A look back on things

I remember the final years of my childhood. They ended up being dedicated to TotalFreedom. I went from a directionless operator to a Probationary Senior Admin to a former admin. Times have changed. School has gotten more stressful and my interest in TotalFreedom is degrading fast. While I may never quit the server, my activity will continue to go downhill. However, I just wanted to make a thread telling my entire story of life during TotalFreedom.

It started in the beginning of my 4th grade school year in 2013. I was on the search for my then YouTube idol, SkyDoesMinecraft to meet him and talk to him. As a result, I was given the IP address of TotalFreedom. I joined it, expecting a map like Cops and Robbers. I noticed SkyDoesMinecraft was not online. Although discouraged, I felt that one day, he would join this server. Weeks passed, and I wanted to join the admin team (with seemingly no reason behind it) by force. I spammed the chat demanding to be given admin privileges and was banned with the reason "You are not getting admin". Saddened by this, I created a forum account under the username "videogamesm12" to appeal my ban. Before I started writing it, I noticed that there was an admin applications board. I followed the template, and started filling out the questions and was stumped at the question asking about recommendations. Being the honest 10 year old I was, I did not complete the application and continued to break rules. I recall griefing only once and committing several minor offenses. After this, I slowly forgot about the server.

Things picked up in January 2014. I got my act together and started by updating my forum account. I set my profile picture to a ProBoards avatar. The earliest profile picture I remember setting to was this one.


I set my status to something around the lines of "Hey guys! I just took some of my time to update this forum account to make it look better." Then I took some steps to improve my behavior. I stopped breaking the rules and started helping people. Unfortunately, I remember getting griefed severely and since there were no admins online to ban them, I could only helplessly watch my work get destroyed. This ended up greatly influencing my good behavior and eventual decision to work to get the Super Admin rank.

In February 2014, I ended up in a discussion with a bunch of people in the chat about DDoS, where I explained that it gives the attacker the ability to take down their target for as long as they want. Shortly afterwards, the server crashed. This ended up getting me reported ironically by vj13573 (who is now UYScutix). The report was denied, and I was not banned for it.

I faintly remember building a small spawn (designed to be unofficial) and ended up making it the official spawn.



On March 20, 2014, I built a statue of Kash , 0SKS0, and was about to do @bloop  but due to time constraints, could not complete the last one. Kash's was griefed, but the griefer was banned by the real Kash. Seeing what I built, he asked me "Video, how did you make this statue almost perfect?" Here is a screenshot of the original Kash statue.



3 days later, I created a thread asking the simple question: "Should I apply for admin?" Many admins responded positively, and after I got home from school the next day, I checked the forums to see 4 PMs with each one being from a different admin: JagWire , Paldiu , aggelosQQ , and Sportguy. The PMs simply told me to apply, and 2 of the PMs said that they would TPaS/SPaS me. Soon after, I applied for Super Admin status and was TPaS'd by Jaguar. On March 25, my forum account obtained Super Admin status.

When I first became an admin, I received 2 warnings from xXWilee999Xx due to minor misconduct. Fortunately, his threats (such as "you're on thin ice") managed to get me in check. I read the conduct policy, learned the commands, and was a fairly decent admin. In May of 2014 (cannot remember the exact date), I accidentally crashed the server and was about to be permbanned because markbyron didn't realize I was an admin. When this was clarified to him, he didn't permban me and instead was all chill and simply said to chill out.

On November 27, 2014, I worked with zthehorsekid to get several spambots permbanned. Unfortunately for me, I had not taken my ADHD medication so I would easily loose focus. However, that day was different. I was able to focus and along with horsekid, managed to get the one behind the spambots (mad_cal1993) permbanned. That day, we became close friends.

My memory stops at this point, and continues in early 2015. On January 4, 2015, I worked with Harry Hart (Galahad) , Mikan Tsumiki - DL108 , and Connor in an attempt to get two admins suspended as revenge for a few actions that they did (frightened zthehorsekid). The attempt failed, and shortly afterwards we were sent a PM by markbyron.
The next day, I released my first render. I named it "Corrupt" after what 0SKS0 had said the previous day, "All of you are just corrupt". I don't recall why I created it. Was it from a lot of stress? A small dose of depression? I don't know.



I received positive feedback from it, and that inspired me to work on a big project. I called it "The Corrupt War" as it would be a battle between the non-corrupt and the corrupt.

In February 2015, my computer fell off from the side of my bed while it was on, causing the hard drive to start failing. While Minecraft was still running and was running fine, the computer had a notable level of performance degrade. Eventually, I decided to force power it off and turn it back on. When I noticed the computer wouldn't boot, I was scared. While waiting for it to boot, I saw the computer give a Blue Screen of Death. It continued to give this screen with no hope of recovery. I knew what happened. All my data was lost to a hard drive failure.

My memory jumps to mid-2015. I was at my worst. I would scream at people in all-caps, use "XD" all the time, post Phoenix Wright memes everywhere, and would be a huge hypocrite. I also hated taking criticism. I remember at one point, @cyro was talking about me on the server (while I was offline) and criticizing me, and then I ironically came on and noticing the strange behavior, I checked the logs to see what he was doing. I raged at him, and he then reported me for not respecting his opinion.

cyro1999 issued server command: /o Anyone else think VideoGameSmash is super fucking annoying?


In August 2015, I developed a minor case of depression, and started going insane. The behavior was unintentionally captured by DarkLynx108 in one of his "TotalFreedom Randomness" videos.

My self-explanation (20:43):
 

My self-ban with a fucked up ban reason (11:13):


I did it a second time afterwards, this time having markbyron give me two choices: Take a break from the server and forum or be permbanned from them. I chose the first one, and controlled my depression after returning. I also stopped posting Phoenix Wright memes around the same time.

Things finally started falling apart in September 2015. Out of boredom, I used my phone's data to log on to the server as "MyGranny". Unfortunately, I got an error message during the login so I had to improvise and GCMD'd my alt to say "fuck you TheSuspense76". I then said "k" and that was it. A day later, I was set down to the lowest rank to still be considered an admin, I was on the edge of suspension. I posted the worst apology possible on the forum and then shortly afterwards gave the full story of what happened. I was forgiven a bit more than originally.

Kash PM'd me after this and finally convinced me to revert to day one VideoGameSmash12.
I was finally off the edge of suspension. I no longer had to worry about my rank being taken away. I created a thread explaining that I would revert back to the old Video, and then changed my IGN back to VideoGameSmash12. I no longer screamed in all-caps, I improved my temper greatly, and corrected many of the issues that I caused. But my journey and recovery was far from over. 


On January 1, 2016, @marcocorriero11 came to the admin team with a bunch of macros. While I did have a slight problem with macros, the macro bots were the ones that really drove me insane. Although I did not have too much of a problem with him, his macros concerned me quite a bit, as those bots he used were quite risky because it could accidentally smite an innocent player.  

In February of 2016, I dismantled my laptop to see if I could add a DVD drive to the computer. Unfortunately, I managed to corrupt the hard drive as a result. My data was once again, lost. Although I did have a backup, it was only from July 2015.

My memory once again jumps ahead to August 12, 2016. It was rumored that marcocorriero11 had direct FTP access to the server and this was enough to cause several admins to all quit at the same time. They posted public resignations and started a trend named "Viva La Resistance". The resignations were either modified or deleted by markbyron, however I knew this would happen, so I archived the threads while they were still live.

Although I was thinking of joining them, I didn't. I guess I made the correct choice, as many of those admins never properly returned as an admin.

Once again jumping to May 2017, a good friend of mine (UYScutix) posted a vote-off for marcocorriero. When the admins caught wind of this, they started roasting him. The first admin to do this was @pinch  who gave him a slap in the face.


Harsh as hell, but Pinch actually did this two times. Although I do not have photographs of this, you will just have to take my word for it. However, the burn I served during all of this was the most brutal. There were multiple Senior Admins online, and this one made them laugh and put a few into tears.


Although I am not proud of what I said there, it definitely was merciless.

- - more info coming soon - -