Since everyone else is giving their perspective on this I thought people may like to read mine too. I don't think I've logged on here in awhile and don't anticipate doing it too frequently in the future but Slm pointed me this way a few days ago and I figured I'd stop by.
Obviously I created a bunch of multis, I know somewhere around here there's a confession confirming and I've been pretty frank about it in a lot of private chats. I don't know where to really start and I am shooting from the hip so lets have a bit of word salad.
One of the questions I got a lot for awhile were how many multis did I actually create and to be honest I don't have an answer to that. I want to say there were like 7-8 but I couldn't name them all. I know some of the IPs that got caught up with my VPN were definitely not me but I don't think anyone that wasn't me ever got punished (at least for being me). I think that's one of the craziest things when I look back was just how much of my time I was wasting to pretend to be a bunch of people on a fake internet league. Every time I think about about that I honestly can't help but laugh a bit about how fucking crazy it must seem to everyone else. Personally, getting suspended from the league was not a bad punishment for me. I think I earned a permaban and I believe there was a time I advocated for a harsher punishment on myself. I know I got some leniency for doing various things around the league, and at the time it sort of made sense to me, but every time we revisit this topic I realized I was doing just as much to hurt the league as I was to keep it running so it was probably a wash. The other reason I got leniency was simply because people liked me, which honestly made it worse. I know I've mentioned it before but it was painful seeing people defend me when there was some evidence that I thought was pretty conclusive. That was definitely one of the times where I really just felt, disgusted with myself.
By the time everything started coming down I was pretty done with doing every PT for half of my team but it is hard to develop an exit plan for something like this. Nobody else in the league knew anything and I kept it that way to the very end. There was definitely a few moments where I had typed confessions to Baller but that never happened. If I had known just how much time people were wasting of their own to expose everything, I probably would have just sent the confession to Baller partially to spare people I was friends with from wasting as much of their lives as I was but also because I would have realized I was going to get caught eventually (I can't pretend I'm all that altruistic).
I can definitely relate to the feeling that the punishment took way too long to happen. There was a time where I was pretty confident I was caught, but it seemed to drag on forever. I can't remember how long that period was, but in my head today it feels like it was an eternity. I was sick to my stomach with stress everyday and was pretty relieved when everything was done.
After the fact I have dealt with the multi thing in various ways, whether it was serious apologies or various jokes. I have sort of just rolled with it and embraced it. Yes, I absolutely fucked up. I did something that I knew was against the rules and for what purpose. With the scale of the operation I had going, it seemed like I was some evil lunatic and I can get why you'd think that. I had plenty of self-reflection afterwards and while I admit I did something dumb. I don't consider myself a bad person or anything crazy for it. I did a bad thing for sure and I think I've made it clear I am sorry for that.
The worst parts of it all were that it drove a lot of people away from the league and when I was in the thick of it I really didn't think about that factor. My goal was not to kill the league and I am glad that it survived. A lot of people put a lot of time in here and it would be a shame if I had destroyed it. I had to lie to people that I had talked to for 6 months straight and many that I had become friends with in order to keep up this monster I had built. Once everything came out, I would say the majority of those people were not my friends anymore and I was the only one to blame. Not great. I think its important to emphasize this so you don't get the wise idea of doing something similar. There's no fucking point. Don't! There are a few funny stories and memes going back to the multis that seem to get brought up more than all the bad. But there was a hell of a lot more bad than good. I had a bunch of multis for 5 months when I started sim leagues and it's still the thing I am most famous for over 2 years later. If I was to be around in 10 years, it'd be the same. Not the legacy you should be looking for.
Other random thoughts I had is I know a lot of people questioned why I chose all these weird people to be my multis and it was just a way for me to keep all of the characters straight. Making them extreme made it easier to pretend to be different things as necessary.
The only other thing, and I think I've answered this years ago is why I actually did it. First, this is sort of going to sound like a justification and that's definitely not what I am aiming for. I broke the rules and knew I was doing so at the time. But there was a time where I was pretty confident (at least in my head not with evidence) that other people had multis and the like and I had to do the same thing in order to stay competitive or win. This was all going on when I was pretty new to sim leagues and approached it with a competitive approach rather than the casual-community one. I was coming from another community where creating alts to infiltrate and sabotage other groups was a big achievement and I think that also just allowed me to make the move a bit more easily. Today, I would say sim leagues are definitely more about a community where you can B.S. with other weirdos on the internet about real and fake sports you both happen to like or maybe not even that. If I had that idea of the league in my head from the start, I wouldn't have gotten myself into the cheating that I did. Time definitely fades the memories quite a bit, and I am sure part of that is by choice but this is how I look back on going down this path.
Obviously I created a bunch of multis, I know somewhere around here there's a confession confirming and I've been pretty frank about it in a lot of private chats. I don't know where to really start and I am shooting from the hip so lets have a bit of word salad.
One of the questions I got a lot for awhile were how many multis did I actually create and to be honest I don't have an answer to that. I want to say there were like 7-8 but I couldn't name them all. I know some of the IPs that got caught up with my VPN were definitely not me but I don't think anyone that wasn't me ever got punished (at least for being me). I think that's one of the craziest things when I look back was just how much of my time I was wasting to pretend to be a bunch of people on a fake internet league. Every time I think about about that I honestly can't help but laugh a bit about how fucking crazy it must seem to everyone else. Personally, getting suspended from the league was not a bad punishment for me. I think I earned a permaban and I believe there was a time I advocated for a harsher punishment on myself. I know I got some leniency for doing various things around the league, and at the time it sort of made sense to me, but every time we revisit this topic I realized I was doing just as much to hurt the league as I was to keep it running so it was probably a wash. The other reason I got leniency was simply because people liked me, which honestly made it worse. I know I've mentioned it before but it was painful seeing people defend me when there was some evidence that I thought was pretty conclusive. That was definitely one of the times where I really just felt, disgusted with myself.
By the time everything started coming down I was pretty done with doing every PT for half of my team but it is hard to develop an exit plan for something like this. Nobody else in the league knew anything and I kept it that way to the very end. There was definitely a few moments where I had typed confessions to Baller but that never happened. If I had known just how much time people were wasting of their own to expose everything, I probably would have just sent the confession to Baller partially to spare people I was friends with from wasting as much of their lives as I was but also because I would have realized I was going to get caught eventually (I can't pretend I'm all that altruistic).
I can definitely relate to the feeling that the punishment took way too long to happen. There was a time where I was pretty confident I was caught, but it seemed to drag on forever. I can't remember how long that period was, but in my head today it feels like it was an eternity. I was sick to my stomach with stress everyday and was pretty relieved when everything was done.
After the fact I have dealt with the multi thing in various ways, whether it was serious apologies or various jokes. I have sort of just rolled with it and embraced it. Yes, I absolutely fucked up. I did something that I knew was against the rules and for what purpose. With the scale of the operation I had going, it seemed like I was some evil lunatic and I can get why you'd think that. I had plenty of self-reflection afterwards and while I admit I did something dumb. I don't consider myself a bad person or anything crazy for it. I did a bad thing for sure and I think I've made it clear I am sorry for that.
The worst parts of it all were that it drove a lot of people away from the league and when I was in the thick of it I really didn't think about that factor. My goal was not to kill the league and I am glad that it survived. A lot of people put a lot of time in here and it would be a shame if I had destroyed it. I had to lie to people that I had talked to for 6 months straight and many that I had become friends with in order to keep up this monster I had built. Once everything came out, I would say the majority of those people were not my friends anymore and I was the only one to blame. Not great. I think its important to emphasize this so you don't get the wise idea of doing something similar. There's no fucking point. Don't! There are a few funny stories and memes going back to the multis that seem to get brought up more than all the bad. But there was a hell of a lot more bad than good. I had a bunch of multis for 5 months when I started sim leagues and it's still the thing I am most famous for over 2 years later. If I was to be around in 10 years, it'd be the same. Not the legacy you should be looking for.
Other random thoughts I had is I know a lot of people questioned why I chose all these weird people to be my multis and it was just a way for me to keep all of the characters straight. Making them extreme made it easier to pretend to be different things as necessary.
The only other thing, and I think I've answered this years ago is why I actually did it. First, this is sort of going to sound like a justification and that's definitely not what I am aiming for. I broke the rules and knew I was doing so at the time. But there was a time where I was pretty confident (at least in my head not with evidence) that other people had multis and the like and I had to do the same thing in order to stay competitive or win. This was all going on when I was pretty new to sim leagues and approached it with a competitive approach rather than the casual-community one. I was coming from another community where creating alts to infiltrate and sabotage other groups was a big achievement and I think that also just allowed me to make the move a bit more easily. Today, I would say sim leagues are definitely more about a community where you can B.S. with other weirdos on the internet about real and fake sports you both happen to like or maybe not even that. If I had that idea of the league in my head from the start, I wouldn't have gotten myself into the cheating that I did. Time definitely fades the memories quite a bit, and I am sure part of that is by choice but this is how I look back on going down this path.
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