Each nation has its own origin myth that people look back to and draw inspiration from. The Romans had Troy, the Caliphate had Mohamed, the United States had Washington’s Cherry Tree and so on and so forth. Many entities in Eve have a similar sort of origin myth. Perhaps the most well known one is the Goon origin myth regarding the destruction of Band of Brothers. There’s even a comic series made of the entire event floating around. As many of you know, the story as presented is, that the Goons were at war with their forever enemies, Band of Brothers. Victory was secured after Mittens worked with a BoB director named Haargoth to disband the alliance. This story gets carted out every year for some war, or some Eve event and there are several articles written and live presentations out there going over the event again and again.
However, Darius JOHNSON who was the leader of the Goons at the time recently wrote a lengthy piece on reddit questioning some of these misconceptions. DJ claims that after six years of silence, and seeing that he was used and his friends have been getting ousted/leaving Goonswarm Federation due to Mittens and Sion, he needed to present the truth. This adds onto the ever growing list of notable ex-goons including Vily, Endie, Blwarf, SUAS, and others who have spoken out and criticized Mitten’s leadership style. While many of the more recent defectors have focused mostly on individuals such as Sion and the questionable handling of the Fountain War Kickstarter, DJ’s focus centers around arguably the most important event in Goon history, the destruction of Band of Brothers.
“THIS is a complete work of fiction that somehow transposes The Mittani as instrumental in the defeat of BoB rather than a guy who showed up on Skype while others did the work then claimed ultimate credit which lead to appearances at GDC, a comic book, numerous articles and now a space business. All based on false pretenses. The story is still good. Mittani just didn’t really do very much at that time.” ~ DJ
Instead DJ claims that Mittens was a minor figure in the events leading up to BoB’s defeat and that the Goon victory was inevitable and would have occurred even without Haargoth’s betrayal of BoB. DJ’s claim is not that Mittens simply forgot to give props out to his peers, but that he has invented a version of events which simply did not occur and purposefully wrote out other people that were much more important to the actual events. Even as far as the disbanding itself, Haargoth approached Tamir, not Mittens. And Mitten’s creativity in the disbandment mostly went as far as “Let’s take their stuff.” The creative master plan that actually pushed BoB to defeat was mostly done by members such as DJ, VileRat, XTTZ and others.
“Mittani did contribute to the effort and did show up in a chatroom to help manage the disbanding and war, but that’s not what his telling of the story has ever been.” ~ DJ
Honestly it took months to take down BoB, and it had very little to do with The Mittani. – Mr. Rive
Another myth DJ debunks is Mitten’s claim that when DJ retired from his CEO position, he was handed a “Pile of cold ashes.” Instead DJ states that the diplomatic agreement made with Tau Ceti Federation, an old French alliance that allowed the Goons to settle in the current region of Deklein, occurred under DJ’s watch. I don’t think it would be too much of a stretch to say that the agreement that provided the base by which the entire CFC coalition could grow and develop is more than just “Cold ashes.” I’d also venture to say that Mittens has been quite dishonest about his involvement in the events in question on numerous times.
They say good artists borrow, great artists steal. However when your entire reputation is built upon the theft of other people’s achievements eventually that comes to light. Bit by bit the real talent of GSF has departed, and you can certainly tell too. Goon logistics which was once the envy of Eve, is now sluggish. The supposedly spectacular Goon Intelligence Agency, the pride of Mitten’s as a self proclaimed “Spymaster” lost much of its credibility when poor intelligence led to the the CFC awoxing its own titan. The various interviews with ex-GSF members involved only confirm these factors. Due to this leadership style GSF command is made up of two different groups: koolaid drinkers and the vexed old guard that tolerates the others’ incompetence for the sake of its friends, much like Endie held out for as long as he could. Am I wrong? Well speak with the former members yourself and judge for yourself.
Of course I’m going to get “Confronted” by Mittens again for this article as well. In my last piece I commented on him getting into a purse swinging match with Gorski Car regarding his moderation of r/eve. You can read the article yourself but the short version is that Mittens claimed that Gorski was leading a “Hate mob” against his alliance members on reddit by not moderating the mass community dissent regarding Mitten’s and Sion’s actions. Not only that, such events lead to “Actual real life doxxing.” Translated: Gorski if you don’t do what I say you are not only harming me but the world as a whole because what is good for me is good for everyone.
As commentator/critic on a pretend news site reporting on video game spaceships I thought it was completely in my realm to give my 2 cents in on the fact that Eve’s most powerful individual felt so insecure that he needed to argue with Gorski. This would be like Putin going down to some run down bar in Moscow and yelling at the bouncer for not letting his buddies in for a drink. You’d think Mittens would have something better to do.
So I joined up on the tweetfleet slack, something I recommend ALL the readers here do, just to see if I could investigate further and see where all the drama was. To my delight I was treated to something more. As soon as Mittens saw me on slack he launched into a tirade of insults and attacks trying his best to give off an air of intelligence through forced “Intellectualism.”
themittani [3:40 AM]
anyway son keep at it, this is hardly your first lengthy post full of big words all about me @seraph.ix.basarab and i was getting texted while at the club about what i thought about whatever you wrote
Just casually remark how he’s at the club. My immediate reaction was “Who the hell goes to a club on a Wednesday night.” Apparently thirty-something-year-old important spaceship people do. The remark also came off like he was trying very hard to impress me. I mean here we have arguably the most powerful spaceship person in Eve trying to impress a relative nobody like myself. That’s some thin skin.
He went on to tell me that he was there to confront me and that now I couldn’t hide behind EN24. He was really going to let me have it. Of course this shows how little he knows about me because I thrive on conflict. But anyway he let me have it, boy did he. He started off rambling off pseudo-intellectual nonsense that read like a 4th grader’s version of “The Art of War.” He was telling me “How it really is” and referred to himself again and again as an autocrat while linking youtube videos of Laibach.
For those of you who don’t know Laibach is a European band that has songs about dictators, fascism and communism. Of course they do this in an ironic way to mock it but that fact seemed to elude Mittens counting by the many times he referred to himself as an autocrat.
themittani [3:51 AM]
i just want you to understand that we’ve been mocking you on gsf jabber for months and we can see through you, perhaps far better than you even know yourself, as you’re one of a very predictable phenotype @seraph.ix.basarab and we are not fooled by your facade
There’s at least a couple dozen such remarks from him. When he claimed that all I did was write about him, I pointed out that before the kickstarter drama my last article regarding him was in March detailing the propaganda of the CFC and N3PL. In the face of such facts his reply was that he had made me “Look it up.” Apparently this is what the spymaster is capable of. Also there were a lot of run on sentences about how amazing his life is outside of Eve.
Who am I that he’s trying to convince? Maybe he’s trying to convince himself, I don’t know. In any case for a super important space dictator to come down to the level of a humble EN24 poster, it’s quite telling. He basically loses simply by engaging in the purse swinging be it Gorski or myself. The very fact that he feels the need to engage me shows a level of insecurity and weakness which is detrimental. I’m pretty much a nobody. I don’t lead an alliance of thousands of players. I don’t own hundreds and hundreds of systems. I personally thought if he did say something to me, he’d be cool and nonchalant about it. I always thought he was kind of arrogant, but when you get to talk to him you realize its only the top of the iceberg. It’s very entertaining.
Certainly DJ’s posts along with the ever growing list of defectors are really shedding light on a few things regarding his reasoning. If it was one or two ex-Goons you could say maybe they’re just bitter. But when the people that actually were on your side, turn against you, that should tell you something. In any case this is one of the most interesting events to follow for me. If you read DJ’s AMA thread you’ll also see that he says he will “share more” if “certain things do not change.” We can assume he has much more in store for us all to watch out for. I’ll certainly update with another article.
In closing I’d like to answer one particular question that is often posed to me. “Why are you anti-Goon Seraph?” Of course much more colorful language is used but that’s what it really amounts to. I’m not anti-Goon. But I do enjoy mocking tryhards and challenging the status quo. I’m a very simple individual. I’ve said this before but I see sand castles, and I want to kick them. The bigger the sand castle, the more I want to kick it. The more whining when the sand castle is getting kicked…even better. I love critiquing and crying about it only further motivates me to dig even deeper. Let it all burn.
