Skytown

Skytown is a formerly secret channel on the Blank Slate Discord chat, designed to promote more

"intelligent" conversation. However, it unintentionally resulted in the badmouthing and slander of a few members who were not in the channel. As a result, it became a point of extreme controversy among multiple members after its existence was revealed, and sparked notable backlash against the staffies, particularly MT.

#### Conceptualization, Formation, and Early Stages

Skytown was initially conceived by MT as a way to have conversation that was less likely to be interrupted by memes and shitposting, given the difficulties that had presented themselves in trying to enforce anti-shitposting rules. MT suggested the creation of a secret channel where members who weren't quite as meme prone would be invited to talk, while leaving regular conversations in the Blank Slate main chat unimpeded. The idea was received mostly favorably, and as a result, Skytown was created.

Skytown continued its secret existence peacefully for about a week, with discussion mostly focusing on video games and the odd movie. This would continue until the Blankovia prank, during which the chat's existence was leaked to members outside of it as a result of a mistake while changing member roles. Certain members began to protest both MT and Solaris Magnus for information on the chat's background.

#### Controversy

After MT repeatedly denied the chat's existence, Sol eventually admitted to it, and granted several of the upset members the ability to look inside and see that they weren't being excluded for any nefarious

reasons. This upset certain members who were inside Skytown already, believing that this was the mods going back on the promise of having a chat where certain people couldn't look inside. Several members, including CaptSlayer21 and Shad, became furious with MT, believing that he had created Skytown specifically as a way to bad mouth certain chat members.

MT, Sol, and other staffies repeatedly denied this accusation, and opened up viewing permission to all members for Skytown, along with the audit logs for the chat, so that members could see what had been written in the channel and that none of it had been deleted.

#### The Aftermath

In the wake of the Skytown controversy, two long term changes were made. Both the chat audit longs and Skytown were made permanently visible to all members, although the ability to chat in Skytown is still restricted to certain members. Several members who had been left out of Skytown believed this

was not enough, however, and remained furious with MT. Two members, Capt and Kitt, attempted to spam Blank Slate with the intent of getting banned, and were quickly kicked from the chat or sentenced to the Pit. Many of these members now unironically bad mouth MT consistently in Fatal Visionaries.

#### Member Commentary

Sammy's note: While it was plain to see that the chat didn't *exist* for those reasons, badmouthing did happen.

MT's counterpoint: As stated below, I opened up the chat history for anyone to view, and I've repeatedly asked anyone who feels they were bad mouthed to show me an instance of it happening. No one has taken me up on this so far. Seriously, if you feel you were bad-mouthed, by all means let me know where.