Ladies and Gentlemen, on the night of May 12th, we lost a soul invaluable to the discussion here on the forums. A user whose desire to contribute cost him his account in his desperate attempt to obtain respect with a simple 16x16 image. Some may call him creepy, others may call him a flaming badgewhore, others just simply a bad troll, but all will stop and gawk at the tragedy that was:
TruthPains: A Cautionary Tale
Our story begins on a chilly December morning, with a bright and cheery new user ready to hop his way onto Smogon. Young little TruthPains registers his Smogon account on Decemeber 4th. It wasn't long before TruthPains began noticing small icons below certain users names, users who were more reveared than others with larger avatars and a whole collection of words below their usernames! TruthPains learned of badges very quickly, and soon, he was hellbent on claiming one to call his own.
While most users would have lurked to get a grasp of what is and what is not accepted here, Truthpains was an innovator and wanted to claim a ladybug faster than even BlueKirby had. Why wait when you can cheese your way to the top? Why, just a few VMs to learn what he'd need to do, a few friend requests, and some flattery to grease the wheels would be more than enough!
And with that, TruthPains was off on his way to becoming a badged user.
Some were more blunt with their advice than others.
After hearing about all the wonderful ways he could contribute, Truthpains left for some time to painstakingly work on a Dragonair analysis for RU. Four painful months of play testing and fine tuning were about to pay off with his first contribution to the site!...
Which was promptly locked for not giving a rat's ass about the C&C rules.
But this Dragonair fiasco was far from pointless. It was this that led to a chance encounter between starcrossed lovers, destined by Fate to meet.
There she was, the very vixen that had locked his thread. With glorious looks (so her avatar implied) and a great standing in the community, TruthPains knew she was the one. After such a glorious encounter, TruthPains needed to express his undying love for his crush.
A barrage of unending love letters hit Fatecrashers wall like a sack of bricks. When those were unresponsive, however, more drastic methods were set into place. Here, TruthPains unveiled his remarkable skills as a poet, begging for Fatecrashers in such elegant prose to "MARRY/TUTOR ME?".
Alas, Fate rejected his love and revealed he was actually male. Brokenhearted, TruthPains set out to drown his sorrows in a Screamo discussion, at first, kicking off the discussion with a simple discuss followed by another one with just the first paragraph of the wikipedia Screamo article.
Lost and confused, Truthpains took to his roots and began asking more users how to contribute. Nearly all of them gave the exact same response, usually trying to be detailed and nice. Even though they all basically spelled it out that he should lurk more all of them were ignored. Now he was beginning to notice a trend... Everytime he begged users for authority people started to look down upon him! Why, the nerve! Who would ever bash a prospective contributor who had done nothing but serve as a jester for the forums!?!
That was it. Banned from several smogon IRC channels and Pokemon Online for what? Insulting / Impersonating moderators? What petty justification!
With that bout, it was time to show Smogon who was the REAL boss of the place, starting with his sweetheart, Fatecrashers.
A moment of silence followed before a swift ban struck his account, striking though not only his username, but every attempt he had made to ascend to the reaches of the moderators he admired(?)
For now, all that remains of Truthpain's reign are memories, saved forever with the rest of Smogon on a floppy disk. But in the end, the love between TruthPains and Fatecrashers will never die, as evident by his final words:
TruthPains: A Cautionary Tale
Our story begins on a chilly December morning, with a bright and cheery new user ready to hop his way onto Smogon. Young little TruthPains registers his Smogon account on Decemeber 4th. It wasn't long before TruthPains began noticing small icons below certain users names, users who were more reveared than others with larger avatars and a whole collection of words below their usernames! TruthPains learned of badges very quickly, and soon, he was hellbent on claiming one to call his own.
While most users would have lurked to get a grasp of what is and what is not accepted here, Truthpains was an innovator and wanted to claim a ladybug faster than even BlueKirby had. Why wait when you can cheese your way to the top? Why, just a few VMs to learn what he'd need to do, a few friend requests, and some flattery to grease the wheels would be more than enough!
And with that, TruthPains was off on his way to becoming a badged user.
Some were more blunt with their advice than others.
After hearing about all the wonderful ways he could contribute, Truthpains left for some time to painstakingly work on a Dragonair analysis for RU. Four painful months of play testing and fine tuning were about to pay off with his first contribution to the site!...
Which was promptly locked for not giving a rat's ass about the C&C rules.
But this Dragonair fiasco was far from pointless. It was this that led to a chance encounter between starcrossed lovers, destined by Fate to meet.
There she was, the very vixen that had locked his thread. With glorious looks (so her avatar implied) and a great standing in the community, TruthPains knew she was the one. After such a glorious encounter, TruthPains needed to express his undying love for his crush.
A barrage of unending love letters hit Fatecrashers wall like a sack of bricks. When those were unresponsive, however, more drastic methods were set into place. Here, TruthPains unveiled his remarkable skills as a poet, begging for Fatecrashers in such elegant prose to "MARRY/TUTOR ME?".
Not creepy in the slightest.
Alas, Fate rejected his love and revealed he was actually male. Brokenhearted, TruthPains set out to drown his sorrows in a Screamo discussion, at first, kicking off the discussion with a simple discuss followed by another one with just the first paragraph of the wikipedia Screamo article.
Lost and confused, Truthpains took to his roots and began asking more users how to contribute. Nearly all of them gave the exact same response, usually trying to be detailed and nice. Even though they all basically spelled it out that he should lurk more all of them were ignored. Now he was beginning to notice a trend... Everytime he begged users for authority people started to look down upon him! Why, the nerve! Who would ever bash a prospective contributor who had done nothing but serve as a jester for the forums!?!
That was it. Banned from several smogon IRC channels and Pokemon Online for what? Insulting / Impersonating moderators? What petty justification!
With that bout, it was time to show Smogon who was the REAL boss of the place, starting with his sweetheart, Fatecrashers.
A moment of silence followed before a swift ban struck his account, striking though not only his username, but every attempt he had made to ascend to the reaches of the moderators he admired(?)
For now, all that remains of Truthpain's reign are memories, saved forever with the rest of Smogon on a floppy disk. But in the end, the love between TruthPains and Fatecrashers will never die, as evident by his final words:
