Vengarr posted:

IN IRC, July 4, 2006.

The unanimous Declaration of the Something Awful Sycophant Squad:

When, in the course of online events, it becomes necessary for one forum to dissolve the moderating bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the internet, the seperate and equal station to which the Rules of SomethingAwful and of SomethingAwful's Administrator entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of GBS requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all forums are created equal, that they are endowed by their Administrator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Shitposting, Anime, and the pursuit of children--that to secure these rights, Moderators are instituted among Men/Women/Other, deriving their just powers from the consent of the forum,--That whenever any form of Moderation becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the Forumgoers to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Moderators, laying their foundation on such principles and organizing its probations in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect Humor and Discussion. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Moderators long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hat shown, that forumgoers are more disposed to suffer, while bans are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of bans and probations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Moderators, and to provide new Guest Mods for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of this forum; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Moderators. The history of the current Moderator of GBS is a history of repeated probations and bans, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over this forum. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world:

--He has refused his Assent to Rules, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
--He has forbidden his Guest Mods to levy Bans of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
--He has refused to pass other Rules for the accommodation of large megathreads, unless those users would relinquish the right to have individual threads for making GBS threads on cops, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
--He has called together Moderators to a place unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from their usual forums, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
--He has dissolved threads repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
--He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause other threads to be made; whereby the Posting powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the Forum remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
--He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these Forums; for that purpose obstructing the Rules for Posting in GBS; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Posts.
--He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Rules for establishing more Guest Moderators.
--He has made Moderators dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries. There are no salaries.
--He has erected a multitude of Stickied Threads, and sent hither swarms of Forum Cancer to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
--He has kept among us, in times of peace, Containment Threads without the Consent of our posters.
--He has affected to render the Moderators independent of and superior to the Shitposting power.
--For Quartering large numbers of Photoshop Threads among us:
--For protecting them, by summary probations, from punishment for any lovely photoshops of that guy getting shot by the NVA, which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these Forums:
--For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world by putting watermarks on everything:
--For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
--For depriving us in many all cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
--For transporting us to Missouri for no apparent reason
--For abolishing the free System of Rules of GBS 1.0, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Post Count so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Forums:
--For taking away our Floating Head Lady, gassing our most valuable Threads, and altering fundamentally the Status of our Forum:
--For suspending our own Guest Moderators, and declaring themselves invested with power to moderate for us in all cases whatsoever.
--He has abdicated Moderation here, by declaring us out of his Protection and making Shitposts against us.
--He has plundered our threads, ravaged our posts, burned our posters, and destroyed the lives of our people.
--He is at this time transporting large Armies of Redditors to complete the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized Forum.
--He has constrained our fellow Forumgoers probated on the Forums to undertake Mod Challenges of dubious nature; to become the executioners of their reputation and dignity, or to commit forum suicide by their Hands.
--He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavored to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless 8channers, whose known rule of sexual conduct, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in QCS in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated probations. A Moderator whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the leader of a free forum.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our other forum-brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their Moderators to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our posting here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of General Bullshit, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Administrator of the forums for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Forums, solemnly publish and declare, That this Forum is, and of Right ought to be a Free and Independent Forum; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to SomethingAwful, and that all political connection between them and SomethingAwful, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as a Free and Independent Forum, they have full Power to make Shitposts, gas Threads, create Stickies, establish Megathreads, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent Forums may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Lowtax, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Wallscrolls.


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Found this rolled up on some yellow parchment in a house fire I went to, thought I'd transcribe it