leadership now, Loonatic took up the creative lead and at least to me, did not take the ground rules we had established into affect. And it wasn't even long before she left in April for a break anyways. During this month, me and people on the main Offline discord were just literally having opinions on things we did not like about Clash. Admittedly I was probably more aggressive because of what had happened a few months prior. Anyways, this lead to Poppy coming into the team discord as a now contributor and asks us to not be negative about Clash, and that Clash hadn't done anything wrong to Offline, or had not of bad mouthed Offline. This is incredibly false and not true, obviously. They were the ones who did what they did and took the actions they took to put Offline in the state that we were in. And to have me sitting here, guilty, feeling like I was responsible for something I know wasn't my fault but theirs, really angered me. I told Poppy basically "no" except a little more aggressively and admittedly out of spite I had ramped up my negativity for Clash. But how could I not? Imagine waking up everyday for 2 months and seeing your new friends no longer active in a project you all worked together with on all this stuff taken away for what feels like your fault when it isn't. So a few days pass, and Loonatic is back. I am once again having negative discussions about Clash and I am made aware Loon is about to put in a new rule with what I understand is no consultance with any other leads like it should be, that you cannot be negative about other servers. Immediately I jumped on this and told her "no I'm not censoring people to speak their minds because we never had before" and then went in the staff chat and passively aggressively asked her if the people who bullied our friend out the community were also affected by these rules *or if it didn't matter anymore because an hour before hand Clash had blacklisted Offline from their staff to either be on our Discord servers or to be staff on Clash, for nothing but people talking bad about the game* She got mad and complained about "professionalism" something very clear to me was not anything Clash was demonstrating. I again, told her about Offline's philosophy and how we are a friend group, not a corporation. She literally was not listening and threatened to fire me, something she had no authority to do so, because the rules were it was a vote off with all the leads present. But instead, nope, she just banned me from the staff discord, I left a very on the nose message on the public Discord and left. So to reiterate, Loonatic, not allowed to even be on the Offline staff anymore if she wanted to work on Clash, FIRED ME WITHOUT ANY AUTHORITY for SPEAKING OUT AGAINST THE BULLYING THE CORPORATE CLASH TEAM WAS ENFORCING ON US. No matter how you look at it, this was essentially a sting operation to get Offline canned. Intentional or not. They knew what they were doing. It's so incredibly unfortunate it's come to this, none of the staff had agreed with what she had did and everyone else has left because of it and made Offline essentially dead as a project. People who wanted to work like Cogs shut down our project and community. Should've seen it coming though, they do have the word "Corporate" in their name.
TLDR; Corporate Clash bullied our staff out of the community for things they didn't do, and a Clash team member who was staff on our game had banned and fired me with no authority knowing they were not allowed to be on the Offline team anymore.