r/HobbyDrama

>"Let him who desires peace prepare for war." - Vegetius

Can you do me a favor? Watch this live performance. It's a song about a young girl from a Kibbutz in northern Israel who has a new boyfriend from Damascus and wants to "do it all day (with him)"-- look just watch it for a minute.

Did you last more than a minute? Because I couldn't. I've seen middle school productions with better everything than this. Really, the whole show looks and sounds like a parody of dance music, and not an affectionate one.

This is "Sameach" (שמח, "Happy"), Israel's Eurovision 2000 entry, written and performed by a virtually unknown band called Pingpong. It got 7 points in total, somehow beating France and Belgium. When the delegation flew back home, the country was waiting for them, and not with flowers.

This is not a story about a story getting a shitty score. It's about a delegation fighting with itself, bringing down everything and everyone around them with them.

The primary sources of this post are a micro-budget documentary called "The Loser Takes It All" by Alon Weinstock, which follows the band's journey, and a retrospective written by Roy Arad, founder and member of Pingpong.

Finally, and unfortunately, it is impossible to tell the story without some history and geopolitics. I am Israeli myself, but I promise there aren't any objectionable or (overly) controversial topics here, and I've done my best to give a top level neutral view. ^I ^hope.

Welcome to The War on "Happy".

A Peace of History

You probably know what Eurovision is. What began as a wholesome song contest to reunite postwar (Western) Europe grew into an audacious, poppy, extremely campy yet oddly charming affair. Some people watch it earnestly, some, like me, watch it ironically, and others find it deeply cringe. Wherever you land, there's no denying it has some... evocative stuff.

Israel's debut performance on Eurovision happened in Luxembourg in 1973. Six months later, Egypt and Syria launched a surprise offensive against Israel. The war, and especially its conclusion, sent massive shockwaves across the Middle East, some of which are felt to this day. By 1979, Israel and Egypt had signed a peace agreement. Israel and Syria, however, remained in a formal state of war.

But then came the Winds of Change.

It started in 1991, when the Israeli prime minister and representatives from all of its Arab neighbors went to a nice castle in Madrid to discuss peace plans. Then came the 1993 Oslo Accords between Israel's Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat, which were intended as a framework for a future Palestinian state. Don't look up what happened afterwards, we're having a good time.

While all of this was going on, Israel and Syria maintained a covert diplomatic channel. These channels became public almost immediately after some breakthrough seemed imminent. But like a constant stream of job interviews, both sides would shake hands, smile, and then quietly go nowhere. Not even a rejection e-mail.

Let the politicians fuck around. Let's find out what the ordinary folks were up to.

The Squad is Born

Roy Arad was stuck.

His post-punk band Knack/Pop, founded in 1994, was getting regular gigs, a fanbase, and even some airtime on TV. But it had yet to score an album deal. In 1997, Arad left the band, looking for something new. He was 20 years old. Knack/Pop would disband two years later without ever releasing an album.

Around the same time, Arad met an arts and culture journalist named Guy Assif, almost ten years his senior. They hit it off immediately, bonding over a shared love of underground and underappreciated art. Very quickly, they started seriously considering making EDM together.

In the late 90s, house, EDM (known in Israel simply as "dance"), and especially trance music, was not positively received by the mainstream. At best, these genres were seen as low-effort and low-brow. At worst, they were actively "corrupting the youth", with police raiding raves in search of psychedelics.

No matter. The people want to dance, so let's dance. Arad and Assif founded Pingpong and brought in two singers, Arad's roommate Ahal Eden and art student Yifat Giladi. None of them had much experience actually making dance music, but they released a few singles and hoped for the best. Very quickly, some of these singles (according to Arad) actually became hits in the scene, like "Burger Ranch" and "City Girl" (technically not an EDM track). Granted, both sound very raw, that is, uncooked, but I won't deny they have that nostalgic "Kid Playing Around With FL Studio" charm.

Finally, they had a winning formula. The stage was set for their big break. Pingpong started recording their first album with their own money, hoping a record label would sign them and cover the costs. Arad recalls the business people were sympathetic, but wouldn't take the plunge:

>"It's much easier and more profitable to sign a guy with an acoustic guitar singing about a girl who dumped him."

The search for a musically inclined sugar daddy continued to no avail. Weeks turned to months. The burden of recording an album grew heavier and heavier, favors started running out. It was starting to look like Knack/Pop all over again: a traveling band with not one album to their name.

But then, sometime in 1999, Guy Assif, our intrepid journalist, discovered Pingpong was technically eligible to submit a song to the Israeli Broadcasting Authority (IBA, the public broadcaster). If chosen, the song would represent Israel in the upcoming Eurovision. This selection round is colloquially named "Pre-Eurovision," and Assif suggested the band submit one of their songs. Y'know, as a joke. Hey, it doesn't cost us anything, might as well.

It is January 2000. Y2K did not kill us all. "Believe" by Cher is number one on the Billboard charts. Israeli and Syrian representatives are negotiating a peace deal in West Virginia while Hafez al-Assad, the leader of Syria, is slowly dying.

Arad returns home after buying toilet paper and turns on his answering machine. Beep.

"Hello, this is so-and-so from the IBA. Congratulations, Pingpong. Your song has been selected to represent Israel in Eurovision."

...what the fuck?!

The Ruffians Go To Boot Camp

You'd expect a broadcaster to play it safe with Eurovision.

You might pick a well-loved veteran singer, a popular rising talent, a pop idol, hell, maybe someone who'd released more than zero albums up to that point. Instead the judges picked a band nobody had heard of, built around a genre most people derided.

This odd choice made the press look for answers. It turned out producer and gay rights activist Gal Uchovsky, a member of the Pre-Eurovision panel, had "ties" to Pingpong. Assif had worked for Uchovsky in the past, but Assif didn't know about Uchovsky's involvement on the panel, and Uchovsky had disclosed the connection to the panel beforehand. These allegations were later dismissed, but this was day one. Talk about starting on the wrong foot.

Amos Oren, also on the panel, said that "no song was worthy to represent Israel" and that Pingpong was "the lesser evil". I could not find anyone who could further corroborate this claim, so make of that what you will.

Arad states in his retrospective that the band wrote, and possibly composed, the song themselves. I couldn't verify this, but if we take him at his word, it means either the IBA really believes in auteur theory, or really believes in God.

Originally, the song was about a girl meeting, and really wanting to bone, a tourist from Romania. But the songwriting process happened while Israel and Syria were having their Shepherdstown peace talks. Inspired by this gesture of peace and as a way to show their support, Pingpong changed the storyline so the girl meets, and really wants to bone, a Syrian guy instead.

Fuck war! Literally!

Eurovision has a whole chain of command going all the way up to the EBU, the European Broadcasting Union, which runs and manages the show. This means the premise had to be written down, recorded, and approved by all the higher-ups. And it was.

We know this because about a month before the actual contest, the music video came out. It looks like this. This is not a joke or a parody. This is not a tribute made by four hyped-up high schoolers in their A/V class. This is the actual music video the delegation filmed, produced and edited, and was sent by the IBA to the rest of the world. Note that it has two curious props: cucumbers used as a microphones, and Syrian flags (around 2:03). Put a pin in that.

Then came the press tour. The oldest band member was 32. The youngest was 22. People at these ages don't typically get media training, especially not former members of punk bands who pivoted into dance music. Here's Arad summing up the band's approach:

>"We refused to be photographed with sick people, who are exploited to promote others. We tried to have a punk attitude and present the humanist values we believe in as part of the Eurovision contest. We were certain there would be those who would appreciate the audacity and our fresh attitude [...] We were wrong."

The IBA wanted charming, energic, all-Israeli, media-friendly youngsters. What they got instead was closer to this:

"The fact that there are so many gay men is an unbelievable waste for girls"

"We think women should use cucumbers in more imaginative ways than use it in the kitchen"

"The song we gave the Pre-Eurovision was the worst song on the album"

Ahal Eden (the roomate) admitting she had no prior singing or acting experience but the band still picked her, despite auditioning actual singers

These "transgressions" may look pretty mild right now, and they are. But as we'll soon see, you can't act like a Down With The System We're Just Having Fun kinda guy when you actually represent The System.

It is May 2000. Pingpong is mere weeks away from their international debut. The public is skeptical. The IBA is on edge. But the ship can still be steered back to safety. The band would go on stage in Stockholm, represent their country with a silly song, have fun, and that's it. All it would take is a few weeks of peace and quiet, and all would be forgotten.

There Was No Peace Nor Quiet

10 days to Eurovision. The IBA's head of programming has a chat with the group prior to their flight to Sweden and tells them to lose the "gimmicks" and "provocations," most notably the Syrian flags.

4 days to Eurovision. The Deputy Education Minister is quoted as saying the song will "give Israeli culture a bad name and a reputation of a low and savage culture." He calls to disqualify the song, despite the fact it was approved many times, and despite the fact it's 4 days to Eurovision.

3 days to Eurovision. The band visits an Assyrian community center. They seem to have fun, and come out as friendly, curious and respectful.

This is the only good thing that happens that day.

Some Eurovision rehearsals are open to the public. Reporters spot Pingpong waving Israeli and Syrian flags during their performance (they lost the cucumbers, though). The Israeli press quickly finds out and breaks the story. The IBA is livid.

Then, during a press conference, Assif waves both flags and ostensibly asks the audience, "What's wrong about these two flags hanging on [sic] together?" before offering optimistic platitudes of peace. After he finishes, the IBA delegation producer goes up on stage, unprompted, and shoots him down. On stage. In front of the press. His English is so delightfully broken that I just had to transcribe it:

>"And I think the whole Eurovision concert doesn't think the group is coming here to performing a song, not performing "politicals" [...] We are not a political party [...] But if he is a "delicate" Israel television and they have to song the song and the best, they will know that.

Congratulations everyone, you've just made your feud extremely public. Pingpong and the IBA are officially on a collision course, driving toward each other at 200 miles per hour, in a cruel game of Chicken.

To make things worse, Pingpong never acknowledged (or willingly ignored) the fact that a peace agreement with Syria would inherently involve returning the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights, a deeply unpopular prospect. Knowingly or not, they had essentially entered a political minefield.

2 days to Eurovision. The night before, the IBA demanded the complete and total removal of all Syrian flags from the performance. Should the band refuse, the delegation would back out of the entire contest. Song producer Ronen Ben Tal backs the ultimatum, saying he feels the band had made its pro-peace opinions loud and clear all week.

Everyone is clearly not taking it well. Ahal is crying and chain-smoking. Ben Tal produces a hand-written resignation letter, threatening to give it to the IBA if the rest of the band won't budge.

By early morning, Pingpong responds with its own ultimatum: they will only agree to perform with Syrian flags. A standoff. The game of Chicken continues.

But then a man jumps in and stands in the middle of the track.

1 day to Eurovision. Midnight, Stockholm time.

Eytan Fox, the delegation's director and the band's artistic director, calls the chairman of the IBA. The documentary features a small snippet of their conversation. Fox starts off by saying that all of this talk is all an act, and really, this is how it works, man, this is Eurovision. When that doesn't land, Fox gives him an outsider's perspective: you approved a song about peace and sexual innuendo. The band spent the last nine days promoting exactly that message. To disqualify yourself at this point is censorship. You'd be stopping a group of Israelis from waving flags of all things, after letting them do and say everything else. Let's meet in the middle here.

And so, the IBA caved.

Pingpong would sing and dance however they bloody well like, but the IBA would remove their channel logo and all Hebrew subtitles while the song is on. In effect, they disowned their own song, but more importantly - the representatives of their own country.

It's worth noting that pulling out this late is punishable by a considerable fine. What's more, it would have been a massive blow to Israel diplomatically, and put the blame squarely on the IBA. Surely they quickly understood that ragequitting was significantly worse than letting the damn band sing.

Eurovision. Exhausted and nervous, Pingpong did the best they could with what they'd been given, which was their own song. You already know how it looks. You already know how it sounds. You already know the score.

But crisis was avoided. Pingpong sees the Eurovision drifting away in their rearview mirror. Finally, Pingpong can return home, victorious.

Win the Battle, Lose the War

>"Hezbollah is making threats, the government is about to collapse and the South Lebanon Army is stuck, but members of Knesset (Israel's parliament) found a far bigger disgrace to deal with. The Knesset's Education Committee concluded, at the end of a fiery debate, that the performance of the "Pingpong" band was "a disgrace and a shame to the State of Israel, the Broadcasting Authority, and Israeli culture." - Yediot Aharonot newspaper, May 31st 2000

What Pingpong and Eytan Fox failed to realize at the time, or perhaps blissfully ignored, is that by letting the band do whatever it wanted, they also erased whatever responsibility or accountability they had over the band. The IBA and the public were free to shit on Pingpong, with very few people asking questions.

That said, the whole affair forced the IBA to give up the "Pre-Eurovision" contest almost entirely, replacing it with a public televote rather than a panel of judges. They also learned many lessons about managing a delegation, from songwriting to performance and PR. Future delegations became much more refined, organized, well-directed, and professional.

"Sameach" became a scarlet letter on the bodies of all Pingpong's members for a bit. The CEO of the IBA called Pingpong "a band of crooks." Right-wing politicians tried, and failed, to sue the band for fraud, or even for waving "the flag of the enemy."

Roy Arad alleges he was spat on multiple times. He and Guy Assif were promptly fired from their jobs as editors. Since they'd founded the band and frequently appeared in most interviews, they caught most of the flak. To quote Arad:

>"Had I truly aspired to be public enemy number one, I don't think a pop-dance band is the way I would have chosen."

Yet just as fast as the storm came, it was over. The political and military situation in the region quickly took precedence, and the whole affair had all but disappeared by October 2000.

Today, "Sameach" is a small and silly footnote in the story of Israeli Eurovision history, and people barely mention it. Discussions about it revolve around the poor quality of the song and the embarrassing performance. People often forget the details of the feud, and when it comes up, they usually cringe at how stupid the situation was.

Epilogue

Roy Arad continued to make music as a hobby up until 2006. He dabbled in many fields of writing, like literature, plays, screenwriting, and journalism. He wrote or edited around 10 books between 2000 and 2014, most of them poetry books. In 2020, six women disclosed that Arad sexually abused them, leading him to quit writing for Haaretz newspaper. I don't know what he's doing now.

Guy Assif returned to journalism, both written and televised. Today he is a regular political columnist for Yediot Aharonot.

Ahal Eden is now a DJ, art curator and activist, often assosiated with the far-left Hadash party.

Yifat Giladi majored in art and design. She is an artist and painter.

None of them really have anything more to say about their Eurovision experiences nowadays. They aren't asked about it, and don't care for it.

So, at the end of the day, who were Pingpong? Proud warrior-poets who stood by their art, grubby leftist trolls who faced the consequences, or just teens doing teens things without understanding their position?

And who was the IBA? Well-meaning reps who had to constantly put out fires by a renegade group, nationalist boomers who made every mistake possible and fucked off, or just a large, antiquated, unorganized corporation that had no idea how to handle what they approved?

What of the peace process? Was there a genuine yearning for peace, or a ploy for legitimacy in the West? And from what side? It doesn't matter, because it didn't work, and never did. Israel and Syria remain in a state of war to this day, and the rise of Al-Sharaa and the subsequent Israeli invasion two years ago only serve to remind us of that.

"We were a funny band that competed in a stupid, dying contest," Arad wrote. "It's unclear why winning it is so crucial to the lives of seven million people."

Well, Roy, while I don't fully agree with your writings, and I believe you bore some responsibility for the tomfoolery at Eurovision, I too am asking that every year.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: Violence, The Philosophy of Violence, Rape, Torture, Organized Crime,  Deeply Uncomfortable Existentialism

 

What is Mixed Martial Arts?

Mixed Martial Arts (abbreviated as MMA) is, currently, one of the most popular sports, lifestyles, and fandoms in the entire world. Which is interesting, because if you think about it, it is technically not its own independent pastime. MMA is more like a cobbled-together hodgepodge of dozens, if not hundreds, of previous cultural traditions that came before it.

Perhaps it helps to start in the beginning. At some indeterminate and therefore un-citable time, the first human being (or homo-sapien ancestor species) discovered that they could hurt other human beings. Physically. We do not know what shape or form this discovery took, or what motivated it, only that it must, logically, have happened at some point. My personal guess, for the sake of convenience, is that a caveman smacked another caveman in the face out of the blue, and history was made.  

This was the invention of “Violence”.

Now, given that this predated recorded history, we can’t say through what mechanisms the pursuit of violence continued to branch out and develop. However, as we now live in the present, we can see that violence must logically have done so, as there are now many roads through which we personally pursue the ways in which better violence can enrich our lives.

This journey has traditionally taken the form Martial Arts. No matter where you live in the world, you have most likely heard of a few. Kung-Fu, Karate, Wrestling, Sumo, Jiu-Jitsu, Capoeira, Wrestling, among many, many others. A Martial Art is any codified system of either techniques, philosophies, exercises, practices, or any combination thereof, which seeks to “perfect” the practice of violence.

Universally, every Martial Art- without exception- is based on the fundamental idea that that Martial Art is capital-b Better than all others, in some unique way. After all, if a Martial Art isn’t the “best” way to practice violence……. Why do it?

This “institutional ego”, for lack of a better term, is why Martial Arts branched off into countless different directions, countless different forms, all being incredibly distinct not only from each other, but from their common roots of cavemen smacking each other in the face. There have been instances of Martial Arts interacting with other, different disciplines in the distant past, but these were very much the exception instead of the rule. For the most part, if you practiced a Martial Art, you mostly interacted with other people who did the same (or similar) Martial Arts. There was no commonly-accepted reason for Karate-users, for example, to go and fight Savate users on an institutional level.

After all, why fight someone using a different Martial Art? You already know that yours is better on a foundational level. So what would be the point?

As these styles of combat developed, some branched off into a different practice altogether, the Combat Sport. Combat Sports are Martial Arts that pursued an innately different goal. Instead of pursing better carnage, for the sake of the carnage itself, Combat Sports sought rational limits on violence, in pursuit of entertainment. While the first, millenia-old combat sports were, in fact, spectacularly violent (and sometimes fatal), this was no-longer the end goal they pursued. Rather, Combat Sports developed rules, methods of judgement, and limits, for the purpose of making their violence equal parts competitive, fun to do, and fun to watch.

For the most part, Combat Sports no-longer treated violence as an “anything goes” affair. There were now, definitively, things you were not allowed to do. There were now particular acts of violence that were encouraged over others, by the way of “points” or “victory conditions”, even if they were suboptimal, purely because they were fun.

This distinction- that between Martial Arts and Combat Sports- is important to understand, because MMA is the end product of these two philosophies crashing into each other. Martial Arts are about hurting people in a way that is “better”. Combat Sports are about hurting people in a way that is “fun”. These things are different.

The growing popularity of Combat Sports would lead the general public consciousness to a curious idea. It was already “fun” to watch individuals fight, but what if Martial Arts themselves, as individual disciplines, fought each other? Who would win? It was a fun question to think about.

Global Pop Culture in the 1970’s and the 1980’s would begin to flirt, heavily, with this idea.

While the roots of this concept are many and varied, one of the first individual flashpoints of this concept becoming reality was the “War of the Worlds”, a “Mixed-Style” fight between legendary boxer Muhammad Ali, and all-around crazy person Antonio Inoki (A Professional Wrestler, Judoka, and Catch wrestler). While this is arguably the first fight of its kind, the bout itself was disappointingly lackluster, and thus the idea did not really catch on at the time. Due to last minute contract shenanigans (allegedly on the part of Ali’s management), the entire fight was Inoki falling to the ground intentionally, and kicking Ali in the shins.

But the seed of the idea was planted nonetheless.

Another commonly sourced flashpoint was the popular 1988 movie “Bloodsport”, depicting an event called the “Kumite”, a secret international tournament where fighters from different cultures and styles would meet in a no-holds barred brawl to determine supremacy. What gave this film particular mystique at the time was the fact that it was, allegedly, based on real events, namely the life-story of one Frank Dux. Of course, the entire thing was likely fictional, and Frank Dux was (allegedly) a massive fraud on a hilarious scale.

But, again, the popularity of this film just spoke to a growing global culture that was really, REALLY wanting to see different Martial Arts fight each other. Even though the “Kumite” of Bloodsport was completely fictional (and distinct from the real tradition of “Kumite”), by the time the 1990’s hit, there were a lot of people who thought it would be cool to see.

So Mixed Martial Arts, in its modern form, was born.

 

The Development of Modern Mixed Martial Arts

The organization most widely credited with popularizing (though not inventing) the modern MMA competition is the Ultimate Fighting Championship, or UFC.

I should clarify at this point that UFC and MMA are not synonymous, although many people use the terms as such. UFC did not, and does not, have a monopoly on MMA. Even in the 90’s and 2000’s, they had competition in other circuits and companies like Pride FC. Even today, the UFC has competition in Bellator and One FC. So even though we’re going to be talking quite a bit about MMA and UFC, please do not think these are interchangeable.

All this being said, the UFC was the first large scale organization to really launch the idea of MMA as a competitive combat sport. The concept was simple: conduct one-on-one fights between two fighters, with an incredibly open and forgiving ruleset. All disciplines and martial arts would be allowed, and the only real limits were on certain types of debilitating moves. These limits were the reasonable things one would expect: eye-poking, biting, etc. Hilariously, strikes to the genitals were actually not outlawed within UFC’s version of the MMA until a few years in, leading to this curious early fight where a competitor was punched in the junk twenty times in a row at full power, until he gave up “out of terror”. Seriously, the official result is “Submission by Terror”.

Anyway.

With this very open ruleset, early UFC marketed itself as the cross-style brawl that everyone wanted by that point. “Anything goes”. If you thought your martial art was the best, come and test it under this very open combat-sports ruleset. And indeed, that is exactly what the early UFC became.

Heck, the very first MMA fight within the UFC was something out of a videogame, with a traditional French Savate practitioner fighting a Sumo Wrestler. Like that fight, most fights in the early UFC were extremely one-sided, non-competitive affairs.

Remember, the landscape of Martial Arts at the time was not to cross compete. Consequently, many, MANY martial arts simply had not been realistically tested against other, different styles. So when these very insulated, untested martial arts were thrown into the metaphorical deep end of the pool……. They drowned.

Within just a few years, the growing popularity of MMA had all but eradicated the “mystique” and “prestige” of certain martial arts, mainly because they completely failed when tested. Most notoriously, Aikido was found to lack real effectiveness, most schools of “Ninjitsu” were found to be outright fraudulent, and “standing only” styles like traditional Boxing were found to have fundamental weaknesses that could not be overcome. Many styles of Traditional Chinese Martial Arts (Kung-Fu, Hung-Gar, etc.) were found wanting within the UFC arena, and are still highly suspect to this day. Chinese Martial Arts in particular are a culturally contentious topic on this front, so I’ll save that conversation for another day.

On the other hand, the success of UFC and MMA as a wider concept caused certain Martial Arts to rise in prestige and exposure. The undisputed biggest “winner” in this regard was Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu (BJJ), which before the UFC had been a niche regional practice. However, Brazillian Jiu-Jitsu would absolutely DOMINATE the early UFC for several years, most notably through the legendary Gracie family of fighters, catapulting the sport to some prominence. Several other martial arts also rose into prominence through early UFC success, mainly Kickboxing, Freestyle Wrestling, and Vale Tudo.

Quite rapidly, MMA would filter out the “weaker” styles of martial arts, leaving only single-style practitioners who specialized in the styles that “worked”. While early UFC very much resembled the “Street Fighter” games in its colorful style variety, the high-pressure, natural-selection environment of the sport would rapidly give way to extremely focused, narrow-minded competitors. The kickboxers, the wrestlers, and about a million BJJ practitioners.

However, the next stage evolution of MMA would target that single-mindedness itself. After all, even if some Martial Arts are “better” than others, every discipline has logical weaknesses. For example, BJJ is a “grappling” based art, focused primarily on scenarios where both fighters are more or less flat on the ground (“rolling”). Those who practiced only BJJ, at the time, would have difficulty with fighters who could strike at range, keeping them from closing in, and negating almost every scenario where BJJ would shine. Conversely, those same striking arts- Kickboxing et. al- would not offer any particularly strong offense in grappling scenarios.

As a result, the dominance of single-style fighters would be broken by those fighters who would truly put the “Mixed” in “Mixed Martial Arts”. By “cross-training” in multiple different (and often philosophically contradictory) martial arts, this new breed of fighters would create something altogether new. They would create the modern MMA paradigm, as a patchwork tapestry of techniques plundered from different traditions. Anything that worked, worked, and would rapidly be adopted all throughout the MMA landscape. Anything that did not work, did not work, and would be discarded.

Ironically, through the infusion of Combat Sports-based ethos and limits, Martial Arts had returned to their original purpose of being. It was no longer about the ego of any individual martial art, but about the pure and unadulterated pursuit of better, more efficient violence, once again.

By the 2010’s, this philosophy had not only come to define MMA (and the UFC), but now loomed over all martial arts and combat sports, worldwide. MMA, which itself was paradoxically not a martial art itself, had become something somehow grander. A wider road to pursue, for all who wanted to improve themselves by hurting other people.

But this set the stage for something peculiar.

You see, mixing martial arts, despite being such a popular concept, is actually EXTREMELY difficult. In addition to the physical dedication and consistency which is required of any sport, it requires a particular mindset. It requires a mind that is smart enough to adopt the “working” parts of various disciplines, yet has enough personal ego  to rebel against those same disciplines, and reject that which “does not work”.

This new era, where the different parts of MMA were blending into each other in a way that was increasingly difficult to quantify, was begging for someone with this type of mind. It was a kingdom with no ruler.  A lock, looking for that one key- that one all time great- who had the dedication to say yes, the ego to say no, and the body to endure it all. A person with this singular mindset, so singular that it probably could not come from anywhere but natural talent, would find their empty throne, waiting and eager.

It was a shame that that person happened to be a complete asshole.

 

Intermission 1- April 9, 2002

My parents received a call from my middle school. I wasn’t there when they got the call, but I know what it said.

“Charlie has been in a fight. It was quite bad.”

This would likely have been a shock to them. As a child, I was extremely overweight, academics- obsessed, and non-expressive in general. Docile, even. I was a stickler for following rules, even those that no-one else cared about. The stereotypical “good boy”, taken to an unhealthy extreme.

“Socially Stunted”, in some people’s view. Including my own, now that I’m over two decades divorced from the time period.

They would go to the school, and have a private talk with one of the school’s guidance counsellors. They were assured that I was in no trouble, because I was in no way an instigator.

To the contrary, “SK”, a known bully with a long disciplinary record, had gathered a few of his friends and “jumped” me, in the middle of the schoolyard. They had surrounded me, yelled insults about my weight, and then a (coincidentally fatter) boy shoulder-checked me into the ground, where they proceeded to hit and stomp on me further.

There were dozens and dozens of witnesses, young and old, who were loudly (and insistently) verifying this to the school staff. Coincidentally and amazingly, county administrators had visited the building when this occurred, and they saw it as well. And perhaps this is why, despite “zero tolerance” policies being in vogue, I was not to be disciplined in anyway. You see, SK was the son of the local high school’s guidance counsellor, and his previous infractions hadn’t been particularly “witnessed”.

This one was. This one was EXTREMELY witnessed, by all the wrong people. So SK would finally see some severe punishment, after years of being protected,  while I was treated as the victim I was.

But the staff all told my parents one curious thing- that I was to be commended for, of all things, my “compassion”.

You see, I had been crying ever since the incident. And while a fair amount of that was from the bruises and cuts, as far as they could tell, I was never crying harder than when they said that SK would be punished.

“Even as a victim”, they told my parents, “He cares so much, clearly so deeply, for the people who were hurting him. He truly is a nice young man.”

This was such a bizarre moral stance to take. Truly. To this day, I cannot understand how they would come to this conclusion.

Mainly because they were thoroughly mistaken.

 

Who is Conor McGregor?

Conor McGregor was born in Ireland. If you couldn’t tell that from his name, or from looking at him, or from hearing his extremely thick Irish accent, you would likely find out anyway, because he would tell you. Repeatedly.

McGregor is a man who clearly prefers to live his life as a “character” as opposed to as a person, and this manifests itself most obviously in his national pride. The man carries an Irish flag to the ring, wears the stereotypical Irish green in all of his fight outfits, and loudly and repeatedly heaps praise on his fellow Irish fighters and sportsmen. But McGregor’s national pride is only emblematic of the type of person he is, which is to say, a man controlled almost entirely by his manic passions.

If Conor McGregor likes something, by god, he’ll throw his entire soul and being into doing that thing, and lord help you if you try to stop him.

(For anyone who remembers the title of this writeup, you are correct in recognizing that sentence as a horrible omen).

McGregor discovered early on in his life that he loved sports, and combat sports in particular. He had always vocally idolized famous fighters and martial artists, and given that he grew up right when MMA was beginning to solidify, he took to it like a fish takes to water.

McGregor started in Professional MMA at, most likely, the literal earliest he could have legally done so. At the age of 18, he had his first billed fight against Ciaren Campbell, which he would win by TKO. But already, even though he was barely into proper adulthood, he would display the genius-level fight IQ that would define his titanic success in MMA.

In this first fight alone, he is already pulling techniques from no less than 6 different and distinct martial arts. As the purest of amateurs, I was able to spot him bouncing between Boxing and Karate stances, displaying footwork and parries from Jeet Kune Do, throws from either Freestyle Wrestling or Judo (I couldn’t quite tell which), standing high kicks from Tae Kwon Do, and standing low kicks from Muay Thai.

And this was not even his final form.

More so than any fighter than had ever come before him, Conor McGregor embraced the ethos of MMA, displaying an almost supernatural talent for incorporating disparate techniques and philosophies into a single, functional combat style.

This is a fighter who, in addition to performing kicks out of Muay Thai, Kickboxing, and Tae Kwon Do, also seamlessly integrates Capoeira, aka Brazilian Dance-Fighting.

This is a fighter who once bloodied another man by hitting that man’s face with his shoulder at short range, which…… is that even from any martial art at all? I’ve seen no stylistic attribution, and if there wasn’t footage I wouldn’t be sure that it was possible.

This is a fighter who, despite taking elements from every standing and striking art imaginable, still was able to force fighters to submit through Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. In fairness, this happened extremely rarely, but the fact that he was able to do it at all was staggering.

The point is, McGregor was exactly the talent that MMA (and UFC in particular) was calling out for at the time of his ascension. He was an unpredictable knockout artist, pulling his techniques seemingly at random from the entire world of martial arts, in a way that was almost impossible to predict or react to. McGregor has always been an impulsive person, and his brilliance was in turning that impulsivity into a strength. By training in so, SO many disciplines, he gave himself a million different combat options to choose from at any time, and to his opponents, it looked like he would pull techniques out of the air seemingly on a whim.

McGregor wasn’t just a fighter who put on fun individual fights. His entire career was fun to watch, purely due to the variety of fights he would put on. Even though most of his fights would often end in knockouts, it was a staggering variety of knockouts. Wild hooks, crazy feints, sneaky counter-punches, punch-kick sequences, mounted finishes, there was not a single way of punishing another human being that Conor McGregor would not try.

Conor McGregor was extremely good at violence in general. Possibly one of the best to ever engage in combat sports in general.

 

How successful was Conor McGregor?

Extremely.

McGregor was signed to the UFC in 2013.

By 2014, he was already publicized as a rising, heavily promoted star, winning two straight “Performance of the Night” awards.

By 2015, he was a champion, defeating Jose Aldo for the UFC Featherweight Championship, in what was (at the time) the most heavily promoted fight the UFC had ever had.

In 2016, while still the Featherweight Champion (although he had lost it briefly before regaining it), he defeated Eddie Alvarez for the UFC Lightweight Championship, becoming the first man in the history of the UFC to simultaneously be a champion in two different weight classes.

What’s more, every single McGregor fight kept making more, and more, and more money. The rise of McGregor, along with the rise of Ronda Rousey at the same time,  catapulted the UFC into the multi-billion dollar fighting ecosystem that it is today.

This was, due to in large part, due to McGregor, personally.

He knew it. Anyone watching the product knew it. And if you didn’t know it, he would tell you.

 

The Mouth of Conor McGregor

As I’ve mentioned more than a few times up to this point, Conor McGregor has a massive ego. He is loud, he is outspoken, he demands to be the center of attention at all times, and above all else, he is impulsive. Whereas in the normal world this would likely land you in prison, in the world of Combat Sports, these habits have a nasty tendency of elevating mere “Excellent Fighters” into “Legends”.

Both McGregor and the UFC as an organization would capitalize on his antics as much as possible, all in the name of further promoting his (already heavily promoted) fights. At the start of his career, he was merely a colorful trash talker, and his outspokenness would lead to some legitimately hilarious moments. But overtime, with no-one able to reign him in, he would turn into an obnoxious, drunken, coked-out jackass. Not to mention racist as hell. Like, REALLY racist.

Everyone in the MMA community at the time benefited from the fact that McGregor was living as a character and not a person. He was a wheel spinning fast, getting more and more bold with his wins, getting bigger and bigger in his media presence, getting more and more over the top in his promo. He was a wild, racist, misogynistic, alpha-male-coded, reckless cannon, with his endless bravado being backed up by wild, exciting, genuinely innovative, and fun wins.

So what happened?

Well, the wheel spun so fast that it flew off the axle altogether.

 

The First Downfall of Conor McGregor

About a year after becoming a Double Champion, McGregor was stripped of his Featherweight championship due to inactivity. In other words, he was simply not accepting any challengers for the title, and attempted to maintain his championship without actually defending it. It is not as if he was inactive as a fighter altogether, it just appears that he decided to prioritize one weight class over the other.

Actually, no. He was inactive as a Lightweight as well. Instead of accepting any challengers in the UFC at all, he stepped outside the organization to have a boxing match with Floyd “Money” Mayweather Jr.  Despite attempting to stall out two different weight divisions in the UFC, McGregor entered this boxing match as an active (but oddly non-fighting) UFC champion. In fairness to him, he did make (allegedly) $130 million USD from this one fight, so this decision makes sense.

However, after further refusing to defend his remaining title, the UFC stripped him of his Lightweight Championship as well. The “Double Champ” had lost both titles without a fight, because he simply refused to fight.

Thus started an embarrassing cycle of McGregor “retiring” for attention, “un-retiring” for a big- payday return fight, “retiring” again, and repeating the process. His first un-retirement fight was against Khabib Nurmagomedov, which McGregor lost in a decisive and humiliating fashion.  

In addition to losing the fight, this fight also marked the turning point in McGregor’s life as a celebrity. Before the fight itself, McGregor had committed SEVERAL crimes against Nurmagomedov and his fight crew, very publicly, for which he was arrested and charged. Instead of going into the details here, u/Nomerdoodle was kind enough to write up this incident all on its own, and I think they did a fantastic job. You can read it here. TL:DR, this was the point where the appeal of “Wild, Crazy Guy” McGregor was starting to wear off, and the public was beginning to see him as “Dangerous Washed-Up Nutjob” McGregor.

This retirement-un-retirement cycle would see McGregor develop a miserable, losing record. Other than one win against Donald “Cowboy” Cerrone (the shoulder hit I showed earlier), every fight he had at this point was a loss due to his own personal failings. Fights where he just didn’t seem to try or train particularly hard. Fights where McGregor’s own body, clearly neglected through his life of extravagant excess, began to fail on him.

By 2021, McGregor said he was done with fighting. And it looked like it would stick this time.

So what would Conor McGregor do with himself, without the daily focus of MMA?

Well, several things. He had already been engaging in a wide array of business ventures before this most recent retirement. He was a fixture in multimedia, making cameos in television shows, movies, and video games. He had bought his own Whiskey distillery, “Proper No. 12”, and was extremely passionate about its promotion. In 2025, he declared himself as a candidate for the President of Ireland on a far-right platform, before rapidly withdrawing due to his sudden allergy to actually fighting anything in any manner whatsoever.

Oh yeah, and then there’s the rape.

 

Intermission 2- April 9, 2002

My parents are looking at me. I’ve just gotten home, I’m no longer crying, but I am still sniffling.

“You know they say that SK might be sent to military school. Although I’ve heard that Juvenile Hall is on the table” says my Dad.

I made a noise.

“We’re a little concerned. They said you cried a lot.”

I nodded.

“And they said you cried hardest when you found out SK would get in trouble.”

I said nothing, confused. I tilt my bruised and cut head.

“I did?”

My parents looked at each other.

“They said you were loudest when you heard that.”

“I guess…… I was laughing.”

A moment.

“I was crying too, and crying harder than the laughter, but I found that funny.”

“What?”

“I mean, he’s a bad person. He’s hurt me. My friends. Why wouldn’t I laugh?”

My mom seemed to understand. My dad was slightly confused.

“But…. They said you were crying a LOT. You weren’t crying for him?”

“No”.

I hold up my right hand, and my parents winced.

“Jesus christ, is your wrist broken?”

“It doesn’t quite feel like the break that one time. But it’s bad.”

“Why……. Why didn’t any of the teachers notice?”

“They were more concerned with getting SK under control.”

A moment.

“Why didn’t you tell them?”

“I was enjoying the moment.”

“But you were crying?”

“Yes, but bad things were finally, finally happening to SK. And he’s a horrible person. Isn’t that good? Isn’t that funny?”

My parents took me to the hospital, and we never spoke of it again.

It is funny, right? I mean, don’t you think so?

 

The Rape of Nikita Hand

In an unnamed hotel in Dublin in 2018, right before his career began spiraling out of control,  Conor McGregor heavily beat a woman named Nikita Hand, and then raped her.

Ms. Hand’s allegations would not be fully reported to the Irish authorities until 2021, for unknown reasons. The nature of these investigations and proceedings seems far more opaque than they would be in the American legal system, so it is difficult to source exact details about the details of the proceedings or the legal affairs (if they are reported at all). But what we do know is, that at the time, Conor McGregor was one of the richest and most prominent men in Ireland, and much of the investigation seemed to take unusually long.

There had been other, similar allegations against McGregor from around that time, but most went formally un-charged, or underreported. In addition, many of the accusers seemed to suffer from coincidental violence, right around the time their accusations went public.

In 2023, an anonymous woman alleged that McGregor violently assaulted her on a yacht. Shortly after her allegations were publicized, her car was blown up, and a brick was thrown through her court window. She did not press charges against McGregor.

Even Ms. Hand had her share of this coincidental violence. Close to the start of her trial in 2024, four masked and armed men broke into her home, smashed the windows, and stabbed her boyfriend (he survived, thankfully).

For whatever reason, the Irish government declined to press Criminal Charges against Conor McGregor. However, Ms. Hand was allowed to pursue a civil suit against McGregor.

So, she did.

My detail on what happened in this exact trial, or the exact evidence or nature of the narrative, are necessarily scant at this point. From the best of what I can tell, within the Irish legal system, trials for rape or similar sexual crimes are closed to the general public, whether they are civil or criminal. I am by no means any sort of expert or authority on Irish Law, but I can find very little information on the trial itself, other than the verdict and aftermath, and this appears to be the reason. If I’m wrong, someone please correct me on this point, as I’d hate to be mistaken on such a serious matter.

Speaking of the verdict, Ms. Hand won. A jury found, in a legally conclusive way, that Conor McGregor had beaten and raped her in 2018. The court ordered him to pay her 250,000 euro in damages, and an additional 1,500,000 euro for her legal fees. McGregor would deny all guilt, appealing the case repeatedly all the way to the Irish Supreme Court, and would lose entirely at every level.

At this point, McGregor’s brand was toxic. His former Whiskey Brand, which he had been so proud of before, stripped all of his imagery from their promotion. His sponsorships and endorsements dried up. He was still rich, but practically, his only remaining media asset was his previous reputation as a fighter.

By 2026, McGregor had not fought in any capacity for five years. Yet he still remained one of the most recognizable MMA fighters of all time.

He was going to make his comeback. He was going to do what he did best. He would fight again, and he would win, and everyone would love him again.

CONTINUED IN COMMENTS

Warning before you begin - this post links to some unpleasant antisemitic imagery.

What do you imagine when you think of fountain pens? Many imagine a Shakespearean writer, quill in hand, penning his magnum opus. Others might imagine a middle aged English professor, inking his arrogant thoughts with a sleazy smirk on his face. Yet more might imagine an artist, creating stunning landscapes or beautiful calligraphy with a pen and paper.

I hate to burst your bubble, dear reader, but the reality of the matter looks quite different. Fountain pens are, by their nature, accessible to a wide variety of people. The community over at r/fountainpens is broad, generally welcoming and extremely diverse, including when it comes to political conversation. There are collectors who drop thousands on the latest Montblanc or Sailor without a second thought, artists who play with brightly coloured inks, and observers like myself who have a good selection of cheap to 'mid-range' pens because, well, they like to write. However, while the audience for pens may be large, the hobby community itself is small, with many retailers and stores being operated by hobbyists who are part of the community. Remember that.

This story is going to take you back in time by around four years, to a controversy that shook the community and almost brought a small but controversial ink company to its knees. This is the story of Noodler's and the antisemitic inks.

To start with, we need to explain Noodler's and why they were so important to the fountain pen community here on Reddit. Noodler's is a tiny company. In fact, it's entirely owned and operated by one man, Nathan Tardif. Nathan has long since been a controversial figure in the fountain pen community, being extremely vocal about his political views. Nathan is a staunch Libertarian, and is not afraid to feature his beliefs on his product labelling to this day. However, despite the explicitly political nature of some of their imagery, Noodler's was beloved in the fountain pen community, with Baystate Blue reaching legendary meme status for its permanence and habit of staining pens, fingers, walls, floors- anything and everything it may encounter. Noodler's seemed like a case of the small indie creator being successful against huge companies like Montblanc and Parker. And everybody loves an underdog.

However, all was not good for Noodler's, even during its golden years. Sprinkled throughout fond jokes in the subreddit, complaints of overfilled bottles being impossible to open without spillage, the ink itself being hard to use without damaging pens and serious inconsistency between batches were rife. Traces of these posts can be hard to find now, as they were often deleted by users due to disagreement from the community. However, overall, Noodler's had a lot of goodwill within the fountain pen community and it seemed unlikely that anything could damage their popularity.

Of course, I wouldn't be writing this post if that were true.

On January 6th 2022, Noodler's released Volcker Green, a forest green ink in the typical Noodler's bottle, complete with hand designed label. As this summary post from the subreddit explains, the date is not insignificant; January 6th 2022 was the 1 year anniversary of the insurrection in the US. The label, instead of the usual doodly landscape or fishing imagery, had a picture of Volcker, a Christian head of the federal reserve, with a halo on his head. Next to him were Bernanke and Greenspan, also previous heads of the reserve, with demon horns on their heads. Both men are Jewish. Demon horns are an antisemitic dogwhistle (as explained in this article about a different case here).

An image of Volcker Green can be found in this comment.

Within 6 days of this ink releasing, stores were beginning to drop Volcker Green from their shelves due to the explicitly antisemitic imagery. This led to Nathan's other inks being examined a little bit more closely than before. And people began to pay attention to other labels.

By May, a reddit user posted a thread (link contains image of the label) saying they would never buy Noodler's again, with an example of a product that horrified them. Specifically, an ink called Bernanke Red. Bernanke Red had been on sale for a long time. I can't actually find the exact release date, but it was a while. Its predecessor, Berning Red, was at least 6 years old and had only been out for a short time before being renamed. And there, straight on the front of the bottle of Bernanke Red, was an image of Bernanke with demon horns (eta: and the communist symbol on his head, a reference to an antisemitic conspiracy theory) and the words 'debt addiction enabler'. Imagery that was horrifically antisemitic. And imagery that was eerily similar to Volcker Green, yet had managed to fly under the radar.

The subreddit exploded. Comment after comment expressing horror flooded the post. More and more posts about Noodler's began to pop up. And remember how I mentioned that some of the most trusted retailers were part of the community?

The retailers saw it all happen.

Retailers began to pull Noodler's inks from their ranges out of fear of boycott. Briefly, the owners of popular retailer Goulet Pens attempted to defend Nathan as having been ignorant of the implications. A comment from Rachel Goulet, one half of Goulet's management, can be seen here. This soured a lot of people's opinions of Goulet and led to more scrutiny for them - the resulting controversy for Goulet and their own downfall is another post entirely, but they aquiesced to opinion and withdrew Noodlers ink from sale on May 11th.

The same day as Goulet withdrew his inks, Nathan put an apology out on his Instagram and Facebook and pulled all inks with imagery and names even mildly linked to anything controversial from supply, planning to rename them. This meant he withdrew almost every ink he'd created due to names such as Tiananmen Red and Apache Sunset. This was widely regarded as a good move on Nathan's part, although many questioned how a man so politically motivated could miss the implications and suspected he'd just wanted to avoid the controversy.

Edited to add: to his credit, Nathan did make a donation to the ADL following his apology. He also chose a culturally relevant number of $3600 USD - traditional donations and gifts are given in multiples of 18. This is mentioned in his apology above, but I failed to highlight it in my explanation. This eased some of the anger, as the apology was thorough and followed through on action.

However, following this apology, Nathan remained silent. As was inevitable, the community went on. Some retailers quietly put Noodler's back into their stores, with Goulet specifically restocking within a month.  A lot of retailers, such as Anderson Pens in Chicago, never restocked Noodlers (although they themselves closed down fairly recently). However, the community never forgot.

Noodler's still puts out ink to this day, although the community on Reddit has long since stopped recommending them to users. Users who do recommend Noodler's tend to get downvoted, a huge fall from the company's early days. The new names and labels of the ink are generally less offensive, mostly based around nature. And the controversial inks? They tend to be hoarded by those who got them before everything was revealed, because antisemitism is apparently just controversy.

Well, at least most people think it's awful.

Update: a comment by u/arrogantsword gave some lovely context from the perspective of a long time fountain pen community member, if you're interested click here or scroll down to read what they have to say.

Back again, with a story from June 2017. Screenshots are gonna be broken for this one, so bare with me!

Setting: Starbase 118, a long-running Star Trek play-by-post roleplaying fleet with its own written constitution ("the CON"), an Executive Council (EC), a Captains Council (CC), a JAG office, and apparently enough internal bureaucracy to run a small nation.

A new player (referred to as cadets) finished the game's tutorial (academy) and, mid-training, reaches out to a fleet CO (game master) claiming to be "a friend of" David Cody. If you've been part of 118, chances are a shiver has run down your spine. David Cody is an infamous figure in the community, specifically with the old dogs, as a rather troublesome figure. This interaction is one of many - though I think it's the last one, IIRC. Nevertheless, it's quite entertaining. TLDR, Cody has been uninvited from the game, but he did actually retire from the fleet of his own volition. Anyway, the cadet was permitted to complete training because it seemed that no one could prove they had a connection with David Cody.

Once training wrapped, Community Founder and Chief Admin Officer FltAdml. Wolf did some digging and matched the new cadet's IP address to David Cody's. As suspected, this cadet was no random guy who was "friends" with Cody. The cadet - going by the character name Hawke Kin'io - was in fact Cody, returning under a fake identity without filing the required "returning member" paperwork, and without disclosing who he actually was. This is a big deal because the fleet's constitution explicitly bans "misrepresentation on any portion of the application for membership." Wolf filed disciplinary action, expelled him, killed his forum account, and pulled him from the training lists - after first checking with the Academy Commandant, who agreed with the call.

Cody/Kin'io immediately appealed the expulsion. This kicked off a genuinely delightful bureaucratic spiral where a dozen different council members tried to figure out who was even allowed to hear the appeal - the Captains Council, or the Executive Council?

Wolf posted the whole appeals procedure verbatim from the constitution, complete with numbered articles and subsections, and asked the room to just vote on whether to skip the full tribunal process since the facts seemed "pretty cut and dry."

First reply pushes back on shortcutting anything: "Not to mention David Cody has shown persecution tendency and just cutting him out could feed that and make him come at us again." (Foreshadowing! Incredible foreshadowing.)

Then Wolf himself second-guesses his own procedural read halfway through the thread, quoting a completely different constitutional article about expelled members only having recourse to the EC, not a CC appeals tribunal, and asks people to check his work. What follows is basically a law school study group: member after member all chime in one by one agreeing it's an EC matter, several citing specific CON articles about retirement, reinstatement petitions, and appeal rights.

Then Captain Faranfey raises the genuinely spiciest procedural question of the whole thread does he even get an appeal at all, given the nature of the offense? ("So, is there even a point to proceed forward in hearing his case, in any case?")

Quinn Reynolds runs with this and drops the killer legal logic: since Cody's re-entry into the group was itself built on fraud, his return was never valid in the first place - meaning there's no "member" to have rights of appeal. He's just... not a member. Full stop. Several members still argue he should be allowed to petition anyway on basic fairness grounds.

By June 8th, Wolf announces they're taking it to the Executive Council. Reasonable people, reasonable process, everyone being pretty fair to a guy who lied his way back into a hobby group. And then the actual emails got posted. They are an unhinged batch of unsolicited emails Cody had been sending over the period of 48 hours. (I've included screenshots - but as the files running the original 118 forums are gone, the HTML files are janky to read, so I've included a side-by-side of what I've sifted through, and an easier to read text paste in imgur.) TLDR, he jokes about the disciplinary process, needling Wolf to hurry up and finish verifying server/email logs because he's "running out of creative fiction to feed these guys". He goes on to say he's basically a co-owner of the fleet's server infrastructure, about how he made two donations to buy himself some kind of backend access he's had for months without anyone knowing, and that he could shut things down if he wanted. He talks about a friend's mental health crisis, that he's had to suffer for the group,

Wolf did not reply to any of these.

Six emails, all in the same night, escalating from mocking laughter to server-ownership conspiracy theories to a suicide-adjacent guilt trip to outright profane demands. All completely unprompted.

Wolf then very calmly and methodically dismantles every single claim in the emails, point by point, for the council's benefit:

• Confirmed he is the only person with root access to the server
• Confirmed sub-accounts exist for specific delegated tasks (e.g., a captain given sim-archive access) but Cody was never among them
• Went back through donation records to 2008 and found no donation from Cody ever exceeding $50 - directly contradicting the "$800 buys me backend access" claim
• Explained that donations wouldn't grant server access anyway, comparing it to a bank not handing out account access because someone claims to have funded the branch

Wolf's closing verdict to the council is about as done as a person can sound while still being professional,

The Executive Council unanimously agrees: appeal denied, no further communication, full stop. Council members pile on with support.

Two weeks later, Cody returns! Just when the thread looked closed, Wolf returns with an update he clearly did not want to have to post, explicitly noting he's only sharing it for transparency's sake even though he thinks it's just more attention-seeking behavior. Cody had submitted a formal complaint through the site's general contact form (which, being from a non-member, gets auto-moderated) - this time not appealing the expulsion at all, but pivoting to accuse the Executive Council itself of violating his privacy by connecting his sock-puppet account to his real identity.

The complaint is a genuinely wild piece of self-mythologizing legalese, in which Cody unilaterally declares the EC has no authority over him anymore and that jurisdiction now defaults to the Captains Council instead.

Attached to this complaint is yet another forwarded email chain, in which - under his Cody persona, writing to himself basically, forwarding from the Scott Hawke sock-puppet account - he now claims he has no proof Wolf specifically was the one who "outed" him, and reframes the entire disciplinary action as the fleet's admin team violating his privacy by daring to notice he was lying about his identity.

Understandably, CC members question whether they're witnessing a mental health crisis in action. But one has to question how long a mental health crisis can continue, because Wolf comes back and reveals Cody was still sending awful, manipulative emails to the point that he was considering a restraining order. What follows is basically the rest of the leadership team collectively telling Wolf to protect himself, no further debate needed.

No further public updates in this particular archive post - just a leadership team that spent three weeks meticulously working through constitutional appeals procedure for a guy who turned out to be sending six-email-a-night rants about secretly owning the server, before finally, collectively, deciding the healthiest and most correct answer was simply to stop reading his emails altogether.