thanks to these idiots for proving my point and reinforcing exactly what i was talking about, like fucking clockwork. this article was posted in 19cord to truly show how much leverage that community has over the SCP wiki - and like a moth to a flame, they descend upon this article with fury and rage like a bunch of children. the only reason i wasn't screamed at in the discussions is because an administrator (wisely) locked the post before that could occur.
holy fuck. i now have hard proof that one of the SCP's i reported for vote manipulation GENUINELY got posted with an @everyone in a discord that's SEPARATE from the official discord. actual fucking insanity.
you people are a fucking joke. it's embarrasing how bad you are at this. you can't even cover your tracks properly.
HOES MAD!
this was uploaded on 4/16/2026, and archived from this awesome post which will likely be deleted by the time you see this and has been archived in the wayback machine forever and ever
Hi everyone. What a wild 48 hours, huh? Here is a rating box so you can preemptively downvote this article without reading it: (removed as this code does not exist on this website)
I’d like to start off by introducing myself - I have been around this website for over a decade now. I remember playing the SCP-087 minigame when I was 12 or 13. I was a lurker in the IRC chat for many many years. This website and its subsequent universe have been nearly omni-present for almost the entirety of my adolescence, and again at my big 25 years of age. I remember excitedly telling my friends about Series 4 when it first came out, and how excited I was to read new, quality SCPs and tales.
I love SCP. I love the universe, I love the tales, and I especially love a well-crafted and logical SCP article. Recently, I attempted to make a (somewhat successful) foray into writing content for this website.
I have an obligation to discuss my experiences. I have an obligation to call out the elephant in the room, and to do my best to try and change the course of this website.
**We have to talk about 19cord.**
I do my absolute best to stay off the internet. I don’t have a Bluesky, I don’t have a tumblr, I don’t even have an AO3 account. I spend most of my time writing for my own personal benefit and building rockets in Kerbal Space Program.
It didn’t used to be this way. I used to have a fairly loud online presence, one which I have worked tirelessly to silence. The evolution of social media platforms from actual places of discussion to tireless propaganda mouthpieces is staggering, frightening, and entirely avoidable.
**This includes spaces such as Discord.**
Along with social media, I have reduced my Discord presence to near zero. This has had a monumental effect on my mental health, allowing me to spend time with the people that really matter in the spaces that are actually real.
I, and users like me, should not be forced to join a Discord in order to receive genuine, meaningful feedback.
There are others like me, who feel just as strongly about this as I do. Requiring someone to make or join a Discord and to integrate into the social fabric of said community is ridiculous. Tying up meaningful critique behind social acceptance has left this website in a truly abysmal state. Worse still is how many people insist that the Discord is the only place to receive meaningful feedback for your work, including members of the moderation staff.
Authors here used to be a bastion of real, actual critique, something which other websites typically fail to accommodate. In the past, this has been a boon for the quality of writing and effort put into SCPs. This no longer occurs - instead, people have become comfortable with simply -1’ing a post with no comments, no feedback, nothing. This is fundamentally unacceptable, and opens the door for voter manipulation by way of reputation.
It’s no secret that authors in the Discord use their social standing to actively manipulate the votes on their articles. This is exceptionally obvious, no matter how hard said members try to fight the accusation. Users participating in this generally dislike this fact being mentioned, and have an exceptionally hard time articulating why they like a specific article when prompted. Anyone with half a brain can see that this is occurring constantly. The only people with a modicum of success on this website are people who socially integrated into the Discord community.
In the industry, we typically call these people “yesmen”. The president of the United States is currently surrounded by them, and he’s making the worst geo-political decisions since Reagan. Clearly, allowing these things to fester is a really, really bad idea.
In fact, the people responsible are quite obvious, and appear to be doing this with no semblance of ignominy. Nobody calls them out for this, nobody bothers to address the massive rot consuming the underbelly of this community. Instead, users are encouraged to double down. A great example of this is the “Crit Flights” (https://scp-wiki.wikidot.com/discord-critique-flights-guide). I sent this article to a group of personal friends, all of whom have full-time jobs and participate in creative efforts when they have the time. Every single one of them agreed that this was a truly bleak idea, and only serves to enable those with higher social standing to place new artists under their boot. The fact that you have to include a disclaimer at the bottom clarifying that this is not your intention says a lot, and does not change the fact that it clearly is your intention.
I’m not a child. I’m not going to do your little song and dance so I can receive 15 “critcoins”. It’s degrading and humiliating to imply that ANYONE outside of the very meek and feeble would enjoy having their artwork controlled in this manner.
**Critique is fine. Control is not.**
All of this culminates in a desperate scramble to retain as much control over the website and its social fabric as possible. The metaphor “crabs in a bucket” is quite literal here - those who are more popular put as much effort into dragging down those who are relatively unknown. This dynamic becomes incredibly obvious when you look at the “who voted for this page” tab, something I am not sure many of you are aware exists. For those who don’t know, the rating button allows you to see every single person who voted for your article, and which way they voted.
This is a great way to tell if your articles are being brigaded by a specific social circle, or if an article is being artificially boosted by a group of yesmen. Simply look for the ones with higher karma, and the way they vote. I promise you that if you are unknown, almost every single one of your -1s will come from someone with 3 ticks or higher, and if it’s a well known author, almost every single +1 will come from someone with 3 ticks or higher.
Behaviors like these destroy websites. They destroy social circles, they make it exceptionally difficult for anyone who isn’t doing the song and dance to become accomplished. It encourages silent judgement instead of honest feedback. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.
**Media literacy is dead.**
It’s a joke - except it’s not. Every single (reasonable) person I have spoken to about this website has joked about how users here are a) braindead and b) media illiterate. I agree! The fact that nuanced articles are unpopular lends credence to this alone, but it’s not just that - it’s the fact that you must have every single thing spelled out to you, and if that does not occur, you downvote the article with no recourse. This is how children behave. Not to throw a personal insult into this, but many of you give off the vibes of “never called on to read during class reading time”. It’s shocking how many of you continue to remain popular despite your inability to parse nuanced articles.
I would venture that many of you have never picked up a thesaurus in your life, and that half of you probably don’t even know what that word means.
I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have to tune my work to serve an unintelligent populace. Nuance and subtlety is dead, replaced instead by objective slop. IT DID NOT USED TO BE THIS WAY. It’s heartbreaking to watch people upvote something that’s truly just written to cater to a specific audience, while simultaneously tearing down the works of others for being too nuanced for you to understand. This happens often, with many articles - just have a stroll through the Mystery tag. The fact that authors MUST post the answer to their articles in the discussion for it to actually be popular is insane. To quote a personal friend who will remain anonymous,
“A big cheat is literally just saying that in the author's post. That's what most mystery articles do anyway. A lot of popular articles hinge off of the discussion page cheat. A lot of them would be dead in the water if the author didn't just flat out [do that].”
This is asinine. The purpose of a mystery article is to remain a mystery. Authors should not be forced to reveal their intentions through anything other than their work. Forcing them to do so does not speak poorly of the authors themselves - instead, it reveals an audience of people who are truly incapable of understanding the literature before them.
Disclaimer - I am transgender and bisexual. My partner is transgender and pansexual. This is not important whatsoever, it’s essentially me flashing my “I can talk about this” badge so I can talk about this without people immediately labeling me as The Big T (transphobic).
Being trans does not mean you are not a NEET. Being trans does not automatically de-chudify you. Being trans does not give you a blanket excuse to treat anyone poorly.
**And if you’re skimming this, and had a neuron activation when you saw the word “trans”, please go back to the start of the article and actually read it before you start shouting at me.**
It’s exhausting to watch this community fall into the same cycles as every single trans community I have observed over the years. Twitter, Reddit, Bluesky, shit, even 4chan all struggle with this issue now. Being trans does not make you special. Being trans does not mean you should receive special treatment. Unless, of course, you’re a popular member of the SCP community and trans - then you can do whatever you want to anybody with no recourse. If someone calls you out for this behavior, no problem! Just label them a bigot, or immature, and move on. Surely that is a nuanced and mature way to approach these issues!
The point of bringing this up is that allowing a community to focus entirely on, and for social standings to be tied to, identity alone. This fact enables and encourages clique-like behavior. It’s no secret that trans people stick together, and it’s not shocking to learn that the largest and most obvious clique consists of mostly trans people. I am not saying that this is wrong, or that trans people should not stick together. I am saying that what you are doing is obvious, and has happened in countless other media sites before this one. And typically, the people responsible for these behaviors are…
**The case against the terminally online.**
One aspect of the Discord that MUST be discussed is the prevalence of the Terminally Online. For those who don’t quite understand, these are people whose entire sense of self worth exists behind a screen. Usually, these kinds of people do not have friends outside of the internet, and will typically integrate into a community in which they are accepted. I have no problem with acceptance, nor do I think that discrimination is acceptable in any manner.
HOWEVER. (There’s always a “but”, right?) These behaviors were acceptable during Covid, when everyone was FORCED to be inside. As people have grown and aged, their development has been stunted by their constant presence on, and consumption of, the internet. This has turned something that was once mostly harmless into a hydra of forced conformity. It’s no secret that many of the original authors and members of staff have departed the website in recent years. Many like to pin this on bigotry - instead, I’d posit that these departures were influenced entirely by an understanding of the direction this website is headed in. This is where we get to the point of this whole thing.
I’m leaving.
It sucks. I really love this universe, I really love some of the people who frequent this website, and I really love some of the wonderfully written items that have come out in the last ~10 years. This is not a decision I take lightly - as I said, this website has been omnipresent in my life for over a decade. Nevertheless, the behaviors of the obvious cliques and the rapid decay of article quality has forced me to make a decision I never thought I would have to make.
Most of you will simply say good riddance. To you I say, **fix your hearts or die.** Learn to step outside your social circles, or wither away as your confidence falters in the face of a dwindling userbase. For every one person that complains about a lack of quality articles, there are at least two hyper-active Discord users ready to -1 every new article (including this one!)
**It is not bigotry to state the obvious - many of you need to touch some grass, metaphorically and literally.**
An archive of this post has been uploaded to my personal website, as this article is obviously going to be deleted. I wish you all the best of luck in your future endeavors. Thank you for your attention to this matter.