[Rant] Why I keep my circle small

[Nutter 15,194]

All of you who have been regulars on Garnet Gaming have by now figured out that while I may hop on your room in Teamspeak/play with you in-game for a period of time, I generally refrain from building friendships with new people, and keep it strictly "business" and micro-manage the community/conflicts/disputes/reports between users on occasions,. Welp, there's a reason for this.

I've been screwed over from thousands of dollars from staff/developers/players over the years who took advantage of my friendliness and provided incomplete work, with me allowing their real-life conflicts to seep into business matter, most notably with Bizzy having received hundreds of dollars towards the MilitaryRP missions system, only to leave me with incomplete/inaccessible work as he claimed mid-way through the job that Garry's Mod took a toll on his health saying 'I will be back soon' and never coming back.

Well, today a new situation rose up. Ark, a DarkRP staff member who I considered  to be a close friend was  caught abusing his staff powers by @eXg-Buddha , and as such, was temporarily demoted down to Trial Moderator while he fixes his behavior. In retaliation, he began minging the server/spamming Buddha maliciously (mind you, he's in his 20s) He chargedback everything he had ever donated for on Garnet, and gotten offline. He later contacted me and explained the situation to me, I paraphrase "I didn't mean to harm you by charging back, I wanted to harm Garnet as a whole because I was demoted, but I will retract the chargebacks, you're my friend". I let a couple of days go by in figuring out where the situation goes, only to find out he had threatened to DDoS Buddha and banned everybody underneath him in our staff-only GarnetGaming discord, amongst other things, leading to me permanently banning him. He asked to have a conversation with me, claiming "the ddos threat were just an act of anger, and i'm sorry about the Discord"  I let him know that until Buddha can verify he was not DDoS'd, and the chargebacks were indeed cancelled, I will not be speaking to him. He agreed to the terms and said he will contact PayPal. A few more days go on, and I see more chargebacks from him coming in, and I discover this chat conversation:

 

So what's happening here? evidently out of nowhere, a Garnet player I built a close relationship with is going out of his way to invest his very own money into crippling Garnet Gaming financially, by abusing the PayPal chargeback system, where no matter how little is spent in a purchase (could be as little as $2) will cost me $20 in fees as some sort of 'processing/handling' fee. Reiterating again, somebody who I thought to be a close friend of mine is spending his own money to cripple myself and my hobby over a slight inconvenience of a demotion due to his own actions.

The internet is a horrible place sometimes.

[Homast 377]

Can't you make a case out of this?

Literal Malicious Fraud.

On god fuck skids who do this for the sole purpose of hurting the community

[Nutter 15,194]

Just now, Homast said:

Can't you make a case out of this?

Literal Malicious Fraud.

On god fuck skids who do this for the sole purpose of hurting the community

I have been genuinely considering it, but at the end of the day, it'll cost me more money than I will get out of it, but he will most definitely end up in legal trouble.

[LalaDeviluke 328]

Why are people so petty about this and want to hurt the community and you. Just move on instead of trying to ruin someone else's life and hobby over a demotion. 

[Homast 377]

Just now, Garnet said:

it'll cost me more money than I will get out of it

I think the Lawyers fees alone would drain his 50k savings.
But yeah I see where you're coming from, You have more to lose than he does so a legal war of attrition probably isn't a good idea.
Can't you file a fraud report to Paypal themselves or something?

[Vizii 566]

8 minutes ago, Garnet said:

I have been genuinely considering it, but at the end of the day, it'll cost me more money than I will get out of it, but he will most definitely end up in legal trouble.

yeah dawg you cant let this slide. This guy is literally robbing you so hard. I would defo consider that a case should be put into place here 

[Nutter 15,194]

4 minutes ago, Homast said:

I think the Lawyers fees alone would drain his 50k savings.
But yeah I see where you're coming from, You have more to lose than he does so a legal war of attrition probably isn't a good idea.
Can't you file a fraud report to Paypal themselves or something?

I'm in the process of filing a fraud report to PayPal, i'm taking this one specific case as seriously as I can, and I have consulted with a law firm.

The only reason i'm not pursuing this as heavily as I would like to is because the guy is very young, and this would quite possibly land him some jail time for up to 5 years in jail. Does he deserve it? sure. Do I want to be the one to take a couple of years away from some guy's life over a couple hundreds/thousands of dollars? I don't know just yet.

[IAreGunner 268]

It kind of sucks to think how people can use you. 

 

The magic situation I'm sure no one thought about that never really heard something bad about him.

I will go as far as dude bro bending the rules for his benefit. It just sucks seeing  The reality of what happens with these people. like we want to believe that they're just chill person but then again we never know and that we see what ends up happening with that person. 

Console when he screwed up the forums, pretty sure Burton did something too I just don't know what.

 

 

[WhiteBolt 33]

Jesus man, this isn't right. You've created this community out of the sole purpose for people to have fun and put thousands of dollars into this community. It's kinda fucked that people are honestly this greedy, you shouldn't have to go through this. I'm really sorry @Garnet I hope things turn around for the better for you. If it makes you feel better I have a lot of nostalgia playing on different servers of yours especially MRP over the summer. 

[Ting 368]

Ark = the one redhead from kim possible

[PrisonNightmare 741]

Damn man, I don't even know what to think of this. What a scumbag to do this to you, an absolutely abhorrent thing to do to someone. 

 

I think you should pursue with legal action if he doesn't stop with the chargebacks. he's old enough to realise what he is doing is wrong and shouldn't be done. He's harming your brand and you personally financially by him doing this to you. 

 

Goodluck with the disputes man, and thank you for everything you've done for the last 5 years of the community to keep things running. Hopefully the situation gets resolved quickly and easily. 

[Ziggy 1,353]

Yikes, this is why you can’t fuck with fake people. Unfortunately there isn’t really a big indicator for people like this, but you’re right on keeping distance between the people you can’t trust. Shame to see a grown ass adult being like this.

Good luck with the disputes, OG.

[eXg-Buddha 729]

3 minutes ago, Bishopil said:

Yikes, this is why you can’t fuck with fake people. Unfortunately there isn’t really a big indicator for people like this, but you’re right on keeping distance between the people you can’t trust. Shame to see a grown ass adult being like this.

Good luck with the disputes, OG.

While you're mostly right, I need to take full responsibility on this one. Ark was a shady character from the start. Whether it was constant mood swings, unwarranted toxicity, beligerant behavior towards staff, or just being a weird guy in general - Ark should not have had staff nor have been in the community for as long as he did. Instead, I decided to be lenient and forgiving, often giving him another chance to redeem himself. I could not have predicted his behavior, nor could I have predicted how childish he would be towards Garnet, but regardless I want to apologize for letting this intolerable mess into our community, and for letting him stay this long. Good luck with Ark, and I hope you get through this on top Garnet. 

[jaylen 32]

I feel kinda bad now after reading this people have been making rumors about how you have a lot of money from gmod. I started to fall into the rumors and the "Garnet doesn't care about the community".  But you do. I played this server when I was 9 seeing a bunch of CSGO models killing each other on CS Desert brought joy into me. Every day I'd come home do some homework then it was straight to Garnet on Haqqani under Verse, I still remember random occurrences in the server from Charkiarv1 (spelt wrong) and Garnet CS Desert. then up to 2GA LT when I was toxic and honestly fucking stupid. during my ban I learned not be immature, Occasionally I'd go on Youtube and watch old videos for Nostalgia, and remember the old days. All in all, Its been a great 4-5 years on Garnet Gaming. Thank you for everything and wish you well on dealing against disuputes. 

(Sorry for causing havoc on the server before)

 

- Xploding/Venus

Edited April 3, 2020 by Xploding
grammar

[Nutter 15,194]

3 minutes ago, eXg-Buddha said:

While you're mostly right, I need to take full responsibility on this one.

 

3 minutes ago, eXg-Buddha said:

I could not have predicted his behavior, nor could I have predicted how childish he would be towards Garnet

Sounds to me like you don't need to take any responsibility. These were his very own actions, but I respect you for that.