Facepunch/Knockout Forums - A "welcoming" gaming and lifestyle community

[deepFriedBaka]

Spoiler: Knockout copypasta

You will never be a real website.

You have no goal, you have no leadership, you have no mission. You are an inbred unholy abomination twisted by circlejerking and power tripping into a crude mockery of Internet perfection.

All the “validation” you get is two-faced and half-hearted. Behind your back people mock you. Your users are disgusted and ashamed of you, your “critics” laugh at your soulless appearance behind their screens.

Users are utterly repulsed by you. Thousands of hours of typing have allowed them to sniff out hugboxes with incredible efficiency. Even websites that are "welcoming" look off-putting and hostile to a user. Your moderation strategy is a dead giveaway. And even if you manage to get a new user here with you, they'll turn tail and bolt the second they get an idea of your demented, mob-justice ratings scheme.

You will never be successful. Your admins wrench out a digital grin every morning and tell you it's going to be OK, but deep inside you feel your death creeping up like a weed, ready to smother you under the unbearable weight.

Eventually, it'll be too much to bear - your last user will delete themself and you'll plunge into the cold abyss. Your admins will find you, disappointed but relieved that they no longer have to live with the unbearable circlejerking and hiveminding that marked your existence. They'll pull the plug for good, and every passerby for the rest of eternity will know that your community is long gone. Your server will shut down and you'll cease to exist, and all that will remain of your legacy are the cold scars of a once-proud community scarred by infighting, banning, bullying, and drama.

This is your fate. This is what you chose. There is no turning back.

Feel free to use this for whatever.

 

[deepFriedBaka]

By the way, I had another pre-written post about why Knockout is bound to die at some point, but forgot to post it here. Fair warning, it's pretty long.

Spoiler: Why Knockout will inevitably die

The reason why Knockout is a zombified husk that is doomed to die is very simple. Anyone who's seen what happens with Yandere Simulator clones, ResetEra, or any forum/community spun off from a bigger one knows that any project done in spite - no matter what it is - will inevitably fail and fade into obscurity or be destroyed in internal drama. Knockout will die because it had no good reason to exist.



When Garry built Newpunch in 2018, there was no theme or key concept behind it - it was only "vBulletin is shit and I'll make something better lol" and he ended up banning anyone who criticized him for making a poorly-written piece of shit that had less functionality than Craigslist, all because of his own ego. You'll see this a lot on Discord servers - someone declares they'll just start their own server, nobody joins, people wonder why it was even worth it, slapfights ensue, and the server gets nuked. It happens like clockwork because people fail to grasp this concept, and it's going to happen to Knockout whether it likes it or not. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But it will happen, and it's already going down that path.

Knockout was started in spite by Inacio and by people who thought that they could do better than Facepunch. It had no key idea, no goal, no clearly designed process, and no guarantee of anything. From day one, Knockout's sole motivation was to be better than Facepunch and to be a replacement for Facepunch. It might not have been made out of spite like other failed projects, but it still had no clear goal. A project without a goal can't function for long.



People who recognized this or who didn't want to join it moved on, and the refugees from Facepunch signed up. They began talking amongst themselves. Dissent went from being allowed - just barely - to being grounds for an instant permanent ban. And all through it, the members, who have no new members to engage in healthy debate or do not want to recruit new people, continue their own private discussions with other people who believe exactly what they say. After all, dissent isn't tolerated there. And since the members of the forum were the only ones who cared about what was going on, petty drama ensued until it was forcibly "settled" by the moderators and the site became an echo chamber to the point where ratings were meticulously policed to make sure you couldn't express your opinion.

ResetEra's goal was to be a better NeoGAF. It failed because it had no mission or goal. Those Yandere Simulator clones I mentioned? Almost all of them are dead because of drama since their only goal was to make "Yandere Simulator, but better."
Knockout's goal is "Facepunch but better". It's only mission statement was to be better than Facepunch - that was it. Most of the members there joined in 2019 - it's somewhat rare to see someone with a join date of 2021 or older - and that was how it got most of its traffic.

Knockout has already had a ton of drama for a site that supposedly has a stable community. It's almost like ResetEra, in a way.

Drama Moment #1: Inacio ended up getting completely shat on when he switched the subscribe button to a link to Facepunch, claimed he was shitposting, and got dogpiled even harder.

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Drama Moment 2: He threw in the towel and DFE'd on November 24, 2020, just two days after this shitshow. It's worth noting that this is the same guy who staged a coup on Facepunch (or tried to), if my research is correct.




Drama Moment #3: A massive slapfight ensued in May 2021 because no one could agree over how to use "retard" properly. We documented this entire thing.

Drama Moment #4: More bitching ensued in November 2021 because the members were upset at lolicon and how it was handled. We documented this too.

To top it all off, the admins publicly upped the post limit (archive) to see the Meta forum on the backend API in May 2021, most likely because of our thread.



Knockout is barely three years old and is already getting itself into drama because of how it is and how it was founded. There was no goal, so anyone could join in the beginning, but there was an extremely complicated set of rules that were poorly defined (see the "No Trolling" rule) and ripe for moderator abuse. People got banned or deleted their accounts because they simply couldn't deal with it anymore. And, judging by how rapidly new members are banned for speaking up against the hivemind or making an opinion that goes against the narrative, its death is only increasing, to the point where you see this frequently:



Knockout is the zombified husk of Facepunch clawing itself out of a well-deserved grave, trying to stay relevant, claiming it wasn't dead, and saying that it was better than Facepunch. It failed, and will continue to do so, because it had no goal and no reason to exist besides "it's a better forum than Facepunch". And eventually, like every other forum besieged by petty drama, members will keep joining and getting banned, getting involved in drama, engaging in petty slapfights, and endorsing violence as the answer to everything that doesn't fit their narrative:



One day, the moderators will be all that remain (or they too will delete their accounts) and the last remnant of Facepunch will be no more.

tl;dr - Knockout is dying and will die because it was founded on the basis of "we can make a better Facepunch" and had no clear goals in mind - although the militant userbase and suppression of any dissenting opinions didn't help either. There was no reason for it to exist besides spite - and that's why it's dying.

 

[big rig 42]

they said "we can be a better facepunch" but kept literally the same mod team, same site layout, same cliques, same everything lol

 

[Barry McKockner]

they said "we can be a better facepunch" but kept literally the same mod team, same site layout, same cliques, same everything lol

Should have kept the same ban list.they re-banned all of the right wing shitposters, but left the left wing shitposters.

 

[Slap47]

Knockout loves violence more than Ethan Ralph.

 

[Ambient Occlusion]

Every thread has like the same 10 people posting. I really want to know how many new users are joining because it doesn't seem like much lmao

 

[Slap47]

Joress takes over the Ukraine thread.

 

[Natalia the Sluice]

I'm pretty sure Kiwi Farms gets more users registered by reference in a day when it's closed than Knockout does in a week. At a certain point it's not even worst posting when a thread has a full day delay between posts.

 

[Hyro]

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Knockout loves violence more than Ethan Ralph.

This is the forum that thinks they should have a right to kill people who don't call them ma'am so naturally they'd support smacking someone over a mild ass joke.

 

[Kyangyenki]

Knockout got april fools rainbow font, just in time for

Conversion therapy: Ban to go-ahead but not cover trans people​

https://knockout.chat/thread/34671

 

[Sapient Foot Fungus]

I'm pretty sure Kiwi Farms gets more users registered by reference in a day when it's closed than Knockout does in a week. At a certain point it's not even worst posting when a thread has a full day delay between posts.

Our forum's pretty aware of the slow growth. Generally speaking, I don't think anyone holds any delusions that Knockout WILL last more than a few more years - users leave every week, new users don't steadily 'replace' them.
There were some stats a while back that showed growth, albeit slow. Part of our inevitable death may be due to some of the hostile atmosphere (that's been behind quite a few old-timers leaving), but it's not all because of that I feel.

Forums as a format for discussion are a dying trend, I think we can agree on that. In that same vein, Knockout/Facepunch have tons of splinter communities on Discord and such.
Kiwifarms may be growing now, to be fair this place has a niche (bullying - let's be real lol) that attracts certain users. Facepunch had a niche of being somewhat of a popular board to show off your programming work - game dev and such.
If you're old enough to remember GamingW (rip Steel), RPG2Knet, the old Gamemaker Community, etc. you will know that when these forums died a lot of prominent users spread over to SA or FP, and probably NeoGAF and other smaller living forums at that time. Those aren't really the users we see on Knockout, as much as some would like to; it's true that most of Knockout is comprised of people unwilling to let go of Facepunch.

While it's far from the best forum in the universe or even remotely comparable to FP a decade and longer ago, I mostly stick around because I too am too used to the FP format and I like to see some familiar people that I've talked to for most of my life. Any serious discussion for me happens on like... Telegram and Discord, usually just with one friend, you know, like the rest of the world lmao.

When Knockout dies there will probably be another lifeboat. Whether I'll be in it or not, I'm not sure. I'm getting to an age where I just don't have time for bullshit, but similarly I admire the spirit of a dying format trying to remain relevant. I don't like where we've been headed internet-wise for years. The move to central platforms owned by megacorps, that's shit. I might post on KF some more but I'm not particularly interested in interfering with internet weirdos or lolcows as you'll call them. I registered here during the CWC jail saga because everyone involved with that had some form of chromosomal failure - it was both fucked up and funny.

Also, digging the SA theme here for April Fool's. Our Comic Sans / Samsung Galaxy Karen rainbow font joke was funny for 2 seconds.
Rip Lowtax? Good riddance tbh.

 

[deepFriedBaka]

Those aren't really the users we see on Knockout, as much as some would like to; it's true that most of Knockout is comprised of people unwilling to let go of Facepunch.

And that is exactly why the cycle will repeat.

The members of Knockout who joined between February and June 2019 either knew about the forum or realized that Facepunch was going to die. The members who joined after June were the refugees. Have you actually seen that many people who have a join date outside of that? No, not really.

Knockout exists because, as you said, people didn't want to forget their memories of Facepunch. If it does die out, I highly doubt the community will accept it without a fight. It's far more likely that someone will build their own platform, a small handful of users will migrate over, and the cycle will begin anew. This post made in 2020 says it far better than I ever could.

 

[Phys]

they said "we can be a better facepunch" but kept literally the same mod team, same site layout, same cliques, same everything lol

And worse, they ended up copying Newpunch out of the two. I frankly don't get the avatar + background shit. It's still just too much.
Anyone else feel like Oldpunch was better by design? More kino. Maybe I remember it with rose-tinted glasses and that design died with the old internet.

 

[Shaka Brah]

And worse, they ended up copying Newpunch out of the two. I frankly don't get the avatar + background shit. It's still just too much.
Anyone else feel like Oldpunch was better by design? More kino. Maybe I remember it with rose-tinted glasses and that design died with the old internet.

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 just feel more readable than Web 3.0. Maybe it's gay nostalgia or something but I've felt pretty strongly that web design is regressing since smartphones became popular. Websites where content feels designed to be consumed on a phone are lame.

 

[Hyro]

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 just feel more readable than Web 3.0. Maybe it's gay nostalgia or something but I've felt pretty strongly that web design is regressing since smartphones became popular. Websites where content feels designed to be consumed on a phone are lame.

I think the reddit redesign highlights this most. Ugliest most confusing design ever made. Anything like that which is designed to be mobile friendly is just horrid to use on PC. Knockout isn't quite that badly designed but they should have made it closer to old facepunch that garry's aborted retard baby design that came after. The worst part is still knockouts search function, which they somehow made worse recently.

 

[EgyptianFo]

Still think he's larping honestly

 

[Rion]

And worse, they ended up copying Newpunch out of the two. I frankly don't get the avatar + background shit. It's still just too much.
Anyone else feel like Oldpunch was better by design? More kino. Maybe I remember it with rose-tinted glasses and that design died with the old internet.

I don't hate the idea of the background thing inherently, but it quickly just became a way to have to look at big pictures of coomer art.
Given Facepunch had the problem of lewd Avatars too, but at least those avatars were tiny.

 

[chumbawombo]

Hello everyone, I registered to this website just to say FUCK Knockout, fuck its virtue signaling users and fuck the moderation, especially Emperor Scrotum. "bad faith arguing" my ass, man up and write "wrongthink" as a ban reason next time.
The toxicity thread was the last straw for me, the hypocrisy is unreal. Multiple people have come out to say they don't want to post because of the dogpiling going on but no, there's no hostility here, if we're toxic towards people who don't conform to the hivemind then it's not toxicity because they deserved it. (t. the first one to reply to that thread).
The problem is not even the dogpiling itself, FP was much worse AFAIR, it's the complete impossibility of any kind of honest discussion. If your opinion is a nono you get banned mid-conversation regardless of how respectfully you are explaining yourself because you're "arguing in bad faith", while at the same time you have 12 year olds shidding and pissing on the thread with low effort posts to get upvotes ratings, but that's ok with the moderation team because their opinion is the right one. This leads to the same handful of users posting the most boring takes you can possibly imagine to avoid offending anyone. It's just reddit-tier circlejerking drivel.
Also the website is one of the buggiest pieces of shit I've ever had the displeasure to use. How do you fuck up this bad in the first place, and then make it progressively worse over time?

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I had to get it off my chest. Yes, I mad, and I hope they pull another Garry.

 

[Barry McKockner]

Hello everyone, I registered to this website just to say FUCK Knockout, fuck its virtue signaling users and fuck the moderation, especially Emperor Scrotum. "bad faith arguing" my ass, man up and write "wrongthink" as a ban reason next time.
The toxicity thread was the last straw for me, the hypocrisy is unreal. Multiple people have come out to say they don't want to post because of the dogpiling going on but no, there's no hostility here, if we're toxic towards people who don't conform to the hivemind then it's not toxicity because they deserved it. (t. the first one to reply to that thread).
The problem is not even the dogpiling itself, FP was much worse AFAIR, it's the complete impossibility of any kind of honest discussion. If your opinion is a nono you get banned mid-conversation regardless of how respectfully you are explaining yourself because you're "arguing in bad faith", while at the same time you have 12 year olds shidding and pissing on the thread with low effort posts to get upvotes ratings, but that's ok with the moderation team because their opinion is the right one. This leads to the same handful of users posting the most boring takes you can possibly imagine to avoid offending anyone. It's just reddit-tier circlejerking drivel.
Also the website is one of the buggiest pieces of shit I've ever had the displeasure to use. How do you fuck up this bad in the first place, and then make it progressively worse over time?

Thank you for coming to my TED talk, I had to get it off my chest. Yes, I mad, and I hope they pull another Garry.

"Bad Faith" is their excuse for banning wrongthink, because how could someone in good faith ever disagree with the approved narrative. They either don't realize they created that mechanism to enforce a hivemind, or they did it on purpose.

 

[Nod Flenders]

"Bad Faith" is their excuse for banning wrongthink, because how could someone in good faith ever disagree with the approved narrative. They either don't realize they created that mechanism to enforce a hivemind, or they did it on purpose.

KO definitely sounds like a cult to me. The way they punish anyone who dares to disagree with them.