The Scratchpocalypse

**The Scratchpocalypse** was the first major event in the history of r/SMG4 itself.

## Timeline

### r/meggyxmario

In a now-deleted post from sometime in July of 2019, a user by the name of u/gnome\_memer advertised a subreddit called r/meggyxmario; claiming it was a bypass of Rule 8, which at the time forbade just the Mario x Meggy ship. Soon after, head mod Jeffiper declared war on all chats and associate mod MrRedditUser5000 announces it in a now-deleted post. Users, like the future Viva La Resistance movement, went to go spam r/meggyxmario with memes denouncing shipping and such. In addition, Jeffiper attempted to report the subreddit.

Later on, a user known by the community as Scratch created a chatroom known as the "war chat" to plan raids against said subreddit, but gnome\_memer found them and banned them outright. In response, Jeffiper bans gnome\_memer and all their alts from r/SMG4; but to no avail, as they kept making more to circumvent the ban. On 27 July 2019, former mod u/Wkc19 posted a post calling for the end of the crusades, saying "On behalf of the mods I would like to ask the community to immediately cease (stop) all posting of this "raid" onto r/SMG4. [r]/SMG4 prides itself by a community having a space to talk about the weird world of mario and not in a light of attacking or even raiding. We the mods also do not like how said subreddit was created and we are working with Reddit to get rid of it." On 28 July 2019 Jeffiper himself called for an end to the crusades, stating "The threat of this subreddit and various accounts being 'hammered have been lingering in my mind for the past 24 hours. The user known as "gnome[letter, number, or hyphen/underscore]memer" has been creating alt accounts to add to the moderators of that subreddit to manipulate upvotes and subreddit member counts. We tried to not let those f\*\*\*ers take our land, by using meme weapons, alts, and downvotes. The attacks crippled the sub before all non-ship posts were removed and most of us banned. We again tried and tried to get the gnomes to surrender by posting memes, but they were soon deleted. But that's when gnome\_memer played dirty, creating alt accounts to add to the moderators of the sub to manipulate upvotes and subreddit member counts."

However...that was when the true war began...

### "The Scratch Arc"

Prior to Jeffiper's call to end the crusades, he gave Scratch mod; in which he claims as his "worst decision yet". Scratch proceeds to go mad at users supporting gnome\_memer and crusade haters, eventually banning mod Paperplaneman42. Jeffiper proceeds to unban Paperplaneman42 and give Scratch a warning. Scratch then goes AWOL and proceeds to delete most posts and ban most users after the "war chat" idea backfired and others began to turn against him. He later asks for forgiveness and attempts to repair the subreddit and unban all banned users, but to no avail as he had no idea how to unremove posts. The mod of r/meggyxmario, gnome\_memer (under the guise of u/bigchunges1) then repaired the subreddit. After gnome\_memer/bigchunges1 fixed all the posts on the sub, Scratch gave mod to everyone as an "apology gift". These "mods" were later removed.

A temporary subreddit, r/newSMG4, was created as a base of operations during the rebuilding of r/SMG4. This subreddit is now privated and is reserved in case something like this happens again.

## Outcomes

It was confirmed that r/metarunner was affected by this as well.

The outcomes from the war were:

* Gnome was unbanned
* Scratch got banned from 30 days banned to permabanned to 24 hours to the point where he was literally terminated by reddit themselves. (Jeff was a little trigger-happy with the hammer)
* r/meggyxmario became the only exception to Rule 8 until 2020. The rules were later changed to prohibit all mentions of shipping once subreddit ownership was transferred to the creators of SMG4 themselves.
* Many people got confused about what just happened
* The subreddit learned never to crusade again
	+ However, the subreddit made several other crusades during the latter half of 2019 and first half of 2020.

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "What happened to the subreddit?" - u/jeffiper, 30 July 2019
2. ↑ "About subreddit "raiding" - u/Wkc19, 27 July 2019
3. ↑ "Calling to end the brigading of r/meggyxmario"- u/jeffiper, 28 July 2019
4. ↑ "guys... its gnome that saved this reddit..." - u/7SCRATCH6R7\_REDDIT, 28 July 2019
5. ↑ "Sit down kids it's story time. Please read to the end." - u/AshCreeper10, 31 January 2020