*sigh*... I'm truly sorry if this journal upsets anyone. I'm going to try my best to speak my mind while still showing some measure of respect. I hope it's enough, but if it's not, know that I'm not holding anything against anyone who has fond memories of Dragoneer personally. I know this isn't a black and white issue, and I have no doubt that on a personal level, Dragoneer may have touched certain peoples' lives positively. While many of you know I had no shortage of animosity towards him and what he did, if he were standing in the path of an 18-wheeler, I'd have pulled him off of the street if I had the chance.
So no, this is not a "good riddance" journal. If anything, it's unfortunate he won't have the chance to rebuild some of the bridges he burned. I'm making this journal because a lot of you weren't around during the worst of the cub panic on FA, and many people remember Dragoneer as someone who "brought the fandom together", which might have been true in the beginning, but then all of that was undone by his hand, and many lives were turned upside down while he and the filth that moderated that site at the time ignored, or at worst perpetuated it without remorse or consequence.
You can make all the excuses you want about why the cub ban happened in the first place (many of such ever-changing stories have been debunked, however), but what happened AFTER the ban was absolutely inexcusable.
Imagine Twitter antis times 10. That was the hellscape of FA after the cub ban. A dear friend of mine and respected cub artist here on Inkbunny has hidden his past identity since 2009. He was doxxed, threatened, and blackmailed into leaving FA while trying to stay and follow the new rules. Many cub artists and enthusiasts experienced the same or similar. Blackmail, threats, doxxing, harassment, just a wave of hatred (that also spilled over into Twitter) for people who drew or commissioned the wrong arrangement pixels on a screen, and those whose automatic biochemistry responded to it.
So what did Dragoneer and his mods do about it? Ban people who spoke out against the abuse. People were suffering waves of hate and abuse, threats, and doxxing, things that should have been worthy of action by Neer and the mods, but they sat back and allowed the abuse to go on, and on, and on, and on, and when someone got tired of it all and lashed out, THAT is when action was taken, not against the abusers, but against the abused.
Yes, I'm still sore about the ban itself, but everything that happened after that could have been dealt with, and wasn't. Not with any other content ban have we ever seen anything on this level before or since. Not even cub bans on many other furry sites have degraded into anything like this. All of this has created a wound in the furry fandom that has never truly healed.
There's a lot more I could go into. The fraudulent donation drive, punishing and publicly shaming two people trying to shine light on legitimate rape threats (which including doxxing the address of the victim), continuing to ban people over personal beefs, etc., but the waves of the hate that was coddled since the cub ban are still being felt by all of us 15 years later, with no effort being taken to undo or even mitigate the damage.
So no, I wouldn't wish what happened to Dragoneer on anyone, and I don't hold anything against anyone who remembers him in a positive light, but the damage he caused should not be overlooked. It should be remembered along with him, never forgotten, and most importantly, never repeated.
