Third SBC Renaissance

The Third SBC Renaissance is the name given to a landmark series of major events in SBC history that occurred between June 29th and July 1st, 2018, with related developments continuing later into the year.

The Third Renaissance was centered around the demotion and permanent ban of longtime SBC staff member Mr. Dr. Professor Patrick, and was spurred on by increased focus on the details of a past romantic relationship between him and Kylie. Conflicts between MDPP and the rest of the community began in the early hours of June 29th, and reached their climax with MDPP taking the site down for over six hours on July 1st. Afterwards, JCM assumed ownership of SBC and its major technical responsibilities.

While SBC had, up to that point, seen more than its fair share of community dramas and scandals, the Third Renaissance's real-life consequences and ramifications, involving an abusive real-life relationship between members with a large age gap, resulted in an unprecedented level of both outrage and unity which persisted for months after the events. Now known simply as "the Renaissance" (and having well overshadowed the first two), the events of summer 2018 were a watershed moment for SBC as a community, resulting in the strengthening of personal bonds across the site, and seeing a number of inactive users return to the forums in order to show Kylie their support.

History

Background (June 25-29)

The lead-up to the Third Renaissance began on June 25, 2018, when Kylie shared a document she wrote about two different relationships she had with then-admin MDPP. This relationship, involving a large age gap between MDPP and the then-minor Kylie, had already been known to the members of SBC, but had become the center of much discussion in the weeks leading up to the Third Renaissance, due in part to Metal Snake using events surrounding their breakup as a point to criticize the SBC staff. Kylie initially shared the document to members Halibut and Big Meaty Claws, who helped her spread it across the community's members. The spread of the statement was largely through word of mouth, and for several days, no public statement was made on the subject.

A copy of the document can be read here.

Outbreak and MDPP's resignation (June 29-July 1)

MDPP's June 29th threat to Kylie, seen on Discord.

The Third Renaissance began in earnest in the early hours of June 29th, 2018, when MDPP issued a violent, public threat to Kylie on the SBC Discord (pictured to the left). While this outburst was met with an intense initial backlash, it was mostly overlooked throughout much of the following day, having occurred in the very early hours of the morning. Later in the afternoon, however, MDPP was again pressed about his threat, leading members who were not present during the early morning argument to heavily pressure MDPP. As a result, he issued a brief resignation message on Discord. At the same time, details of Kylie and MDPP's relationship had begun to spread faster, leading to MDPP increasingly losing support throughout the community.

The next morning, on June 30th, MDPP wrote a longer resignation message in the form of a thread on SBC. This topic quickly became the center of much controversy, as MDPP's standing within the community had been all but destroyed, and he attempted what many felt to be damage control by giving shoutouts to numerous members. Much of SBC's membership reported wishing that they would rather have seen him leave silently than make a topic about the events, with Aya writing that "[he] should have just left and said nothing because that's the best thing [he] could have done."

An example of the post redactions in the "Resignation" thread.

Subsequent to the controversy regarding the topic, MDPP returned on July 1st to reprimand members for their posts in the topic. A number of statements MDPP made in the topic were proven to be lies, including his own notion that "[he] was not redacting content in any member's posts," something which had already been disproven on the SBC Discord by jjsthekid. This censorship of several posts, including the controversial topic "HELLO ONE AND ALL!!!11" - in which MDPP stated that he provided the "G-rated version" of his meeting with Kylie - resulted in an even larger firestorm across SBC, with several members accusing MDPP and his brother Face of censorship. This censorship debacle was amplified by both MDPP and Face opting to censor a number of posts on the forum, completely redacting several posts along with the words "MDPP," "Kylie," "pedophile," and any other term that they believed to be incriminating. The resulting backlash ensued mainly due to many members feeling that their posts had lost the meaning they once had, and that the censorship was ultimately pointless.

The controversy regarding the censorship resulted in an increased vitriol from SBC's membership, who continued to make posts disparaging MDPP in various threads, with members like Hayden being accused of doxxing and being banned by the former admin, despite it no longer being within his jurisdiction to make this decision. As a last-minute resort, MDPP changed every post outside of his own within the topic to read as "Redacted. Please use the appropriate Discord channel. Thanks." A number of reactions resulted from this, including tvguy creating an entirely new thread entitled "You Are a Disgrace" with the intention of re-posting his original sentiments. A partial image copy of the thread prior to its replies being redacted can be seen here.

MDPP was officially banned from SBC on July 1st, but continued to hold technical control of the site against the will of the staff and community.

Site takedown and conclusion (July 1)

As a result of the overwhelmingly negative reaction MDPP received for his Resignation topic, and with the addition of new topics aimed solely at members venting their feelings against him, MDPP took down SBC at approximately 4:50 P.M. EST on July 1st. The message left by MDPP, pictured to the left, read as follows:

The message MDPP left on SBC following his takedown of the site.

"It brings great displeasure that I have to temporarily shut down SBC. I never wanted to do such a thing ever in my life, but it is quite clear that SBC has strayed away from the very thing that we have came together to do: talk about SpongeBob. While some may see this as an attempt to censor even more of what is going on, the truth of this shut down is that things have truly gotten out of hand. Nobody here should be proud of how they have been behaving as of late. Take this shutdown as a means to calm down. Eventually SBC will be back online. You may continue to discuss on Discord. Best of wishes to all."

A number of reactions ensued as a result of this, with many members expressing extreme discontent in the site's takedown. Members quickly gathered on a new Discord channel entitled "Resignation Discussion" to vent their feelings on the topic, writing that MDPP had overstepped his boundaries by way of taking down the site that, in the eyes of the members, no longer belonged to him. Prior to the shutdown JCM, tvguy, and jjs all put forth efforts to keep the site active in case an incident like this were to occur, as MDPP had warned prior to the site's shutdown that he would likely take action against the site if anyone were to, in his own words, "[have] one more slip up." This was likely in reference to Hayden's post, which was seen as the catalyst for MDPP's decision by some.

SBC remained down for over six hours, but was later brought back online just after 11:00 P.M. EST. MDPP explained that SBC's return was guided by "outside negotiations," which were later revealed by Kylie to be an e-mail exchange between the former admin and Kylie's own mother regarding SBC. MDPP revealed in this conversation that he had transferred site powers entirely to JCM, vowing to leave SBC alone.

Censorship

On June 30th, during the battle over ownership and control of SBC, MDPP added a number of word filters into the entire site's database, which censored any reference to both his username and his real name to instead say "hilaryfan80". This also retroactively edited existing posts which contained either variation of his name, leading to otherwise completely unrelated posts containing mentions of the name "hilaryfan80". Due to the complexity of the coding used by MDPP to create these censors, they were not removed until many months after the ending of the Renaissance, and many instances of the censored names still remain scattered across old SBC posts and pages to this day.

In addition, this very wiki page was found on July 18th, 2018 to have been mysteriously censored; not only were all mentions of MDPP's name edited out, but links above to the image of his threat and to the image archive of the Resignation thread were deleted as well. In addition, MDPP's name was retroactively removed from this page's edit history, in direct violation of MediaWiki's terms. Due to the nature and method of the removals, this was speculated to be an attack on the wiki's database by MDPP, as both the wiki and main SBC site fall under the same domain.

MDPP's 2023 reappearance

President Squidward becomes a "bully" on SBM

On June 17th, 2023, it was noticed by members of SBC that MDPP had appeared on the former "neighbor" site SpongeBuddy Mania, attempting to reintroduce himself to the latter community with no acknowledgement of the events of the Renaissance. With this coming several months after the official end of the second SBM/SBC Feud, many members of SBC, including Kylie, logged into SBM to directly confront MDPP, informing newer members of SBM of his abusive background in the process. In response to the backlash, MDPP attempted to lie to the site's newer members, claiming that the events of the Third Renaissance were simply rumors created as a homophobic smear against him. This prompted HawkbitAlpha to respond on Twitter, threatening to "rain down all hell on [MDPP's] head with receipts" if he did not delete and apologize for the post.

While MDPP was banned from both SBC and SBM in the immediate aftermath of the Third Renaissance, it is speculated that SBM's staff made an error when banning him from the site in July 2018, and mistakenly did not make his ban permanent, leaving him able to return after the fact. Regardless, the swift backlash by the sites' shared members would cut MDPP's reappearance very short, as SBM moderator PinkPugPrincess quickly banned him again the next morning, this time permanently. He has not been seen on either site since.

Aftermath

The events that occurred within the Third Renaissance spurred some of the strongest reactions to any event in SBC history. Due to the extraordinary circumstances behind it, and around MDPP's removal, the Third Renaissance has been referred to as SBC's "Me Too" moment, in reference to the international movement against sexual abuse.

On the flip side, the unity of SBC members resulting from the Third Renaissance marked a high point for the community. Kylie was made the Featured Employee for the summer, and a number of older members returned to the site despite inactivity in order to support her. The event culminated in a number of topics and posts being made (notably here and here) in support of Kylie and the community as a whole. A number of members cited the Third Renaissance as strengthening and re-energizing the community after the exhausting events of Metalgate, and ushering in a new, robust era for SBC. The event significantly increased activity on the Discord and the forums.

As a commemoration of the ending of the Third Renaissance, in the late hours of July 1st, tvguy released a new SBC skin called Together Since '09, ultimately becoming the final skin he would make for the site. Made entirely of white and pink colors (the latter as a shout-out to Kylie), it also shifted the forum sidebar to the left instead of the right, calling back to SBC's Forumotion era as a nod to the community's endurance. The skin remained in use until April 2023, when it was phased out with the release of Seahorse 15.