The "Ahem" Thread

This was a thread that inveitably caused huge drama throughout PSF, leading to much unrest throughout the forum. The thread was created by Manic (believed to be Ivan) adressing the staff about unjust decisions, autocracy, and plain out stupidity. Seeing as this was posted in the community box, Avis Cyrus moved it into the Battle Arena (a now defunct sub-forum to the spam forum), a forum dedicated to trolling, where then, all of the members online, began to post macros and posts, "trolling" the troll in return.



Things started to go awry after Hollow Abyss logged on, though. He saw the thread, closed it, and presumed to rage. He made every member involved in the thread pretty much feel terrible. Half of the group were sorry, while the other half did not regret their actions whatsoever, and felt it was simply spamming the spam section. Most notably, Rucario continued to repost sections of the "Ahem" thread after being told to stop by various staff members. The Spam Section was temporarily closed as a direct result. The shitstorm proceeded to escalade in the Solstice IRC, where members involved continued to lash out against staff members, which mainly involved endless flooding, flaming, and bashing. This event itself came in two waves; the first one occurred shortly after the closing of the "Ahem" thread, and the second one would occur the following day.

Seeing as Avis had been, as of late, an immenent threat to Skyler's position as Administrator, Skyler decided this would be the best time to forever eliminate Avis from the boards. Most agree that Skyler used this as an excuse for his unjust behavior at the time. Using the "Ahem" thread to his advantage, Skyler managed to shift the attention from himself to Avis, via MSN to Dream Eater. Some believe that Skyler was feeling threatened by Dream Eater's close friendship with Avis at the time. Skyler saw the oppourtunity to use the "Ahem" thread to eliminate Avis from power, and also eliminate him from a friendship with Dream Eater, ensuring his position as an Administrator for weeks to come.

Most staff members (after persuasion by Skyler) agreed that Avis Cyrus' participation in the "Ahem" thread deemed him incapable of maintaining his adminship. Skyler, in particular, saw this as an opportunity to eliminate Avis off the staff team for good. The following day, Avis was demoted, which lead up to the second wave of shitstorming in the IRC, which eventually started leaking onto the forums in the form of signatures, visitor messages, and private messages (many of which were later leaked to the community).

Within two weeks, Solstice would see its final day and Lavender would be opened up in its place; however it would not last to see its third week anniversary. Some believe that the reactions and actions that took place after "Ahem" was posted, to lead to the destruction of the forums. This thread, along with Skyler's secret thread about Avis, were one of the main reasons for Avis Cyrus' demotion. This event also inadvertatndly spawned #avisism, a once innoncent group, but later tainted by Rucario and Skyler's seemingly destructive behavior.

Overall, the "Ahem" thread was playful banter at first, but once ignited, flipped the forum upside down, and forever divided it in half. As such, the "Ahem" thread can be considered another domino in the downfall of Solstice v1.