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(after:4s)[written by joe burke.]
(after:8s)[<br>and you.]
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In essence, this day started like most other days for (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew]. (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew], for those of you just joing us, might be better known as (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[`skullz_ovr_mscw`] to you. No? Not evoking something in you?
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(t8n:"instant")+(link:"No.")[Perhaps this is to be expected. (after:4s)[ (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[`skllz_0vr_mscw`] is best known as a moderator of "metal lovers anonymous" - a forum most well known for being brigaded constantly by trolls who were on systems more cutting edge than the cumstains on their desk chairs who begrudged that the wild west internet they loved would begin to fellate itself on such filth as Slipknot and Linkin Park. It is in this setting, with (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[`skllz_0vr_mscw`] and the boy behind it - moderating duties included - where we set our scene.]]
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(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[Cut the exposition, let's get back to Matthew.->page 2]]
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But, before we begin our story in earnest, I will urge the reader that what you are reading is just a passing simulacrum of what events and scenery actually occured, interspersed within a narrative. I'm sure you, the intelligent reader, can understand. However that illumination - for my own sake - must be //crystalline clear// to you to give me good conscience to relay to you the story I have prepared. And that, in fact, this whole framing matter is //also// simply a simulacrum, do you understand?
<br>(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[Yeah sure whatever.->page 3]]
<br>(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[Get to the story jackoff!->page >:(]]
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Now, to the uneducated, it was once the barbaric practice of most sites of the independent internet to manually approve its userbases. Unlike the reddit "forum" ""moderators"" of this current age, it was traditionally the respected primary labor of moderators to take //preventative// action against low-quality content, as opposed to the high and mighty police actions of the modern class of police-moderators fostered by those behemoth platforms from an age without.
(t8n:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)+(link:"continue.")[<br>This had the consequent effect that, before any matter of communication was to be undertaken by the user, that (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] or whatever moderator was continually patrolling the incoming user sign-up requests had to approve you. In the matter it was undertaken in this particular sect, a user also submitted some kind of profile picture, as well as a picture of the real out-of-computer-land you with some matter of metal paraphanalia. A very permissive form of gatekeeping on the surface, but one which often had the intended effect of staving away trolls and undesirables //(fans of "Creed")//. (after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[continue->page 4]]</button>]]]
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<div class="title-bar-text">`>:(`</div>
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Yeah fuck you too buddy.
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(after:20s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[continue.->page 3]]</button>]]
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However, as you might now be imagining as a consequence of the means I relay it, that this duty had a particular effect on (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew]. (t8n-time:0.1s)+(link-reveal:"And it did.")[ (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] had a particular way of getting //attached//, as it were, to those he approved. He thought of them in a very different way to those unwashed, untrustworthy number who his other moderators approved. (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] thought of himself as the sole and only arbiter who arbitrated in good faith and conscience. He assigned a slightly different shade of black to the display names left on posts and in the chatrooms to those //he// approved. A difference in black so unnoticable that, as it happened, an outside observer would know that (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] himself could not tell the difference most of the time, and bumbled around under the false pretense that he had branded his enlightened anointees in a manner so particular he was a genius for it. I must assure you at this time, he was not as inept or misguided as simply that anectote will portray to you.<br>All of this, of course, eventually meant he came upon someone so extraordinary as to change him and set the course of this plot into motion, as would be expected of a story told so far in this manner.(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[who?->page 5]]</button>]]]
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//Her// (we will address that matter in a moment, promise) screen name of choice was (text-colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s]. In the pre-approval "begging" message //(often an ignored place of troll copypasta and ban-evasion justification)//, (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] found the following:
(t8n:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)+(link:"read.")[<div class="field-border" style="padding: 8px">haiiii<br>looking 2 connect with metalheads and beg 4 limewire links for dat raaaaare shiiiit lol. i'm not really the best computererrrrrrr so if it too much lmk LMAO.</div>Already sufficiently odd.(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[continue.->page 6]]</button>]]]
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Really, the origin //(there's a lot going on in his mind I struggle to convey through text, we'll get through it all)// of what confused (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] were the attachments. Her picture and her profile picture. And, not only that she was a woman, but they seemed... odd... picks if you were a woman. <br>In (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew]'s mind, girls on the internet were a kind of particularly evolutionarily fit bird. They flaunted their divine femaleness to those legions of trolls to find the attention they could not satiate themselves on - not that he felt so negatively towards all women, but just that he had a particular disdain for attention seekers. Although he was still traditionally misogynistic in the sense common of the internet dweller of this era. //(more to complicate the situation of the mind we are faced with here)//.
(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[the pictures?->page 7]]</button>]]
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Any matter, the pictures themselves. (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] always had a sense to check the verification picture first. No need to assign pfps to those he disapproved of. That is when the other shoe was dropped, of course, that she was a woman. Now, in the exact nature of her being a woman that he was more particularly stricken with we shall get to in another instance, but it was particularly notable also because he //approved// of her, in the //same// judgemental kind of pass he was to all those others. Her Korn t-shirt and awkward mirror-digicam pose and CD all aligned with a traditional kind of picture, and were she not particularly evervescent in that manner I promise again we //will// get to she may be confused with another shrimpy shut-in male common to the platform.
(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[and her second picture?->page 8]]</button>]]
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And, calling back to mind that bird example named before, that was distinctly //not// her profile picture. And, were (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] not actually listening to Follow The Leader in that moment, it would be lost on anyone that the only thing outward about her that would mark her female would be a song reference as her name just as easily confused for something suitable to name someone who fancies himself an enlightened post-femoid male. Her profile picture was actually a screengrab of one of the Korn logo, but insofar as everything about (text-colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s] we know so far this is perhaps the most unimportant.
(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[and her second picture?->page 9]]</button>]]
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Having named the circumstances appropriately, it is now right to discuss that she was a woman. (text-colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s] was a woman, certaijnly the only one in this particular forum (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] had approved. That, in and of itself, was a big deal. But (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] was no stranger that women, in fact, existed, and too were capable of using the internet. Not to say that didn't color his fascination, but it really wasn't the novelty that (text-colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s] simply //was// a woman that had sold (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] on such a notable fascination, nor was it simply that she was //hot.// (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew], a man of the internet, was familiar with the many hot women it could provide. (text-colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s] was different, in a way, that he was certain could not be understated.
And he, enlightened arbiter of the revolution, was the only one who knew. And he had absolutely no idea what to do with the information.
(after:12s)[<br>(align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[open a chat.->page 11]]</button>](align:"=><=")[<button class ="default">(t8n-depart:"instant")+(t8n-arrive:"instant")+(t8n-time:0.1s)[[approve the profile.->page 12]]</button>]]
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I guess, simply, that approving her was the right move. After all, (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] wasn't //obligated// to be a perv about it. It was simply something pulling inside of him. That evil urge of many men - but he was above that. Creeping in the "hey bbg, saw u have F in ur profile ;)" manner was for that class of person he regarded, squarely, as trolls. But, in the same way, he was drawn to doing exactly that. Better a mod than a troll, (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] believed. <br> And in a way, that could've been it. Really, now, (colour:white)+(bg:red)[c4m3lt0s1s] was just another profile in the long log of approved users on the site which was growing longer by the day, none the wiser except (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] that it was different from the many accounts registered and rarely, if ever, used. It was a simply a matter of time, to go and wait, see if an opporotune moment struck, and if there was some manner of mental gymnastics through which (text-colour:white)+(bg:black)[Matthew] could convince himself that what we was thinking and doing was perfectly morally right and in no way an abuse of power or creepy. <br> He went afk a moment, to go grab a pepsi.
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