I want to preface that the contents of this post is for informational purposes. I do not condone or approve of any harassments or witch-hunting or the attacking of anybody.
 
Richard Lewis recently did a stream talking about the terrible state of CS esports and I thought it was an important stream anyone who cares about the CS community should listen to.
Vod Link here: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/830415547
I realize it is 3 hours long so I took it upon myself to create a list of interesting points from the stream so you don't have to listen to the whole thing, although I still encourage you to do so if you can.
I know this post is still long but probably easier to digest, especially in parts.
Here is a link to my raw notes if you for some reason want to read through this which includes some omitted stuff. It's in chronological order of things said in the stream and has some time stamps. https://pastebin.com/6QWTLr8T

Intro

• "The last month has convinced me, that we are going to be heading into a dark place for Counter-Strike esports in 2021."
  • "I think I've seen the scene essentially kill itself."
• "For the past 5 to 6 years, we've basically been in a holding pattern of people coming into our game wanting to run it, wanting to run all of the esports and wanting to profiteer and its been sort of a concerted effort to drive them off and push them away."
  • "We're spread way too thin."
• "If Riot don't get involved and stop the scumbags that have moved over to Valorant from getting their feet under the table, Valorant is going to have real problems."
• RL thinks too much has happened all at once for us to do anything except watch it play out, like:
  • Recent CSPPA strike against BLAST
  • ESIC failures and them not being supported enough
  • Teams cheating i.e. coaches/bugs
  • Widespread match fixing
  • The Pandemic
    • "People who try to hold bubble events are so incompetent and fuck up and people get the 'rona and its their fault."
    • "People who say Flashpoint is a bubble is full of shit and is a lie and people are now suffering for that lie."
      • "To save money they let people go home and break the bubble for a week."
      • "Not just Flashpoint peoples decision, they have a partner that handles the production." (hinting FACEIT)
      • "People are trapped in hotels essentially under house arrest because of COVID restrictions and has fucked peoples lives up."
• "It's all too much, all of this incompetence, all of this greed, maybe we ride it out."
  • RL says he has talked to the Riot devs (the ones working on Valorant) and says, "They are so cognizant of all the fuck ups and all the problems we have in Counter-Strike."
    • He continues to say that this is factored into their business plan and that we never had a competitor, but just so happens to have one coincide, when we are at our worst.

CSPPA - Counter-Strike Professional Players' Association

"Who does this union really fucking serve?"

• RL believes that the CSPPA is a mockery.
  
  • He points out the hypocrisy that they wouldn't strike for the pros who were kicked out of ESL Pro League, or for Jamppi or dream3r.
    • He also says ESL paid CSPPA and are racketeering and many other TOs have to pay them to get their "seal of approval"
      • He says they would strong-arm TOs saying "well if you don't give us the money, these guys are so we'll just have to commit to playing their event."
    • Also points out that they will strike against a competitor they are not in agreement with (Flashpoint)
    • RL: "It's what it says about every other time you haven't done it and it's about every time you don't do it now moving forward." "The issues they've chosen to ignore this year alone are embarrassing."
    • Then he points out that there was no strike for Valve qualifiers even if we have no major but Jamppi and dream3r can't play in them.
      • "and Valve have said 'Oh yeah we know actually their stories are accurate, Jamppi didn't cheat, now in a legally binding document. Yep dream3r did have his account hacked in a LAN café', but they still can't play. Where is the fucking solidarity? Gone. Doesn't exist. It's not important [because] it doesn't affect you." "That's what the union does right now, it looks after all the tier 1 people."
• He says the CSPPA doesn't represent all players all the time and has driven a divide where you have the haves and have-nots
  
  • "We have a tier of players that operate with impunity and do not help their tier 2 or tier 3 players out at all." "If you are not a tier 1 player you do not matter, they don't event ask your opinion."
  • He tells chrisJ to admit and own the fact that the reason he didn't speak up during the ESL Pro League debacle is because it didn't affect him
  • "They are looking after some players at the expense of other players. How the fuck is that a union?"
• He says the BLAST situation is a reasonable dispute and supports the players but is not the right time for a strike and have not even identified the correct enemy
  
  • He thinks players are lashing out now due to previous incidents and are upset that BLAST are working with ESIC
    • He stated that CSPPA shouldn't beefing with ESIC and they should be working in harmony
  • He says what they need to do is talk with the teams/organizations that have sold that right to BLAST
    • RL: "Your employers, the people who pay you that massive exorbitant salaries, when you don't stream and you don't do interviews and you offer no value beyond your ability to click heads and you get 25k dollars a month." "Why don't you talk to them about it? Oh right. You're happy to take away BLAST's paper, but you don't want to risk your own."
  • "I am seeing such unbelievable cowardice from the players here with the battles you choose."
  • "Where was the strike action when in the qualifiers for the world championship, there were teams and players engaged in huge conflicts of interest?" "Where was the strike action when your image rights were taken and sold to every league you've ever been in every union type organization you've ever been associated with like, WESA, to your org every time you sign a contract, to the leagues you play in."
    • "Your image rights are essentially worthless now, there's about 10 fucking separate parties that have them, and how many of them are giving you anything for it? Not much pretty much your org by the way."
    • "That's a big issue. Your image is you, your image is your brand. What are you doing about that? Nothing."
• He is also angry at SirScoots who is "popping off" at people on Twitter who all want the same thing, which is 'A unified Counter-Strike scene for everybody, that works for everybody, that has a sustained ecosystem that nourishes everybody.' "We don't have that now."
  
• He also says their rankings are a joke
  
  • "Just so happened, oh look TACO, that very important prominent member of the board, we pushed his team artificially up when they weren't even in the fucking top 20, not by a long shot."
• He also says the ineptitude of the CSPPA cost Flashpoint a monitor sponsor
  
• "Is it really a player association or is it like a fucking agency at this point"
  

ESIC - Esports Integrity Commission

"They have been put in an impossible position."

• RL says that Ian Smith, the founder of ESIC and who was done work in mainstream sports, is a good and honorable man who has dedicated his life to integrity and sports. He takes on both sides, ensuring match fixers are punished, but also doing appeals and ensuring those punishments were fair.
• "ESIC is a tiny organization" and are in need of money, "They didn't run a grift like the CSPPA did."
  • "Saying 'you want our support and you want the players to turn up you better pay us.' They don't do that."
  • "Had startup seed money from MTG and since then they've been pecking shit with the hens."
    • Ian Smith made sure that the money given by MTG (Modern Times Group, parent company of ESL, ESEA, DreamHack) was nothing more than startup money and wouldn't be in debt to them
      • Ian Smith sat down with other TO's not part of MTG and wanted to partner with them. They declined and called ESIC "ESL spies and we will never align ourselves with you"
  • "They only were just able to afford, hiring a PR guy on a full time salary to deal with the press and send out those releases you've seen, this year."
    • "They have a tiny group of staff investigating these things and they have taken on the biggest problems in our scene: the cheating, the match fixing."
• ESIC have had "unprecedented levels of cheating to deal with, because there's something wrong with our scene ever since we went online. There's something wrong with it, everyone's lost their fucking pride and self-respect and they got no passion for it anymore, so they think fuck it, what's in it for me?"
  • He calls out coaches who are talking about players rights when they would rob and steal from them.
    • Also says more coaches being banned are coming
    • He also points out flaws in community's reaction to the punishments to coaches bans: "Half of the cunts still have jobs and some of the cunts got new jobs. We didn't even shun the cheating coaches."
• ESIC have "found I think another 2 or 3 exploits like that one and they are investigating them all right now, it's going on right now."
  
  • "I know that there are going to be more names getting banned, again."
  • "So they're doing that on a skeleton crew while, investigating 3 continents worth of match fixing in MDL and semi-pro level CS." "They're doing this with half a dozen people." "They don't have any money or any help. People barely even fucking cooperate with them, they are treated like pariahs. It's ridiculous."
    • "Why are the CSPPA popping off at ESIC on my Twitter timeline, when you should be working together." "because its all about what's in it in for me." "2020, the online era of CS: 'What is in it for me?' How can I cheat, how can I get my paper, how can I bleed this scene one last time before I fuck off and play shooty shooty bang bang Riot Games babys first fps."
• RL says that in the CIS region, teams have gone to tournaments and have been eliminated multiple times by the same team. We found out they were cheating and those players who lost, have been cut from their roster, careers ended because of cheaters.
  

Stream Sniping

"They're all at it in the online era, they're all at it, they're all cheating, they're all using exploits, probably that see through smoke bug got used a bunch of times"

• RL talks about how there is no integrity from dead (the player), always denying when caught doing something
  • On the topic of 'BLAST never said we couldn't stream snipe': "Lies, BLAST never said you could do that, they had to sort of retcon it." "because what happened after that they fucking started snitching and squealing"
    • "Suddenly you had like, 10 of the top 15 teams in the world, staring into the abyss of being banned for 6-12 months in line with ESIC recommendations."
      • He says that ESIC was put in a tough situation and couldn't enforce the bans because it would have resulted in killing CS. What resulted was, BLAST, ESIC, and teams came together and gave them a warning and told them, in RL's words "don't do this again or you're gonna get got."
        • He then says the top teams brushed this off and didn't give a fuck
        • The new MiBR team playing Flashpoint, that wasn't involved in the previous incidents are doing it again (stream sniping). He gave credit to Flashpoint for the quick resolution and punishment and respect for cogu's response to the situation.
        • "ESIC came out and said, once more, 'Guys, zero tolerance from now on.'" RL then got upset at community's reaction calling ESIC "pussies" for their non enforcement and said if we want competitive CS we cant ban the top 10 teams.
• He points out how players have no integrity and will do anything for an edge as long as they won't get detected or banned or it's within a grey area.
• "All of this shit was mad avoidable, even in the pandemic era."
  • He talks about why aren't we filming them. Why aren't there representatives for leagues and tournaments making sure players aren't cheating?

Match Fixing

"How many years have we let our scene be fucking pillaged by these greedy cunts?" "We just let it happen."

• RL says that gambling and skins betting which existed in moderation was "accelerated and blown up by the Call of Duty greedy fucks."
  • "Never forget TmarTn was on the board of EnVyUs." "His website, CSGOLotto, they had a bunch of off-the-books sponsorships." "NBK promoted them. People forget."
• "Those people who had access to the skins, go to the players" "Even people like s1mple, best player in the world, even he scammed knives and skins off fucking fans."
• Owners of skin casino sites would approach pros and lend them skins to use in tournaments and possibly keep them after reaching a deal
  • Players would tip off inside info about matches and teams in exchange for skins. Info such as: roster changes, how they played in scrims
    • They would use this info to bet and subvert the odds on their sites. "That happened religiously, I can't even tell you how many times it happened."
      • "I had access to the biggest database of information, from an inside betting circle in NA, and it would take information and screenshots from other pro players, who were feeding them info in exchange for money or skins."
        • "Some of these players are still playing." "Incredibly, there are players still in the CSPPA today, complaining about the BLAST recordings, that were embroiled in this murky shit back then."
• RL also says that there were tournaments where teams contrived with each other, who should throw, who should win.
• "There's a handful of people that are trying to fucking clean it up, and you think you get something over the line and you see something like the CSPPA and it's run by corrupt fucking chuckle heads, and now you've got another corrupt body you have to fight on a fucking daily basis, it's demoralizing."
  • "It's too far gone. Our entire semi-professional scene is compromised."
• "It's rife guys, I'm not going to lie any more. It's not just China, it's not just Russia, it's here, it's NA, it's Europe, it's Australia, so much more than you think, so much more than we can prove."
  • "I get sent chat logs all the time […] and they're morons, these players, short-sighted, amateur, morons and they're doing it on WhatsApp." People would get cut from the bets because they want to make more money, then they leak the logs. He says, from the chat logs, they spread "little" bets across every site they can (400 to 1k dollars) to prevent shifting odds
• He says the scumbags who've fucked off to Valorant will do the same there if Riot doesn't do something and says Valorant "is an esports scene heading for a very early fall based on the sheer volume of scumbags that are already there."
• "That's tier 2 CS in a nutshell these days. They know they're never going to play in a major, so what's the punishment?"
  • "All of these tier 2 fucks that are fixing games now they are like the fucking mafia compared to iBuyPower" "These guys are working with organized criminals to fix entire seasons worth of games. That's what's going on in your tier 2 CS."
• "I'm literally being told that there are players fixing games at all levels of Chinese esports and motherfuckers with guns are turning up to team houses and stuff."

North America

"Everyone in NA has left we've lost a continents worth of support during this pandemic and Valve haven't said a fucking word."

• RL says the Call of Duty "goblins" that destroyed CS for years are the same people who are now trying to leave CS. "The nerve to treat a game where the fans, and the community, and the TO's were nothing but good to you." "To just kick the players out now and go and leave and say 'It just doesn't make financial sense.' Oh you'll slither back when we have a major though for them stickers won't you."
• There's a cascading effect in NA where people don't bother with CS anymore and people like Chaos suffer.
• He says NA team owners are incompetent for always wanting it easy and always wanting a guarantee on their investment without skill or nuance.
  • RL says he would be able to market a team correctly and would have a good ROI and also points out how TSM wouldn't even be bothered to tweet that their team, which was one of the best in the world, was playing at the Major.
  • He also says not all NA owners are like that, compliments and respects Jason Lake who nearly lost everything to keep Complexity going.
• He then calls out the incompetence in Infinite Esports when they acquired OpTic Gaming and bought an Indian CS team.
  • He says HECZ is not to blame here and that they couldn't tell forsaken was cheating when it was so obvious.
    • They measured his reaction time to the likes of dev1ce and s1mple
    • When an enemy showed up on his screen he won that duel something like 44% of the time
    • "was like the number 1 player in the world statistically"
    • He brought a laptop to their bootcamp and refused to use the high end PCs that hey provided
• He respects Andy Miller (NRG CEO) and HECZ but says that the attitude of not being able to easily monetize their teams is "piss weak" and there needs to be a risk.
  • He says Chaos EC shouldn't be cutting their roster and should be competent enough to be able to figure out how to make money off their team.
• He says there are still opportunities in NA and people are panicking and pulling out, and says Valorant will be the same if not worse.
  • He also says "bums" who couldn't even get out of groups in NA competitions, are making crazy money in Valorant and says it will continue to inflate.
• He also said that he heard rumors that EG (Evil Geniuses) are done.
• He also thinks that the rumors of a Valve franchised league from before was sparked up from "these lazy fabled weak NA fucking team owners basically trying to see if Valve would bite at the hook if it was dangled and they didn't"
  • Slasher says NA team owners are really in favor of franchised leagues because they want to make more money. "Most of the powerful team owners right now are on board with ditching this third party organization structure, or they are trying to play this power politics with all the TOs, and that is contributing to a lot of the problems there"
• RL says that Riot has proved they can run a franchised league (LCS) and will be profitable in 2021 which is what a lot of team owners care about and says the competition will only serve to snatch people away from CS.
• RL continues to say, "I am so sick and tired of what we have done to this scene, I am just exhausted with it." "I think we have legitimately fucked it, I really think we have. I think we're staring into almost like a CGS (Championship Gaming Series) wasteland in NA." "Counter-Strike esports is a fucking joke."

Talent

"TO's have treated CS talent like absolute human garbage for years now."

• RL says that people like Sean Gares and ddk switching over to Valorant isn't for financial reasons because they are making less over there.
• He points out that TO's can't even give talent a 3 month in advance calendar.
• Because of the pandemic TO's won't hire certain people and some people are working more hours for the same money.
• He says we as a community don't respect journalists enough which is why we don't have good journalists.
  • He also says DeKay is leaving the scene soon and that Thorin is close to leaving also
• He says he had to talk a caster down from quitting and was struggling to find reasons.
• He says that DreamHack told Vince they would hire him but not if he wants to stick with dusT and says that this is the norm in esports. "Constant leveraging of people against each other." and says this is why we don't have a talent union.
• New gen casters are getting put into shit situations and the community's reaction to them is adding fuel to the fire
• He says the reason Moses left was because of the terrible conditions
• He says that Anders had to constantly leave his family and kid because someone fucked up or broke promises and had to constantly tell his kid to their face that "daddy can't be home this weekend."
• He says that esports has always been a lie to sell you this dream, "Meanwhile there's about 2% of the cunts getting all the checks."

Valve

"Anything that Riot does, is better than Valve's inaction"

• Slasher says that the larger aspect of esports as a whole compared to other entertainment mediums and Valve's lack of inattention are the bigger problems. He continues saying that the fact that Valve let their game be ran as an esport, they need to take on the responsibilities of it.
  • Both Slasher and RL wants Valve to take control but not on the level of Riot Games, there needs to be a balance.
• In case it was ever a question: Gabe Newell has been to 0 CSGO Majors.
• RL calls Valve out saying they could have done something during the gambling era.
• He says Valve used to come to the majors, but doesn't think they do anymore.
• RL had met with Valve at the Cluj-Napoca Major and had tried to appeal iBP's indefinite punishment and had also gave Brax's life story:
  • A recent family member passed away, they had lost a lot of income, they had to live in trailer, iBuyPower did not pay any salaries, and was pressured by family to make money who didn't support his career.
  • RL said that Valve told him, "How dare you try and make us feel guilty." "We shouldn't feel bad about enforcing the only thing that matters that we need to make players afraid of: cheating and match fixing"
  • RL also tried to share other info about match fixing and nothing came of it
• RL points out that Source 2 or a new engine is not something you will want based on the experience of transitioning from CS 1.6 to CS:S. "Valve's track record with brand new engines being launched, not fucking great from what I remember."
• Slasher says "If there is anything the community should do, is pressure Valve to hire a community manager."
  • They say that we need a commissioner, a community manager (not the person who runs the Twitter who posts memes all day), then we need to have a circuit
• RL reiterates that Valve doesn't care about CS esports and says they need to change the culture at Valve to make them care about CS esports
  • Slasher says a systemic problem is making it so working on CSGO would be a bad decision for you as an employee for Valve
• He also hasn't talked to Valve in ages and have sent over bugs and cheats and doesn't get emails back anymore
• Slasher says we should be directing attention at the developer leads, pointing out Ido Magal, if he even is still the project lead
  • RL thinks that Ido and Brian are the only people that "vaguely even give a fuck about CS" and were the only people that RL recalled that actually read Reddit and paid attention from time to time
• "It is really fucking precarious. Somebody has got to step the fuck up and start giving a shit"
  • Slasher suggests org owners, with CSPPA, with ESIC, with TOs have a concerted effort against Valve
• "Riot Games are doing better things than Valve in the esports space" which is something RL didn't think he'd say.
• "People who used to be talent, working with unions, arguing with other talent, when the unions fucked them over, can't understand their perspective, TOs fucking over broadcast talent, broadcast talent wanting to leave and go and work for orgs, orgs having no money, Valve might take coaches away because all the coaches are cheating, ESIC has about 4 people in a fucking call doing the investigations, everyone thinks they're spies for ESL, ESL are just the evil fucking overlords wanting to rule the scene and will just somehow, like cockroaches outliving a nuclear bomb, and Valve are in a fucking holiday in Hawaii thinking about the next Dota character because they don't give a fuck about us."

Closing Statements

"We've peaked. If we want to sustain and exist, now is the time to figure it out. No esports lasts as long as this, we've already done 8 years. We've already broke the records. We have got to figure out a way to coexist and drive the negative forces out and we need to do it as a collective and we're not doing that."

• RL compared the Counter-Strike scene to the people on the Titanic who ran around with guns robbing people while the boat was sinking.
• "We have given up on being a respectable esports scene." "We are now a conduit to make money for those who want to just milk it, just have one last ride, one last roll of the dice. It's done." "What a fucking mess. What have we done to our fucking scene?"
• "There's just too much self-interest driving all of this." "I don't see a way we stop the dominoes." "When it's that bad, when there's that many dishonest people that ESIC have to come out and say that if we punish them all there's no one left. What does that tell you?"
• "How many opportunities have we had to clean house? How many times have we said, 'this must never happen again', and another scandal." "The entire skins betting operations was the biggest criminal conspiracy in esports ever executed and no one has been punished for it." "The people who could be driving that don't want to."
• "Right now people are fans of those organizations because the scene has value. It is worth being a fan of Astralis because they are excellent at Counter-Strike. It is worth being a fan of s1mple because he is the best player in Counter-Strike, maybe the exception of ZywOo. If the scene is devalued, if the scene loses its meaning, those things lose its meaning too, and people will leave, people will stop tuning into the games. I have seen it happen in multiple esports, this is not my first time at the rodeo. I am getting big Brood War vibes right now and I don't like it."
• "The role you play in all of this as fans, as viewers, as listeners, as consumers of esports content, it's absolutely imperative that you know who the good guys are. It's absolutely imperative that you use your voice. It's absolutely imperative that when things are bad, you know who, at least, is trying to make them good, and you have to apply your criticism to the right targets."
  • He continues saying it's no good in continuing to attack ESIC and saying how they are bad, ESIC have it hard
• He says CSPPA are on the right side of the argument on BLAST but have been on the wrong side of many arguments many times.
  • "If you are not willing to stand along side the weakest member of the union, with the least amount of influence, and the least amount of power, then it is not a union at all and you shouldn't pose as one." "You wanna serve a bunch of special interest do it, everyone else in esports fucking does, but do not pose as something you are not." "We love the players. I've been fighting for players rights for as long as I've been able to, but the CSPPA is not what we needed."
    • "They are not applying the pressure to the right people, they are not fighting the right battles, they are not helping their weaker members."
• He says what orgs have done by keeping or hiring coaches is bad. "When you give up on holding an appreciable standard, you've lost the scene" "Competition matters, rules matter, punishments matter, achievements matter, excellence matters" "If you start stripping that away, you have nothing" "You guys need to take that knowledge and apply it sensibly."
• "Valve has sold you all down the river, they sold everyone in the esports scene down the river, tournament organizers are selling their talent down the river. Don't hate on them for sounding tired after a 16 hour day. Don't hate on them because the hype for a matchup they've seen for the 20th time in the past 3 months, they can't be as excited or it sounds contrived. Support your guys, they're there for you, these are your people."
• "This community has got to start acting like one for the first fucking time. Just put the petty shit away, let's try and fix this fucking scene while we still have one to save."
• "You can't rely on Valve, you can't rely on ESL, you can't rely on the CSPPA, you can't rely on anyone." "Once again, it's gonna be the likes of us, the amateurs, the people who give a fuck, rolling up our sleeves and grafting." "I'm old and tired and I don't want to have to do it again. People need to pick up the torch and do it."
  • "Like Michal did, like Dudenhoeffer did. You see something wrong, fix it. You see somebody doing something wrong, call it out. If you think something could be better, let people know."
• "Vote with your wallets if you're not happy with the direction Valve goes in. If when we do get to the Major, they serve up another subpar, same old bullshit stickers and signatures package again, do not buy it."
  • "You're a powerful block and if you use it correctly we can fucking avert this disaster."
• "I'm not doing another year in this broken, bust-up fucking scene, where everyone is miserable, everyone is broke, everyone is tired, and everyone is trying to fucking rob everyone else, blind, while the fucking people who are meant to be protecting you, are just fucking enhancing it and lining their own pockets."
  • "I'm not doing it anymore and you shouldn't want to do it either."
• "I stand by every fucking thing I said. I mean it, because this game fucking matters to me, this scene fucking matters to me. I put my life into this, my adult life, and to see it in this state is fucking sad."

Note: I was technically supposed to post this earlier this week, but noticed that no one was signed up for today (plus I was super busy earlier), so I'm posting a bit late, under a throwaway account! Fair warning: I'm VERY verbose, so this will be long!
Section One: Assets and Debt
As I mentioned above, I make $56k per year as an administrator in higher education. My husband (K) just got a raise to making $155k per year. He works as a lawyer, has been in the workforce for about 12 years. I won't get into too many details but he works for a small boutique firm, not Biglaw. He also sometimes gets a yearly bonus of around $10k-20k but it's not guaranteed or anything like that. K and I have totally combined finances, so the below numbers are for both of us. I have a humanities PhD but I decided to leave academia and find an alt-ac job. My current position has good work-life balance (I never work past 5 pm), but pays terribly and my university is very badly run. I'm hoping to leave higher education all together in the future and am currently enrolled in a certificate program to try to make a career transition to instructional design.
The big elephant in the room is that my husband, K, makes a lot more money than me. When we first met, he was paying off massive amounts of student loans and making much less, and I was debt free with a lot of savings, so we both spent about the same amount. Now he makes 3x what I make and we are both debt-free, so the difference is much more noticeable. We do argue about money sometimes (more in the past), but the reality is that I have a humanities PhD and will likely never out earn him, and he knew that when I married him, lol. Because of all the labor I do around the house and in our lives to support him as he works a much more intense job, I was very clear that I believed we should split our finances equally as soon as we got married. We don't have separate accounts and we generally check in with one another whenever we are planning to spend more than $100. This system works for us for now.
I also want to address the question about parental or family support. Although I technically paid all of my own bills since I got my Bachelor's degree, my parents supported me a lot by paying for my flights home to visit at Christmas or in the summer as Xmas presents/birthday presents. My parents also paid for my undergraduate degree (and K's parents paid for his undergraduate degree as well). They also gave us about $15k to pay for our wedding.
Finally, my parents recently gave me $20k as an "early inheritance." They told me they plan to do this every year (depending on the stock market). We put this money into a brokerage. I don't consider my parents rich, as they both worked hourly jobs in health care my entire life (as a nurse and respiratory therapist - both with only associate's degrees). We never owned a new car, when we went on vacation we stayed in hostels , and shopped almost exclusively at Goodwill. But they scrimped and saved and now they have over $1 million in a retirement account. So I want to acknowledge my financial privilege in that I came from this kind of background. K's parents are similar.
Retirement Balance: $186k (combination of 401k, 403b, 457, 2 Roth IRAs, and taxable brokerage account).
Equity: None, we rent.
Savings account balance: Approximately $45k.
Checking account balance: Right now, around 8k.
Credit card debt: Right now, around $3k. But we pay it off each month with our checking account balance.
Student loan debt: $0. We finally paid off my husband’s law school loans (around $130k), last year. I didn’t have any student loans from undergrad (parents paid) and my MA & PhD were fully funded.
Section Two: Income
Income Progression: I’ve been working in my current field for 3 years. I started off making about $53k and got tiny 2% “merit increases” twice. Then in July my payroll title was changed, which triggered a required raise of about $2k. (I am dramatically underpaid).
Before my current position, I was in academia. I worked as a visiting assistant professor for one year at my alma mater (made $50k for 9 months of work) and before that I was a graduate student for 7 years. I was paid $18k-21k in stipends each year and my tuition & benefits were covered. Luckily, I lived in a very low cost of living area and this was enough for me to live on without going into debt. I got my PhD in 2017. Before I was a graduate student, I taught English in Japan for three years and made around $36k per year. In high school and college, I had random jobs that provided grocery/spending money, but I was lucky enough to have parents that paid my tuition and my rent in college.
I’m currently trying to make a career change (as you will see in my diary) and enrolled in a certificate program which runs from Autumn 2020 to Spring 2021 in order to help with that.
Main Job Monthly Take Home: $7,634. This probably seems low relative to our joint income, but we max out our 401k (K) and 403b (me). I work for the state government, which means I’m also eligible for something called a Deferred Compensation Plan (457b). This is basically the same as a 401k but you can withdraw contributions and gains from the account at any age without penalty (of course, you still have to pay taxes). I also max this out, and the limit is the same as a 401k/403b - $19.5k. Also this number is before K’s raise is accounted for. It won’t increase until his end of February paycheck.
Other deductions - I have health insurance taken out (about $80 a month for me, K’s firm covers his premiums) and taxes. WA has no state taxes, so it’s only federal taxes. I used to have to pay $50 / month for a bus pass (K's was free), but I don’t pay any longer because I’m working from home during COVID.
Final note - the sum I mentioned in the headline includes a variable bonus my husband gets. My base pay is $56k and his is $155k (as of February 1). This year he also got a bonus of $20k, which is set up a bit strangely. About $4k of this was structured as a 3% matching contribution to his 401k and the rest was taxable income. In small law firms, it’s unusual to get any 401k match so this was nice.
Side Gig Monthly Take Home: None.
Any Other Monthly Income Here: We get some interest from our savings account… like $25 a month.
Section Three: Expenses
Rent: Rent comes to approximately $2,050 total for a one-bedroom apartment. Rent itself is $1886, then we have pet rent ($25 per month), bicycle parking ($15 a month) and water / sewage / gas, which is usually $120-150 (variable cost).
Renters insurance: $157.76, paid annually. $13 a month.
Retirement contribution: In addition to the 401k, 403b, and 457, which all come out before taxes, we max out our Roth IRAs. That means $500 each per month per person (for a yearly total of $6k each). As I noted up top, we match out our 401k and 403b (19,500 each) and our 457. My employee also offers a 7.5% match. K's employee offers a 3% match but it is included in his yearly bonus so it's not guaranteed (confusing).
Savings contribution: We put $500 per month into our emergency fund. We also put about $860 a month into our “sinking fund,” which covers large and small annual or sporadic purchases such as vacations, gifts, Amazon Prime renewal, car insurance and renters insurance, etc.
Investment contribution: $875 per month into a taxable brokerage at Vanguard.
In total, we save about 47% of our gross income. We can do this because we keep our housing cost low relative to our high income, we don’t have any debt remaining, we don’t have any kids or parents who need financial support, and we’re very privileged in a lot of ways. We are hoping to FIRE within 10 years.
Debt payments: None.
Donations: We budget $100 per month for donations, which includes one-time donations as well as some reoccurring donations. My husband does pro bono work as well. I would like to increase this by quite a bit, but I still have a hard time budgeting for donations because I spent 7 years living on approximately $20k a year. To go from that to making more than 10x that amount within 3-4 years is obviously something that I am very privileged for, but it is still hard for me emotionally to comprehend at times.
Electric: ~$50-100 (billed every other month)
Wifi/Cable/Landline: An extortionate $87.12 for slow internet that only works for Zoom calls about half the time. Do I really live in one of the tech cities of the future?
Cellphone: $170 (This includes both service and paying off two new iPhones. We could have paid them off up front, but it was actually cheaper by like $50 to go on a payment plan.)
Subscriptions: BritBox ($7.70), Spotify ($16.50), HBOMax ($16.50), We Hate Movies Patreon (my favorite podcast - $8.81). My parents pay for Netflix and my sister pays for Hulu, and we all share.
Gym membership: None. K and I both run and do yoga with YouTube videos. Before the pandemic, we went to yoga classes pretty frequently in person. I’d like to do some online synchronous yoga classes but find it hard to make time.
Pet expenses: Varies, but I budget $50 per month and also include an emergency fund for my cat’s vet bills in our sinking fund. She’s 11 years old and probably asthmatic, so I know her vet bills are going to increase over time.
Car payment / insurance: We own our car outright. Insurance billed yearly is $2,097, about $174 per month.
Regular therapy: $0
Paid hobbies: Nothing regular, sporadic language classes and art supplies.
Other expenses: Right now I’m doing a certificate to hopefully help with a career change. The total cost for tuition is about $5k and we already saved it up (included in our 'sinking fund') basically through spending less during the pandemic. I’ve paid two quarters so far, and the last quarter (due in March) will be a bit more - about $2.3k.
__________
Day 1
Morning: I wake up at 5:30 am. Ever since the pandemic, my sleep schedule has been shot. At first, I was so happy not to have to leave the house at 7:15 for my 45 minute bus commute and I slept in a lot. But the stress (and maybe getting old?) has made me an early riser, no matter how much I try to sleep in. I do value my early mornings with just me, my cat, and my coffee, though.
I start work at 8 am and begin by triaging my emails. I have a bunch of deadlines this week, so it’s busier than usual. My job tends to be very seasonal, and sometimes I have a ton of work and sometimes I have none and can work on other longer-term projects. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and place a Whole Foods delivery order for the following day at 10:30 am. We made a meal plan and put everything in the cart the day before ($117.36, including tip).
Afternoon: I have my lunch break from noon to 1 pm. It doesn’t really matter when I take my lunch break, since I’m salaried, but the others in my office are hourly so in the before times we used to always close our office during the same time. I have a piece of leftover delivery pizza and some spinach risotto that I made a few days earlier. I also have half a brownie – the last one from a batch I made a few days ago (K gets the other half). He also has leftovers for lunch.
I should say at this point that both K and I are lucky enough to have been working almost entirely from home since early March. An area near Seattle was one of the first places to get hit by COVID-19, and my state and both of our employers have been taking it very seriously ever since. Working from home hasn’t always been easy since we live in a 600-square foot apartment. Also, there is a three-story townhouse being built directly next door to us and I can hear the pounding in my dreams at this point.
Around 2 pm, I go for a 2-mile run. I feel like some money diarists tend to toss off things like “oh, I went for an easy 7 mile run,” at the drop of a hat, so I want to be clear – running for 2 miles isn’t easy for me; it’s exhausting, annoying, sweaty, and generally gross. Also I am very slow. But it has kept me sane during quarantine.
Meanwhile, my husband goes to our local pet store to get an enzymatic cleaner (our cat peed in one of our suitcases… I think it’s probably a lost cause, but it was basically brand new, so worth a try) and special weight-loss cat food. Our cat is an 11-year-old rescue from the Humane Society and she is a chonky girl. We had to sign a waiver when we adopted her, saying that we understood that she was very overweight, lol. Our vet recommended a special diet food, rather than just restricting her intake as we have been doing, so we will give it a try ($78). My husband also stops buy our local wine store and picks up two bottles. We’ve been doing a dry January, so this will be our first drink for a while ($27.53).
I have a phone interview scheduled for 4 pm – just a preliminary interview with an internal recruiter. It’s the first ‘corporate’ job interview I’ve ever had, since I’ve been in academia my entire life. I’m trying to make a pivot into instructional design / training and development. I’m just excited to get an interview. It seems to go pretty well, but who knows. They tell me they will probably get back to me by the end of this week.
Evening: My husband whips up a random meal of fridge remnants – pesto pasta with sausage and a fridge salad with feta and bell peppers. It’s pretty tasty with a little Sauvignon Blanc. During dinner, we play a card game we call gin rummy, although it bears no resemblance to the actual game. After dinner, I make a chocolate cake with orange buttercream frosting and we watch Cobra Kai.
Daily total: $222.89
Day 2
Morning: Up early again, a piece of toast for breakfast (very exciting). We’re out of eggs until our Whole Foods order arrives. I’m working on creating some tedious but necessary spreadsheets this morning.
Noon: Our Whole Foods order arrives around noon. Excitement! They’ve given us a half-rotten bag of romaine lettuce and substituted pecans for hazelnuts. I should probably just double mask and go to Trader Joe’s myself (our regular spot, only a 5-minute walk from my apartment). I’m just getting anxious about these new variants.
I have leftover meatloaf and spinach risotto again for lunch. Lots of meetings and more organizing spreadsheets in the afternoon. Around 3 pm, I go for my daily ritual - a 20-minute walk around my neighborhood. It’s still raining slightly but I need to get out. Halfway through the walk, I get an email from my apartment manager telling me the apartment will no longer accept debit card payments, direct deposit, or credit card payments for paying rent. In other words, only checks or money orders (?!). Ugh. Our lease is up in 4 months and we will not be renewing our lease. Our last apartment manager was a gambling addict who may have been stealing people’s identities, but by God, he kept things working. Ever since they fired him, this place has been going downhill.
Evening: I check my bank statements to update my budget spreadsheet and realize that I have been billed the wrong amount of rent. They actually charged me less than they should have. I don’t trust my apartment manager not to start charging me a late fee or something for this, so I call them up. They are baffled by how to fix this, which you would think would be the one thing you would want to get right, if you’re renting out apartments.
K cooks dinner – steak with a Roquefort sauce and glazed brussels sprouts. It’s from a French cookbook we recently bought and it is delicious. I work on classwork for my certificate program while he cooks. After dinner, I do the dishes and buy the 13th season of RuPaul’s Drag Race. I watch the first episode – lots of shocking twists and turns! I’m planning to watch the rest of the episodes together with my younger sister, M ($22.01).
Daily total: $22.01
Day 3
Morning: K has an 8 am dentist appointment, so he takes off early. He already paid for the work last month, so there’s no charge. I have a piece of toast for breakfast and get to work checking my emails. It’s 8:20 am and the construction crew building a townhouse next door is blasting mariachi music. I’m glad someone is having fun. At least the sun is coming out.
Someone at work has made a critical error, but it wasn’t me, thank God. I was the one who found out about it, but it’s still going to cause a big old headache for me. I’m ready to be done with this job. K and I go for a run so that I can exhaust myself enough to no longer be furious about said careless error.
Noon: I have leftover spinach risotto and meatloaf again – exciting. I’m busy at work but frankly, not a lot going on other than that. Still no word about fixing my rent payments. I’m not really willing to pursue this any further at this point.
Evening: I start making chili (Turkey Chili from the NY Times) and cornbread (from my new cookbook, Jubilee). K is doing some work on our investments when he announces that, somehow, a transfer was scheduled from our checking account to our savings account of $55k (?!) We obviously don’t have $55k in our checking account, so we start frantically trying to figure out what’s going on. Numerous phone calls later, we still don’t know if that was a hack, if my husband somehow mistakenly scheduled the transfer himself, or if the bank messed it up. Either way, it doesn’t seem like any harm was done since the bank with our checking account just declined the transaction. But it seems really strange and worrisome. We get to work changing the passwords on all of our accounts, just in case it was some kind of hack.
After dinner (and chocolate cake), I have a Zoom happy hour with a local friend. We occasionally see each other outside but it’s nice to have a longer chat from the comfort of our living rooms. We both love murder mysteries, so we signed up for a service where a company sends us letters with clues and we try to solve the mystery together. It’s a fun way to stay connected and look forward to something during the pandemic. The service costs about $15 per month, but I paid for it in lump sum for 3 months, so it’s not included in my budget above. I drink some wine and we vent about work (we work at the same place) before getting started on the puzzle.
Daily total: $0
Day 4
Morning: I sleep in a bit, which is nice. Get up around 7 am. My parents are both getting their 2nd vaccine today – they’re both in their 70s and I am so relieved. I send my mom a “congratulations on being vaccinated!” text and we chat for a bit. I have leftover cornbread with honey and butter for breakfast – soooo good.
Work is not particularly exciting today, but someone sends me a last-minute request for something that does not need to be so urgent. I feel annoyed. Still no word from the interviewers on Monday, and I’m beginning to suspect I wasn’t selected to move forward. Too bad. K pays for a Wordpress website for the year (it’s a work-related website, but sadly his work doesn’t reimburse him). It costs $92.48.
Noon: The mariachi music is particularly loud today. I stand out on my balcony in the sun for a while and watch the workers. It’s been interesting seeing a house go up next door in real time, especially since I’m at home all the time. The workers are balancing on the top of the third story wall without, as far as I can see, anything like a safety line. It seems unsafe, but I presume they know what they’re doing.
We booked a cabin for the upcoming weekend in the Hood Canal region of Washington to do some hiking and birdwatching. I want to be as safe as possible and not go to any grocery stores or risk spreading COVID in any way while I’m there, so I place another grocery order with Whole Foods just for some special treats for the weekend. The cabin has a small kitchen and a grill, so we’re planning to make a fancy steak salad on Saturday. I order chips and hummus, some fancy cheese and meats, Tate’s cookies (I’ve heard a lot of good things about these), a baguette, and the ingredients for the steak salad. I also order a few staples I forgot in our last order, like sweet potatoes, more coffee, and half and half. It comes to $87.41, including tip, but that does include like $30 worth of steak. For some reason, I can’t order a small amount of steak online, so I’m planning to freeze half of it for later. (I include this purchase in our vacation fund budget, rather than under our regular grocery budget).
Around 2 pm, K makes a quick trip to our local wine store to buy an Oregon pinot noir and some port to enjoy at the cabin ($59.45). This store has an outdoor walk-up counter where you can tell the owner what you’re looking for, and he brings you some options (the store is way too small to allow customers to enter during Covid). It’s fun to chat with another human being, even briefly.
Evening: After work, we spend a little time rebalancing our investing and retirement accounts. We decide to put more money into bonds and a little bit into REIT’s as a hedge against a potential crash or recession in the future. Then I start making dinner – Broken Eggs (Huevas Rotas) from the NY Times cooking site. You basically cook the potatoes in a skillet in water, spices, and olive oil, and then sauté them to crisp them up once the water evaporates. Then you add onion, lots of garlic, and finally some eggs. It is delicious. I eat it with leftover cornbread while watching RuPaul’s Drag Race season 13 with my sister – we watch the first two episodes. It’s full of twists and turns. A note about this – we have an elaborate procedure for watching shows together developed during quarantine whereby we start the show at the same with an earbud in one ear, while FaceTiming. I also have chocolate cake, of course.
Later, I get an email that I’ve signed up for HBO on Amazon Prime. I definitely have not. I text my mom, who shares my account, and she tells me she signed up by mistake. I cancel right away and luckily they won’t charge us for it.
Meanwhile, K is doing an online Japanese language class over Zoom. He’s been interested in learning ever since we went to Japan last January. I lived in Japan for 3 years so I was able to take us around to a lot of more obscure places and he really enjoyed the trip – it was a blast.
K starts a YouTube yoga class (from Do Yoga With Me – my favorite channel) and I join him for part of it before bed around 10 pm.
Daily total: $239.34
Day 5
Morning: I get up around 7 am and we go for a run first thing. I prefer running early in the morning because there are fewer people to avoid during COVID. We do a different route today – it’s longer (3 miles) but has fewer hills. It’s a slog, as always, but I feel good when I get back right around 8 am. I jump straight onto my computer to start checking work emails and my husband makes us avocado and egg toast for breakfast - it is absolutely delicious.
We talk about how our bathroom smells distinctly mildewy (yay for being a grown-up because I guess this is what we talk about now) and we buy two big buckets of DampRid on Amazon ($26.60). I’ve found this to be a necessity in Seattle. Mid-morning, I take a break from work and start packing for our trip to the cabin.
Noon: I have leftover potatoes and cornbread for lunch, and my husband has the leftover chili. We finish getting ready to leave and head out right after lunch, taking a half day. The only problem is that I have attend a meeting at 3:30 pm, so we head out hoping to get there in time. Our cabin is near Quilcene in the Hood Canal region of Washington, about a 2 hour drive or a 2 hour ferry ride + drive. We are initially planning to take the ferry both ways, but realize that we mistimed the ferry departure, so we drive the whole way instead. Luckily, there’s little traffic mid-day, and we arrive at our Airbnb around 3:00 pm.
The Airbnb is beautiful! It’s a small cabin handmade by the owner, whose house is next door. It’s very rural, with a beautiful view. It’s tiny, but has a little kitchen and a waterfall-style shower with river rocks on the floor. It’s a great place to get away for a short time. Luckily, it also has good reception and I’m able to sit in on my meeting with no problems. My husband also does a little work, and then at 5 pm we’re free!
In our planning, we decided to get takeout on Friday night, since the little kitchen isn’t designed for any serious cooking. We call ahead to a local restaurant to order burgers (one of only 2 restaurants in the whole town). It’s around 5:30 pm and the place is deserted. It’s a microbrewery, but they tell us they haven’t been making beer since COVID-19 hit. None of the workers are wearing masks when I walk in, but they put them on when they see I’m wearing one. I pick up our order - a few bottled beers and burgers and fries ($49.52 including tip).
Back at our Airbnb, we watch Big Trouble in Little China and enjoy our very messy, but delicious, burgers (it costs $4.39 to rent). The movie is very campy but fun. I love silly action movies, as you will see with my other viewing choices. We wrap up the night in a very exciting fashion, eating chocolate cake and watching old episodes of the original Star Trek.
Daily total: $80.51
Day 6
Morning & noon: When we wake up around 8 am, the weather is looking thankfully clear and even sunny! We were expecting rain, so we’re really glad. We decide to go hiking today, and we head out before even having breakfast, with snacks and lunches packed. Our first destination is a hike called Mt. Zion, but unfortunately, we run into enough snow 2 miles before the trailhead that we decide to turn back. We don’t have any traction for our Subaru and don’t want to risk getting stuck on a very narrow mountain road. Instead, we drive another hour or so to the Lena Lake trailhead, a very popular and less strenuous trail. It’s about 7.5 miles roundtrip with 1200 feet of elevation gain.
By this time, it’s around 11:30, but luckily there is still parking. It’s a great hike up, and we run into relatively few people. We always mask up whenever we pass anyone, as does about 50% of the people we meet. The others… not so much. Around a mile from the lake, we start to run into snow. It’s turned into a beautiful sunny day, and I’m loving seeing all this snow! It’s a bit slippery, but not too bad. We make it to the lake mid-day, and it’s super jammed – there’s only a small viewpoint accessible, so everyone is crowded in there. I feel a bit uneasy with all the unmasked people, but we manage to find a spot away from the crowd and sit down to eat our lunch of apples, chips, and energy bars. There are a ton of robber jays there (Canada Jays) which try to eat our chips. It is fun watching them, but I’m annoyed to see some kids feeding them – it’ll just make them that much more aggressive. Bad trail manners.
On our way back down, we get stuck behind a group of 5 unmasked adults, who refuse to cede the narrow trail to faster hikers. I’m a slow hiker myself, so, to be clear, I’m not angry at slower walkers being on the trail but have some self-awareness and let people pass! especially if you’re going to go hiking in a big group during a pandemic! We finally get back down and head back to our Airbnb.
Evening: Back home, we explore some of the trails our Airbnb host has set up around his extensive property, and then relax on the deck. The sun is breaking through the clouds and it feels wonderful to sit out in nature and feel the sun on my back. We open up a bottle of wine and have a few pre-dinner snacks (more chips and hummus). For this night, we brought ingredients to make a steak salad. Our Airbnb host has kindly set up a charcoal grill for us, so we grilled the steak and toast some bread on the side.
We eat dinner while watching the truly terrible Jean Claude Van Damme movie Bloodsport and finish up the very last of my chocolate cake. It’s amazing that anyone ever let Van Damme act… or should I say ‘act.’ I also have a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie or two, accompanied by a little port. My husband and I are truly very old people at heart, so we finish up the night watching a few episodes of Columbo.
Daily total: $0
Day 7
Morning: Unfortunately, K had insomnia last night, so he sleeps in pretty late. I drink coffee in bed and enjoy looking at the view out our big windows. Once he’s up, we get packed up and write a thank you note for our host. It was a great stay.
One of my big hobbies is birding and K enjoys wildlife photography, so we go out to look for some lifers! (The first time you see a new species of bird). Did I mention we are very old people in (relatively) young bodies? We first go to Dosewallips State Park and see some bald eagles, great blue herons, lots of various ducks, and a flock of Canada Geese, which, strangely, includes a domesticated gray goose. He’s much larger than the Canada Geese and seems to be watching over them. It’s kind of cute. Unfortunately, a lot of the birds are too far from shore to be seen clearly.
Our next stop is Point No Point (I love all the sad & disappointed names that early Westerner explorers gave places in the Washington/Oregon coast), a popular birding spot. We see a ton of birds here, and I can understand why it’s so well-known - Red-Breasted Mergansers, Western Grebes, Common Goldeneyes, Pacific Loons, and a few others I can’t identify yet. Most excitingly though, we see a whole pile of otters! They’re lounging around together on a rock just offshore and a ton of people are watching. We watch as they all slip off the rock and go hunting in the shore. It’s my first otter sighting in the wild, and it’s so cool! We also see some seals and possibly a sea lion. It’s a great spot for wildlife. We eat some snacks (hummus, chips, some sliced meat & cheese) before we head out.
I really want to come back to this area another time and explore further, but K has decided that we need to get back home in time for the Big Game. We take the 3:00 pm ferry back to Seattle ($16.40) and get home around 3:45 pm. I veg out at home while my husband watches football. He’s a Patriots fan but he still loves Tom Brady (??) so he’s happy to see Florida win. I don’t understand sports team loyalties at all, but whatever, I’m glad he’s happy. We order from a new Indian place called Spice Box and get vindaloo, roganjosh, and vegetables pakora – so tasty ($53.96). Happily, there’s enough left over for lunch the next day, since I have no plans for what we will eat yet!
I’m really dreading work the next day, as I know that it will be obnoxious. I want to get out of my job so badly, but it doesn’t look like I’m going on to the next interview stage for the job I interviewed no back on Monday. I’m feeling kind of down about it. I try to stay positive and promise that I’ll apply for at least 2-3 new jobs next week. I bake up some frozen cookie dough I had in the freezer and feel sorry for myself. We end the night by watching another episode of Columbo.
Daily total: 70.36
Food + Drink: $395.23
Fun / Entertainment: $26.40
Home + Health: $26.60
Clothes + Beauty: $0
Transport: $16.40
Other: $170.48
Grand Total: $635.11
I think this week was pretty normal for us. Obviously we spent a bit more than usual due to the weekend cabin trip, but nothing outrageous. Our largest consumer spending category is definitely food and drink – we live in a very busy area of Seattle with tons of restaurants and bars so believe it or not, we actually used to spend even more on eating out. We still try to support our local places by getting takeout or delivery during the pandemic and even occasionally getting a few drinks outside. I spent more than usual on groceries due to stocking up for the weekend away.

TLDR in vid form - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqX_8dPXtM
Preface
Hey everyone! Today I'm going to tell you the story of someone rather infamous in the EVE online community before his ban a few years ago. I personally played EVE for years before winning the game and haven’t been back since, but the legend of Erotica 1 has stayed with me all of that time. Erotica 1 was known throughout the game as the most prolific isk-doubler of his time. If you’re unfamiliar with EVE, isk is just money. Isk-doublers would stay docked in popular trade centers with an offer of doubling any amount of money sent to them. Now, if you have half a brain, you would realize this is an obvious scam. However, there are quite a few players of EVE online who need to learn the hard way and will giddily send their money to Erotica 1 and many other scammers like him. These scammers would frequently employ the tactic of actually doubling your money the first few times until you sent them an amount they were pleased with. Now, this is all within the game rules, as scamming is perfectly allowed and the general consensus surrounding the victims is that they should have been smarter and now ya’ know better.
The Bonus Room
With all that explained, let’s get into what made Erotica 1 infamous throughout New Eden. Located normally in Jita, Erotica 1 would spam the chat looking for marks to scam. When he found a good victim, he would use his charisma to convince the person to transfer all of their assets to him. After he got everything they owned, he would promise to only double it if the mark made it through what he called the bonus round. Now, this isn’t too special. Many isk-doublers would make themselves stand out by creating small but usually difficult games to actually win, so that people would say they were legit in chat. This also gave them an out when people called them a scammer, they could just claim that the person lost their game fairly. Erotica would seek out the most gullible or innocent of the eve community before selecting them for the bonus round, others would simply just walk away once they realized it was a scam before they got in too deep. Those selected for the bonus room would be instructed to send everything in the game they had to Erotica 1 and his brokers, this included money, ships, materials, PI goods, any holdings they had in EVE gambling sites. Now, you’re probably thinking why on earth would anyone do this? Erotica would promise bonus round participants that he would quintuple their net worth. For many greedy players, this was too much to pass up. There was also plenty of innocent, naive or just plain stupid players who fell into this trap. After Erotica was satisfied that he had control of all of their assets, the player would proceed to part 2 of the bonus room. This part often varied from player to player, but was consistently horrible for the scamee. Players would be prodded into reading hours of boring text, singing song after song over voice chat while Erotica and his friends egged them on, promising to pay out after just a few more songs.
Jester's Blog
Eve blogger Jester made a long post about the horrors of Erotica 1 and how he tormented a player. The victim in Jester’s post had a speech impediment, when Erotica and his fellow interrogators noticed it they jumped on him for it. Making him repeat a word he could not pronounce again and again. Then they decided he would need to read the word and its definition over and over. Following this, they forced him to read the entire Russian history entry of wikipedia all while mocking his speech impediment. After about an hour and a half of reading, Erotica had decided it was time for this player to move to phase 3 of the bonus room. Like many others, the contestant is forced to sing song after song while he is mocked by interrogator after interrogator, each popping in after the other is forced to mute themselves due to their laughter. After about 3 hours of the bonus room, the contestant snaps. He begins screaming, cursing and shouting at the interrogators who all burst into laughter. He has completely lost it at this point, the scamees wife can be heard trying to calm him down before she herself devolves into a panic attack at her husband's state. All the while Erotica and his gang are in hysterics at the situation, they have stolen everything from this man and now have pushed him into a manic state of mind. Eventually, they disconnect, taking everything the player owned. Erotica would then publish the recording of this event online, humiliating the player further. When people talk about the sociopaths or truly fucked up people that play EVE online, you need look no further than Erotica 1. Jester’s post would make major waves, the story would be picked up by Massively.com, Eurogamer, EveNews 24 and discussed wildly across the EVE subreddit. Jester, at the time, was also a member of the CSM which is a group of players selected to be in close contact with game developer CCP, so it isn’t a stretch to think that he likely brought this to their attention as well. Erotica had made waves before, when he used to force players to be repeatedly killed in their alpha pod, until they lost all of their skill points. For non-EVE players, this means Erotica would force the player to be killed in a state in which they lost skills or levels, over and over again, wiping out possibly years of progress that they could not just get back, all the while dangling all of their assets in front of them.
The playerbase chooses sides
When the recording and blog post dropped, the community split into two factions. Those pro and anti Erotica 1. Many players were appalled by his actions while others found it hilarious, bombarding him with both support and hate mail. The New Order or CODE, a group of hi-sec griefers being one of Erotica’s staunchest supporters. Though this is not surprising, Erotica’s scamming had made him one of the richest players in EVE and he had funnelled billions of his isk into supporting the CODE. Erotica, once a long time member of the Goonswarm or CFC as they were known at the time, was recently kicked before the recording due to creepy behavior and crossing the line one too many times so he found no support in his old allies. In the end, after thousands of posts for and against Erotica 1, CCP chose to permanently ban him from the game. After around 100 or so bonus rounds, years of scamming and attention whoring, EVE’s most infamous scammer was finally brought down. Erotica would make a long post on the eve subreddit post regarding his ban, promising to essentially whine to every gaming media site he could find about his unfair treatment and how he was simply trying to protect the sandbox, but in the end, his ban stood.
EVE prides itself on being a tough, roguish game where you are expected to just get up and dust yourself off after even the worst disasters so it is understandable that some players would side with Erotica in seeing those who fell for his scams as foolish or greedy.
However, Erotica 1 just took it too far. There are thousands of scammers within EVE online who are able to practice their craft without even so much as a warning from CCP. It’s an accepted and beloved part of the game, At the end of the day, you need to think about the other, real life person on the other side of the game. Scam them and move on, don’t push them and torment them for a few laughs because you “outsmarted” them. Honestly, I’m glad he’s gone, the game is certainly better for it.
This has been the tale of Erotica 1, EVE onlines most infamous scammer and one who remains banned to this day. What do you think about it? Does he deserve his ban? Did those who participated in the bonus room deserve it for being so gullible?
https://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html - The original blogpost that caused all the drama

TLDR in vid form - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqX_8dPXtM
Preface
Hey everyone! Today I'm going to tell you the story of someone rather infamous in the EVE online community before his ban a few years ago. I personally played EVE for years before winning the game and haven’t been back since, but the legend of Erotica 1 has stayed with me all of that time. Erotica 1 was known throughout the game as the most prolific isk-doubler of his time. If you’re unfamiliar with EVE, isk is just money. Isk-doublers would stay docked in popular trade centers with an offer of doubling any amount of money sent to them. Now, if you have half a brain, you would realize this is an obvious scam. However, there are quite a few players of EVE online who need to learn the hard way and will giddily send their money to Erotica 1 and many other scammers like him. These scammers would frequently employ the tactic of actually doubling your money the first few times until you sent them an amount they were pleased with. Now, this is all within the game rules, as scamming is perfectly allowed and the general consensus surrounding the victims is that they should have been smarter and now ya’ know better.
The Bonus Room
With all that explained, let’s get into what made Erotica 1 infamous throughout New Eden. Located normally in Jita, Erotica 1 would spam the chat looking for marks to scam. When he found a good victim, he would use his charisma to convince the person to transfer all of their assets to him. After he got everything they owned, he would promise to only double it if the mark made it through what he called the bonus round. Now, this isn’t too special. Many isk-doublers would make themselves stand out by creating small but usually difficult games to actually win, so that people would say they were legit in chat. This also gave them an out when people called them a scammer, they could just claim that the person lost their game fairly. Erotica would seek out the most gullible or innocent of the eve community before selecting them for the bonus round, others would simply just walk away once they realized it was a scam before they got in too deep. Those selected for the bonus room would be instructed to send everything in the game they had to Erotica 1 and his brokers, this included money, ships, materials, PI goods, any holdings they had in EVE gambling sites. Now, you’re probably thinking why on earth would anyone do this? Erotica would promise bonus round participants that he would quintuple their net worth. For many greedy players, this was too much to pass up. There was also plenty of innocent, naive or just plain stupid players who fell into this trap. After Erotica was satisfied that he had control of all of their assets, the player would proceed to part 2 of the bonus room. This part often varied from player to player, but was consistently horrible for the scamee. Players would be prodded into reading hours of boring text, singing song after song over voice chat while Erotica and his friends egged them on, promising to pay out after just a few more songs.
Jester's Blog
Eve blogger Jester made a long post about the horrors of Erotica 1 and how he tormented a player. The victim in Jester’s post had a speech impediment, when Erotica and his fellow interrogators noticed it they jumped on him for it. Making him repeat a word he could not pronounce again and again. Then they decided he would need to read the word and its definition over and over. Following this, they forced him to read the entire Russian history entry of wikipedia all while mocking his speech impediment. After about an hour and a half of reading, Erotica had decided it was time for this player to move to phase 3 of the bonus room. Like many others, the contestant is forced to sing song after song while he is mocked by interrogator after interrogator, each popping in after the other is forced to mute themselves due to their laughter. After about 3 hours of the bonus room, the contestant snaps. He begins screaming, cursing and shouting at the interrogators who all burst into laughter. He has completely lost it at this point, the scamees wife can be heard trying to calm him down before she herself devolves into a panic attack at her husband's state. All the while Erotica and his gang are in hysterics at the situation, they have stolen everything from this man and now have pushed him into a manic state of mind. Eventually, they disconnect, taking everything the player owned. Erotica would then publish the recording of this event online, humiliating the player further. When people talk about the sociopaths or truly fucked up people that play EVE online, you need look no further than Erotica 1. Jester’s post would make major waves, the story would be picked up by Massively.com, Eurogamer, EveNews 24 and discussed wildly across the EVE subreddit. Jester, at the time, was also a member of the CSM which is a group of players selected to be in close contact with game developer CCP, so it isn’t a stretch to think that he likely brought this to their attention as well. Erotica had made waves before, when he used to force players to be repeatedly killed in their alpha pod, until they lost all of their skill points. For non-EVE players, this means Erotica would force the player to be killed in a state in which they lost skills or levels, over and over again, wiping out possibly years of progress that they could not just get back, all the while dangling all of their assets in front of them.
The playerbase chooses sides
When the recording and blog post dropped, the community split into two factions. Those pro and anti Erotica 1. Many players were appalled by his actions while others found it hilarious, bombarding him with both support and hate mail. The New Order or CODE, a group of hi-sec griefers being one of Erotica’s staunchest supporters. Though this is not surprising, Erotica’s scamming had made him one of the richest players in EVE and he had funnelled billions of his isk into supporting the CODE. Erotica, once a long time member of the Goonswarm or CFC as they were known at the time, was recently kicked before the recording due to creepy behavior and crossing the line one too many times so he found no support in his old allies. In the end, after thousands of posts for and against Erotica 1, CCP chose to permanently ban him from the game. After around 100 or so bonus rounds, years of scamming and attention whoring, EVE’s most infamous scammer was finally brought down. Erotica would make a long post on the eve subreddit post regarding his ban, promising to essentially whine to every gaming media site he could find about his unfair treatment and how he was simply trying to protect the sandbox, but in the end, his ban stood.
EVE prides itself on being a tough, roguish game where you are expected to just get up and dust yourself off after even the worst disasters so it is understandable that some players would side with Erotica in seeing those who fell for his scams as foolish or greedy.
However, Erotica 1 just took it too far. There are thousands of scammers within EVE online who are able to practice their craft without even so much as a warning from CCP. It’s an accepted and beloved part of the game, At the end of the day, you need to think about the other, real life person on the other side of the game. Scam them and move on, don’t push them and torment them for a few laughs because you “outsmarted” them. Honestly, I’m glad he’s gone, the game is certainly better for it.
This has been the tale of Erotica 1, EVE onlines most infamous scammer and one who remains banned to this day. What do you think about it? Does he deserve his ban? Did those who participated in the bonus room deserve it for being so gullible?
https://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html - The original blogpost that caused all the drama

EDIT - one week after i posted this, Britain's most successful hedge fund manager Michael Platt has taken a 6.5% stake
tl;dr
At-NAV new SPAC with world-leading expertise in online gambling. Worth a bet on potential to be next DKNG on the hype train
   
+++++++
Hi all - have had a lot of great tips from this sub. Hopefully this pays some of you back. I have been watching and researching this since 23 December when it first filed S1, awaiting the units to be listed - they are available today trading as ADERU
Positions - 500 units @ 10.42 to start. Will be monitoring and building position below $15, especially if attention starts to build ahead of units and warrants splitting and shares coming available to Robinhood.
(My other SPAC positions are OPEN, IPO-E-F, PSTH, FUSE, PIPP, ACTC, CCIV and DMYD, 100 to 1000 shares each mostly around NAV and numerous warrants and options around these.)
As ever, this is not investment advice and do your own research
+++++++
   
26 Capital Acquisition Corp or ADER
is a 240m SPAC with usual terms - 10$ units, 1/2 warrants. Seeking a merger in "gaming and gaming technology, branded consumer, lodging and entertainment, and Internet commerce sectors".
I think this is highly worth a play on the online gambling hype if you can get in at near NAV, based entirely on the management which is unbeatable in its knowledge of the gambling industry
   
CEO Jason Ader
has held director level positions at Las Vegas Sands Corp. ($42bn one of biggest casino groups in world), IGT (£3.72bn multinational gambling firm specialised in software and slot machines) and Playtech (£1.4bn multinational gambling software firm)
Before starting his own fund in 2013 he was regularly ranked Wall Street's top analyst on the gambling and leisure sector
His fund, Spring Owl Capital, is a small activist fund focused on gambling and leisure. They are probably most famous for ousting the CEO of Viacom in 2016 and a crusade against Yahoo CEO Marissa Meyer in 2015.
Ader knows the gambling - and online gambling - industry inside out. He drove bWin to a £1.1bn takeover by gambling giant GVC (now Entain) in 2016, and has been driving similar change and demands for improvement at board level at Playtech
The fund mostly manages money for a select group of wealthy families, which could be a positive sign for the SPAC (although I don't know how much skin in the SPAC the fund has, if any)
Here is a video of Ader from November talking about how he's excited about SPACs. He talks about how he has been advising certain States about legalising sports betting and how to maximise value and liquidity by linking up with European companies in the space (Playtech e.g.??).
Ader is extremely bullish on US legalising online casino and more sports betting options, accelerated by need for revenue because of pandemic
   
Rafi Ashkenazi
One of the most highly respected names in the online gambling world, including COO and CEO positions at major online gambling firms such as Playtech and Stars Group (a world leader in online poker and casino). At Stars he led the $4.7bn takeover of Sky Betting to create the world's largest publicly listed online betting firm in 2018. Most recently he led the £10bn merger between Flutter (biggest gambling company in world by revenue, market cap £26bn), and Stars Group (Ader also involved). Also has connections into the booming Israel tech space which is interesting
   
Joseph Kaminkow
Special Advisor to the Chief Product Officer at Aristocrat, a leading gambling software provider and games publisher, previously Vice President of Game Design at Zynga Inc. This guy is a former video game / pinball designer who is credited with revolutionising the slots industry after moving into gambling software from video games in 1999. Regarded as a "legend" and "hall of famer" in this niche. At Zynga he designed so-called 'social casino games' which don't involve real-money gambling but are otherwise basically gambling apps (revenue from microtransactions etc). 130 patents on gambling/gaming design inventions
   
Greg Lyss
This is a very interesting but extremely low profile person. He was Bill Ackman a.k.a SPACman's right hand man at Gotham Capital. Ackman respected him so much that when Ackman set up a personal hedge fund to invest the Ackman family's money, he put Lyss in charge of it. To repeat - Bill Ackman thinks this guy is such a good investor and trustworthy that he put him in charge of investing his family's money. Don't know anything more about him, but I like this association with Ackman, which suggests to me some integrity around management of this SPAC, especially as the gambling world can be very murky.
The other member of the team is the CFO of SpringOwl with 20+ years' hedge fund experience and not notable (although clearly competent)
   
Thesis / potential targets
Based on the above experience and many public comments by Ader over the past year, I would be very surprised if ADER is not looking to merge with an online gambling technology provider / existing online betting website / social casino app / possibly a supporting technology provider
They are activist inventors, and specifically say in the IPO prospectus that they could look for businesses that can benefit from turnaround or are not being run well. I speculate that their deep knowledge of the European / global online gambling industry means they have a target in mind that they think would benefit from their expertise and US liberalisation of gambling legislation.
   
1) Ader believes the listing of UK-listed gambling companies in US is immediately big in terms of market cap because of the premium on online gambling stocks in US. He has pitched DraftKings to takeover Playtech and called on Playtech to spin off non-core business. This makes me wonder if he would spin off some element of Playtech to list in US to cash in on gambling hype.
This might be Finalto.com / TradeTech which is an online financial platform owned by Playtech. Playtech has been trying to sell this for 200 - 240m since August so it fits. This company provides liquidity and trading to brokerages and runs markets.com a trading site. I wouldn't be that excited although apparently the business has been booming during COVID and there could be a decent pop just on fintech hype.
   
2) This could be a 'picks and shovel' type data/B2B betting software play a la DMYD, or something like e.g. Israel based CRM software Optimove which works with some of biggest online gambling cos and has links to Ashkenazi. This would be interesting but probably not a huge pop
   
3) Possibly - given Ader's links to Sands - an online gambling tie-up with one of the big Vegas casinos who are desperate to get into the online betting space (see MGM's attempt to buy Entain for $8bn last week). Interestingly, Sands' owner Sheldon Adelson, previously a major opponent of online betting, has just died. Ader predicted a few months ago that Sands would be moving in this direction.

“There’s no stopping online gaming,” Ader said [before Adelson's death]. “(Las Vegas Sands’) initiatives to stop online gaming, at this stage, are largely historic. There hasn’t been a lot of spending recently to do that, especially post-pandemic.”
“I think the company will see the value created by DraftKings and FanDuel and Penn (National) Gaming and others. They’re not foolish,” Ader added. source

   
4) Ader is very confident that Macau will legalise online gambling in next year or two. Sands is big in Macau, the biggest gambling market in the world. A SaaS-type product positioned to capitalise on Asian gambling would be MASSIVE - at present however, China's attitude to gambling and local regulations mean this is unlikely
   
5) I also wonder if they might try to take legitimate one of the offshore bookmakers with big customer databases and brand recognition but which have been grey-area/illegal under US gaming legislation. For example, Five Dimes recently announced a settlement with the FBI to attempt to transition into newly legalised US markets. This might have the most hype potential
   
Potential upside
This is entirely a play on management experience and the meme factor / hype around online gambling in the US. I think if they pick a good target - which given their experience and connections seems likely - and get the right publicity and attention from retail investors looking for the next DKNG this could easily 3x and maybe 5-6x if on DKNG-type hype levels.
There is currently little spotlight on this and it is a good time to get in at NAV
   
Potential Downside

• Ader has been vocal that he thinks US online betting is overvalued and in a bubble - why is he starting his own SPAC in the space then? Does he just want to cash in while the hype is at all-time high or does he have a legitimate business goal?
  
• If he just wants to dump a part of Playtech which he does not like onto retail investors, this is a bad deal.
  
• Other targets could be e.g. hotel industry or other leisure sector which would be zero sexiness to retail. Given Ashkenazi and Kaminkow's background this seems unlikely though
  
• Usual SPAC caveats apply about potential difficulty finding a target, locking up your money for unspecified period of time, and the fact I may have completely misread the potential and my above thesis might be totally wrong
  

Hopefully a post like this can be stickied since a lot of people are posting the same questions. If you are new or just getting back into collecting basketball cards then please read.
For the New Collector
How do I start? Collect what you like. What do you enjoy the most? A player or a team? That should guide your collection. Then figure out how you want to get your cards; either buying boxes or buying singles. Buying boxes are always a gamble as you don't know what you are gonna get. Buying singles from eBay or comc are typical ways to go about this.
Boxes are so expensive, what gives? Currently, we are in a bull market for cards in general but especially with basketball. The demand for them has increased exponentially. A lot of previous collectors, when they were younger have come back to the hobby. Also, influencers like Gary Vee have touted that basketball cards can be assets, so you have wealthy people looking to invest getting into the hobby as well. Hobby boxes of Prizm used to be $60-100 when they initially came out but now 2019 Prizm are $800. Group Breakers are also pushing this.
I have the money and I want to buy boxes, which box? (For this discussion, I'm only focused on hobby boxes) NBA boxes come in tiers: Low Class (I don't mean this in a bad way...just that these are usually the cheapest in terms of pricing) NBA Hoops (usually the first release of the season) Panini Panini Complete Donruss
Middle Class (just like in real life, middle class is slowly becoming high class in terms of affordability especially for Prizm,Optics,Mosaics) Certified NBA Hoops Premium Stock Court Kings Absolute Revolution Prizm (most sought after for general public for refractors and colors) Mosaic (colors) Optic (colors) Select Timeless Treasures Gold Standard Chronicles Illusions Origins
Upper Class (dollar dollar bill y'all...either you have a really good job or you are swimming in credit card debt lol) Spectra Noir Impeccable Immaculate One and One Obsidian National Treasures (most sought after for RPA - rookie, patch, auto) Flawless Opulence Eminence (15k per box!! WTF?!?!?...It's now listed at 50k!!!!!!!!!!!!!)
Now, where do I find these boxes? Boxes can be separated into Hobby or Retail. Hobby boxes can be bought at your local card shops or online at sites like Blowout and the like. Retail are typically found at big box stores like Walmart, Target, etc. Retail can also be found online as well. Because of how hot the basketball market is, it is super hard to find retail boxes because people are literally camping out or stalking the distributers that restock those shelves. So for many people, once those shelves are stocked, someone will come along and purchase everything. Sometimes it's someone who will rip it all or worse yet, sell it all at 3-5x MSRP.
But what about the college boxes/cards? Prizm Draft Picks or Flawless Collegiate or National Treasures Collegiate don't hold too much value to us NBA fans. So if you buy these boxes, please don't expect for those cards to increase in value. It's obviously ok to like the cards of the players you like or the college team you like but those cards will not hold the value like their NBA uniformed card counterparts. If you do buy these boxes and want to sell them, the best time is around the draft time and before the first NBA cards comes out (usually NBA Hoops).
What happened to Topps and Upper Deck? Isn't Panini a sandwich? Panini is an italian styled sandwich but it is also a huge company that got big by selling stickers. Stickers of all things! I know! They are so big that they are bigger than Topps and Upper Deck combined i think. Anyways, back in 2010, Panini got the exclusive rights from the NBA to produce cards and thus forced Topps and Upper Deck out. Topps had baseball and football so they were fine with it and Upper Deck had hockey and a number of financial issues that I think still plague the company. So now we are stuck with Panini for better or worse.
There's so many color variations? Which ones are valuable? As a collector, whichever one catches your eye. As a flipper, look for the serial numbering. Typically the lower the serial numbering, the more valuable it should be. /1 > /5 > /10 > /49 > /99 > /199 > etc... A note on color, a lot of collectors place a premium on the color parallel if it is the same color as the team's colors or jersey colors.
But I've seen non-numbered silvers sold for more than the numbered colors? What gives? That is the market sometimes...If the general public decides that the silvers are more desirable than that is whats going to happen.
Yay! I pulled a Zion silver prizm rookie card! It will be worth $100k in 10 years right?I can now retire right? NO. While Zion is definitely the sexy new cards, there can be a whole host of things that can derail your retirement plans. First, Zion may flame out. He may have a career threatening or altering injury like Derrick Rose or Blake Griffin. He may never live up to his hype like Wiggins. He can become a player that the fans hate or turn on like Durant. The basketball card market starts to crater if all the new money wants to start selling and get out of the market.
I've dug up some old cards. Most are from the late 80's and early 90's and with this basketball card boom, I'm rich right? NO. You have literally found kindle for a fire. Just kidding but not really. Unfortunately, a lot of the cards in the late 80s and early 90s were massively overproduced. If you think there a tonne of prizm cards, it still doesn't compare to the sheer number of 1988-1995 cards (Hoops, Fleer, Upper Deck, Topps). That 1990 Hoops Michael Jordan? You're lucky to get a $2 for it. Sorry to burst anyone's bubble about it but that's the truth.
When is the best time to sell a card? Usually during the season and the playoffs. If you want the most, do not sell during the off-season. Another thing to think about is the player that you are looking to sell. If it is a player that is not a star or superstar, it's best to sell after that player has strung along a few good games. If it's a star or superstar, the best time would be if that player is about to win a championship. Case in point, Kawhi's value was through the roof when he won in Toronto and now his value has dropped since his failure with the Clippers.
Rookie cards are too expensive. What do I do? If the rookie cards are a little too much in price, you can always collect the 2nd year cards. This seems to be the case more than ever now as younger collectors just don't have the financial resources. To me a base is a base, so a 2nd year card is the same as a 10th year card. But that's just my opinion.
Is my card valuable? Before asking this question, please for the love of god look it up on ebay. Type in the player, year, brand of the card and scroll down until you see the Show Only filter and click on Sold Items. This will pull up all the previous sales of that card. This will give you your best answer as to how valuable your card is.
But what about the Beckett value? Before the internet and ebay, Beckett was the best way to figure out approximate value of a card. But now we have the internet and ebay and 130point.
But what if I have a One of One? How do I know how much it's worth? Congrats! You have a pretty cool card. If it is of a superstar like Lebron or Luka, you just gained a $1k+ card. No one can accurately tell you the value of the card until it is sold. But if the card is of a common player or scrub, you might be lucky to get $20.
From u/kHartos, he wrote the following for Retail Boxes: Here is another thing I see asked a lot - retail box formats. So here they are in order of smallest to largest. Not all formats are available for all products.
Gravity pack - smallest packs, typically 4-8 cards. Comes from gravity feed boxes.
Fat pack - jumbo gravity pack. Available for low end sets like Hoops and Donruss.
Cello pack - multiple smaller packs wrapped in cellophane.
Hanger - A small box of multiple packs
Blaster - The sh*t fliplifers most try to get you to buy for 4x MSRP (which is always 19.99). This is larger than a hanger, smaller than a Mega.
Mega box - Exclusive to Target and Walmart. MSRP at $49.99. Usually Target and Walmart Megas get their own exclusive parallel/s.
I hope this helps for the newbies. Feel free to add as I'm sure I have missed some tips. Edit: Formatting

Hi everyone, new here. Briefly read through some of the recent posts many of which sound a lot like my own struggle/story.
I'm in my mid 30s and have been losing every dime of my paychecks weekly since I was about 17. It all started with online poker - around the late 90s when sites like PokerStars and PartyPoker started popping up (and not checking I.D. as KYC laws and online gaming regulation wasn't really formed, with poker being a grey area in terms of it's "game of skill" status). Basically back then if you were underage you could just go buy a prepaid visa card from the local store and use that to deposit.
Without realizing consciously that I was starting to develop a pretty expensive habit. I spent most of my late teens and early 20s selling weed and working shitty jobs. The urge to gamble grew and my situation got really dark as I began stealing. First it was stuff like borrowing money from friends and girlfriends without thinking or caring about how I would pay them back. Then I began finding stuff around the house I figured I could sell without my parents knowing. Making e-check deposits on gambling sites with an empty bank account.
​
Once e-check deposits became a thing I basically just ran around opening new bank accounts once one was deep in the red and just ignoring the calls/collection mail. Eventually there were no more banks that I could open an account with. Then one day I found my parents checkbook sitting on the living room table.
​
In my mind, I could just do a quick $100 deposit, win at least $100 and get it back in-hand before their bank statement came in the mail. Or at worse just act like I didn't know anything about it when I would inevitably be asked about the strange charge. So I play with the $100, end up losing it before I saw any profits and decided, well, we're already in deep shit when they call the transaction company associated with the charge and get the full story.
​
So I deposit another $200 to remedy the situation...
and then $300... $500... and within 3 days I had made $4700 in charges on their account. A day or two after the deposits kept getting declined I came downstairs with my parents sitting on the sofa, bank statements in hand and said "Son have a seat we need to talk about something". Before I could make it to my seat I was already balling my eyes out. I explained that every deposit was an attempt to fix the previous mistake ect ect and it was really the only time where what I had done and how I was living finally hit as reality.
​
So fast forward 15 years later and here I am, still living with my parents. I have no real possessions or hobbies because i've sold everything of value to gamble along the years. Doing food delivery in a car that has 430,000 miles on it, working for companies that allow me to cash out my earnings on a daily basis. Unable to save a simple $2000 for an old beater replacement car before the one I have takes a dump on me. I literally have less than $500 to my name and I just got my stimulus money 4 days ago. I don't know what the hell i'm supposed to do to get on the right track and start making some progress in life. My friends and family have the patience of saints - that and I suppose they just feel bad or basically look down on me. Just last night I deposited $100 for slots and hit a $900 spin... but what do I do? Crank up my bet and watch it all wither away within a couple hours.
​
As I finish this wall of text I just shrug and tell myself "All I can do is just avoid gambling, avoid the triggers" but i've been here more times than I can even remember. This is painful. I hate it. I feel like a selfish, bored, simple, and unhappy person.

TLDR in vid form - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUqX_8dPXtM
Preface
Hey everyone! Today I'm going to tell you the story of someone rather infamous in the EVE online community before his ban a few years ago. I personally played EVE for years before winning the game and haven’t been back since, but the legend of Erotica 1 has stayed with me all of that time. Erotica 1 was known throughout the game as the most prolific isk-doubler of his time. If you’re unfamiliar with EVE, isk is just money. Isk-doublers would stay docked in popular trade centers with an offer of doubling any amount of money sent to them. Now, if you have half a brain, you would realize this is an obvious scam. However, there are quite a few players of EVE online who need to learn the hard way and will giddily send their money to Erotica 1 and many other scammers like him. These scammers would frequently employ the tactic of actually doubling your money the first few times until you sent them an amount they were pleased with. Now, this is all within the game rules, as scamming is perfectly allowed and the general consensus surrounding the victims is that they should have been smarter and now ya’ know better.
The Bonus Room
With all that explained, let’s get into what made Erotica 1 infamous throughout New Eden. Located normally in Jita, Erotica 1 would spam the chat looking for marks to scam. When he found a good victim, he would use his charisma to convince the person to transfer all of their assets to him. After he got everything they owned, he would promise to only double it if the mark made it through what he called the bonus round. Now, this isn’t too special. Many isk-doublers would make themselves stand out by creating small but usually difficult games to actually win, so that people would say they were legit in chat. This also gave them an out when people called them a scammer, they could just claim that the person lost their game fairly. Erotica would seek out the most gullible or innocent of the eve community before selecting them for the bonus round, others would simply just walk away once they realized it was a scam before they got in too deep. Those selected for the bonus room would be instructed to send everything in the game they had to Erotica 1 and his brokers, this included money, ships, materials, PI goods, any holdings they had in EVE gambling sites. Now, you’re probably thinking why on earth would anyone do this? Erotica would promise bonus round participants that he would quintuple their net worth. For many greedy players, this was too much to pass up. There was also plenty of innocent, naive or just plain stupid players who fell into this trap. After Erotica was satisfied that he had control of all of their assets, the player would proceed to part 2 of the bonus room. This part often varied from player to player, but was consistently horrible for the scamee. Players would be prodded into reading hours of boring text, singing song after song over voice chat while Erotica and his friends egged them on, promising to pay out after just a few more songs.
Jester's Blog
Eve blogger Jester made a long post about the horrors of Erotica 1 and how he tormented a player. The victim in Jester’s post had a speech impediment, when Erotica and his fellow interrogators noticed it they jumped on him for it. Making him repeat a word he could not pronounce again and again. Then they decided he would need to read the word and its definition over and over. Following this, they forced him to read the entire Russian history entry of wikipedia all while mocking his speech impediment. After about an hour and a half of reading, Erotica had decided it was time for this player to move to phase 3 of the bonus room. Like many others, the contestant is forced to sing song after song while he is mocked by interrogator after interrogator, each popping in after the other is forced to mute themselves due to their laughter. After about 3 hours of the bonus room, the contestant snaps. He begins screaming, cursing and shouting at the interrogators who all burst into laughter. He has completely lost it at this point, the scamees wife can be heard trying to calm him down before she herself devolves into a panic attack at her husband's state. All the while Erotica and his gang are in hysterics at the situation, they have stolen everything from this man and now have pushed him into a manic state of mind. Eventually, they disconnect, taking everything the player owned. Erotica would then publish the recording of this event online, humiliating the player further. When people talk about the sociopaths or truly fucked up people that play EVE online, you need look no further than Erotica 1. Jester’s post would make major waves, the story would be picked up by Massively.com, Eurogamer, EveNews 24 and discussed wildly across the EVE subreddit. Jester, at the time, was also a member of the CSM which is a group of players selected to be in close contact with game developer CCP, so it isn’t a stretch to think that he likely brought this to their attention as well. Erotica had made waves before, when he used to force players to be repeatedly killed in their alpha pod, until they lost all of their skill points. For non-EVE players, this means Erotica would force the player to be killed in a state in which they lost skills or levels, over and over again, wiping out possibly years of progress that they could not just get back, all the while dangling all of their assets in front of them.
The playerbase chooses sides
When the recording and blog post dropped, the community split into two factions. Those pro and anti Erotica 1. Many players were appalled by his actions while others found it hilarious, bombarding him with both support and hate mail. The New Order or CODE, a group of hi-sec griefers being one of Erotica’s staunchest supporters. Though this is not surprising, Erotica’s scamming had made him one of the richest players in EVE and he had funnelled billions of his isk into supporting the CODE. Erotica, once a long time member of the Goonswarm or CFC as they were known at the time, was recently kicked before the recording due to creepy behavior and crossing the line one too many times so he found no support in his old allies. In the end, after thousands of posts for and against Erotica 1, CCP chose to permanently ban him from the game. After around 100 or so bonus rounds, years of scamming and attention whoring, EVE’s most infamous scammer was finally brought down. Erotica would make a long post on the eve subreddit post regarding his ban, promising to essentially whine to every gaming media site he could find about his unfair treatment and how he was simply trying to protect the sandbox, but in the end, his ban stood.
EVE prides itself on being a tough, roguish game where you are expected to just get up and dust yourself off after even the worst disasters so it is understandable that some players would side with Erotica in seeing those who fell for his scams as foolish or greedy.
However, Erotica 1 just took it too far. There are thousands of scammers within EVE online who are able to practice their craft without even so much as a warning from CCP. It’s an accepted and beloved part of the game, At the end of the day, you need to think about the other, real life person on the other side of the game. Scam them and move on, don’t push them and torment them for a few laughs because you “outsmarted” them. Honestly, I’m glad he’s gone, the game is certainly better for it.
This has been the tale of Erotica 1, EVE onlines most infamous scammer and one who remains banned to this day. What do you think about it? Does he deserve his ban? Did those who participated in the bonus room deserve it for being so gullible?
https://jestertrek.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-bonus-round.html - The original blogpost that caused all the drama

!! Content warning for blood and gore, sexual content !!
TL;DR: Viral TikTok leads people to think a specific plush is a bondage toy; the price skyrockets and plush collectors find their collections suddenly sexualized.

BACKGROUND CONTEXT:
All given prices are in USD.
Also preemptive disclaimer: I have no intention to kinkshame others in this post. I tried to remain as impartial as I could throughout.
Everyone reading this probably owns, or has owned at some point in their lives, at least one stuffed animal (or plush, as they’re more commonly called now). Some of us never stopped collecting, and continue to collect well into adulthood. There are all sorts of niches that plush collectors fall into—some only collect very realistic animal plush, others only collect custom one of a kind plush or art dolls made by artisans, and some others yet collect everything, etc. This post will focus specifically on those collecting “kawaii” plush—the Japanese word for cute. A majority of these plushies are made in Japan, designed by Japanese people and brands. Some companies in other countries also replicate the kawaii look, but these plush are not quite as popular. Various Facebook groups exist for plush collectors. The demographics of these groups tend to skew heavily female, and the age range for collectors of kawaii plush specifically skews from minor to young adult (30's), although there are also a lot of older parents.
Japanese plush are generally of high quality, and thus command higher prices. In general, expect to pay $25-40 per plush if you're buying stateside, and that's before taking additional shipping costs into account. Even small “mascot” plush (keychain size, about 2-3 inches tall) will go for about $15.
Now, let’s talk about these plush and their country of origin. In Japan, there’s two markets when it comes to kawaii plush. The first is plush specifically manufactured to be sold in stores—think branded Sanrio plush, like Hello Kitty. These plush are of premium quality and generally are easy to obtain for standard releases, even for overseas fans. The second market is plush specifically manufactured for UFO catchers, of which the closest equivalent would be “claw machines” in the west (although everything from the experience to the mechanics to the play style is incredibly inferior in western claw machines). These are known as prize plush, and are NOT sold in stores. The quality of these plush varies from good to excellent. Even the lowest quality prize plush tends to be leagues ahead of what’s found in American claw machines. Those who aren’t good at winning can buy them pre-owned or secondhand from shops and marketplaces catering to this sort of thing. All of this combined makes prize plush trickier for overseas fans to obtain.
Enter Toreba, a global online service that allows you to play Japanese UFO catchers in real time through your phone using the internet! They have hundreds of machines for you to browse through, all of them stocked with the same current prizes that Japanese players have access to. You buy credits using real money and then play to (hopefully) win. Any prizes that you win are shipped to you for free. Hop over to Toreba to take a peek at winning videos to see how it all works. (Off-topic warning: this is obviously a form of gambling, so be careful! Lots of people fall into the trap of spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars with very little to show for it, so I don’t recommend playing if you have an addictive personality.) Toreba essentially cut out the middle man, making it possible for overseas players to win prizes for themselves—or to pay others in their own country for them, instead of importing from Japan directly.
Now, getting closer to the topic at hand: there’s one designer whose plushies are consistently sought after. His name is Mori Chack, and you might even be vaguely familiar with his work if you stepped into a Hot Topic about 15 years ago: he’s responsible for creating the Gloomy Bear, an adorable but very violent pink bear that often ends up attacking his human owner named Pity. Nowadays, his plush are only available as prizes, and their quality of construction tends to be pretty high, with unusually shaped plastic eyes (an oval, instead of a circle), specially molded plastic claws, and embroidered blood spots. They come in dozens and dozens of different variations (someone made a 3 part picture guide on Google Docs here: [1] | [2] | [3]) in pretty limited runs, meaning they generally appreciate steadily in value over time as supply is limited and the same design is almost never replicated. They’re more akin to soft art pieces than plush, as most collectors will display them instead of playing with them.
Mori Chack is also the creator of another highly popular creature in the Gloomy universe: the All Purpose Bunny (also known by collectors as the Chax Rabbit), who also comes in dozens of variations, including collaboration variations featuring a certain famous Miku Hatsune. This cute li’l bun is the main star of today’s post, but first I need to briefly touch upon Mori Chack’s politics, as they are relevant to the subject. He’s an animal rights activist that explores his themes through his work. A common trend is cute animals getting revenge on humans for exploitation and abuse. The Gloomy Bear’s story is that Pity found the bear as a cub and took it back home to raise it. As the Gloomy Bear grew, it could no longer withhold its violent impulses and thus regularly attacks Pity as retaliation for its unnatural upbringing. This is why a lot of the Gloomy Bear plush are regularly splashed with bloodstains. As for the All Purpose Bunny, its story begins with being an experimental rabbit in a test lab. Genetic modification led to its strange properties and unnaturally long ears, and it eventually retaliated against humans for its years of abuse. All Purpose Bunny and Gloomy Bear often team up to attack and kill humans, using their unique skills and abilities to hunt them down in imaginative ways. The point is that they are no longer slaves to humanity (this is important).
Finally, a very small description of DDLG, since these kinksters play a minor role in this drama. DDLG (Daddy Dom/Little Girl) is a form of roleplaying ageplay in which two consenting adults take on the role of a dominant male and a submissive female. The daddy is responsible for taking on the role of the caregiver, and often disciplines his little. Littles tend to mentally and physically regress to an age most comfortable for them—the age range varies from infancy to young teen. The littles tend to act silly, immature, and bratty, and often break rules set by the daddy in order to be punished. The daddy is usually “in control”. Generally, there are agreed upon set times for the play to occur—this is known as “little space”—but some couples might prefer the dynamic to be more prominently reflected in their daily relationship.

THE DRAMA (At last!):
On July 31 2020, a Tiktok video featuring an All Purpose Bunny went unexpectedly viral, with well over a million views. It introduced many people to Mori Chack and his creations (debatable as to whether or not this is a good thing), but most significantly, the creator of the video declared at the end, with quite a lot of emphasis: “This is a bondage plushie.”
That proclamation changed the entire Mori Chack aftermarket literally overnight. There are at least half a dozen active plush collecting groups on Facebook, and every single one was bombarded by newcomers desperately trying to find one of these rabbits. Because the creator of the viral TikTok video did not specify the actual plush name, you had people looking for “that bondage bunny”, “TikTok rabbit”, and other similarly ignorant terms. I regret not taking screenshots of the flood at the time, but here’s a sample (once you've seen one, you've seen them all). At the height of the frenzy, you could scroll quickly for well over thirty seconds and see nothing but posts about the Chax Rabbit, even in groups that are usually very active.
In all fairness to the creator of the video, she clarifies that she meant it as a joke and has made a number of follow-up videos giving a more in-depth look into the lore. Unfortunately, none of these videos took off quite the same way, so many had their impressions formed solely from the viral video. Luckily, although quite a lot of people directed ire towards the video itself, it seems the person behind them wasn’t attacked (on Facebook at least—I don’t have a TikTok account so I can’t see any comments on the video itself).
These new collectors began snatching up rabbits left and right, sending the price of these rabbits skyrocketing. The rainbow one in the Tiktok video (known as the Fantasy Fur variant) was actually not a very popular color prior to the boom. They were going for about $25ish plus shipping. Once that stock rapidly depleted, the price skyrocketed to $80 or more per plush (with some like the Fantasy Furs reaching $100), which was ridiculous for a relatively new release—that price was usually reserved for the older rarer Mori Chack plush. When all of the Fantasy Fur rabbits were gone, people began looking for other variants. Longtime collectors, afraid of having their most sought-after plush being bought up, also began buying in droves to try and secure their plush before others got to it (compilation of images featuring people who purchased their most desired plush while they could, and the despair of those who were forced to miss out). As a result, the price of ALL rabbits began spiraling out of control. This had a spillover effect on Gloomy Bears as well.
As a personal example, I bought this pink argyle variant on June 20 2019 for only $15 including shipping, which was a little cheap for its going rate—others were going for about $25 including shipping. Today (September 13 2020), that same exact rabbit is on eBay for $65 + $15 shipping, or on Mercari for $85 + $5 shipping.
This goes beyond the normal appreciation I mentioned at the beginning of my post. Yes, Mori Chack plush did rise in value over time, but generally not to this degree. This was definitely unprecedented.

FALLOUT (or, The Drama, Part 2):
Whenever new fans begin to flood a community, there will inevitably always be gatekeeping and other minor clashes. Many old fans were frustrated by the sudden sexualization of their collections. Some collectors were parents who shared their plush with their children, which made the sexualization extra icky. There were a few posts involving newcomers making creepy comments on collection posts, like insinuating that the OP “must have a lot of fun with those rabbits”, or “I see those bondage bunnies ;)”. There was one instance where the rabbits actually belonged to the OP’s very young child, for added grossness points. Luckily, these sorts of exchanges tended to get deleted very quickly with the offending users banned, which helped ensure they never overran the groups.
Fans who ascribed to Mori Chack’s philosophy were frustrated by this perversion of the rabbits, because it explicitly paints the All Purpose Bunnies as being slaves of humanity yet again, now for sexual reasons. (Of course, many new fans pointed out that the “All Purpose” in the name naturally means they could be used for sexual reasons as well, which is a valid interpretation but also seems antithetical to Mori Chack's original intentions.) There were a few newcomers who very stubbornly refused to view the plush as anything other than sexual—here’s a screenshot of a conversation that is now deleted. This person was soon banned after continuing to fight with others, and they weren’t the only one being super weirdly stubborn about sexualizing these plush.
And then there was the influx of littles (remember them?) who were tickled by the idea of a functional set piece—not only are these plush cute and integral to the adorable little girl aesthetic, but they were also USABLE in sexual play! (Note: not really (compilation image)). Remember how I mentioned that some practitioners of DDLG tend to make it a lifestyle and not just a kink reserved for the bedroom? Some (not all, of course) of these new littles ended up being incredibly bratty and rude to the sellers in the groups. Many of these sellers are just other collectors as well, by the way, not wholesalers—as a result, the community is very close-knit and it’s easy to get yourself unknowingly blacklisted. If you’re cruel to one seller, they will almost certainly warn the others.
In case you’re wondering how I know these people are littles, it’s because I have seen them bring it up at some point or another.
[Small disclaimer: The Facebook app allows you to view all of your joined groups’ posts within one page, which unfortunately has made it incredibly difficult for me to try and figure out where I saw each and every post. As a result, I apologize for not having more screenshots. Also, some of the posts and comments I reference have been deleted by either the user or the admins/moderators of the groups, and I have no screenshots for those, either.]
Brief summary of some exchanges involving littles that I saw:

1. One little asked a seller a number of involved questions, including asking for more detailed pictures, height and weight information of the plush, examples of the seller’s packaging, etc—a little annoying, but completely valid questions to ask and well within your rights as a buyer. However, once she was seemingly satisfied, she dropped a, “Let me ask if my daddy will let me buy it!” She later returned with, “Daddy said no :(“, which ended up wasting everyone’s time and also raised concern (will touch on this later). This type of exchange began happening with increasing frequency, where (different) littles would essentially string a seller along before using their daddy’s disapproval as a reason for backing out of the sale.
2. Another little didn’t seem to enjoy plush at all, which already is a bit of a red flag for someone joining a plush collecting group. She made a post searching for All Purpose Bunnies for sale. A seller commented informing her that they no longer had the rabbits for sale, but they did have several Gloomy Bears for sale. The little asked, “So what does the Gloomy Bear do?” She was informed by the seller that the Gloomy Bear is simply another cute plush, and the little promptly responded, “I don’t want it, then.” It became clear that she was only interested in the All Purpose Bunny for its perceived sexual function, and likely wouldn’t enjoy it at all if it was “just” a plush.

Overview of changes in group dynamics I’ve noticed:

1. The plush collector groups that I am in tended to be pretty open-minded. No one bashed other people’s collections. Some of these groups are catch-all for all types of plush collectors and some are more focused, but everyone was supportive of others’ collections. It was a very positive and uplifting community. After the TikTok boom, people began being more judgmental. There were a number of posts about how people found the Chax rabbits ugly or overrated, and posts from newcomers judging longtime members for their large collections. A lot of judgment, primarily from newcomers, was introduced and still hasn’t been totally weeded out (although it's much better, now).
2. These groups are SFW and meant for all ages (so long as you’re old enough to join Facebook, anyway). There are a very large number of minors in these groups. This means no sexual content is allowed—but because of the TikTok video, a large number of littles have joined the groups, leading to concerns that they would attempt to transform the space to cater to them. There is definitely some not so subtle dogwhistling going on, and members openly calling their significant other “daddy” and referring to themselves as “littles” treads a very fine line that each group's admin rules differently on. Members tended to fall into two camps: some thought any and all mention of DDLG was inappropriate for the all-ages groups, while others thought that there was no harm in using the terminology openly. a. Those in the former camp believe that whatever happens in the bedroom should stay in the bedroom, so long as it involves consenting adults. Just like how wearing some of your BDSM gear out in public is distasteful because it pulls unconsenting people (strangers who might notice) into your fetish, some people believe that DDLG language being openly used where anyone including minors could read it was equally distasteful. Those against it believe it openly establishes the sexual proclivities (dom/sub) of DDLG members to strangers who may be uncomfortable unexpectedly learning about the sexual lives of others (and, more importantly, did not consent to gaining this knowledge). There's also the concern that such language can promote a troubling female subservience dynamic to uninformed minors, especially if these minors regularly see female collectors relying on their male partners for “permission” to buy a plush, as well as being coerced by their daddies to sell plush when they "have too many" (an entirely subjective opinion). b. The latter camp is comprised of defenders of those in the DDLG kink, and they often state that no one has the right to question their relationship and that doing so was kinkshaming. They also say that by questioning their usage of “daddy” or “little”, it was exposing minors to the kink when they may not have noticed the verbiage to begin with. They also argue that “daddy” could be used entirely innocently, and that it isn’t the admin’s or mod’s place to verify the intention behind their words. Because this is a tricky subject and no community wants to alienate a large portion of their members, as a result none of these groups explicitly banned DDLG practitioners from using their terminology. Any drama that crops up is usually stifled quickly, and people have more or less come to terms with the fact that just about anyone might be a little. ;)

THE AFTERMATH:
How are things today, about 6 weeks after the TikTok video? It depends. Prices for anything Mori Chack related are still inflated, especially as the supply continues to dwindle. What used to be the old normal is now seen as a good deal. The more abrasive newcomers have been banned, and the kinder more open-minded ones have stuck around (we love them). It’s doubtful that the production numbers for Gloomy Bears or All Purpose Bunnies will be raised any, and the newest set of Gloomy Bears seem to be selling at only slightly inflated prices, so interest is probably dying off. I don’t know what Mori Chack thinks of this whole thing, but people in the hobby are definitely aware of it in Japan, because prices on Japanese secondhand sites have risen as well and many sellers have begun selling on international eBay to take advantage of the hype. There are still littles in the groups that openly identify as such—if anything, there are more now than there were before—but drama specifically involving them basically doesn’t happen anymore.
But, hey! We got memes! In the end, isn't that what everyone on the internet wants??
If there are any loose threads I failed to tie up, feel free to let me know and I’ll answer your questions and edit the post for clarity. Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the drama! :)

Hey guys, I have been reading this thread al night and everyone’s stories have made me realize I am not alone. For the first time in a long time I have some hope that I can still fix things in my life. You have all inspired me to share my story.
I am 23 years old and I have been gambling since I was 16. It all started when a couple of my highschool friends decided to open up a book. At first I kept my losses to a minimum but I was hooked from the start. At the start I was only losing around $100 a week ( a lot of money to a 16 year old) but as I got older the losses began to grow. My friends being my bookie definitely strained our relationship when I was late on payments. Mostly every week I would max out my account and I couldn’t wait till first thing Monday morning for my account to reset so I could bet again. By the time I was graduating highschool I already began to have a reputation for loosing money but so did a lot of my friends so I didint really think too much of it.
Throughout college I was lucky enough to have my parents send me chase periodically to spend on food/ social life. Most of this went straight to gambling as bounced from bookie to bookie trying to cover my losses. At this point I was a junior in college and things started to get pretty serious. I realized I had a problem but was unable to stop. I was chasing after my losses every week. Once I would go on a hot streak it was like I would forget all abt what it was like to lose and all my problems would go away. All my summer jobs income would go straight to fueling my gambling. I hit rock bottom multiple times in college, owing bookies hundreds of dollars while my bank account was at $0. Each time I would tell myself I was done gambling and I would slowly pay off my debts. My all time low was when I had to call up my mom and ask to borrow money to pay off a bookie. She was very disappointed in me and I felt awful. She made me promise to never put myself in this situation again.
Looking back at my college experience I feel like 90% of it was spent being stressed out abt paying someone back or avoiding a bookie. Once I graduated and was starting a real job I told myself I would use this as a fresh start and give up gambling. At first I was able to give it up for a little bit, I was starting to build up my bank account every week thanks to my new job and I was feeling good about the path my life was going down. For the first time in my life I was not broke anymore and I had the power to spend money as I pleased. I was able to use my money to book flights to visit my girlfriend/friends back in college and life was good. Then came the legalization of sports online sports betting in my state. I decided to open up an account and deposit $100. This quickly spirald out of control. After every loss I would deposit more money and my bank account shrunk after each week. It got to the point where I was gambling away each hard earned paycheck days after it hit my account. I felt so shitty abt this because it was like I was working for free. Then came a win streak where I was able to win abt $4,000 in 2 weeks. Everything was good again and I forgot all about my problem. When COVID hit I was out of work and no longer had a stream of income. My bank account was at about $8,000 which would of been enough to live off of until I could start working again. After my heater my bet size grew tremendously I went from wagering $50 a bet to $100 then to $300 on some bets, eventually there were some bets where I would wager up to $1000 dollars on if I was up on my account. No matter how much I won I never was able to keep it. I quickly burned though the $8000 in my bank account and was broke again. I was so embarrassed and the last thing I wanted was for my girlfriend to find out. I hit a new all time low when I stole $2,000 out of my moms bank account to cover some debts/ gamble again. This was about 2 months ago. I immediately felt horrible for doing this and had a panic attack. I came clean to my parents about everything. I told them how out of control this had gotten and how I needed help to stop. I told them I was scared and I wanted my life back. They were not mad at me but were very understanding and supportive when I first told them. I promised to stop and you would think this would be the end of it right? I really wish it was.
After coming clean to my parents everything began to feel so real. The gravity my addiction finally set it. I was so embarrassed and I could not believe I let myself get to this point. I quickly fell into a depression and was put on medication to help. I wanted to use this a fresh start. I was broke but did not owe anyone any money. I wanted to earn money the right way and leave this all behind me. I knew I had lost a ton in this past but I was ready to leave that in the past. This was about 3 weeks ago. Since then I stopped using the legal sports sites because my parents were monitoring my bank accounts. However, a friend of mine from college had a book and I opened an account with him. The first week I quickly lost $1,000. I was devastaded and so dissappinted in myself that I fell back into this hole. I couldn’t stop tho I was determined to win it back and start fresh again. The second week I lost another $1000. I wanted to stop but I couldn’t. My bookie was my friend I was worried he would tell all my friends back at school about my losses and worse, he would tell my girlfriend (she has no idea abt the extent of my losses). This week was my last shot to win my money back before he returned to school from break and saw my friends and girlfriend. I was using this week as one last shot at saving myself. Of course it did not work and I lost another $1500. My girlfriend is returning to school this weekend and she will be sure to hear about my losses and I’m so ashamed.
This brings us today. If you are still reading I really appreciate it because I never told anyone abt the extent of this. I am at a loss for words, i do not know what to do. My back account is overdrawn by $2,000. I have two maxed out credit cards, and now after last night I owe my friend/ bookie another $1500 on Monday. I do not sleep anymore, I barely eat, my moods are constantly dependent on my bets. I take my frustrations out on the ppl I love the most. After reading everyone’s posts on this thread I think I am ready to finally leave this all behind me. I’m done chasing my losses. I need to accept the fact that I’m in a huge hole and I need to be and adult and work my way out of it. I am going to come clean to my girlfriend tomorrow before she returns to school, I want her to hear it from me and not my friends. I am ready to take the first step to recovery but I need your help.
How can I block gambling out of my life, every time I watch tv/ listen to the radio it’s another commercial about a gambling site offering a new promo to entice people to join. Every time I hangout with my friends they are talking about what games they are betting on, every my own brothers have began to sports gamble. Every where I turn gambling is being shoved in my face, the adds on my social media’s are all about gambling. The people in my life who gamble have more self control then me. I need to stop but I cant avoid it. I don’t know what to do and I could really use some advise because I’m at the end of the line here. If I can’t give this up I don’t know what I’m going to do. Gambling has destroyed my reputation, friendships, relationships, my finances, my happiness, my sleep, my weight, I have given everything I have to gambling. I simply have nothing left to give....

With the elections less than two months away, I thought it'd be interesting to write an overview of each of the pre-candidates' projects, beginning with the dark horse of this election: Victor Font.
So what are the major policies of Victor Font?
Sell products directly to supporters without intermediaries

In the current model, the economic potential of the club is limited by the intervention of external agents

Font’s idea is that by removing intermediaries, Barça should see an increase in revenue since the club would get to keep all the money from sales of products.
Under Bartomeu in the 2018/2019 season, the club already assumed control of its merchandising and licensing operations so it’s a bit unclear what this particular Font policy would involve.
Limit the power of the board to that of grand strategic decisions, granting more power to the CEO

The executive board should exclusively focus on making the grand strategic decisions of the club.
The best possible CEO . . . is never going to come if you have 20 different executives telling him everyday what to do

As with other Font policies, it’s a bit unclear what this entails. Is the club’s hierarchy being changed in a lasting way, or does this refer more to what Font’s personal philosophy will be like running the club?
Ex-Presidents council

We have the idea of creating a new organisation . . . that would be the council of the ex-presidents

Font wants to gather the club’s ex-presidents of the club and make use of their knowledge and experience by making them members of an advisory council.
In an interview with Mundo Deportivo, he emphasised this idea by saying

We, with regards to our project, think that being able to count on the experience of all the ex-presidents should not only be a goal, but almost an obsession

Certainly an interesting idea that might make Font seem like a candidate wiling to compromise, but seemingly it would only include ex-presidents that are completely on board with his project given that he has said

We are open to include all individuals who could contribute to the project and that are one hundred percent aligned with the project we have defined

Electronic voting
Font’s plan to set up an electronic voting system is probably his strongest policy on several fronts. For one, given this pandemic the idea of an electronic voting system almost seems prescient. This current pandemic aside, it would give improve the access to voting for members living abroad as well as very likely increasing overall turnout. Font has also gone on the record saying that with this system in place, the board would consult the socis on important decisions regarding the club more often.
Back in 2019, Font already had already proposed electronic voting during an assembly only for it to be rejected due to being 59 votes short of the 2/3rds majority required.
Given the current situation in the world, I don’t think there’ll be much, if any, opposition if Font decided to implement the electronic voting system once he’s president. In fact, Font’s so confident that he will be able to implement this system that he has explicitly stated that by the 2027 elections the electronic voting would be in place if he was elected:

Interviewer: The next elections of 2027, would those have electronic voting if you were president?
Font: If Si al Futur has the honour of governing in 2021, without a doubt in the 2027 elections, the 150000 socis will be able to vote electronically

Focus on developing e-commerce opportunities and find ways to monetise online content
Another idea that has been partially implement by the previous presidency- see Barça TV plus. While we’re on about Barça TV, he has pointed out some problems with how the current board has developed the service
It’s currently unclear what Font’s plan is to accomplish this particular goal and he hasn’t gone in much detail in the interviews I’ve read/seen.
Espai Barça Referendum
One of Font’s major talking points during his campaign has been about the lack of transparency surrounding Espai Barça. For the unaware, Espai Barça is major project that involves the remodelling of the Camp Nou, constructing a new Palau Balgrauna, and many other proposals you can read about here.
In 2014, a referendum was held and the Espai Barça project was approved with a budget of 600 million euros. Due to increased construction costs, the interests on the Goldman Sachs loan, and the loan repayments, it is now estimated the project will cost a total of 1.25 billion euros.
Font has said that once he is president he will be transparent about the project, share the details of the current situation of the project and call a referendum to determine Espai Barça’s future.

Once we know [the financial situation of the project] we will take a stance regarding the project, we think that remodelling Camp Nou and El Palau is urgent, and we’ll call a referendum so the socis can decide whether they want to move forward with the project or not

Push for a change in Spain’s 1989 law “Ley del Deporte”
La Ley del Deporte was a law that made the football clubs in Spain convert to what’s known as S.A.D (Sociedad Anonima Deportiva). Four clubs were exempt from having to convert into a S.A.D: Osasuna, Barça, Real Madrid and Athletic Bilbao. These 4 clubs could retain the fan ownership system as long as they followed certain conditions. One of these conditions is that when someone to be part of the executive board for one of these 4 clubs, they must present what’s known as an aval- a sum of money that’s equivalent to 15% of the club’s budget.
Victor Font has said that he would like to push for this law to be changed since it acts as a barrier for candidates that may be qualified but are not able to present the aval.

It’s a law [referring to Ley Del Deporte] that acts as a barrier to democracy and meritocracy, because we think it’s important that the club is run by qualified people and not people who have enough money

He has further argued that there are already financial FairPlay mechanisms imposed by La Liga and UEFA that make this law redundant:

We are in 21st century, we have all the financial control mechanisms of La Liga, UEFA, FIFA…we need to adapt to reality

Font’s team

• Ramon Cugat: The latest addition to Font’s board involved in decisions related to the medical field.
  
• Antoni Bassas: Font’s right hand man.
  
• Toni Nadal: Rafa Nadal’s uncle will be involved in the sports field of Font’s presidency.
  
• Xavi Hernandez: It’s no secret Font considers Xavi to be the cornerstone of his project. As is well-known, Xavi would be the coach of the team if Font were to be elected. Although he has also hinted that Xavi could have also a general management role since he said that it would be up to Xavi to decide whether Koeman would remain as the manager.
  
  • “Hopefully, and I mean it from my heart, Koeman and Barça can win the treble,” Font stressed. “Xavi, in charge of the project [when Font is elected], will surely know how to find a place for Koeman's talent.”

Opinion
The good

• Electronic voting. Straightforward, simple proposal that will increase turnout. A win for everyone all around.
• Power to the socis. Font seems really enthusiastic about “democratising the club”. He wants the socis to have a bigger say, and many of his policies seem to reflect that, from electronic voting to increasing the frequency of referendums
• Limiting the board’s executive power. While it is unclear if this involves a lasting structural change or just refers to how Font will personally run the club, I appreciate this idea in principle at the very least

The bad

• The Ex-presidents council. Hear me out here, I don’t think this is feasible. I honestly don’t see Font managing to get Bartomeu, Rosell or Laporta on board with this idea given that he wants everyone involved in his project to be 100% aligned with it. And what exactly would the point of having Barto or Rosell as advisors when Font thinks their management of the club has put Barça on course to become ‘the next AC Milan'?
  
• Font’s insistence on bringing Xavi as soon as possible. I understand that Font views him as the cornerstone of his project but depending on someone with little managerial experience is an incredibly risky gamble. It might pay off, but what’s Font backup plan if it doesn’t?
  

The confusing

• So many of Font’s policies are so fuzzy and undefined that it’s hard to evaluate them.
  
• That being said, it would be unfair to single him out for this, when nearly all candidates have exhibited the same reluctance to go into detail about their policies, with the front runner even saying he would explain his project after he was elected.