My last avatar was a snippet of a comic I really like, here's the full thing



And on that note, I wish you all well and a happy New Year

I also have been hanging out with my family this weekend. It's been forever since I've seen them. I missed my dog a lot, she's still the cutest thing ever.

Been reading some art views recently. I think it'd be cool if I knew more about painting because my grandmother and mother are both painters.



I also saw this and really liked it

Here's some photographs of Alaska

I don't really have any one favorite song. Just listen to the song on my profile

whats ur fav song?

It doesn't help that Lucid doesn't even come on the site anymore or care in the slightest. For instance, when I was a moderator before both admins, Nathan and Edark, quit and literally left the site for a few weeks. They both messaged Lucid and informed him that they were doing this and suggested some people for new admins. They didn't receive responses and the site literally had no administrators during that time.

Even now Nathan is absent most of the time, though I do love him and he's great when he's around, but the moderators don't even have alt account checks anymore, only the admin does. This means we rely on him alone to come alt check people, which is a hassle and him coming around isn't too often.

This makes it incredibly easy for trolls/banned users to just make new accounts, rack up violations, rinse and repeat. If you get 7 violations on your alt account, and then 7 violations on your main, there's a 99% chance that unless the mods know it's your alt to begin with no one will be aware that you're 6 violations passed an 8 violation site ban.

On top of that the mods are plain just apathetic. Nobody wants to handle the difficult or time consuming reports. Nobody wants to handle the reports written by/about the people that will 100% whine and complain about them. Everyone just sort of views things as fine as they are, but the site is going down the tubes due to apathy.

When you really want to get to the bottom of what's wrong with Main lobby, it's that the issues are self-perpetuating.

Main lobby is overran with trolls/banned users/gamethrow accounts to the point where most new users probably just quit or don't bother getting involved in the community. Just look at how active the forums are compared to even a couple years ago, they're basically barren. Not to mention the fact that competitive rounds are getting less and less players.

Why is that though? Because moderation is just getting apathetic.

It's impossible to judge everything as black and white when it comes to the rules so you'd think the moderators would rely on utilizing their judgments and trying to base their decisions on what would be good for the site or improve it right? Wrong.

For some reason the rules are treated as laws and most verdicts are decided upon because they're either the easy choice or to just avoid conflict/people lashing out at the mod. There's silly things like this happening:

https://epicmafia.com/report/238139

a troll account created just to be annoying and try to incite people into making homophobic comments using a pretty overtly sexual background of two people kissing

Or maybe this one

https://epicmafia.com/topic/87981

someone made an account named after a man who helped Hitler rise to power and have created countless threads on their alt to complain and argue against it just to cause problems

The underlying issue is that trolls are being given too much leeway and too much of a platform to just berate and harass moderators to the point that they aren't actually moderating the site anymore

eat says

I just wanna say thank you for all the work you did on the Luke/K/Cam investigation, it truly is appreciated.

Thank you!

Being a site mod actually sucks and I'm getting burnt out again. I derive almost little to not joy from doing it already and only went back to doing it because I was requested and because I was feeling a bit inspired to try and help the site out again.

Here's just a few excerpts of what being a mod is like from the last few days alone:





Not to mention the countless threads filled with vitriol because people are upset that they get a violation for throwing games. Just read any complaint thread and you're guaranteed to read me being insulted at least a few times. Sometimes people just make thread after thread of complaints in various forums too.



It gets pretty silly at times and trying to explain something as simple as "1+1=2" is like banging your head into a wall over and over.

https://epicmafia.com/topic/87948

Just trying to play the game itself is often not even possible either.



Fun. This is what playing competitive epicmafia is like.

Note: This isn't even all of it, there's been a whole lot more but it just seems lame to try and round it all up and I think you get the picture from this alone

withered says

If you could be given another talent or ability, what would you want it to be?

There's so many things that I wish I was better at and all for different reasons so this is tricky.

I think I'd go with writing for this one. I really like poetry and reading but I've found that my writing level just isn't up to snuff with what I'd like it to be and often find myself displeased with what I've created once done. Funnily enough, writing was also historically what I was worst at academically, and if I was a bit better I could've been on some lame list for being a perfect standardized test taker or something.

Being a poet is something I'd love to be, but that's probably just stemming from some deep, unrecognized, creative drought that's going on with me presently. But it's a fun thought.

jack says

to piggyback, who plays in you in said film about your life? (could be your age right now, or you when you would be older)

I have a few actors that I'm really fond of and who are also somewhat close to my age and not __too__ different from my aesthetic as a human being so I'd pick one of them. I think it'd be a close choice between Leonardo DiCaprio, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Oscar Isaac. (shoutout to Mads Mikkelsen who is also an insanely talented actor but I'm afraid is a bit out of an acceptable range and also just not similar enough to me to fit)

But in the end I think that Oscar Isaac would probably be my choice because he's the only one I've seen actually work in a biographical movie, which was Inside Llewyn Davis (something I would highly recommend as well)

https://letterboxd.com/film/inside-llewyn-davis/

I think my close second choice would've been Jake Gyllenhaal here due to his performance in Enemy

https://letterboxd.com/film/enemy/

Which was absolutely spectacular and easily one of his best to date

yeasayer says

what song would play in the opening credits of a film about your life? who's directing it?

After pondering that question some I came to the conclusion that a movie about me would almost entirely be filled with instrumentals and contain little to no lyrics. I just don't think there's too many songs that have lyrics that would fit "me" as a whole, and I'd want them to do me justice. I'm a huge fan of instrumentals and jazz and my favorite band is BADBADNOTGOOD (BBNG). So picking DOOM, especially given that I use the username harodihg, which is Ghidorah (the three-headed space monster as that video's background) backwards fits incredibly well.

As for who's directing it I would definitely pick a director who's already created a movie that I'm not only wild about, but also believe to have created a near perfect movie before. Not to mention the styling of those movies also being able to fit with what I'd envision my movie to be like.

I'd go with either Jean-Pierre Melville, the director of Le Samourai

https://letterboxd.com/film/the-samourai/

or Charlie Kaufman the director or Synecdoche, New York

https://letterboxd.com/film/synecdoche-new-york/

If you could be given another talent or ability, what would you want it to be?

I just wanna say thank you for all the work you did on the Luke/K/Cam investigation, it truly is appreciated.

to piggyback, who plays in you in said film about your life? (could be your age right now, or you when you would be older)

I love that question and wish I had more that were similar! I will answer it when I have some free time.

what song would play in the opening credits of a film about your life? who's directing it?

I was actually really wanting to get into one of those, or another ORG-type game for a while but I didn't get into the few that I applied for. My interest in things tend to wax and wane and if there's a lull in what I'm doing I'll often just pick something else up to obsess over. That's probably what's happening right now too.

I can't exactly put my finger on why, but I always feel a bit standoffish and lonely sometimes when I feel 'committed' to Survivor lobby unless I'm actively participating in a game. I know I type all of the time and buzz around here and there, but I still feel a bit secluded.

I've just been playing Hearthstone and modding the site to fill time gaps instead of various Survivor games or whatever. I just got done spending most of my morning/afternoon investigating and writing up this long thread to ban Luke, the guy who stole your lobby's trophy a while back. It's actually pretty bonkers and I found even more bizarre evidence that I posted throughout the thread, so if you want a laugh check it out

https://epicmafia.com/topic/87939

You should play a one-night trophy game sometime and then compare it to a main lobby round on how much cortisol was released into your bloodstream.

You haven't played in one so you wouldn't know I guess but lord. They're unlike any other games I've played.

The trophy games in Survivor are a lot more drawn out and the challenges were pretty relaxed allowing people to play when you'd like. The only strenuous part would probably be trying to communicate with people (which, funnily enough I was actually a part of no alliance chats or anything outside of the house chat) which I would say isn't difficult at all. If anything I'd say that's a good aspect of Survivor lobby trophy games.

In comparison, trophying in Main on average might take about 10 days. In those 10 days you have to play at LEAST 5 hearts (assuming you only play on one account and none of your games have any suicides) which is about 50 games. Then if those 5 games take on average about 20 minutes (not even taking into account the time it takes for them to fill, or waiting on games to be hosted, etc.) that's about 1,000 minutes or 16.7 hours. I'd say that 16.7 hours of yelling at people, stressing out about properly reading others and worrying about being lynched yourself is a lot more demanding than the persuasive techniques and drama that you'd find yourself engulfed in while playing a Survivor lobby game.

You really have to take into account the stress factor of playing over 10+ hours of games and being closely followed by someone else who's only a couple wins away from nabbing your position on the leaderboards, which might be hard to do if you haven't trophied or attempted to before in Main.

Feel free to gaze upon and admire my trophy collection from Main that I've acquired through much shedding of blood, sweat, and tears

Elfen says

Main lobby or Survivor lobby? Which is more demanding?

A thorough answer would be positively regarded.

A comparison, for example, that makes sense, would be a Trophy Game for Survivor and a yellow heart trophy race for main.

In general, I would say that Survivor lobby games are a LOT more demanding than Main lobby. This is due to a few reasons:

1) the games are shorter, much shorter

2) there are a good number of trolls/GT accounts in Main so the level of competition is on average higher in Survivor lobby

3) due to the nature of Main lobby games being more play-when-you-like there's little fatigue involved, whereas Survivor lobby games can take HOURS

if we were to compare attempting to trophy in each lobby though I'm afraid I wouldn't be able to give you that great of an opinion as I've only played in a single trophy game (EMBB4) and I believe I got 7th(?) but here goes...