Note: The below is a mini recap of the “Gang of Eight” situation, in which a group of collectors tried to implement their own rules on a Bootleg Sharing Thread over on GreasyLake. I wrote this to catch people up on what happened. Context and all that, if you know me on discord I mention this every now and then.
A Brief History
Bootleg Corner started in May 2018 as a thread simply for sharing interesting bootlegs. Requests were originally kept to DMs, but that ended quickly. At first, the major uploader was “Badlands_89”, a member who was active for quite a while but was then harassed off of the forum by a group of fans who mistook badlands for gotgodonmyside (this group had beef with gotgod from another forum and found him on GL and were still going after him, but badlands was caught in the frey). Badlands left, and several other users stepped up and became major uploaders including: Born to Rock, Twink, Monkinmotion, Chevy396, Buddhabone, Daisey Jeep, and others. There was never an expectation or requirement that people upload shows in return, or upload before requesting anything.
Thread goes fairly well with few hiccups until June of 2020, when a user requested a bootleg of an archive show that released that same day. Now, up until that point, any bootleg was fine, so long as it was a bootleg and not an actual archive release (IMO, how it should be). Mods got involved because they thought this user was asking for someone to upload an official release (they weren’t). That’s when the rule about no bootlegs of archive releases came about.
Thread is still going good, October 2020 is when Sunshine joins, she wasn’t active until early 2021 when she hopped onto the thread. She clearly had her own ideas about how things should be, so she in a sense took over the bootleg thread. Instituting several rules that she had no business instituting, (so far, the only ‘official’ rules are: no uploading official releases, no uploading bootlegs of officially released shows). Her rules included a demand that people upload just as much (if not more) than they request. Apparently quite a few people thought this was fine and said nothing (I guess those people were tired of “moochers” in a forum dedicated to sharing tapes freely.)
This introduced a sense of uneasiness in the thread, people anxious about requesting fearing sunshine or someone else might jump down their throat. Activity kinda died down because I guess many people didn’t feel it was very fair to have to upload 1:1 with any requests they make. Plus many might not be able to upload, or don’t know how to. Sunshine didn’t give a shit and expected every one to share as much as they uploaded, even newbies. Then the idea of deleting links after the requester downloaded (which is intended to keep shows flowing around and not making it too easy to find shows.) I believe BorntoRock follows this school of thought, seeing as links of hers from even last month are no longer active. Which is horrendous for a few reasons, namely that it’s pointless because she is a frequent uploader, and seemingly has a giant MEGA drive, so sharing is nothing to her. Compared to anyone else who might not have the space and has to upload every time to share.
This all continued until last month, when a user named Lord_Burgess shared the Fatherhood Saga (a collection of songs dealing with Bruce’s relationship with his father, and his own impending Fatherhood in the 1990s). And Sunshine requested he share it on the bootleg corner. Now, either she didn’t know (doubtful), or just didn’t care (more likely), that the fatherhood saga was made from archive release tracks. Which is technically against the rules (no way of dancing around that one). Sure enough, Lord_Burgess shared it to the corner, and immediately Sunshine goes on both the defensive and the attack. Defending herself because she “didn’t know it was archive tracks”, but also starting a brigade against Lord_Burgess attempting to get everyone to block and report him, and get him banned. To his credit, he stayed civil and stood up to their petty rules bullshit and belief that they are in charge (cue a mod coming in like bane “do you feel in charge?”)
(the reason I mention Lord_Burgess and the fatherhood saga is that I believe that the pushback from the bootleg regulars is what led to the mods watching the thread a little more)
Eventually in April, sunshine goes after a few people (yours truly included) for not being up to her standards. a few people report it, mods start getting involved. Originally just vaguely mentioning some people. Sunshine goes off again, report, mod and admin response. Sunshine throws a bitch fit about people not showing gratitude. Mods get more involved than before, now directly calling her and her gang out for pretending to be mods, policing uploads/requests, running an unfriendly to newbies community, among other things.
And that leads us to today (4/13/21), after 3 days of a mod having to get involved, the admin eventually hops in and goes after sunshine for all her bullshit. Which I believe scared her off for good.