Something Awful forumite achieves posting godhood, emerging from the void after 100,000 hour 11 year ban to continue the same argument from 2013

In what may be a unique event in world history, a Something Awful forums user has posted so hard that it's become news—returning from the void after a decade-long ban purely in order to pick up the exact same tabletop game nerd debate that got him banned in the first place.

Let's begin at the beginning. The Something Awful forums are (in)famous and, god help us, genuinely culturally important. Despite—or maybe because of—a $10 registration fee, all sorts of memes, turns of phrase, and general ephemera of internet culture have sprung from them over the course of their 24-year existence. It also bears the burden of being at least partially responsible for the creation of 4chan, which was originally created by disgruntled members of SA's anime subforum.

The SA forums are also famous for giving moderators free reign when it comes to laying down the law. It's not uncommon for users to end up eating bans (which you have to pay $10 to get out of) or lengthy probations («probes,» or time-limited bans) because they're being annoying, or have neglected some bit of posting etiquette, or just because it'd be be funny. The forum keeps a dedicated list of all its recent bans and probes alongside the reasons they were handed out, like a wall of heads on spikes.

One such head on one such spike was a poster in SA's tabletop game subforum. Etherwind, the hero of our tale, was disciplined all the way back in 2013 for, ah, jokingly wishing death upon an author on the World of Darkness TTRPGs in an argument over the political direction of the series. Etherwind's punishment was swift and lengthy: A probation period 100,000 hours long that began on the 14th of February, 2013, at 10:24 pm BST.

It's far from the only time a 100,000 hour probe has been handed down by SA's mods but, where most users simply take it as the de facto permaban it is, our Etherwind set an internal timer. 100,000 hours equals about 1.1 decades, 11.4 years, or 4167 days. He would be free to post again in July 2024.

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