Tetsumonchi



Colin McMenemy, known as Tetsumonchi, is the owner of the Miniclip Fan Forum. Previously, he had served as lead administrator of the Old Forum, a support admin on MCCP and a moderator on the 8 Ball Pool Forum. His more than 14 years on the staff team make him the longest serving staff member to date.

Tetsumonchi joined the Old Forum in August 2004 and spent his first 2 years as a member, winning the innaugural MOTY competition in 2005. In July 2006 he was made a moderator to assist in tackling Club Penguin spam. When MCCP was opened in February 2007, then-lead admin Dracophile began spending more time there and less time on the Old Forum. Tetsu gradually took on more administrative responsibilities to compensate, and in March 2009 officially replaced Dracophile as lead admin of the Old Forum. Tetsu's two-year tenure as administrator saw the forum grow at an unprecedented rate and is often regarded as the golden era in the community's history. It was undermined, however, with the events of "Tetsugate" and Tetsumonchi was subsequently removed as admin, along with Dracophile and AmberMouse in the June 2011 Purge.

Regular Member (2004–2006)
Tetsumonchi discovered Miniclip and became a member of its forum community on the 4th August, 2004, while on holiday with family in Spain. His first thread was an advertisement for his personal forum, The Netziz, which was quickly deleted by the forum administrator, AmberMouse. For the remainder of the year, Tetsu was only sporadically active on Miniclip - spending the majority of his time at AnyNowhere.com instead. However, when he was banned from AnyNowhere in January 2005, Tetsu began to post regularly on Miniclip and quickly established himself as one of the central members of the community. While popular, he gained a reputation as a spammer due to the amount he posted and openly engaged in "races" with other users to see who could become the highest poster on the forum. Moderation at this time was minimal, so Tetsu and others were largely able to get away with this behaviour. However, when AmberMouse eventually noticed she banned Tetsu and several other members for a month - reducing their post counts to zero. Upon his return in April, Tetsumonchi continued to contribute extensively, but was mindful not to spam as he had previously done. Gradually, Tetsu modified his posting style and went from being one of the forum's biggest spammers to a user renowned and respected for making highly contributive posts and threads.

Even as a regular user, Tetsu involved himself in forum affairs. In September 2005, he visited xGen.com's forum to negotiate a truths after a large group of xGen users posted spam and porn on Miniclip's forum, prompting Miniclip users to retaliate by doing the same on xGen. The raid had initially overwhelmed Miniclip's small moderation team but was eventually brought under control when enough users were persuaded not to participate further. In October, Tetsu met Dracophile, and the pair quickly became good friends. Tetsu and Draco shared a similar view that the forum should not be used as a chat room and spammers should be "encouraged" to change their ways. Controversial methods of backseat moderating were used to achieve this, such as calling spammers out, humiliating then or chastising them. AmberMouse knew of this and seemingly condoned it, while Tetsu and Draco also received back-up from other veteran members. 2005 came to a close with Tetsu being awarded "Member of the Year".

In January 2006, Tetsu discovered that a handful of forum users were attending the same high school as him. The pupils, aged 12, were some of the targets of Tetsu and Draco's anti-spam campaign. Disliking Tetsu, they attempted to pester him at school by following him around, swearing and throwing things at him. Tetsu, a senior at the time, tried to ignore them for the most part, but did respond one or twice by shoving one kid to the ground and throwing another inside a bin. One of the children, known as StormierZiggy on the forum, noted that Tetsu's forum location said "USA" and tried to expose Tetsu as a liar. Tetsumonchi was deeply protective of his privacy and wanted to maintain the identity he had created for himself. When Ziggy tried to explain that Tetsu was a senior at his school, Tetsu rubbished this and accused Ziggy of trying to harass him.

The community sided with Tetsu and Ziggy was virtually ostracized. Ziggy sought revenge for his humiliation and in April he sent Tetsu an email, posing as Miniclip employee Ben Gillbanks. The Ben imposter offered Tetsu a temporary admin position, but stated that he would need Tetsu's forum password in order to change the account. An over-ambitious and gullible Tetsu agreed to help out and gave Ziggy his password. Shortly after, Tetsu left with his family to spend a week in Spain. When he finally found a internet cafe he logged in to discover that his account had been locked following a string of attacks on staff and members. Tetsu knew he had been fooled, and created a new account to explain the situation. The community again sided with Tetsu and Dracophile called for Ziggy to be banned. However, staff said there wasn't enough proof and Ziggy denied involvement. Tetsumonchi and others began searching for the proof they needed, and discovered Ziggy's personal forum. There were rumors that within hidden areas of the board, Ziggy had bragged about the attack. The group from Miniclip, consisting of Tetsu, Draco and several others, demanded access to see for themselves, but Ziggy refused. However, when Dracophile threatened to hack the forum, one of its admins agreed to give them access without Ziggy's knowledge, to avoid damage to the board. Evidence was collected and Ziggy was perma-banned from the Miniclip forums. Tetsu got his original account back shortly after.

Early 2006 also saw the introduction of Club Penguin to Miniclip. A subforum for the game was added in February which steadily grew over the next two months. During April, hoards of young Club Penguin players started registering on the forum as the game's popularity increased and activity in that section skyrocketed. Initially a self-contained community, the "penguins", as they came to be known, began pouring out of their own subforum and into other areas of the community. Their presence in these areas was met with the tacit disapproval from the mainstream community who regarded their posts immature, off-topic and spam. The often childish nature of the Club Penguin players could be attributed to the fact that this was a children's game, and therefor many of its players were 13 years of age or younger. AmberMouse and her moderators seemed unwilling to get involved with Club Penguin, so a small group of regular users, led by Tetsumonchi and Dracophile, entered the Club Penguin forum and innitiated a sort of backseat moderating campaign, hoping to improve and fix the penguin community from within. Guides, rules and various useful threads were written, which the group would then get a moderator to sticky. For over two weeks they also tirelessly attempted to answer questions, offer advice, end disputes and keep the peace when a troll would attack. Their involvement ultimately had little effect, but was seen as the first small step towards an organized Club Penguin forum. On the 12th May, 2006, Dracophile was promoted to the rank of moderator. Unbeknown to others, Dracophile had been in contact with Ben, discussing ways to organize and manage the expanding community. This initially offered some reprieve from the spam as Dracophile was able to manage content and punish rule-breakers, but as the community grew, Draco became overwhelmed. It soon became clear that an additional moderator was needed, and Draco and Ben discussed promoting Tetsu.

Moderating Club Penguin
On July 3rd, 2006, Tetsumonchi received an email from Ben, Miniclip's head of web development, offering to make him a moderator. Tetsu gladly accepted the offer, promising he would do his best. Public reaction to Tetsu's promotion was entirely positive with numerous threads of congratulations. Between them, Tetsu and Draco could comfortably handle the workload and initially took a light-handed approach to moderating the community. Within the Club Penguin forum, Tetsumonchi and Dracophile gained a form of celebrity status due to their ranks, receiving fan art and having "temples" dedicated to them in which penguins would thank or praise the moderators. However, with the community continuing to grow and things getting increasingly out of hand, it was gradually becoming evident to the pair that a firmer approach would need to be taken, particularly as a large number of the mainstream community were beginning to leave, claiming they were fed up of seeing penguin spam in their areas of the board, as it was getting in the way of "quality threads" and thus "ruining their forum experience". On July 27th, 2006, Dracophile was promoted to the rank of administrator and officially replaced AmberMouse as the head administrator. Following demands that Club Penguin be more strictly moderated, Tetsu and Draco reevaluated their approach and tightened the rules, switching on the forum's infraction system and turning post count off. Tetsumonchi spent three days going through over 500 pages of threads in the Club Penguin forum, deleting any he deemed to be spam, unnecessary or not in line with the new rules - resulting in about a quarter of the forum's total threads being removed. The rules were tightened further through September and October, with Tetsu writing a specialized set specifically for the Club Penguin forum. In an announcement to the Penguin community, Tetsumonchi cautioned the users to either "shape up or ship out" as henceforth each and every rule violation would be met with an infraction. This policy was successful in finally bringing Club Penguin under control, however it was met with harsh criticism from many the Penguin community due of the amount of users being banned as a result of it. Collectively, Tetsumonchi and Dracophile issued approximately 1,000 infractions between September and November, but were forced to ease up after Miniclip received complaints from parents. Thankfully their efforts to that point, while deemed excessive by some, had cleaned out many of the most spammy and bothersome users, leaving the Club Penguin forums considerably improved from the point of view of staff and the mainstream community.

After Club Penguin
In December, Dracophile proposed an independent web forum for the Club Penguin community, due to the fact that it was now three times the size of the mainstream Miniclip community and still growing. In March 2007, the Miniclip Club Penguin Forums (MCCP) opened and Draco deleted the old Club Penguin subforum on Miniclip. Tetsumonchi became a moderator on MCCP and would remain on staff there until the forum's 2012 closure, but only played a major role in moderating for the first month, after which a team of users from the penguin community took over. On the Miniclip Forums, Tetsu noted a sharp drop in activity now that the Penguin community had left. Numerous Miniclippers had also left over the months, due to being frustrated with Club Penguin, leaving only devoted veterans and a small number of former Club Penguins players who felt they had outgrown the game and had decided to stay. Tetsu was left to moderate Miniclip alone, as Draco was busy with MCCP and the other staff had become inactive, but was able to cope due to activity being so low. Activity would remain relatively low throughout 2007, but increased enough for Scootz and Spike16 to be promoted later in the year to assist Tetsu. As the months went by, Tetsumonchi noted with concern that Draco was visiting less and less frequently. After growing tired of trying to coerce Draco back to the forums, Tetsu took it upon himself to make sure that all threads in the "General Help" section, including site-related stickies, were responded to - a task previously undertaken almost solely by Draco, and additionally made his email public so that members could discuss issues with him or ask questions privately. Behind the scenes, given that there was only two new moderators and several semi-active ones on the team, Tetsumonchi also began playing a much larger role in directing moderation; taking part in all staff discussions, answering questions from other staff, taking responsibility for training the new mods and being the "senior authority figure" in place of an administrator who would back-up his colleages when their moderating was called into dispute. Tetsumonchi kept in regular contact with all moderation staff via MSN, in order to keep himself up to date with everything that was happening on the forums. Despite this more active role in providing forum assistance to users, and in a sense managing the moderation team, Dracophile was still very much running the show and Tetsumonchi in no way considered himself in charge. Draco's activity had lowered considerably, however he would still log in at least once a week and Tetsu would keep him informed of any significant happenings.

Anagrammatic Conflict
In November 2007, a major conflict erupted between staff and members of the Anagrammatic community following a staff initiative to prevent the posting of suggestive or explicit images there and impose similar rules to the rest of the forum. The Anagrammatic community, which had been largely self-moderated until this point, consisted of adults 30 to 70 years of age. They reacted angrily to what they perceived as unnecessary staff interference in their close-nit community and angrily voiced their objections. Tetsumonchi and Scootz initially tried to justify their intervention, but discussions soon digressed into heated arguments, with Anagrammatics vowing to defy the moderators, and Tetsu/Scootz labeling the community as childish while threatening infractions and bans. Following the first such ban, Anagrammatics pledged to stand together and fight to defend their way of life on the forums. Threads mocking and attacking Tetsu and Scootz were posted, more moderators began to get involved, and the bans and infractions mounted. AmberMouse, an Anagrammatic player herself condemned the moderators' use of force, while Dracophile supported it, stating that the Anagrammatics were being ridiculous. Miniclip also became involved, having recieved complaints from Anagrammatic members. It concluded that Tetsu and Scootz had been right to address the inappropriate images that were being posted and was keen to end the arguments. A thread was posted in Anagrammatic by Ben, publicly supporting the moderators and calling for an end to hostilities, but this was largely ignored.

By December, with the dispute showing no signs of abating, Tetsumonchi decided that a different approach had to be taken and initiated negotiations which slowly brought hostilities to a close. Moderators were instructed not to penalize members further except in extreme cases, while Tetsu struck a deal that allowed Anagrammatic to remain mostly self-moderated in exchange for its members agreeing not to post images or other content deemed too adult in nature. Upon receiving agreement from the Anagrammatic members, all bans were listed, with all infractions being lifted over the following 3 months. In time, apologies were exchanged and through cooperation the staff and Anagrammatic community developed a mutual respect. Jaycee Dee, an Anagrammatic member, joined the staff team in 2010.

Activities on MCCP
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Miniclip Forum Revival
Around mid-2008, activity finally began to increase when a large number of users began registering on the forum and participating in discussions. Many of them were fans of the newly introduced Sketch Star and Players Channel, which collectively were bringing an unprecedented increase in gamers to Miniclip. Tetsu, who had been grown dismayed at the state of the community, was delighted by their arrival and was determined to make sure they felt welcome and chose to remain, in order to finally revive the forum to its pre-Club Penguin state. He altered his style of moderating by making an effort to befriend many of the new users and participate in discussions with them. He emphasized that he was there to help, rather than to moderate, hoping that this would make him more personable and approachable, rather than just an authority figure, as he had been during Club Penguin and the Anagrammatic dispute. To this end he was successful, and Tetsu was able to to relax and enjoy a friendly and fun relationship with his new and growing community. Tetsumonchi arranged for the creation of Posting Games and by the end of summer 2008 the Miniclip Forums were once again alive and vibrant with a new community and a new focus of discussion for its gamers: the Players Channel and Sketch Star. Tetsumonchi encouraged other staff to follow his own more relaxed approach in handling these users, and as a result there was a generally positive attitude on the forums with good prospects ahead. Tetsu made the decision to replace a the majority of Dracophile and AmberMouse's stickies and guides around the forum, as they had become largely unknown figures amongst the community and Tetsu felt it was beneficial to have these important threads under his own name; someone that the members knew, trusted, and could communicate with. Dracophile was now logging in once every 2 weeks and Tetsu was more or less considered the guy in charge by the community. Tetsu began taking over more and more of Draco's administrative duties, quite often doing things of his own initiative that would previously have required Draco's approval. These included reversing member's perma-bans, adding new forum rules or altering existing ones, making announcements to the community and approving, observing or implementing all major moderation decisions. He now more or less regarded himself as the forum's de facto manager, although arguably he had been since MCCP opened the previous year. Ironically, though, this was not something that Tetsu reveled in. In his mind, he felt it was his duty to take the reigns, and he was doing everything in his limited powers to hold the forums together and to keep them running smoothly. He was angry with Draco for seemingly abandoning them, particularly when he saw how successful the MCCP forum was. Many veteran users began to voice a desire to see Tetsu officially appointed as administrator, however Tetsu himself remained silent. 2008 came to a close with the The Mini's, an Oscars-themed competition devised by Tetsumonchi with the help of the community. Miniclip offered to create a Players Channel award for the winners and the competition was considered a huge success. There has been a Mini's competition in the community every year since.

Early Administration
In March 2009, moderators found themselves struggling against a series of trolls whom they were unable to IP ban. Dracophile had not logged in for 3 weeks and was not responding to emails. Tetsumonchi finally decided that this had gone on long enough and approached Miniclip with a request to be allowed to administrate their forum himself. Miniclip staff in London discussed and agreed to his request, and Tetsumonchi was promoted to the rank of administrator; officially being given the responsibility of managing the Miniclip community. The community was delighted by the promotion with many claiming they had seen it coming. The first few months of Tetsu's administration were marked by a series of changes and reforms, centered around appearance, organization and features, aimed at maximizing activity and creating a more relaxed and enjoyable atmosphere. MCCP, at 800,000 posts, was now only 200,000 posts behind the Miniclip forums, and Tetsu was determined that under his management the Miniclip Forums would pull ahead in posts and reach their full potential.

The first change was to the lengthy and cluttered forum index, which Tetsu significantly shortened and rearranged to make it easier to navigate and appear more professional. A column to the right of the page, listing each forums' moderators, was also removed, and Tetsu re-posted the forum rules under his own name. To encourage new members to feel welcome and participate in the community a 'new members forum' was set up for newcomers to introduce themselves. A short-lived spam forum was created for members to let off steam and Tetsumonchi reinstated the Miniclip Master rank, designed to reward upstanding veterans. The Forum's calendar was opened up to members for the first time and an archive sub-forum was also created in which threads pertaining to significant events were stored. Users on the forums also enjoyed a significant increase to their avatar and signature limits, including the addition of profile pictures and a section within their profiles to include Players Channel and Sketch Star data. The character limit was removed and quick reply was switched on to make participating in Posting Games quicker and easier. Behind the scenes, Tetsu gave his moderators extra powers and was able to address problems that had previously required Dracophile's assistance. Returning spammers and trolls found themselves IP-banned, and Tetsu purged over 100,000 ad-bot accounts from the forum's database, blacklisting many of their IPs and emails.

While most people were pleased with Tetsu's contributions, some were upset by the rapid nature of the changes he was making on a forum that had remained largely unaltered for years. In response, Tetsumonchi agreed to space out further changes and to consult with the community before conducting any major alterations. In June he again caused controversy when he added American Girl to the global ignore list, causing all her threads and posts to dissapear. Although she had been perma-banned several months before by Tim, she remained a subject of fierce debate among her friends and foes on the forum. Tetsu believed that be hiding her posts he could stem this, however in doing so he caused the many guides and stickies written by American Girl, arguably the top gamer on Miniclip, so dissapear. In the ensuing backlash, Tetsumonchi removed American Girl from the ignore list and explained his motives, although her friends shared AG's belief that Tetsu had attempted to thought-police her out of existence because he feared her own popularity had eclipsed his.

In late July, Tetsumonchi departed for holiday in Spain, leaving the forum practically unmoderated. Scootz had recently resigned from the staff team due to a dispute with Tetsu; Alex, Guitarist and Crazy-Bot were absent as usual; Spike16 was taking a break for personal reasons and hypnobe's activity was down due to college. This left 13 year-old JustinTime7777, the newest addition to the staff team, as the only active moderator at this time. Justin was promoted at the end of May in response to increasing activity on the forums, but now found himself moderating a forum of 1.1million posts alone. Members felt Justin was being overly strict in his issuing of infractions and appealed to Tetsu, who informed the members that he would review their infractions when he was back from holiday. When he logged in again 4 days later he discovered further emails, slamming JustinTime for more "power abuse", including bans. Logging into the forum, he learned that JustinTime had been locked in a bitter dispute with over a dozen users over the strictness of his moderating. It turned out that Justin had been handing out tens of infractions that week, upsetting many people, then temp-banning those who tried to fight with him. Justin himself felt overwhelmed and was unsure how to resolve the situation. Tetsu was able to calm everyone down and spoke to both Justin in private. Deciding that both sides were equally to blame, he defended Justin as best he could while opting to reverse all of the bans and infractions as a courtesy to calm people down. Tetsumonchi concluded that the incident had been triggered by over-moderation. Tetsu decided that it would be better for moderators to be less hands-on with the community and to allow the community to moderate itself to a degree. The moderation team was instructed henceforth only to intervene when it was absolutely necessary. Ordinary members would be responsible for teaching new users about forum etiquette and Tetsu only wanted his staff to be seen moderating where a serious rule violation was concerned. This approach had a positive effect with very few user-staff confrontations from this point on. Users would frequently remark, during the rest of Tetsu's administration, how relaxed the forum is.

By August, traffic and activity was booming and Tetsumonchi promoted Felicia as a moderator to assist the small staff team. Seeking ways to capitalise upon the forum's success and push is further up the Big Boards rankings, He resurrected "Forum Happy Hour", an idea originally by the Hypnobe, where users would post as many threads on a particular theme as they could during a period of several hours. Tetsu changed the format so Forum Happy Hour would last an entire weekend, and allotted it its own forum. Rather than having a theme, Tetsumonchi allowed and encouraged members to spam and post as much as they could, often holding competitions to see if they could surpass the previous posts-per-day record. Because of Forum Happy Hour, over 100,000 posts were generated during August 2009, making it the busiest month of his administration and the 3rd busiest month in the forum's history, surpassed only be July and August of 2006, when Club Penguin was at its peak. In addition, Tetsumonchi created "Not-So-Private-Messages" as a substitute to private messages, which were disallowed by Miniclip due to their inability to be moderated. Members could apply for their own personal thread in which other members could contact them directly without the need to share private information such as emails. All messages were public, however this didn't seem to be a hindrance and the forum generated a great deal of activity. August 2009 also saw the introduction of User Reputation to the forums, which Tetsumonchi activated as a "bit of fun". User Reputation allowed members to leave positive or negative feedback for posts that they read. Some limits and restrictions were put in place to try to prevent abuse of the system. Finally, a second series of aesthetic changes commenced, focusing on the forum's skin while a competition was held  to create a new forum banner, the winner of which was used.

Finally, following Scootz' sacking in December 2009 and Spike16 quitting, the moderation team underwent a massive overhaul, with 5 inactive moderators being demoted, and 6 users being picked to replace them. The first year of Tetsumonchi's administration saw the forum double in size from 1 million posts to over 2 million. Moderation had also gradually been toned down with staff now instructed to act only when a serious rule violation was spotted. On the anniversary of his promotion to admin, Tetsu posted a thread asking the community how they thought he was doing, and their opinions on the changes thus far. He was blown away by the pages of positive responses and promised to continue improving the forum into his second year.

MCCP Trouble and Downtimes
In late December, Tetsumonchi returned to MCCP for the first time in months and added a link to the Miniclip Forums to his signature and urging members to see how much it had changed since 2006. This riled the moderators there, particularly Poisenman and Tom, who noted that their community was already on the decline and didn't want anything to expedite this. They became suspicious that Tetsu was only there to steal their members and spoke critically and were often rude or sarcastic towards him, both in public and in private. Tetsu responded in anger to their allegations, which on two or more occasions led to heated debates in the staff forum. In one such altercation, Poisenman accused Tetsu of being extremely disrespectful towards Draco through his actions. Dracophile finally got involved himself and surprised Tetsu by both agreeing with what the moderators had been saying and angrily chastising Tetsu himself. An argument ensued, which ended when Dracophile, furious at something Tetsu had said, told him to leave.In January 2010, the Miniclip Club Penguin Forums (MCCP) experienced the first in a series of lengthy downtimes. The Club Penguin community was alarmed by the sudden disappearance of their board and flocked en masse to the Miniclip forums to re-group. This posed many problems as the Club Penguin and Miniclip communities traditionally did not get along very well. Many of the users from MCCP could remember when they were a part of the Miniclip community, before the split, and being shunned and teased. A large portion of the MCCP community had joined after the split, but had a bad impression of the Miniclip community due to the stories of veteran members. The community was edgy, and Dracophile declared that the thread they had created in Miniclip Forums' help section was their temporary home where his rules applied. Draco warned that any member of the Miniclip Community who disrespected his community or tried to start trouble within the thread would face serious consequences. Knowing that relations were already strained between himself and the MCCP staff, Tetsu opted not to get involved and just to observe what was happening. While most of the Miniclip community attempted to welcome the penguins, a small number seemed intent on creating problems by making mocking remarks. This angered some of the MCCP users who responded back with their own insults. Tetsu intervened at this point to tell his members to back off, however it seemed that the damage was done. Things remained hostile until the MCCP forum eventually returned. The second crash occurred later that month, but only lasted a day. The third which happened in March lasted much longer, and saw continued hostilities between Miniclip users looking for trouble, and sensitive Club Penguin players. Reactions from the MCCP users prompted Tetsumonchi's moderators to intervene and warn those involved. This, in turn, prompted Dracophile's moderators to step in on the side of their community. With users fighting users, and moderators fighting moderators, the pressure on Dracophile increased and he eventually snapped, perma-banning two members of the Miniclip community and yelling at Tetsu's moderators. Tetsumonchi was forced to get involved himself at this point, and lifted the bans that Draco had issued. There was a brief argument between Draco and Tetsu in public, where Tetsu chastised Draco for his aggressive and unprofessional behaviour, and Draco criticized the Miniclip community and what he saw as Tetsu'a lack of control over it. With the Miniclip Club Penguin forums resoted once again, the penguin community left, however a few had decided that the Miniclip Forums actually seemed like a cool place and decided to either leave MCCP or be active on both sites.

Friendship with StormierZiggy and "Eye Of The Storm" website
Throughout March and April, Tetsu invited some banned members back, hoping to erase past old animosities on the forum. One of these members was Ziggy, now 17 years-old. Ziggy was appreciative and was quickly reintegrate himself into the community thanks to his charisma and humor. Putting the past behind them, Tetsu and Ziggy, who lived only a mile apart, decided to meet for a catch-up and surprised the community by posting a photo of them together at Tetsu’s house. This was followed in early May by a half-hour interview, conducted by Ziggy, in which Tetsu spoke on video about the forum and answered questions. Following the interview's success, Tetsu conferred to Ziggy, already owned a moderately successful channel, that he'd been trying to establish his own channel for years but a lack of self-confidence and drive were holding him back. The pair decided to collaborate and, predicting that their videos would be a huge hit on YouTube, decided to create a web forum - separate from Miniclip - where a fan-based community, centered around themselves, could be grown. Tetsu's motivation was his desire to get somewhere in the TV and film industry, using YouTube as a launch pad. Ziggy was keen on the social element and being the center of attention, and decided that the website should be called "The Eye of the Storm" (EOTS). Throughout May, StormierZiggy's popularity continued to grow. He got to know members through MSN and Skype, while others came to respect him on the forum for his sense of humor and outspokenness. Conversely, Ziggy's disregard for rules brought him into conflict with the moderation team, who issued him with several infractions for drug references - although Tetsu reversed most of these. Ziggy hated authority and protested every punishment he received, accusing the moderators of power abuse while drumming up anti-mod sentiments on MSN. He promised members that EOTS would be relaxed, fun and free from rules. Many members expressed excitement and vowed to Ziggy that they intended to swap their allegiance to EOTS.

Over the weeks, Ziggy's relationship with the moderators continued to deteriorate, perpetuated by heated arguments with American Girl. The situation was a headache for Tetsu who tried to remain neutral, due to it being his staff on one side and his friend and business partner on the other. Nonetheless, Ziggy and his associates slammed Tetsu for not showing them enough public support while Tetsu's moderators sensed he was protecting Ziggy. Tetsu denied this, justifying the infractions he'd reversed but stressing that he wouldn't stand in the way if Ziggy truly deserved punishment. Keeping his word, Tetsu refused to reverse a two-week ban Ziggy received shortly after, leading to Ziggy almost quitting their partnership in outrage. Ziggy urged Tetsu to quit Miniclip and dedicate himself to EOTS, but Tetsu insisted that he wanted to do both forums. Throughout June, as Ziggy's infractions and bans mounted, so did his private arguments with Tetsu, who refused to reverse them or shield Ziggy any longer. At the end of June, Tetsu went on holiday to Egypt. Ziggy and Ultimate Solstice were perma-banned two days later by after a serious altercation with the moderators, resulting in huge protests from the community.

Ziggy alleged that the staff had been been waiting weeks to ban him and his friends for anything, because they disliked them for "speaking their minds and telling the truth". With Tetsu absent, Ziggy persuaded MMFgamer5 to let him use his account to read staff discussions about his ban. While in the staff forum he leaked critical or mocking remarks by the moderators regarding other users, then to MMF's alarm, banned American Girl and the moderation team as a prank before himself being banned by one of the Estonian administrators. Many in the community thought it was hilarious and said privately that the moderators "deserved it" for being "corrupt" and for the "horrible things" they said about users. When Tetsu found out he was initially angry but chose not to fall out with Ziggy due to EOTS being so close to completion. He learned from Ziggy that MMF had given him his password but decided that MMF could remain staff as he believed MMF had been manipulated by Ziggy. Throughout the remainder of July, Tetsu and Ziggy continued to prepare for the release of EOTS, creating a 30 minute Q&A video, while MMF and Pennywise constructed the forum under Ziggy's direction. Tetsu's moderators could not believe he was still working with Ziggy after the breach, leading Tetsu to write an explanation about his desire to get somewhere in the film world, and how he believed EOTS and YouTube were stepping stones. They wished him luck but refused to be a part of EOTS due to Ziggy. When Ziggy asked to be allowed back to help promote EOTS on Miniclip, Tetsu, wishing to be respectful towards his moderators and unsure of how Miniclip would react, sought his staff's approval before granting Ziggy’s request or posting any advertisements. They rejected allowing Ziggy back, however Tetsu was able to negotiate a sticky thread in which to advertise, despite Ziggy creating alt accounts to spam on, which Tetsu concurrently tried to cover up or ignore so as not to jeopardize his effort. EOTS opened on August 1st and a sticky was posted in General Chat advertising the new site. It made 5,000 posts while true to their word, around 90% of the Miniclip community jumped ship for the new, more relaxed board. Though pleased by its success, Tetsu was concerned by the strong anti-Miniclip sentiment that was taking hold, with "former" Miniclip users now harshly trolling the company, the moderation team, and users Ziggy did not like, such as American Girl and De Joeri. He worried that Tim or Ben might follow the link in his sticky and see it. This led to heated arguments between Tetsu and Ziggy over rules, with Tetsu wanting a liberal set and Ziggy wanting virtually none in order to keep things chilled. No decision was reached and the following day saw further trolling of Miniclip, users registering under offensive usernames, spamming, and an excess of vulgar language and discussions. This bothered Tetsu, who felt Ziggy was controlling the project and receiving all the credit whilst transforming EOTS into little more than a refuge for users who were disgruntled with Miniclip. After being scolded for moderating, and having changes he wished to make blocked by Ziggy, Tetsu decided to take a break to relax and think things through. Ziggy was ignored and felt irritated at being left to run the site along - claiming that he wished he could run EOTS with one of his school friends instead. Tetsu returned after two days having come to the conclusion that as a partner he has as much right to impose his ideas and influence on EOTS as Ziggy did. He posted a liberal set of rules, deleted some threads that were offensive to Miniclip or its users and made a few minor aesthetic changes. Behind the scenes, stickies were posted in the staff forum similar to ones that existed on Miniclip - one of which told staff not to leak information from the staff forum. Ziggy responded with anger to the changes and told Tetsu he would "leak what [he] wants! This ain’t Miniclip you whiney little bitch.” Ziggy then raged at Tetsu for deleting the Miniclip threads and told him his changes looked crap. Tetsu argued that he had every right to contribute to the website, and Ziggy should compromise. Suddenly, MMF warned Tetsu that Ziggy was attempting to remove his administrator status, so Tetsu acted first by demoting Ziggy. Tetsu then decided that enough was enough and he no longer wanted to work with Ziggy, claiming that he was tired of Ziggy's overbearing, disrespectful attitude and being used by him, in addition to the constant stress Ziggy had put him through. Ziggy responded by telling the community that Tetsu had booted him, and launched a scathing attack on Tetsu in which he labelled his former partner as a "hapless loser" who is "lacking in charisma" and cannot get anywhere without "riding on someone else's coattails". The EOTS community rallied behind Ziggy and pleaded with Tetsu to change his mind, however to everyone's dismay Tetsu remained adamant that he no longer wanted to work with Ziggy. After a day of protests, the community began to break up as users realized Tetsu wouldn't change his mind. On MSN, members told Ziggy they would leave if he was not admin; both out of protest and because Ziggy was the reason they joined the site in the first place. Many also believed that under Tetsu's control, EOTS would turn "all serious" and become "another Miniclip". A few members chose to go out with a bang by trolling Tetsu or posting porn, prompting Tetsu to close the site and officially marking the end of EOTS. Later that day, Pennywise reopened the site and agreed to reinstate Ziggy's admin rank for an hour so Ziggy could do "whatever he needed to do". Ziggy promoted several of his friends to administrator and told Penny about his plan to persuade Tetsu to let him remain admin. One of Ziggy's real life friends would pretend to be a hacker who had hacked Tetsu's account and reinstated Ziggy's admin rank. Ziggy then promoted everyone else in order to kick the hacker out and repair the damage that had been caused. It was hoped that Tetsu would be grateful for the assistance, but the plan was foiled when MMF arrived, saw Ziggy's friends running amuck with no sign of a hacker, and demoted everyone. Tetsu later reviewed the admin logs and discovered that Pennywise had allowed Ziggy back in; firing him. EOTS was then closed once more. Members began to return to Miniclip following the closure of EOTS. There was a great deal of speculation over what had happened between Tetsu and Ziggy, but Tetsu refused to talk about it, wising to put EOTS behind him. A few days later, the Miniclip forums crashed and the General Chat forum mysteriously vanished. Tetsu was visiting friends at the time and was oblivious to what was going on, so Dracophile stepped in to create a new General Chat instead. The loss of the original was a huge blow to the community and despite Miniclip's efforts it could not be retrieved. To make matters worse, it was apparent to Tetsu and his staff that Ziggy was still looming over the forum and intent on causing trouble. Several Ziggy related threads were posted to try and tease Tetsu, and numerous alt accounts belonging to Ziggy were spotted and banned. However, staff became particularly alarmed when Ziggy was discovered to be using other members' accounts to browse and post on, leading to several high profile bans. Seeking revenge for the loss of EOTS and for his friend's bans, Ziggy leaked MSN logs which proved that MMF had allowed Ziggy into his account, thus being being responsible for the forum breach. The moderation team were outraged and banned MMF for betraying them. Tetsu believed he had done the right thing by letting MMF remain of staff, and knew he had the authority to do so, but had grown paranoid at the prospect of Miniclip finding out in case they instead saw MMF as a liability and were furious at Tetsu for letting him remain in a position of power. Tetsu remained silent as MMF was banned, but promised MMF he would try and negotiate lifting the ban as soon as possible. American Girl angrily chastised Ziggy for being responsible for so many good members being banned, and urged him to leave Miniclip permanently so they might get a chance to return. At the end of the month, Tetsu opened an unofficial chatroom for use by the community, and was irritated to discover that Ziggy was also using it under false aliases. In an attempt to keep Ziggy off the chat room and forums for good, Tetsu exploited Ziggy's intense fear of spiders; flooding Ziggy with spider pictures on the chat, and placing them in profiles and threads on the forum. This appeared to work as staff reported no further Ziggy alts or shared accounts, but also enraged Ziggy, who started searching through his chat logs for evidence to "get Tetsu screwed". In the end, however, Ziggy decided to just leave Miniclip and focus on other things in his life, feeling guilty about being the cause of so many people's bans. After saying his goodbyes to everyone via MSN, Ziggy cut his ties with all Miniclip users and dropped off the radar.

EOTS

Tetsumonchi vs American Girl: a bitter race to 30,000 posts
Tetsumonchi now hoped that life on the forums could begin to return to normal. He returned to college in September and was looking forward to putting Miniclip and his personal life back on track. His activity decreased to accommodate his studies, until he suddenly became aware that American Girl was now only 1000 posts behind him and had recently been posting in excess of 70 posts per-day. This bothered Tetsu, who had been the highest poster on the site for three years. In Tetsu's opinion, American Girl was only posting this much in order to pass him quickly and add the title of highest poster to her own vast collection of awards and titles. Tetsu prized the highest poster title, but concluded that since American Girl was his friend and he was trying to avoid drama at this time, he should avoid reprimanding her for spamming. Instead, Tetsu began to dedicate all his free time to making sure he made more posts than American Girl over each 24-hour period. AG noticed and increased her own posting rate further. She challenged Tetsumonchi to a race to 30,000 posts and asked members who they thought would win. Most predicted that American Girl would reach 30k first, but Tetsu refused to officially or publicly accept the challenge, believing that such behavior was unfitting of an admin. Nonetheless, a race was in effect, with AG determined to surpass Tetsu, and Tetsu determined to remain ahead. As the days went by, the number of posts being submitted increased up to 200+ as both users struggled to edge ahead - although American Girl did eventually succeed in slowly narrowing the gap between them. Members noted with annoyance that both AG and Tetsu's post quality had dropped significantly.

Tension and frustration brewed as the weeks passed and neither user showed any willingness to give up. When a disputed moderation decision by Da King upset some users, American Girl created a thread to discuss "selective modding and bullshit" by certain staff. Tetsu viewed the discussion as more of an attack on staff and deleted it, angering American Girl and triggering a debate on MSN over the purpose of the thread. Their friendship was strained to breaking point throughout the remainder of September, following further unpopular moderations by members of staff, and Tetsu's decision to move the revered Recent Achievements thread to Posting Games, where post count had been deactivated. American Girl, Pennywise and others criticized the staff team for what they saw as inconsistent moderating, incompetence, a general policy of turning the forum into a dictatorship. Tetsu again deleted the discussions and issued multiple negative reputations to both AG and Pennywise for allegations and criticisms against the staff that he considered unfounded and offensive. Pennywise and others trolled Tetsu for behaving "like a baby" while American Girl responded by neg repping Tetsu and telling him he could remain top poster if he wanted it that badly and that she gave up, not wanting to be banned, and accusing Tetsu of being silly over the race.

Throughout October, the pair's newfound dislike of each other grew, while the Race to 30,000 Posts - far from ceasing - actually intensified. It came to a head in late October when the pair submitted over 1,500 posts each in a single weekend. The community was fed up and demanded that they stop spamming. Feeling embarrassed, Tetsu agreed to stop and issued American Girl with a warning for spamming, but quickly reversed this when he realized how hypocritical it was. The remainder of October saw Tetsu and American Girl get into numerous heated arguments, and American Girl issued with two infractions for trolling Tetsu and other users, bringing her total to four. In November, Tetsu noted with dismay that American Girl had returned to posting over 200 posts per-day, and learned from her friends that the race was allegedly back on. She taunted Tetsu by frequently posting the number of posts between them and Tetsu, reluctantly, resumed the race.

Around the same time, Static Device warned Tetsu that American Girl was planning a "huge amount of drama and a forumer may go down for good". She also revealed that American Girl had claimed to have sources in the staff forum, and had bragged that most of the employees and moderators were more loyal to her than to Tetsu. Seeking more information, Tetsu learned from Pennywise that he was the target of American Girl's attack, and that she was going to get him sacked by posting incriminating evidence unless mmfgamer was unbanned. Tetsu then contacted mmf, who explained that American Girl was upset that Tetsu wouldn't let her pass him in posts kept giving her infractions. She was also accusing Tetsu of rigging the Mini's in 2008 and of letting Ziggy view the staff forum. mmfgamer alleged that American Girl had asked him to alter Tetsu's signature image, which he hosted, to one that listed all her allegations against him, and to pester him in any way he could. The next day, mmf announced that he had persuaded AG to call off the attack in return for getting Tetsu to reverse one of her infractions. Tetsumonchi refused, however, explaining that American Girl had deserved each of her infractions. According to Static Device, American Girl was furious when she discovered that Tetsu knew about the attack and had claimed Tetsu was targeting her; trying to get her banned through infractions. American Girl's activity started to decline following this, and after receiving a warning for telling people who to vote for in The Mini's, she announced that she was taking a break, and left. She returned two weeks later at the beginning of December and immediately began criticizing Tetsu and other staff. On December 6th, Tetsumonchi reached 30,000 posts, officially winning the race. A thread was posted in General Chat to congratulate Tetsu, but American Girl attacked him instead for having his own thread while "relegating the achievements of others to the achievements thread in Posting Games". She also attacked Tetsu in a handful of other threads; in some cases bringing up disputes that were 2 months old. Static Device explained to Tetsu that AG was simply trying to make him look bad so he quit - and had admitted as much. She hoped Tetsu would say something out of anger so that she could accuse him of being corrupt, or get him into trouble, and didn't mind pushing issues because she knew she was very popular within the community, and valuable to to the company, so people would protest if she was banned. Tetsumonchi and his moderators discussed an appropriate response to her recent behaviour, and while many wished to see her perma-banned, there was an air of apprehension over how Miniclip would react to suddenly seeing its most successful player, and a valuable beta tester, being kicked out their forum for good. Scootz warned that Miniclip would back American Girl as she was too valuable to them, and explained that he had been demoted for trying to ban her. Tetsu and the mods voted instead to remove her Miniclip Master rank for the time being, however even this limited response was opposed by the Estonian Team. Tetsu then began to compile a list of offenses and relevant the evidence to present to senior Miniclip staff in the event that they decided to perma-ban American Girl - something they all sensed was close. That evening members began to gossip in American Girl's NSPM thread about something "explosive" that was about to happen, and Mr Torpedo taunted Tetsumonchi by saying that American Girl was about to knock him off his throne, but wouldn't explain what he meant. American Girl began talking about releasing incriminating evidence once more and Tetsu witnessed private reputation messages that appeared to be related, including one AG sent to Dquest that read "i sent you an email. It is important that you read it and not react publicly. I am sorry for the breach in confidentiality, thus far only 3 people have a copy of this except those in the convo. HUSH HUSH and wait for the fireworks". A similar message was sent to Rigs, one of Tetsu's moderators. Beginning to seriously worry, Tetsu demanded that Rigs tell him what was going on. Rigs didn't know yet and said he would make up his mind on it when he read what was coming. Feeling extremely apprehensive, Tetsumonchi had no choice but to wait.

Tetsugate
In the early hours of December 8th, members received an email that accused Tetsumonchi of severely abusing his position of power and trust on the forum and urged members to complain to Miniclip and rise up against Tetsu. It claimed that he had repeatedly leaked staff information to StormierZiggy over the summer months, assisted Ziggy and others with alt accounts and ban dodging, given out private e-mails, and insulted forumers and staff members. Attached as proof was a document containing 30 pages of incriminating transcripts from discussions between Tetsumonchi and StormierZiggy on MSN. In addition, numerous further accusations of abuse and mistreatment were made by AMERICAN GIRL on the forum concerning Tetsumonchi's attitude and behaviour towards her. The community reacted with disbelief and outrage, with many calling for Tetsumonchi's immediate demotion and some even demanding he be banned. Tetsumonchi was completely caught off balance by magnitude of the attack and the seriousness of the potential consequences. Panicked, and in a state of complete disbelief, he paced around for an hour, trying to take it all in, wondering how to respond, and dreading how Miniclip might react. He had not yet read the chat logs but understood the allegations. He wrote a lengthy email to Tim, denying culpability, and accusing American Girl of trying to get rid of him for her own means. On the forums, dozens of threads were posted to discuss the logs, attack Tetsu or demand his resignation. Dracophile heard about what was going on and arrived to support Tetsu and try to manage what had become a chaotic situation. StormierZiggy also seemed supportive towards Tetsu, but in reality was doing all he could to incriminate Tetsu behind his back.

Members demanded an explanation from Tetsu but none came. Instead, Tetsu spent the next two days posting in regular topics as if nothing were happening, deleting those that mocked him and ignoring all discussions about the logs. This perplexed and infuriated members, who interpreted it as a sign that Tetsu didn't care or had something to hide. Many who had previously refrained from picking a side until they'd heard from Tetsu now sided with American Girl, citing Tetsu's lack of respect or interest as their reasoning. The reality was that Tetsumonchi had become frozen with dread and didn't know how to proceed - posting in regular topics in an attempt to relax. Thinking back to his discussions with Ziggy, he recalled a few indiscretions such as making fun of people, giving out a member's email without permission, and leaking some information from the staff forum that concerned Ziggy, but confessed there could have been a lot more and a lot worse said during drunken conversations that he had forgotten about. This certainly seemed likely given how angry members were. In addition, Miniclip still did not know that Tetsu had allowed mmfgamer to remain on staff after being responsible for the forum breach in July. Paranoia over what might be in the logs, how Miniclip would react to the mmf situation and the thought of losing his cherished admin position, literally terrified Tetsu beyond the ability for rational thought. He found himself unable to look at the logs for fear they might confirm he was finished, and thus was unable to discuss them with the community or defend himself. Ziggy added to Tetsu's fears by claiming there was a second set of logs out there, more incriminating than the first, that might be released if he didn't resign.

As Tetsumonchi stalled and anger grew, American Girl and others furious over the logs set about tearing his reputation to shreds and drumming up support for having him kicked out. Static Device, who had also sided with AG, released an edited screen capture from MSN in which Tetsu appeared to admit to bringing StormierZiggy back for the sole purpose of bullying American Girl away. This was used by AG as proof that all her allegations about Tetsu targeting and trying to get rid of her were true, and added an extra dimension to Tetsugate that Tetsu would have to defend against. Those who still liked Tetsu or attempted to defend him were angrily labelled naive or clueless, and public support for Tetsu soon fizzled out.

Three days after the logs were released, Tetsumonchi got the opportunity to speak to Tim by phone. He reiterated what he had said in his email and Tim was happy for him to remain admin, but suggested he took a short break to let people calm down - promising that the Estonian Team would look after things in the meantime. However, Dracophile stressed that it was vital to respond to the community first. Tetsumonchi, feeling worn down from trying to catch up with college work and worrying about his upcoming job hearing, really didn't want to have to deal with Tetsugate right now, but reluctantly agreed to finally address his community and submitted a response the next day. However, as he still couldn't bring himself to read the logs and therefor didn't know the specifics of what people were angry about, the post merely admitted that mistakes had happened, gave a general apology, and tried to explain why he'd supported Ziggy. It was extremely poorly received by the community who blasted it for failing to address many of the key issues, ignoring American Girl's accusations, and appearing to justify or trivialize what they regarded as serious breaches of trust. Tim also addressed the community to assert that Tetsu would be remaining admin, but it did nothing to halt the growing demand and pressure for him to resign or be removed from power.

At his job hearing, Tetsumonchi's superiors decided that his timekeeping had been unacceptable and he was fired. Depressed, and with his confidence severely shaken, Tetsumonchi could do little but watch as members back on the forum continued to pile on the pressure and demand his resignation. A poll showed that almost 70% of the community no longer wanted Tetsu as their admin, and a petition was sent to Miniclip begging them to remove him. Dquest, who's email had been leaked by Tetsu, wrote to Tim threatening a lawsuit against Miniclip for the breach of his privacy. Tetsu could see no way out, and felt powerless to intervene as his name was dragged through dirt and members like American Girl belittled his achievements as admin while others mocked him. Ziggy continued to pretend to support Tetsu whenever they spoke, but expressed his desire to others to see Tetsu get his comeuppance for screwing him over back in August.

The Estonian Team, who were running the forums with Draco and had long supported American Girl, decided to restore her Miniclip Master rank and reversed all the infractions she had received from Tetsu. Tetsumonchi became ill with a cold, something he attributes to the stress he was under, and was bed ridden for four days. He returned to the forums on December 22nd to see that Tetsugate had not subsided and members were continuing to mock him or demand his resignation. Even his own staff team had now turned against him - unable to understand his silence. The community voted to unban everyone connected with Ziggy whom Tetsu had "unfairly" banned, while Dracophile decided to grant the Miniclip mods staff powers on MCCP, and in turn granted his own staff, including Poisenman101, staff powers on Miniclip. Poisenman joined the attacks against Tetsu, openly gleeful that his old nemesis was getting what he deserved. Tetsu was furious that Draco hadn't spoken to him first about the promotion, but didn't know what he could do about it now and said nothing. Feeling unwanted by the community, powerless now that Draco had taken over, and still too nervous to read the logs or defend himself, Tetsumonchi decided to take a two week break in order to relax, clear his head, and come up with a plan. He left the forums on Christmas Eve, but wouldn't be seen again until May. Three days later, American Girl, now a forum hero, finally surpassed Tetsu to become the top poster on the forums.

Tetsumonchi remained off the forums for the next two weeks, trying to put Tetsugate to the back of his mind in the hopes he could relax and enjoy Christmas and the New Year. However, he found this impossible to do and the severe anxiety remained. Members who could no longer reach him on the forum began to anonymously vandalize his Wikipedia page and submit scores to a forum-quiz he had created under names like "tetsu killed da forum" and "tetsu sux dick". He was hounded whenever he went onto MSN and SourNerdsRope even went as far as to create an imposter account on Facebook, named Colin McMenemy, which he used to try and blackmail Tetsu to resign. When Tetsumonchi returned to college after the Christmas break he learned that his lecturer, Iain Shaw, was still adamant that he wasn't allowed to attend his classes. Without a fight, Tetsu gave up on college and went home. Feeling as anxious as ever about returning to Miniclip, and with his self-confidence and sense of worth now totally in shreds, he felt unable to return to the forums and face everyone. He decided to wait a bit longer, but the longer he waited, the more difficult he found it to pluck up the courage to show his face again. This was due to his belief that returning would put the spotlight firmly back on him and mean the attacks from American Girl and others would begin again, to which he still had no defense.

Tetsumonchi's absence was indeed noticed on the forums and it was assumed he had run away because he was guilty and had no defense. SourNerdsRope launched a scathing attack against Tetsu, swearing at him and posting mocking images. He was banned for the use of profanity, however many said they still respected him, claiming it was Tetsu's betrayal that had pushed him over the edge, and Sour was unbanned shortly after. While some continued to make fun of Tetsu, most were satisfied now that Draco and Krypto were running the forums and wished to move on from Tetsugate. A long anticipated software update finally happened, changing the forum's appearance completely from how Tetsu had designed it, and Krypto re-posted the forum rules and many of Tetsu's stickies under his own name. The symbolic passing-of-the-keys was complete.

Tetsumonchi spent the remainder of January and much of February sitting in his bedroom feeling sorry for himself. Without a job, college, or his role at Miniclip, his life felt meaningless and he often passed the days by sleeping until the afternoon, watching daytime TV, doing nothing-in-particular on the computer, and then watching Whose_Line_Is_It_Anyway until the early hours of the morning. He struggled to come to terms with how his life had turned out, and felt upset and betrayed that the Miniclip community, some of whom had been his friends with for years, had so quickly and so viciously turned against him.

Despite everything, however, Tetsumonchi had not given up on returning to Miniclip some day, and emailed Tim, Dracophile and Krypto to convey this and express his desire to take back over as soon as possible so that things could go back to the way they were. Draco and Krypto were unimpressed. They shared the email with the moderators who were largely opposed to having Tetsu back in command. Dracophile emailed Tetsu to warn him of the disastrous consequences of returning unannounced and just kicking Krypto and himself out, as most of the staff and members thought very poorly of him and would probably leave. He stressed that the only way would be for Tetsu to subject himself to the community's interrogation and slowly try to rebuild trust. He also criticized Tetsu for his handling of the situation in December. Tetsu felt snubbed by the reply and was angry as he envisioned Draco and Krypto sitting on his admin chair in his forum, speaking down to him as though he were a banned user begging for a second chance. Deciding that things couldn't get much worse, Tetsu finally decided to take a look at the chat logs near the end of February. Initially he cringed as he read line after incriminating line... but then something caught his eye.

By late February, Tetsumonchi decided that his predicament couldn't be much worse and finally read the Tetsugate logs. He cringed as he read over his insults towards staff and users, his sharing of staff information, and his acknowledgement that Ziggy was creating alts to spam on as well as using other members' accounts. Some of it seemed vaguely familiar, and other parts he could not remember, but it sounded like him and it seemed genuine. Then as he neared the bottom of the 40-page document, he noticed a phrase which he'd apparently used that seemed unusual as it was not something he could have imagined himself saying. Feeling skeptical, Tetsu compared it to his original copy of the logs on MSN and discovered that what had initially been an innocent remark had been altered to sound offensive. In disbelief, Tetsu analyzed the entire document against his own logs and discovered that on over 30 occasions, words had been added, sentences had been altered, and even entire paragraphs had been made up. In the end, all he was actually guilty of was giving out Dquest's email, as well as one or two unsubstantial remarks made about Jaycee Dee in a moment of frustration.

Tetsumonchi realized he had been set up, however, instead of anger, the revelation came as a huge relief as he now knew he was innocent, allowing him the peace of mind to finally move forward and begin tackling the problem. His priorities became proving his innocence and finding out who was responsible for editing the logs, but he felt daunted by the enormity of the challenge and was still very anxious about having to face his angry community, as well likelihood of confrontations with American Girl and her friends who would try to discredit his evidence. As Tetsu tried to shake off his unease, he became angry with himself and felt very ashamed. He noted how his lack of self confidence and assertiveness had allowed him to be consistently dominated by Ziggy during their partnership, while his cowardice in the face of confrontation meant his mum had to accompany him when he visited Ziggy to reimburse him for EOTS after they fell out. More recently, this same fear had prevented Tetsu from standing up to his college lecturer, and even made it possible for members, many of them young teenagers, to chase him away from Miniclip without a fight because he found the prospect of arguing with people on the internet too stressful and too nerve-wracking. Two years prior, Tetsumonchi had bragged that nobody could make him leave Miniclip, and recalled how during his days as a regular user and moderator he had made a point of confronting troublemakers, no matter how big they were, and would always stand up for the rules and fight for what he believed was right, even when under attack from an entire community (i.e. during the Anagrammatic Conflict). He enjoyed heated debates on YouTube and had no problem at school standing up to bullies and even teachers when necessary. Tetsu couldn't understand why he had become so timid but hoped to regain some of his old personality and confidence back — and with it, the strength to not to be pushed around.

Tetsu knew that the logs had originated from Ziggy, but believed that American Girl edited them as part of her plan to get rid of him. He began his investigation by questioning mmfgamer on what he knew about AG's campaign against him. Next, he met with StormierZiggy to conduct an exhaustive interview and find out all he could about Tetsugate and the logs. Ziggy blamed everything on American Girl and mentioned that he had additional chat logs that not only proved her guilt but showed that the community knew about and supported the things he did, such as account sharing and rigging competitions, which they later claimed to be outraged about and used as their argument for demanding Tetsu's demotion. Tetsu was anxious to see the logs but they were on Ziggy's old laptop which was broken. Ziggy was also resistant to sharing these logs as he saw no benefit in it for himself and asked why he'd help Tetsu return to power after Tetsu had screwed him over during EOTS. After days of intense negotiation, Ziggy was convinced to hand over the laptop on the basis that the logs, and the community's alleged hypocrisy, presented a strong case for him being allowed to return to the forums - something Tetsu no longer opposed. Tetsu took the laptop to be repaired, but was advised to buy a hard disc drive because it was cheaper, which he did. Ziggy had asked to see the laptop first to remove some personal content, but Tetsu didn't completely trust Ziggy and feared he might remove crucial evidence. Instead, he took the laptop home and plugged its hard drive into the reader he'd bought

Ziggy's laptop was a goldmine of evidence, containing MSN discussions with almost every member in the community. All the logs were carefully examined and what Tetsu witnessed blew him out of the water. Many in the community had agreed with Ziggy's stance against the moderators and claimed to also hate them. They applauded Ziggy's pranks and offered to help, for instance by offering access to their accounts or emails. When Ziggy broke into the staff forum, the community was aware that he had tricked mmfgamer into giving him his account. They cheered him on, made suggestions on who to ban or what to delete, while some even asked if they could "get a shot" on the account. Miniclip Masters were implicated as well, with one urging Ziggy to prune the entire forum for a laugh. Tetsu also witnessed other moderators leaking information to Ziggy and observed how kicking Ziggy out of EOTS had caused huge outrage and turned dozens of members in the Miniclip community against him. He hypothesized that this, followed by his prolonged dispute with American Girl, the most popular member in the community, had stoked the fire that led to the massive explosion of anger towards him at the beginning of Tetsugate, and was the reason why he received very little sympathy or support. Indeed, it seemed like many of the community knew all about what was in the logs months before they were released, leading Tetsu to speculate that their calls for his demotion were motivated more out of revenge and frustration than a concern for security or a sense of betrayal, like they claimed. But for Tetsumonchi, the most shocking discovery concerned Ziggy himself. After being kicked off EOTS, Ziggy had variously labelled Tetsu a "lazy", "autistic" loner who he had befriended in order to read the staff forum. He claimed he hadn't wanted to make Tetsu an admin on EOTS, but needed his cash, expertise and the free publicity on Miniclip - although intended to kick him out eventually and run the site with a real life friend. He confessed to trying to demote Tetsu after Tetsu began "killing" EOTS by trying to make it too much like Miniclip, bragging that nobody joined their forum because of Tetsu and that he was the selling point. Tetsumonchi found a copy of the edited Tetsugate logs, dated August 2010, proving that Ziggy had been the one who edited them, and witnessed how Ziggy, posing as Mr Torpedo, had sent the logs to Spike16 on November 16th 2010, a week after he had got back in contact with Tetsu and expressed a desire clear the air. Lastly, Tetsu observed how during Tetsugate, Ziggy had incriminated him further by promising the logs were real, expressed a desire to see Tetsu finished as admin, and posing as Mr Torpedo once more, spread the rumor of additional logs in an elaborate plan to help the real Mr Torpedo return to the forums.

Tetsumonchi was dismayed that there was no information in the logs regarding American Girl, but was pleased that he now had a clear picture of Tetsugate, the events leading up to it, and who was responsible for the logs. In a different branch of his investigation, Tetsumonchi had run an extensive and costly background check on American Girl after hearing rumors that she may have been a group of people working together on the forums and players channel - a severe violation of site rules. The results could not prove this allegation, but did come as a surprise to Tetsu for other reasons. Now that he felt he had a clear profile of his opponent, any fear of confronting her evaporated.

Tetsumonchi decided not to assist Ziggy in any way, based on his findings, and returned the laptop to Ziggy a few days later after saving the relevant evidence to his own computer. As Ziggy was already perma-banned and would remain so, there was no point in pursuing further action against him. Tetsumonchi explained that after careful deliberation he had decided not to make use of the logs and left. The pair would never meet again, although Tetsu allowed him to remain on his Facebook friends list for some time after to avoid it looking suspicious.

By mid-March, Tetsumonchi had all the material he required for a successful return: the edited logs and the real ones to counter them; a list of American Girl's accusations and the necessary evidence to disprove them; proof and testaments that showed American Girl wanted rid of him for personal reasons; the source of the logs and substantial amounts of evidence that showed how many of his critics in the community knew of his alleged crimes months before Tetsugate and did not object while Ziggy was around, while themselves being guilty of a greater number of more serious rule violations. The challenge he faced now was to put this down on paper in a clear and precise manner that could prove his innocence, restore trust and expose the wrongs committed against him by American Girl and others. This would not be a problem but would take time.

Tetsumonchi decided not to rush, however. He realized that he did have serious problems with anxiety, and decided to make use of his time away to address this. Throughout the remainder of March, Tetsu arranged to begin attending assertiveness classes and deliberately put himself in situations that would previously have been too uncomfortable for him, such as doing talks at him mum's school on Egyptology, running evenings at a local youth club, and booking a holiday to Crete with two of his friends. To help put his life back on track, Tetsu successfully applied for a new job working in a local petrol station and made sure he improved his time keeping. Tetsumonchi also accepted that he had spent far too much time on the forums and had grown too dependent on them, to the detriment of his education, social life, and mental well being. He wished to distance himself from them, which was easy had he had already grown accustomed to not being there. Tetsu built upon this by developing other hobbies and interests.

Finally, Tetsu began to put what he was learning to use, and at the end of March he approached his former college to complain about his lecturer and how he had been unfairly kicked out. After meetings with various officials, the college ruled that Tetsu had been unfairly treated and repaid his course fees in full. This boost in confidence would be needed, as hatred towards Tetsu on the forum had not subsided. By late March, trolling Tetsu had become an accepted norm and staff took no action to prevent it. Members expressed how if he ever came back, they would make his life hell or leave themselves. Others posted mocking images images about him, made jokes, or bragged about vandalizing his Wikipedia page. One member even posted in public that he would "cut off [Tetsu's] balls and force feed them to him"

At the beginning of April, a concerned Dracophile and m4rt1n contacted Tetsumonchi to ask how he was doing. Touched that they still cared, Tetsu told them about his issues with low moods and anxiety and explained how these were responsible for his behaviour in December. Both sympathized with him and revealed that American Girl had also become a serious annoyance to them, resulting in staff unanimously agreeing to revoke her Miniclip Master title for a second time, and disabling reputation, in part to curb her "negative influence" over the community. When Dracophile offered to help Tetsu with his return, Tetsu emailed him the evidence concerning American Girl, her identity, the edited logs, Ziggy's involvement, the community's hypocrisy and more. Throughout April, Tetsu began to construct a series of documents that would prove his innocence and reveal his findings, with Draco proof reading and offering advice. Ultimately, they decided not to release the evidence concerning the community's involvement with Ziggy as staff would be obliged to ban handfuls of users at a huge cost to the forum, something they agreed that to responsible admin would want. Instead, two users were picked who were deemed to have been heavily involved in the alleged smear campaign against Tetsu and using Tetsugate solely for that purpose, with varying lengths of bans attributed to each user as punishment. American Girl was to be perma-banned upon Tetsu's return, and the pair of admins agreed to demote two moderators whom they agreed were guilty of leaking information to American Girl.

Meanwhile, Tetsumonchi's social life received a boost when he met people through his brother whom he befriended and began joining for nights in the city at at bars, gigs and clubs. Tetsu had never experienced anything like this before and quickly became addicted to this exciting new world he had discovered away from the internet. Most importantly, he was delighted that he had made new and outgoing friends and the more he went out and experienced the real worlds, the less important the forums became to him.

Demotion
By May, everything was ready for Tetsu's return. Tim emailed Tetsu to suggest that he returned as a moderator to prevent things kicking off again and allowing him time to regain the community's trust before potentially being restored to admin status in the following weeks. Tetsu accepted Tim's decision, as he felt he had little choice, and explained how he and Draco intended to carry out 2 bans and 2 demotions upon his return, including perma-banning American girl. The Estonians were strongly against any of the bans or the demotions, citing a lack of evidence of any wrongdoings and accusing Tetsu of seeking revenge on people who had made him feel bad. Tim reassured that American Girl wasn't un-banable, but wanted to build a solid case against her first and adivised against doing anything at that time which could cause hostility. The bans and demotions were called off.

Tetsumonchi returned to the forums on 13th May 2011 and posted a link to "Tetsugate Explored". The community sympathized with the difficulties Tetsu had been facing, and anger quickly subsided when they saw proof that most of the logs had been edited, and that American Girl's accusations held no weight. However, Tetsu did accept responsibility for leaking Dquest's email and for the disruption and anger caused by his behaviour in December, apologizing profusely. Tetsugate fell apart in under 24 hours and Tetsu was able to reenter the community without any opposition. While he felt disapointed that he hadn't been able to carry out the band and demotions he had wanted, he noted with satisfaction that American Girl's popularity significantly dropped when the community learned of her campaign against him. Tetsumonchi spent the remainder of May as a moderator, trying to get back into the swing of forum life and anticipating the day when he would be allowed to resume his administrator duties. Instead, on May 31st, Dracophile was laid off and Miniclip announced they were taking administrative duties in-house to "better reflect the fast growth of the website", thanking Dracophile for his services but making no mention of Tetsumonchi. Tetsu contacted Tim to ask what was going on and expressed a desire to continue as admin. He received no response. The next day, the Krypto, Merybel and Lainc of the Estonian Team officially took over the responsibility for administrating the Miniclip Forums and MCCP.

Moderator, 2nd Time (2011–2012)
The announcement of Dracophile's demotion sparked outrage throughout the Miniclip and MCCP communities. Members on Miniclip argued that the decision was unfair and that Draco had been a great admin during Tetsugate. On MCCP, the outcry was much greater as Dracophile had led the community since 2006 and MCCP was his brainchild. When Miniclip showed no signs of reversing its decision, most of the community agreed to boycott the forums. Many decided to go out with a bang first by trolling the Estonians or posting large quantities of profanity, spam and porn. As a result, moderators were forced to issue numerous perma-bans. On the Miniclip Forums the backlash was less serious, although Miniclip still faced harsh criticism. About a dozen users on the Miniclip Forums left in protests, and American Girl, who was held partially responsible for Miniclip's actions due to the fact that that she had urged users to complain about Draco, suffered a further drop in her popularity. Dracophile, disillusioned with Miniclip, left the community permanently on June 4th after saying his goodbyes. Tetsumonchi was initially shocked and upset by the decision, but quickly shook this off and was able to accept what had happened in large part thanks to the efforts he had made during his time away to mentally distance himself from the forums. His only bone of contention was with Tim for suggesting he could return to being admin, only to then cut him off weeks later in what now seemed like a deliberate trick. However, despite everything, Tetsu chose to remain on staff as it was something he had enjoyed in the past, but also because he refused to allow American Girl and his other foes to celebrate a resignation as some sort of late victory against him.

In July, Tetsu left for a two week holiday in Crete with friends. Upon returning his activity decreased and remained relatively low for the next few months. Tetsu felt less enthusiasm for the forums now that he was stuck as a moderator and spent the majority of his time on other websites or hanging out with friends. When he was on the forums he passed the time chatting to users and deleting whatever threads concerning Tetsugate he could find. He found it difficult to readapt to life as a moderator and generally stayed out of staff discussions at first. As one of a team of 16 moderators, and the only one without a designated area to moderate, Tetsu had little to do and felt unneeded within the staff. Numerous rules and policies had also changed during his absence and Tetsu was constantly wary of the Estonian Team, whom he had always regarded as being too close to American Girl and biased against him - such as when they refused to let him remove her signature that urged members never to forget Tetsugate. Tetsumonchi also altered his appearance around this time, in order to fit in better at a rock club which he and his friends had started frequenting at weekends. However, this darker, older and more confident look also had symbolic importance for Tetsu, online and in real life, as it outwardly reflected how the experiences he had been through recently, good and had, had changed him on the inside and made hm a stronger person.

In October 2011, Miniclip appointed one of their London employees, missmorris, as the new community manager. Five inactive moderators were demoted while the remaining 11 received gift bags from missmorris containing a Miniclip t-shirt, mug, sketch pad and other items. In November, a staff meet-up took place in Manchester, UK, attended by Tetsumonchi, m4rt1n, Cheeseymonster, missmorris and kieranjo - a php developer at Miniclip. The group went for a meal and then for some drinks, and discussed at length their ideas for the forums and what its like to work at Miniclip. Tetsu found missmorris to be friendly and professional, and was pleased to have her running the forums instead of The Estonians, inspiring him to take a bigger role in moderating once more. With all the drama in the past and a boss he got along with, Tetsu was able to enjoy the forums again as both a user and a moderator. Occasionally, American Girl would post a snide remark directed at him, or announce that she had written to missmorris about him, however Tetsu knew his boss would be neutral and paid no attention to American Girl. In December, Tetsumonchi once again hosted The Mini's competition. However, on the evening of the awards ceremony, a list of the winners that had been posted in the staff forum, was leaked on Dracophile's personal forum, Gatoraids, by a mysterious account. Dracophile deleted the thread and provided Tetsu with its IP and email, which helped Miniclip moderators to identify Poisenman101, one of there own moderators, as the culprit. Poisenman was also linked with the accounts of several troublesome users, including Kat-Von-Dookie, and was perma-banned from the forum. During 2012, Tetsumonchi's activity increased to its 2010 level and he gradually returned to being one of the most active moderators on the team. He became heavily involved in the moderating of the 8 Ball Pool and Dogflight communities, which at the time were proving a challenge to staff, and was constantly on the lookout for Kat-Von-Dookie alts. Even though MCCP was dead by this point and received less than 10 posts per month, Tetsu took responsibility for keeping the forum tidy by deleting the dozens of spam threads submitted by bots each week. His relationship with The Estonians also began to improve as working closely forced them to get along while Tetsu became willing to put the past behind him. Eventually they had a friendly working relationship, and Tetsu was even permitted to remove American Girl's bothersome signature. In April. veteran moderator Alex retired and Tetsu took his place as the most veteran moderator on the team.

Throughout April-June, the Miniclip community was bothered by a group of trolls from a forum called NovoCiv. NovoCiv comprised largely of ex-Miniclip and xGen members who had been banned from their former communities or felt they had outgrown them, joining NovoCiv in search of more mature discussion and less rules. About a dozen of its users registered on the Miniclip Forums under false aliases and began to subtly troll members and post threads that were borderline acceptable. The NovoCiv forum was only visible to members, however Tetsu was able to access an account and reviewed their discussions about Miniclip. With proof that they were only there to cause trouble, Tetsu banned the entire group from Miniclip. He was sad to see so many former users, including people he had once been friends with, behaving this way and with so much contempt for him, the mods, and their former home.

In July 2012, Tetsumonchi, m4rt1n, Cheeseymonster and De Joeri traveled to London to visit the Miniclip offices, having been invited by missmorris. They were given a tour of the offices and met with senior Miniclip employees including Rob Small, the CEO. It was a valuable opportunity to share not only ideas for the forum, but for games and the Miniclip website as well. After a few hours at the office, the moderators left and spent the rest of the day together sightseeing in London, had dinner, and went for drinks.

In late August 2012, staff and users noticed strange text and other elements appearing on pages. Miniclip determined that some data had been corrupted and took the forums down to try and repair the damage. However, this proved very challenging and seemed to cause more problems than it solved. A week later on 4th September, missmorris contacted the moderators to announce that the data was completely unrecoverable and that Miniclip planned to keep the forums closed for the foreseeable future. Tetsumonchi emailed the moderation team to discuss a plan of action and offered to use his vBulletin license to set up a temporary home for the community. King-Ole announced that he had set up a free forum that morning to keep the "Miniclip League Competition running, but members from all over the forum had since started registering. The mods agreed to use Ole's forum as their temporary home.

Temporary Forum Administrator (2012–Present)
Tetsumonchi and the other moderators joined King-Ole's forum and were granted admin rights. Over 100 members joined over the next few days as word of its existence spread, and they demanded to know what had happened to the Miniclip Forums. Many suspected a conspiracy and accused Miniclip of deliberately getting rid of the forums. Tetsu urged people to wait until they had more answers before pointing fingers, and felt confident that Miniclip had no involvement.

Miniclip continued to work on trying and repair the Miniclip Forums, and on 20th September they announced that it had re-opened to the public. The community returned to their old home, however the jubilation was short-lived. On 9th October Miniclip received reports that something on the forum was triggering a lot of users anti virus, and strange scroll bars had appeared by threads. The forums were taken down again, and on 10th October, missmorris contacted the moderators to inform them that the forum had been taken down indefinitely. She explained that over the past two months Miniclip had been subject to scripting exploits, and while no personal data was compromised, as a precaution they had decided not to restore the forum to avoid exposing themselves to more serious exploits. She promised that Miniclip would open a new forum in a different format in the coming months. The community was informed shortly after.

The loss of the Miniclip Forums, and with it almost 10 years of history and memories, came as a huge blow to everyone. Tetsumonchi attempted to find out who had been responsible, but found nothing. On the Miniclip Forums Facebook page, a troll bragged to Tetsu that Kat Von Dookie carried out the attack in revenge for being banned so many times, however Tetsu had no evidence or means of authenticating the claim. Gradually, everyone settled into their new home and in December Tetsu ran The Mini's as normal.

In January 2013, The Estonian team announced that they would no longer be involved with the forum and asked for their accounts to be deleted. Tetsu and others were concerned that Miniclip was distancing itself from the community, however missmorris promised this wasn't the case and that the new forums were still being developed. In February, Tetsumonchi, m4rt1n, Cheeseymonster and thedoc70 met in Edinburgh, Scotland for their third staff meetup. As the months passed, members began to ask why it was taking so long to open the new forums. missmorris explained that they were creating the new forums entirely from scratch and that they would be built into the Miniclip website itself. However, other projects had taken priority and so the new forums had been shelved for the time being. As the temporary forums began to feel more permanent, Tetsumonchi and the other administrators did what they could with the basic php software to try and make the board more homely.

In June 2013, missmorris announced that she was leaving Miniclip, and introduced the administrators to Benjo, who would be replacing her as community manager. She left at the beginning of July, along with kieranj and The Estonian team, whose office in Tallinn, Estonia was being closed. Benjo promised that he would continue pushing to have the new forum completed, and in September 2013 members noticed the incomplete shell of a new forum on Miniclip's website.

In December 2015, Tetsumonchi extensively restructured the forums to resemble the old Forums in both appearance and the layout of the forums and sub-forums. Some members initially thought the old forums had been brought back. Others loved the nostalgia that the changes incurred.

During 2016, Tetsumonchi slowly wrote the Unnoficial Miniclip Forums Wiki, while on the forums he revealed that he had something planned that he was confident would restore the forums to their former grandeur and restore activity. As of early 2017, members are still waiting for this plan to unfold.

Official 8 Ball Pool Forum (2015–Present)
On 8th April, 2015, Tetsumonchi was invited by Benjo to help moderate Miniclip's new 8 Ball Pool Forum, alongside the other volunteer staff from the Community Forums. Tetsumonchi accepted the offer and became a moderator there alongside the rest of the staff from the Unofficial Community Forums. Tetsu visited the forums most days throughout his first year, but was only moderately active within the community as mucb of his attention was focused on keeping the Community Forums afloat.

In 2016, Tetsumonchi's activity began to increase, while other veteran staff gradually became less active. Tetsu stepped up his involvement and became one of the most active moderators during this year, alongside Dalton and MichaelHuang. During the Autumn he played a large role in deleting and banning and posts and accounts of the troublesome "Chinese spammer", who is widely regarded as the most problematic and persistent spammer in the Miniclip Community's history.

In December 2016, Tetsumonchi resurrected The Mini's, hosting the competition for the first time since 2012. The competition did not recieve the levels of participation that he has hoped for, but was popular among those who did participate, who urged Tetsu to host it again in 2017.