Plagued /r/TNOmod and the Reddit HOI4 modding community - When a subreddit for a video game mod turns to utter insanity

[Pointless Pedant]

The New Order: Last Days Of Europe is a detailed but deeply flawed alternate history mod for Hearts of Iron 4 depicting an Axis victory in WW2. It has a substantial fanbase on Reddit, and as whenever Reddit gets involved in something, a lot of them are horribly disturbed and cripplingly autistic. Before long after the mod's release, people were making big chungus memes, erotic fan art, and even merchandise of Nazi war criminals.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/j2xj8e/my_speer_hoodie_arrived_today/

https://archive.md/8YyaZ


The desperate plea for sanity in the top comment is one of the funniest things I've seen on Reddit.

Holy shit. I have a moral obligation to tell people to not do this kind of shit. Don't get fucking hoodies with an actual fucking Nazi's face on it, oh my god. People might actually think you're a fucking nazi.

To make matters even better, "tankist-marie" is a communist troon.

Troonery abounds here as it does on Reddit in general. Any "transphobia" is grounds for a ban from the subreddit. The politics lean far, far left, with the anarcho-communist factions of the Siberian Black Army and Valery Sablin's libertarian socialist path being particularly popular. The latter led to "wholesome Keanu chungus Sablin" memes, and the mod and its community in general show heavy pro-Russian and pro-communist bias. There are also a minority of right wing edge lords, too, such as this exceptional character who carved the symbol of the brutal theocratic Holy Russian Empire into a bench.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/jj7b7t/tno_mfs_be_like/

https://archive.md/Ut0lO



It won't surprise anyone here to know that weebs also run amuck on the subreddit. Weeb content includes art of Nazis with body pillows and gender-flipped art of Valery Sablin.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/j9rsgl/tabby_and_himmler_visit_an_anime_convention_and/

https://archive.md/Vmp5M



https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/jpvpn2/anime_sablin_anime_sablin/



The top comments here are actually very funny. The community has enough self awareness to know how utterly insane it has become.

Imagine being Heinrich Himmler, formally the 2nd most powerful man in Europe, with MILLIONS of obedient soldiers, some trained from birth, to serve at your beck and call, with the lives of millions in his hands,
And this is, an example, on how people treat you today.
It's amazing

Every day I wake up in this community.
*Slams wall*
*Crying*

In fact, entire posts have been made begging people not to spew this nonsense all over the internet, to little avail.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/jrhysj/this_all_looks_very_strange_to_people_outside_of/

https://archive.md/G17xk

Yeah, I know, this is a PSA that you've probably heard before. But it warrants repeating.
Enthusing to your friends who are unfamiliar with the mod and the background and the community carries a certain chance of them getting some very severe whiplash. To hear you suddenly start talking about Himmler like "haha funi dystopia man" and Albert Speer as "haha funi hoodie man" and Oskar Dirlewanger as "haha funi warcrimes man who dies a lot" with no build-up is essentially like walking into your buddy's hobby-room and them just having it totally filled with swastika flags, SS uniforms, pictures of a ton of very, very bad people, and obscure references to various extreme political and religious sects.
Now, we, as fans who are already well acquainted with this mod and its lore and its world and etc, aren't likely to be phased. But imagine walking into your friend's hobby room and finding it full of Nazis stuff. You'd pretty quickly start making some assumptions about them.
Even if they're wrong, other people have really good reasons to be concerned when we start flooding the internet with pictures of Nazis, fascists, and war criminals and treat it all like a joke. Because I'm sure we're all aware of who else does basically that exact same thing. And to the outside eye, we look basically indistinguishable.
I literally just experienced this a few minutes ago, which I why I'm even writing this PSA. I was talking to a friend of mine about TNO, and specifically about "haha funi Holy Russian Empire Burgundian System" and casually just talking about all this god-awful shit, because to me learning about TNO's lore is just another hobby, like watching a TV show.
I just casually sent them a video of the Burgundian Lullaby, and then they had to break it to me that they were actually really fucking uncomfortable, and that learning and thinking about brutal regimes isn't something that everyone considers a fun time.
Imagine reading through a friend's social media timeline and finding a lot of political stuff that is really questionable (something I also have experience with, although this time I was on the end of that where I was the one doing the reading and the finding). The sort of uncomfortable feeling you get as your stomach drops away and you start thinking "Is this person that I think highly of and trust on an emotional level a total nut-case"?
That's what people outside the fandom feel like when they see horrible war criminals being plastered on hoodies, and memes about "haha lol kill all the [insert ethnic/religious/language/sexual/political group here]".
So. Maybe keep that in mind going forward. I find Speer hoodies and jokes about Bruhgundy and haha funi Holy Russian Empire and g*rman jokes as funny as the next guy (actually I think g*rman jokes are boring and dumb, but the rest is pretty funny), but we need to be rally careful about how we present the mod and the fandom, and perhaps talk about aspects of it other than "haha funi warcrime/genocide/fascist thing" from time to time in conversations about the mod; things like passing the civil rights bill with RFK, and wholesome 100 Sablin, and reforming the Japanese Empire into a democracy, and preferably anything without a fucking swastika related to it.
There's my 50 yen. Go nuts.

The spin off subreddits /r/dsrfunny and /r/tabbygetthegas (referring to Meinhof's German communist radicals and the deranged Sergey Taboritsky respectively) poke fun at the madness of the community and ridiculous posts like these:

https://old.reddit.com/r/tabbygetthegas/comments/jqcsd0/_/

https://archive.md/6NVKj



I'll leave this quote to finish:

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/k3db1n/on_tno_references_in_the_wild/

https://archive.md/Ea56v

Hey all, Spar-kie here, and I want to get serious for a moment. In between my bouts of screaming at people for being horny over nazis, and crying into my pillow, I’ve noticed something that I feel should be addressed.
This community can be really obnoxious sometimes.
Now, when I say this, I don’t just mean on this sub, that’s honestly expected and par for the course of any subreddit. I’m talking about outside of this sub as well. It seems every time there’s a mention of something that’s mildly related to TNO in a place where there are TNO fans, some of the TNO fans will go crazy about it being a TNO reference. That or on any song that’s a suprevent song, people go into the comments and freak out about it being TNO related in the comments. Simply put, don’t do that. I’m glad you all enjoyed the mod enough that it’s stuck with you, and the rest of the dev team is as well, however this is just annoying. While I get it for some of the Russian reunification songs where they’re pretty much just known for being in TNO, going into the comments section for Paint It Black and going “WE SHALL SMASH THE DOMINOES, SOUTH AFRICAN WAR MOMENT!!!!” is real damn confusing to anyone who doesn’t play TNO (and yes, I’m aware that now that I’ve said that a bunch of comedians are going to go do exactly that.). And while it may not be a huge issue now, we don’t want it to become an issue later down the line. Anyone who doesn’t know what TNO is will be confused, and may even be turned off the mod after seeing how obnoxious the fanbase is. And to talk about a smaller thing I noticed, that I still want to address even though I’ve seen it less recently. You are not superior for preferring TNO to any other HOI4 mod. Every other mod team has put a lot of hard work and effort into their mods, and they fill fundamentally different niches than TNO does, so acting like you’re the smartest motherfucker in the world for preferring one HOI4 mod to another is just wrong to do. Sometimes people want to read a story, that’s fine, sometimes people wanna go balls to the wall and map paint, that’s fine too. Don’t get me wrong, you’re still allowed to enjoy TNO, hell you’re still allowed to say you feel like it’s the best HOI4 mod, but acting like all other mods are trash and anyone who doesn’t like TNO is objectively stupid makes us look like pretentious douchbags. At the end of no matter which mod we play, Kaiserreich, TNO, Equestria at War, Old World Blues, Red World, or any other mod, we can all agree on one thing. Vanilla sucks.
Tl;dr stop going fucking apeshit whenever someone mentions something mildly TNO related, and don’t act like you’re superior for preferring one HOI4 mod to another. I don’t want TNO fans to be the JoJo fans of the HOI4 modding community.

And, yes, "Equestria At War" is a real thing, sadly.

The mod was originally the work of Jakob "ThePinkPanzer" Zabrowski, a former homeless neo-Nazi Stormfront user turned Vaush-loving communist, developing from a thread on the defunct Facepunch forum.

An interview with Zabrowski can be read here.

https://quillette.com/2020/11/26/the-videogame-that-takes-us-inside-the-hell-of-a-nazi-run-world/

https://archive.md/OJsTp

Zabrowski has been exposed as a pervert who hits on underage girls and has bestiality porn. After the mod's release, he retired and was replaced by a looney troon, Frederick Wakefield, who refers to himself as Pacifica.



Wakefield is, as the picture suggests, a man. He is also insane, and has a crush on the infamous Soviet war criminal Mikhail Suslov. Accusing the TNO Redux submod, also known as RU-TNO due to its Russian player base, of doxing him after a gitlab of the mod was leaked, he deleted their Discord and ignited major unrest in the fan community.

These videos briefly sum up the events, and the community is now falling apart.

After the sperg war raged for several days, Wakefield announced his retirement from the mod team, being lauded by his sycophantic fanbase.



The mod team is now being led by a council of developers.

They also *really* hate Kiwi Farms.

https://old.reddit.com/r/TNOmod/comments/lcm8kb/followup_on_the_previous_announcement/

https://archive.is/P8iLX

It’s undeniable that TNO has experienced some rough times over the course of its development, which is usually inevitable in any long-running creative project. Usually, the cause has been creative differences, hasty action or simply a shortage of motivation. However, what has happened in recent days is something else entirely: a direct attack, via doxxing, a hostile, destructive, and illegal crime, upon the TNO team. There’s no secret that the target was our lead developer, Pacifica – an exceptionally talented coder and able leader, who is responsible for many of the features in TNO that our players enjoy. However, beyond her, the damage remains scattered across the hundreds of coders, writers, artists, testers, moderators, and community ambassadors that have stuck behind us for so long, with attacks against their personal image made with illegally obtained information. Certain accusations, which I will not commit the indignity of repeating here, have been made – allegations which are completely false, conjured with the assistance of out-of-context screenshots from leaked developer chat archives. I’m sure anyone with a knack for public relations could tell you how easy it is to fabricate your own version of the truth from a few conveniently-picked cherries.


There are two primary sources of the recent troubles: RU-TNO and Kiwifarms. RU-TNO is, as the name implies, a Russian TNO ‘fan’ server. They are best known for raiding us frequently, espousing far-right sentiments and being thrown out by our moderation team. There’s little more to say about them beyond the fact that they’re a den of trolls without anything better to do. They are one of the primary doxxing culprits. Kiwifarms is much more well-known: a forum that exists with the sole purpose of providing amusement by tormenting people. Kiwifarms, much like the most disreputable parts of imageboards, knows no limits, with inflicting misery on people treated as an end in itself. A thread on Kiwifarms ostensibly dedicated to targeting the Hearts of Iron IV community – but focused heavily on TNO – has become a repository of doxx information and leaks. The site’s reputation speaks for itself: this is a site that intentionally attempts to cause as much misery as possible to people for the sole benefit of entertainment. This is a site that has driven at least one person to suicide through relentless harassment and doxxing. This is a site that revels in the worst behaviour humanity can offer. Reliability to these people means nothing, and morality in their actions certainly is not held up to any notable standard either given how they have treated so many people, now including several people aboard our own team.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

Seems like a bog standard HOI mod community. Not that that's a good thing, mind you.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Seems like a bog standard HOI mod community. Not that that's a good thing, mind you.

That means they're all lolcows. These people are so crazy that even their own subreddit moderators despair at tard wrangling them.

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

That means they're all lolcows. These people are so crazy that even their own subreddit moderators despair at tard wrangling them.

Yeah, seems like the more removed we are from an event depicted in a mod the less autism there is all around. I play a lot of Mount&Blade and both its sequels and the biggest autists are present in the Red Wars fandom, the mod basically transplants the interwar period and WWII and puts it into the game's default setting (a fictional continent called Calradia). When it's got more autism surrounding it than a mod that's literally called "Dickplomacy" you know it's got issues.

 

[Arm Pit Cream]

Yea they're spergs, but what makes them of note? I have no clue what trannies have to do with anything regarding this.
Also >far left

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Yea they're spergs, but what makes them of note? I have no clue what trannies have to do with anything regarding this.
Also >far left

Because people making gender swapped cartoon art of Russian warlords and Nazi hoodies are obviously insane.

 

[Arm Pit Cream]

Because people making gender swapped cartoon art of Russian warlords and Nazi hoodies are obviously insane.

I'm wearing a nazi hoodie rn(it's comfy) and you can find copious amounts of that sorta art on deviantart. It seems abnormally plain honestly.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

I'm wearing a nazi hoodie rn(it's comfy) and you can find copious amounts of that sorta art on deviantart. It seems abnormally plain honestly.

It's a real shame the TMI rating is disabled at the moment.

 

[Bec]

Your average person doesnt know who Albert Speer is so I dont think its that bad.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Your average person doesnt know who Albert Speer is so I dont think its that bad.

You'd literally get arrested for wearing that in Germany. I don't agree with that rule but that's the way it is.

 

[DJ Grelle]

Imagine an autistic loner who can easily implement his special brand of "it-will-work-this-time" extremist ideology through (easily) modding a (rather easy to pick up and play) video game. Now through the wonder of smartphones and discord on mobile they really do not need to interact with others beyond basic necessities. All socialization they do is via an autistic echo chamber. A combination of leisure time power fantasies and echo chambers means they are totally detached from mainstream life and culture.

Now that is the background against which hoi4 modding cliques grow. And it gets incredibly autistic as they want to live out their own fantasies more and more. I'll give an example exactly how autistic it is: there is a mod called 'kaiserreich' based on an alternate timeline where germany wins WW1. Some autistic retards saw it and made 'fuhrerreich' a mod set in an alternate timeline where germany lost WW1 set in an alternate timeline where germany won WW1. TNO is a special case because its more than a mere alternate history mod w/ new focus trees. It has some GDP mechanics, UI redesign, World events etc. Still, its fucking autistic.

Because people making gender swapped cartoon art of Russian warlords and Nazi hoodies are obviously insane.

If you haven't jacked off to genderbent paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte, have you truly lived?

Your average person doesnt know who Albert Speer is so I dont think its that bad.

Even if they know who Speer is, they probably wont recognize him glancing at an artificially aged up portrait of him.

Yea they're spergs, but what makes them of note? I have no clue what trannies have to do with anything regarding this.
Also >far left

Most of the modding cliques are far left, simply because Paradox suppresses all far right mods because they don't want to be associated with it. There used to be mods with some extrememe right content.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Imagine an autistic loner who can easily implement his special brand of "it-will-work-this-time" extremist ideology through (easily) modding a (rather easy to pick up and play) video game. Now through the wonder of smartphones and discord on mobile they really do not need to interact with others beyond basic necessities. All socialization they do is via an autistic echo chamber. A combination of leisure time power fantasies and echo chambers means they are totally detached from mainstream life and culture.

Now that is the background against which hoi4 modding cliques grow. And it gets incredibly autistic as they want to live out their own fantasies more and more. I'll give an example exactly how autistic it is: there is a mod called 'kaiserreich' based on an alternate timeline where germany wins WW1. Some autistic retards saw it and made 'fuhrerreich' a mod set in an alternate timeline where germany lost WW1 set in an alternate timeline where germany won WW1. TNO is a special case because its more than a mere alternate history mod w/ new focus trees. It has some GDP mechanics, UI redesign, World events etc. Still, its fucking autistic.


If you haven't jacked off to genderbent paintings of Napoleon Bonaparte, have you truly lived?


Even if they know who Speer is, they probably wont recognize him glancing at an artificially aged up portrait of him.


Most of the modding cliques are far left, simply because Paradox suppresses all far right mods because they don't want to be associated with it. There used to be mods with some extrememe right content.

The issue with the Speer hoodie is that it literally says it's him, and the image is based on how he really looked as an old man. Remember, Speer lived until 1981 and died aged 76.

You're right in how these awful communities develop. In this case, it's not so much wish fulfillment as an extreme desire to show that fascism is bad and anarcho-communism is good, which makes many aspects of the mod very exaggerated (allowing the anarcho-communist Siberian Black Army to take over the whole of Russia, for example, and having Himmler go mad to the point where he wants to annihilate all non-Aryans through nuclear warfare). This ruins any hope of realism or plausible storytelling.

Cold War: Iron Curtain seems a bit more reasonable in terms of modding communities. There are still communists about but the lack of alternate history means that fringe extremists aren't as common.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

The issue with the Speer hoodie is that it literally says it's him, and the image is based on how he really looked as an old man. Remember, Speer lived until 1981 and died aged 76.

You're right in how these awful communities develop. In this case, it's not so much wish fulfillment as an extreme desire to show that fascism is bad and anarcho-communism is good, which makes many aspects of the mod very exaggerated (allowing the anarcho-communist Siberian Black Army to take over the whole of Russia, for example, and having Himmler go mad to the point where he wants to annihilate all non-Aryans through nuclear warfare). This ruins any hope of realism or plausible storytelling.

Cold War: Iron Curtain seems a bit more reasonable in terms of modding communities. There are still communists about but the lack of alternate history means that fringe extremists aren't as common.

dude, creator of this mod (Jakob "PinkPanzer" Zaborowski) is Vaush fan, what did you expect?

 

[Pointless Pedant]

dude, creator of this mod (Jakob "PinkPanzer" Zaborowski) is Vaush fan, what did you expect?

I wonder what his views are on the ethical consumption of child pornography.

Zabrowski stepped down recently, so whoever is in charge now are a different bunch of communists.

 

[Fuck Y'all]

I wonder what his views are on the ethical consumption of child pornography.

Zabrowski stepped down recently, so whoever is in charge now are a different bunch of communists.

Pacifica is probably trans; I didn't have her dox though

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Pacifica is probably trans; I didn't have her dox though

"Her"...that would explain why raging about transphobia seems common on the subreddit.

Talking of Pacifica...


Taking a brave stand against "shipping" and "waifus".

 

[Big Brown Schlub]

"Her"...that would explain why raging about transphobia seems common on the subreddit.

Talking of Pacifica...

View attachment 1761952
Taking a brave stand against "shipping" and "waifus".

Running interference for Yagoda is a-ok tho

 

[Pointless Pedant]

Running interference for Yagoda is a-ok tho

Yagoda says...troon rights?

 

[ConfederateIrishman]

I approve of this thread; Even if there is not enough autism in TNO itself for a full thread, the entire community is absolutely full of lolcows across the entire political spectrum: From extremists who think their mod will increase their fringe ideology's popularity to centrists who overdose on smug and proceed to purge everyone they personally consider an extremist (to the point they start trying to secretly bait out crypto-extremists in their discords/reddit page/etc).

Pink Panzer himself is also a fun story because he was a former Stormfront guy who felt so guilty for his past views he took the Vaush-pill to try and atone.

 

[Pointless Pedant]

I approve of this thread; Even if there is not enough autism in TNO itself for a full thread, the entire community is absolutely full of lolcows across the entire political spectrum: From extremists who think their mod will increase their fringe ideology's popularity to centrists who overdose on smug and proceed to purge everyone they personally consider an extremist (to the point they start trying to secretly bait out crypto-extremists in their discords/reddit page/etc).

Pink Panzer himself is also a fun story because he was a former Stormfront guy who felt so guilty for his past views he took the Vaush-pill to try and atone.

I honestly had no idea that Zabrowski used to use Stormfront before turning to Vaush. I had him down as the average Reddit leftist. If you have more content on his lolcowdom I'd like to see it.