Site Incidents

Throughout its lifespan, The SpongeBob Community has experienced a number of notable incidents, including site outages, forum raids, security breaches, and serious interpersonal conflicts. Noteworthy incidents which have been documented will be listed below.

Conflicts

Major

Third SBC Renaissance (2018)

(Main article: Third SBC Renaissance)

The Third Renaissance, taking place between June 30 and July 1, 2018, led to the permanent ban of key staff member MDPP, and the changeover of technical management of the site to JCM. It is widely regarded as the most serious moment in SBC history, due to MDPP's removal being brought on by the unraveling of his illegal real-life relationship with an underaged fellow SBC member. In hindsight, it can be viewed as "the drama to end all dramas" for SBC, as it is the last major incident in the community to date.

Metalgate (2018)

In June 2018, only a few weeks prior to the Third Renaissance, SBC's then-moderator Metal Snake broke away from the site after writing a Google Doc attacking several members. This resulted in him, as well as his friends, Spongetron Robotpants and then-admin Cream, being banned as well. Metalgate is notable in hindsight for beginning the rise to prominence of the SBC Discord as the site's main center of activity, and the effective end of the Xat's 9-year lifespan, due in large part to discussion of the incident leading jjs to join the server for the first time.

Minor

First SBC Renaissance (2010)

A major turning point in SBC history occurred when, in June 2010, control of the site was changed from terminoob to 70s. This was viewed at the time as a renaissance for the site, leading to the evolution of the culture of SBC as it is known today.

Second SBC Renaissance (2011)

A complicated span of staff infighting in late 2011 caused a power struggle between 70s and tvguy, with the latter winning out and assuming control of SBC. This immediately preceded a major reorganization of staff, and the creation of Orca 8, one of SBC's most successful versions to date.

Robertryan Cory's Visit (2012)

On June 13th, 2012, SpongeBob character designer Robertryan Cory joined SBC after getting notices on Flickr that members from the site were criticizing his work. The spat was eventually resolved when the involved members apologized to Cory, who settled the matter.

Hacks & Raids

2009-2010

Prior to the true founding of SBC, August to October 2009 saw a user of TV.com named Captain52 manipulate the staff of the site into banning many members from the site. Some of the banned members would go on to found SBC as a new community for refugees of TV.com's Spongebob boards. A similar attack, carried out by WhaleBlubber, would occur between July and August 2010, driving more members of TV.com to SBC.

November 2010 also saw SBC receive an invasion of spam from members of SpongeBuddy Mania, including future SBC staff MDPP and TattleTale Strangler.

Summer 2011

Between July 19 and 21, 2011, SBC's Forumotion was hacked by an unknown attacker, with numerous members being banned through 70s's account, and the site's layout being scrambled through the ACP. The event resulted in the decision to move SBC from Forumotion to vBulletin the following month, launching V7 Clownfish. It has been speculated in the years since that the hack could have been a false flag operation by MDPP and/or tvguy, both of whom had already been pushing for SBC to be moved away from Forumotion.

Two months later, in September 2011, the forum, now based on vBulletin, was invaded by spambots over the span of three weeks, only being stopped by the addition of a new captcha system.

March 2015

on March 13, 2015, three non-SBC users hacked into SpongeCraft Classic, and used TNT to blow up tons of landmarks and projects, as well as cause a number of floods. The damage was repaired, but a few structures remained damaged all the way to SpongeCraft's closure in 2019, such as The SpongeBob Side Lounge. The three users in question were permanently banned.

Major Site Outages

March 2012

On March 12, 2012, SBC, then based on vBulletin, was taken offline by its host, Lunarpages, for overuse of server resources. After a temporary move to phpBB3, the site would move to Invision Power with the launch of Orca 8, and has remained on the software since.

December 2015

On December 2, 2015, a debugging error by MDPP resulted in over a month's worth of content on SBC being temporarily lost. While most was restored, several days of the lost posts were never recovered.

July 2018

On the third day of the Third Renaissance, SBC was forcibly taken down for several hours by MDPP, with only a widely-mocked splash page being visible on the site. It was restored later the same day when JCM took over ownership of the site.

November 2018

On November 25, 2018, the site went offline due to a complicated technical error, and remained down for three days before coming back online on November 28. Due to the timing of the outage, SBC was down at the time of the passing of SpongeBob creator Stephen Hillenburg, leading to members gathering on the Discord to discuss instead. The site's return was accompanied by the release of the Stephen Hillenburg Community skin.