An announcement:
I joined IOT(/NES), and stuck around, because I enjoyed games and telling stories, and especially because I liked many of the people I met here. I've spent the better part of a decade here, I've grown a lot here, and I will always have fond memories of all that. But it's obvious now that the majority of IOT have grown disinterested in what I came here for. A vocal minority have even made it abundantly clear that they see the forum games as unworthy of their attention--and those who still play the forum games as beneath him. IOT, exactly like NES before it, has left the subforum behind. And if that's what the community wants, it's a good thing. Regeneration is part of life.
But I don't feel welcome here anymore. I've watched--from the outside--as this "community" has steadily grown more fragmented, sectarian, and frankly toxic. I've watched--from the outside--as the IOT Discord in particular has turned into an incubator for extreme cynicism and politics that I, to be blunt, consider utterly abhorrent. I've accepted that this is what IOT wants, and I've tried to ignore all of it and carry on. Unfortunately, it's escalated and bled out to a point where I can't.
I can guarantee that this post will get shot down: perhaps in public, perhaps in a place I can't see. I'm a pacifist, and I can't particularly stomach some of the things people in this community are calling for the greater good. I'm not going to be part of a space that's become so desensitised and cynical that this is accepted and normal. If these things make me a liberal who deserves to be purged, then fine: my leaving is a good thing for everyone involved.
I wish you all the best, and I sincerely apologise to the people I've promised games to and failed to deliver. I also sincerely thank the majority of people here--those of you who have been kind to me. If you're one of them: you'll know where to find me.
Tl;dr see you.