Beatrix the Goddess
Aug 12, 2006, 02:15 AM
As most of you are probably aware of, a member named Dart recently posted this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=16914) in The Asylum, following on from this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8765) thread which was posted two years ago, in which it was claimed that Dart had some sort of terminal illness, and that he died. His more recent thread disputes this; claiming that a friend “hacked his account” and posted those claims.
Obviously this was an extremely unexpected incident and somewhat difficult to deal with, due to its sensitive nature. Given the site’s previous experience of the faked death of Zidane’s True Love, obviously some of the staff, and a goodly number of you, the members, were a little suspicious about this sudden reappearance, although a lot of you were quite sympathetic/forgiving, & that was really encouraging to see, despite the way its turned out.
As for the way it has turned out – we’ve taken the decision to ban Dart for the same offence as Zidane’s True Love: faking death. And for having a double account, although next to the first reason, that’s hardly important. However, obviously it’s a very thorny issue and opinion is bound to be divided over it. There always will be the possibility that we’ve made a mistake, & because of this, we thought it fair that you should all see the evidence that this decision was based on, so that you can follow it through for yourselves. Because of this evidence, we find it highly unlikely that Dart is being truthful.
For those who haven’t checked: the news of Dart’s death was posted by another member named Dias. Both members claimed to know each other and go to the same school – I think we can at least loosely apply the term ‘friendship’ to that. Dart joined the site first, followed by Dias. For a time, both members posted concurrently, then Dart “died” & Dias continued to post. We’ve good reason to believe that Dart & Dias were one & the same person, and that Dart’s “death” was preplanned & orchestrated over several days by this person.
The first point I’d like to make for them being the same person is simple: they “both” chose usernames from the same, single – and by this time obscure – game. I think you’ll agree that this is unlikely to happen even with the closest of friends, especially as by the time they both joined, Legend of Dragoon was quite an old game; certainly not one that would be thought of by anyone except old fans. Furthermore, if you give any credibility to psychological insight, Dart & Dias (actually Diaz) were the hero & the villain of the game, which could be construed as an extra emphasis of the fact that “they” were two different people. Dias later states that Dias is his real name, however no other person seems to share it.
As I said, this similarity of choice is rather unlikely to happen even between the closest of friends who share interests. Therefore it is even more unlikely to genuinely happen between these two people, because in Dias’s joining thread (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8636), Dart welcomes him but doesn’t acknowledge any previous acquaintance. In all other threads that they both participate in there is no evidence that they have any sort of real-life friendship, except for one where Dart states he’s “from the same place as Dias”, and of course the “death thread”. Dart/Dias hasn’t exactly shown a particularly high IQ in his posts, therefore it could be assumed that he felt that making the friendship more realistic by constructing some idle banter such as you see between, say, AP & TLS_Scip, was too complicated for him to pull off realistically, therefore interaction was kept to a minimum.
Another point that casts doubt on the separate identities of these two is the similarity of their writing styles. Both of them consistently do not use capital letters or apostrophes. Admittedly this is a fault of many people but both show an unusual consistency in it, and also of capitalising words which shouldn’t be capitalised. In addition both use the word ‘prolly’ for probably’ and ‘loose/loosing’ for ‘lose/losing’, neither of which you see very often here. Taken together, these similarities make the situation look suspicious, and bear in mind that Dias’s first statement of Dart being sick was made on May 12th. Based on Dart’s story, this must have been the latest date that his account was hacked. However, Dart made 4 other posts on that day which were entirely consistent with his own previous writing style, indicating that it was still the “real him” posting.
This brings us to the days leading up to his “death”. Given that the latest time of his death must be May 16th, it is very odd that he was posting normally on the 12th, and that in this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8707) thread he states he was drunk/hung over on the 9th – Mothers Day. Not exactly the actions of a dying person. Its true that he could have deteriorated rapidly, but this doesn’t rest easy with his leaving statement on the 14th in which he says that “the docs say that’s it”; this indicates a terminal illness, not any sort of sudden trauma. If the illness was in fact terminal, he would have been told “that’s it” weeks before his death, not days. Furthermore, both he & Dias remain utterly vague on the nature of his illness. The most we learn is in this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=101780#post101780
) thread, in which Miko states that Dart told her he was “bleeding from his eyes”. Literally spouting blood from the eyes isn’t something you see except in second-rate animes, however bleeding within the eye is known as a subconjunctival hemorrhage. The only potentially fatal non-acute cause of this is high blood pressure, which can lead to a stroke. However, if that had happened, Dart would be in intensive care and in no state to post a goodbye message. They can also be indicative of bleeding disorders such as haemophilia, but if a fatal incident involving that occurred, he would again be unable to post a goodbye message.
Next, I’d like to point out some more oddities in the behaviour of “both” members. The most obvious one is Dart’s actual leaving thread. Now I’m in no position to theorise on the attitude a dying person would adopt, however I’d like to point out that Dart is very free with his emotions in his posts, he is clearly pleased at being part of one of the “families” that was going on at the time, and his posts are littered with emoticons and exclaimation marks. Given this, I don’t feel that his very brief, emotionless farewell post quite rings true. I think you’d all agree that even our resident dark horses Myst or DreamLines would be much more expressive if such a thing were to happen to them. This suggests that the whole thing was a stunt which Dart was not able to deal with accurately, hence he used few words/explanations.
Now we move on to Dias’s attitude towards Dart’s death. And I think the best way to sum it up, is simply that he doesn’t have one. In the days following Dart’s death, he made normal & untroubled posts such as this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8365&page=6) and this ( http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=102085#post102085), and the one that most caught my eye a post saying “wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllll im hyper and...... here a picture of me ----> o_O” . Now we all have our own ways of dealing with death, but this person isn’t dealing with death; he’s not dealing with anyone, he is in fact quite pleased and happy at the sympathy and attention generated by his stunt. Anxious to milk this pleasant feeling of his, he expresses his triumph with the custom title “You will die when I say you must die”, enjoying the feeling of control.
However, it seems that after a while, the effect wore off, & perhaps he even began to feel a bit worried about what he’d done. He clearly demonstrated that he was preoccupied by it in this ( http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8778) thread of Miko’s (sorry for bringing it up again Miko). In one of her post she says she feels that “everyone seems to push me away” – a very general statement. However Dias responds very specifically with “Dart didn’t push you away”, an un-necessarily specific response.
Despite trying to prolong the event, it seems to me that Dart/Dias continued to feel starved of attention, even resorting to similar tactics by making his sig say “I will soon be gone…” as Dias, hoping the mysterious comment would generate attention. I don’t think we’re dealing with a bad person here; merely someone who thought he was Nobody but wanted to be Somebody, a feeling we’ve all had at some point. His methods were very silly and with no consideration of the seriousness of such claims, but that’s all. However he lost his potential for a second chance by continuing to lie on his return, no doubt because he was frightened of the response that the truth would get. Unfortunately I think he would have fared better if he’d ‘fessed up.
Just a quick final analysis of his returning post: first & foremost, his story of using the computers at school to access UFF is not true, or if it is then he has lied elsewhere. In this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8679) thread and this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=100852#post100852) thread he states that he dropped out of school.He may have said this just to look good but either way its an indication of dishonesty. The next interesting part is his belief that people will post pictures saying ‘Attention Whore’. Quite a few of you have far more acid tongues than I like to see, but even I admire the fact that when you’re acid, you’re acid in a witty way, & ‘Attention Whore’ is very basic & crude flaming – not something you guys would generally reduce yourselves to. This indicates that perhaps Dart has exhibited similar sorts of attention-seeking behaviour before on other forums, & has come into the firing line for it. Next, he is falling over himself to state that he’s basically only posting because Kaii forced him to – this indicates he is frightened that his story won’t stand up to scrutiny, & so tries to blame it on someone else so that he has the back door of saying “I told you they wouldn’t believe me”. Next, there is a very great increase in the amount of swearing compared to his previous posts. He may have learnt a few more words during his absence but its more likely that he felt under pressure, & so was more aggressive. Next, he states he was “never very popular” – yet more evidence of the type of attention-seeking behaviour that is related to these kinds of stunts. Next, when explaining what happens he uses the word “obviously (or obvious)” twice in his explanation. Most people coming back to find posts they hadn’t made would be likely to exhibit a firm denial, but with a degree of puzzlement over how it happened. Dart however, is 100% confident that he knows & tries to be heavily persuasive by telling us its “obvious”. Lastly, in a desparate bid, Dart states he has had “a few friends die on me” – don’t you think even the most hardened of us would remember the exact number if you’d had “a few” die on you by the age of 19?
Finally, evidence that is not so open to interpretation – Dart & Dias’s IP addresses are from the same place. This was all well & good along with the “posting at school” story, but now that’s been disproved, obviously this is very suggestive.
Apologies for the somewhat long & probably unclear presentation of the evidence but its very late at night. Anyway, that’s what was pieced together & the decision was made based on it. I hope its satisfactory to you all because its not one we made lightly – that’s why its all here for you to see.
Obviously this was an extremely unexpected incident and somewhat difficult to deal with, due to its sensitive nature. Given the site’s previous experience of the faked death of Zidane’s True Love, obviously some of the staff, and a goodly number of you, the members, were a little suspicious about this sudden reappearance, although a lot of you were quite sympathetic/forgiving, & that was really encouraging to see, despite the way its turned out.
As for the way it has turned out – we’ve taken the decision to ban Dart for the same offence as Zidane’s True Love: faking death. And for having a double account, although next to the first reason, that’s hardly important. However, obviously it’s a very thorny issue and opinion is bound to be divided over it. There always will be the possibility that we’ve made a mistake, & because of this, we thought it fair that you should all see the evidence that this decision was based on, so that you can follow it through for yourselves. Because of this evidence, we find it highly unlikely that Dart is being truthful.
For those who haven’t checked: the news of Dart’s death was posted by another member named Dias. Both members claimed to know each other and go to the same school – I think we can at least loosely apply the term ‘friendship’ to that. Dart joined the site first, followed by Dias. For a time, both members posted concurrently, then Dart “died” & Dias continued to post. We’ve good reason to believe that Dart & Dias were one & the same person, and that Dart’s “death” was preplanned & orchestrated over several days by this person.
The first point I’d like to make for them being the same person is simple: they “both” chose usernames from the same, single – and by this time obscure – game. I think you’ll agree that this is unlikely to happen even with the closest of friends, especially as by the time they both joined, Legend of Dragoon was quite an old game; certainly not one that would be thought of by anyone except old fans. Furthermore, if you give any credibility to psychological insight, Dart & Dias (actually Diaz) were the hero & the villain of the game, which could be construed as an extra emphasis of the fact that “they” were two different people. Dias later states that Dias is his real name, however no other person seems to share it.
As I said, this similarity of choice is rather unlikely to happen even between the closest of friends who share interests. Therefore it is even more unlikely to genuinely happen between these two people, because in Dias’s joining thread (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8636), Dart welcomes him but doesn’t acknowledge any previous acquaintance. In all other threads that they both participate in there is no evidence that they have any sort of real-life friendship, except for one where Dart states he’s “from the same place as Dias”, and of course the “death thread”. Dart/Dias hasn’t exactly shown a particularly high IQ in his posts, therefore it could be assumed that he felt that making the friendship more realistic by constructing some idle banter such as you see between, say, AP & TLS_Scip, was too complicated for him to pull off realistically, therefore interaction was kept to a minimum.
Another point that casts doubt on the separate identities of these two is the similarity of their writing styles. Both of them consistently do not use capital letters or apostrophes. Admittedly this is a fault of many people but both show an unusual consistency in it, and also of capitalising words which shouldn’t be capitalised. In addition both use the word ‘prolly’ for probably’ and ‘loose/loosing’ for ‘lose/losing’, neither of which you see very often here. Taken together, these similarities make the situation look suspicious, and bear in mind that Dias’s first statement of Dart being sick was made on May 12th. Based on Dart’s story, this must have been the latest date that his account was hacked. However, Dart made 4 other posts on that day which were entirely consistent with his own previous writing style, indicating that it was still the “real him” posting.
This brings us to the days leading up to his “death”. Given that the latest time of his death must be May 16th, it is very odd that he was posting normally on the 12th, and that in this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8707) thread he states he was drunk/hung over on the 9th – Mothers Day. Not exactly the actions of a dying person. Its true that he could have deteriorated rapidly, but this doesn’t rest easy with his leaving statement on the 14th in which he says that “the docs say that’s it”; this indicates a terminal illness, not any sort of sudden trauma. If the illness was in fact terminal, he would have been told “that’s it” weeks before his death, not days. Furthermore, both he & Dias remain utterly vague on the nature of his illness. The most we learn is in this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=101780#post101780
) thread, in which Miko states that Dart told her he was “bleeding from his eyes”. Literally spouting blood from the eyes isn’t something you see except in second-rate animes, however bleeding within the eye is known as a subconjunctival hemorrhage. The only potentially fatal non-acute cause of this is high blood pressure, which can lead to a stroke. However, if that had happened, Dart would be in intensive care and in no state to post a goodbye message. They can also be indicative of bleeding disorders such as haemophilia, but if a fatal incident involving that occurred, he would again be unable to post a goodbye message.
Next, I’d like to point out some more oddities in the behaviour of “both” members. The most obvious one is Dart’s actual leaving thread. Now I’m in no position to theorise on the attitude a dying person would adopt, however I’d like to point out that Dart is very free with his emotions in his posts, he is clearly pleased at being part of one of the “families” that was going on at the time, and his posts are littered with emoticons and exclaimation marks. Given this, I don’t feel that his very brief, emotionless farewell post quite rings true. I think you’d all agree that even our resident dark horses Myst or DreamLines would be much more expressive if such a thing were to happen to them. This suggests that the whole thing was a stunt which Dart was not able to deal with accurately, hence he used few words/explanations.
Now we move on to Dias’s attitude towards Dart’s death. And I think the best way to sum it up, is simply that he doesn’t have one. In the days following Dart’s death, he made normal & untroubled posts such as this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8365&page=6) and this ( http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=102085#post102085), and the one that most caught my eye a post saying “wellllllllllllllllllllllllllllll im hyper and...... here a picture of me ----> o_O” . Now we all have our own ways of dealing with death, but this person isn’t dealing with death; he’s not dealing with anyone, he is in fact quite pleased and happy at the sympathy and attention generated by his stunt. Anxious to milk this pleasant feeling of his, he expresses his triumph with the custom title “You will die when I say you must die”, enjoying the feeling of control.
However, it seems that after a while, the effect wore off, & perhaps he even began to feel a bit worried about what he’d done. He clearly demonstrated that he was preoccupied by it in this ( http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8778) thread of Miko’s (sorry for bringing it up again Miko). In one of her post she says she feels that “everyone seems to push me away” – a very general statement. However Dias responds very specifically with “Dart didn’t push you away”, an un-necessarily specific response.
Despite trying to prolong the event, it seems to me that Dart/Dias continued to feel starved of attention, even resorting to similar tactics by making his sig say “I will soon be gone…” as Dias, hoping the mysterious comment would generate attention. I don’t think we’re dealing with a bad person here; merely someone who thought he was Nobody but wanted to be Somebody, a feeling we’ve all had at some point. His methods were very silly and with no consideration of the seriousness of such claims, but that’s all. However he lost his potential for a second chance by continuing to lie on his return, no doubt because he was frightened of the response that the truth would get. Unfortunately I think he would have fared better if he’d ‘fessed up.
Just a quick final analysis of his returning post: first & foremost, his story of using the computers at school to access UFF is not true, or if it is then he has lied elsewhere. In this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?t=8679) thread and this (http://www.uffsite.net/forums/showthread.php?p=100852#post100852) thread he states that he dropped out of school.He may have said this just to look good but either way its an indication of dishonesty. The next interesting part is his belief that people will post pictures saying ‘Attention Whore’. Quite a few of you have far more acid tongues than I like to see, but even I admire the fact that when you’re acid, you’re acid in a witty way, & ‘Attention Whore’ is very basic & crude flaming – not something you guys would generally reduce yourselves to. This indicates that perhaps Dart has exhibited similar sorts of attention-seeking behaviour before on other forums, & has come into the firing line for it. Next, he is falling over himself to state that he’s basically only posting because Kaii forced him to – this indicates he is frightened that his story won’t stand up to scrutiny, & so tries to blame it on someone else so that he has the back door of saying “I told you they wouldn’t believe me”. Next, there is a very great increase in the amount of swearing compared to his previous posts. He may have learnt a few more words during his absence but its more likely that he felt under pressure, & so was more aggressive. Next, he states he was “never very popular” – yet more evidence of the type of attention-seeking behaviour that is related to these kinds of stunts. Next, when explaining what happens he uses the word “obviously (or obvious)” twice in his explanation. Most people coming back to find posts they hadn’t made would be likely to exhibit a firm denial, but with a degree of puzzlement over how it happened. Dart however, is 100% confident that he knows & tries to be heavily persuasive by telling us its “obvious”. Lastly, in a desparate bid, Dart states he has had “a few friends die on me” – don’t you think even the most hardened of us would remember the exact number if you’d had “a few” die on you by the age of 19?
Finally, evidence that is not so open to interpretation – Dart & Dias’s IP addresses are from the same place. This was all well & good along with the “posting at school” story, but now that’s been disproved, obviously this is very suggestive.
Apologies for the somewhat long & probably unclear presentation of the evidence but its very late at night. Anyway, that’s what was pieced together & the decision was made based on it. I hope its satisfactory to you all because its not one we made lightly – that’s why its all here for you to see.