Hey everyone, so I plan on pretty much withdrawing completely from CM. Being around here or thinking about CM just gets me extremely stressed and anxious. While it probably shouldn't as things are behind me, it mostly stems from my rather sudden retirement from CM and the internal issues that surrounded it. I feel like I need to get all of this off my mind and before I leave, as then I'll have said all I could and everything else is out of my control. While this is a lot to fill a single post with, I'll do my best to make things as straightforward as possible. Before I start, let me just say everything is laid as it unfolded. While Jamie will probably say I'm just leaking PMs to cause drama or something, I've given him real warnings and attempts to talk to him about what happened, something he can not say about me. He should be able to own up to his own words given he stands by them in PMs.
So why did I actually retire so suddenly? Well I technically never retired as Vice Host because as my friend informed me, I woke up one morning to be asked why I was suddenly an Admin again. So the next thing I see is that Jamie has sent me a 3-paragraph message saying that I'm being demoted due to his lack of trust in me and failure to maintain a professional composure for Vice Host. While those debatably valid reasons, this was the first time Jamie has really spoken to me in about 3 months. While he said he, "wanted to talk to me but couldn't find the time to," in this message, this apparently is my problem to deal with and not his. I was completely blindsided by this issue without any prior attempts to communicate with me.
Now we're going to need to jump back in time for a second. Around the end of October, there was an issue with me and a manager that resulted in me and the Head Manager opting to remove them from their role. However, this was overruled by Jamie due to us not giving enough of a warning to them ahead of time. Now I'll be real, I argued that it shouldn't matter and they should clearly be aware that's a stupid thing to do, but Jamie wasn't gonna budge. He said the following to me:
And you know what? He was sorta right that night. I show this picture even though I don't agree with what I did say that night anymore. While I was quite aggravated and sorta just wanted to be done with the problems we were having, it didn't feel justified enough so we left that night at a warning. I did feel guilty for trying to put myself over others that night and try to just do what I wanted the outcome to be at the time. I did my best to not do the same to anyone else because I do my best to treat others the with the same level of respect I would like from them.
Now that was before me and Jamie had our major disagreements a few weeks later. So going back to the morning I woke up to see I'm being demoted out of the blue, I asked him where was my warning was these past months and he just simply said I was warned in the past, when I was promoted to Vice-Host a few months back.
He also said that since I was Vice-Host, he didn't have the authority to warn me anymore? This is obviously ridiculous considering not only did Jamie overrule me (and other heads) in the past, but he constantly refused to allow me to exercise Vice Host abilities like being able to assist and interact with the development of CM. But that's mostly aside from the point. Saying I was clearly never warned, he pulls some message from August 28th, 2019. The current date was January 5th, 2020, over 4 months later. Now was it really a warning? No, he was referring to an old message saying the following (note this is exact thing he sent me):
This is fair in meaning, basically he and the public needs trust in me, but yet if there is an issue why am I being told nothing about it? Note that when I was told this 4 months ago, there were no real issues at all. If there were, I'm unaware of what they could be. So then where, for the past 4 months, have been any warnings to me that things aren't working properly? Well apparently whatever I did was pretty serious as he compared my issue to deleting all server files and have the forums:
All of this is basically the a repeat of Jamie refusing to allow me to make sprites for the server, which the post I made regarding that can be read on the post I made a few months back. //showthrea...6657#post36657. So I tried to talk to him that morning but I honestly was done trying to argue with Jamie. I've been shown almost no respect from him between constantly ignoring almost everything I say and constantly blocking things he doesn't like regardless of what others think, to making up random double-standards to hold against me and constantly backtracking/making-up reasonings for everything he does.
While I could probably go on-and-on about this, I feel like anything beyond this point is just me ranting. I've talked to Jamie about how he blatantly disregarded his own rules to remove me and he doesn't care and refuses to admit any fault on the matter. At the same time, he pretends that everything he's done is completely justified by his own rules. He removed me to basically cover the fire burning his ass because he never talked to me or did anything a host should have done in this situation. On top of this, there was virtually no real discussion amongst any other heads regarding this thing prior to my removal, he just knee-jerked into removing me after people threatened him to basically remove me or else. While it's one thing to be the Host and make the final decision on things, Jamie simply does what he wants and pretends that he is fair and just in his reasonings. But hey, maybe I should have just known better.
So ya, there's the general story behind it. It's disappointing that I got removed from something I did care about, but at the same time, current CM just ain't the same thing I fell in love with. That doesn't mean it's worse, just different. The thing that plagues me the most is the fact Jamie did what he did, threw me under the bus, and tried to sweep all under the rug. While I do worry about the instability of the staff team right now, CM isn't dead, it's not gonna die tomorrow and I believe that things are gonna resolve themselves with time to come. A lot of people who are actually passionate are still working on CM and while I may not personally agree with some of their ways, I wish all of them the best of luck on keeping CM going for future gamers. Do I expect anything to really come from this? Probably nothing but a ripple in the pond, but I'm doing this for myself more than CM or my distaste towards how I was treated as Vice Host.
For all you normal players, you're the real unsung heroes of CM. Trust me when I say keep just playing the game, hanging out with friends, and enjoying the game for what it is. Too much of CM staff is plagued by personal rivalries and drama (like this exact post) and engaging in it all will likely destroy the very thing you love about CM, it happened to so many other CM staff members and somehow I thought I'd come out unscathed. I don't regret what happened though, I gave my best to help make CM what it is and I while I still wish I could just make things a bit better, just one more thing (ya know?), I'm proud of the work I did over the years. Perfect, no, but knowing I helped make a game some crazy people love to play makes me happy. Peace everyone, love CM and everyone in it, even the people who didn't like me or that drove me crazy, thank you for everything. People can still hit me up on Discord if you want to talk (Emerald Blood#5224) since a lot of you are still cool people. Make sure not to forget where we came from!