Amkon
From AmkonWiki
Amkon, short for Amerikan Konspiracy is a conspiracy minded online community with a primary focus on allowing free speech.
Contents |
History
As written by mojo.
So this is AmKon as it happened from my point of view. This view is somewhat biased in many ways and subject to a selective and occasionally imperfect memory of past events. I preferred to write it this way rather than search through thousands of posts to get the dates exactly right or double check the facts. It's personal and shouldn't read like a sterile scientific text, not just to me but i'd like to think for all of us who call AmKon home.
The Essence of AmKon
The Essence of AmKon used to appear on the splash page before we switched over to AmKon 2.0.
This is not just another Conspiracy Forum, this is a Community, within you will find: The Disenfranchised. The Rabid. The Bizarre. The Looney Left and Right and Everything in between. If you want to believe: That reptilian aliens from the 5th dimension inhabit the bodies of the worlds most powerful people, enjoy. That freemasons and jews get together for Christian baby BBQs, fantastic. That the United States intelligence services control the world's UFO disclosure, groovy. That magick is real, knock yourself out. That other civilizations arose before ours did, cool. That there's a muslim conspiracy to take over the western world, you go boy. Do all those things if you so desire... but do not post a single message with the belief or intent that anyone is going to agree with you or that you won't be directly challenged. Don't just believe. No heavy handed moderation, no childish rules, no forced pleasantries. A place where you can be yourself or someone else. AMKON Worship the Seal |
Worship The Seal
The cult of the seal is an amkon religion. The seal is the main deity, and is to be worshiped and feared.
Birth
Jasn (aka simiusdei at AboveTopSecret) was banned from ATS a couple of weeks prior to Xmas 2007 because he had the temerity to question Bill Irvine's integrity and massive ego. Bad bad boy he was questioning the status quo on the worlds most popular conspiracy forum. Irony anyone. Having been a prolific and well liked member of ATS Jasn had made a lot of friends (and no shortage of enemies either) and suddenly found himself locked out and unable to contact those many new friends he had made. As a consequence of this Jasn and one or two other members who he had contact with through email away from ATS sent PM's to a select few friends to join him at a site he had started as a means of keeping in touch. A forum that didn't take itself seriously to begin with but rather a home for those friends to keep in touch and talk shit.
The Toddler Years
It was a few weeks after the birth of AmKon that i received a couple of emails from Jasn and a pm from firestar inviting me to pop by and catch up. Naturally i, along with many others had wondered what had happened to our friend simiusdei (Jasn) and gladly accepted the invitation. What i found was something i hadn't experienced before in my short time on the internet and conspiracy forums, a place devoid of overpowering rules and stifling decorum, a place amongst friends where i could speak my mind freely without fear or favour and expect nothing in return except a wonderful sense of cameraderie. To be perfectly honest the majority of topics in those early weeks were anti-ATS rants, off topic games threads, chit chat and some of our regurgitated topics that we had started at ATS. But it felt good.
Kindergarten
Those few of us who regulalry frequented the board started contacting as many of our ATS friends as we could via email addresses that we had swapped or through other forums that we knew they frequented, and not as Bill tried to portray of us all spamming ATS and their members through PM's (just one of many lies to eminate from ATS over the coming years). Pretty soon we had a very tight bunch of about 20 or so members posting daily, mostly banned refugee's from ATS, just chilling and enjoying each others company. Almost daily we would receive new members from ATS, either banned or intimidated. Some of these folk took it upon themselves to spread the good word about AmKon. It was about this time that a certain banned ATS member joined AmKon using a number of socks, it became known as the Beaver episode. Our first great drama fest (see: Amkon Drama). A pyschotic miasma of veiled threats of violence and incoherent ramblings. One of the first of only a very few bannings that has ever occured on this board. Growing pains.
School Days
All of us that were part of the staff at AmKon then had never been involved in any meaningful way in the running of discussion forums or websites before but what we lacked in experience we made up for in enthusiasm. We could feel that there was something special going on, the interaction on the board was different to anything else we had ever been apart of. There were many drama's, each one bought with it lessons to be learned and the character of the forum evolved. Around this time there was an influx of banned ATS members as happens from time to time, who bought with them some baggage, some good, some bad, some outrageous. A whole bunch of threads were started dealing with the possibility of ATS being more than what they appeared to be. This bought with it increased and unwanted attention from the ATS heirachy. To cut a long story short, members of ATS and their staff joined the forum in an effort to "put out the fires" and at the same time Jasn and myself received numerous email communications from Bill and Springer and Djarums. A whole lot of back and forth, invective, accusation and counter-accusation ensued, before the brains trust at ATS decided it would be a good idea to threaten Jasn and myself with legal action if we didn't take action against our members who were posting "their theories" about ATS. Naturally we declined and redirected all of their emails from that time on to a Porn site. This was the beginning of the real angst between "us" and "them" and i believe the begining of our crusade against the 'stoopid dumb fucks" that pervade the conspiracy community. There are numerous other events at this time regarding ATS and the tactics they tried to employ against us, and of course our reaction to these events that were less than sophisticated but caused us no end of sadistic pleasure. Two other events stand out in this period, the banning of Lexion and the great Boycotteverything/Abattoir debate. One of our friends and prolific poster Boondock was going through another period of what, in retrospect, was a reccurring real life drama. Lexion posted as he has always done in response to Boon's latest life drama, with brutal honesty. It polarised the board and the staff and as a consequence we made a hasty decision to temporarily ban Lex. This in my opinion was a turning point in the evolution of what the forum was to become and what we would stand for. The banning never sat well with some of us but we took the easy way out and remained silent when we should have screamed. That would never happen again. At pretty much the same time, maybe just before, maybe just after, one of the staff had had enough of a certain grumpy old delusional cartoon member causing mayhem on the board and instituted a new forum which was called the abbatoir, basically a time out box for naughty kids. Needless to say this did not go down well and was met with howls of indignation, which in itself was disappointing as a more composed and intelligent response may have meant we did not lose the participation of valued friend's and member's. But thats AmKon, and if any more water has to pass under this bridge we'll soon be up to our necks.
High School
Jasn, Yo Mama, Vckums, Corey and Steve-o and a few others begin to spend much less time on the forum due to a variety of reasons and Mojo and the "new" admin team (Skunk, Bitchkoma, Foxtrot Oscar and Apeci) take up the reigns. We realise that the forum is in need of a purpose, of reinvigoration and so begins the ideology of a home for the banned and disenfranchised, a community that embraces Freedom of Speech and a land without boundaries. The community continues to grow, unfettered by rules and decorum. We spread our wings and tackle issues, research blooms, we talk shit and argue and debate and laugh and cry and shout at the moon. Puberty blues. There are continuing drama's. We battle other "stoopid dumb fuck" sites, friends and members come and go, some in tears, some never to return, others come back from time to time when their busy real lives allow. And everyday, through word of mouth others join to replace those that leave. Hardly a month passes by without some sort of drama, whether it be from members, or trolls, or Kacen being banned again only to be allowed to return days later. And after each drama fest the ideology of the board consolidates itself, the staff learn from their mistakes, the members forgive and forget (for the most part) and we keep on plugging away, trying to build a community we can all be proud of. It's around this time that one of the greatest tragedy's to occur in our short life occurs, an event that is to become known as "The Apeci", named after our technical guru at that time. Thousands of posts were lost to the void never to return. a great hole was left in the board and many of us wondered if we would survive, but survive we did, and not just survive, but thrive. A testament to our character. The forum has now moved to new, sleeker, faster software, growing stronger day by day. Adulthood beckons.
College/University
And here we are today, of the original staff there are now none left but we know we have left it in good hands, (Skunk, Bitchkoma, Foxtrot Oscar and Pack3tg0st) we are proud of what it has become and we see for it a bright future, hopefully a beacon to other like minded sites and individuals that a community can exist and prosper without rules but with an ability to express themselves freely. Somewhere that you can love and hate each other in equal measure from one day to the next, where you can be whatever you want to be. It might sound trite but it's true nonetheless, AmKon really is a different beast to the rest. We don't ban, we don't moderate, we allow you to speak freely, though don't be fooled, you will be challenged.
