I don’t know how far back that is, so I’ll try to give snap shot for the whole thing as best I can.
community member approached to fugue about doing a secret Santa thing for some members through the store
intended members for the gift received emails giving a password to access the durtle black market with a code to get in and claim the gift
somebody else saw that the durtle black market changed and now needed a passcode, and assumed that it might be an ARG, due to tofugu’s past with them
secret Santa saw the thread, but because it hadn’t escalated into anything (no passcode guessing yet), left to do work
the people who received emails didn’t realized that the gift was for particular members, and started giving hints for other people (because they also thought it was something for everybody)
passcode hunt ensues, but some people start getting frustrated due the fact that the hints weren’t very clear (nor were they supposed to be, as there weren’t supposed to be clues)
people that guess the password instead of getting an email start ordering the secret Santa gift that, unknown to them, wasn’t intended for them
after (a couple hours? A while in any case), after the thread spiraled out of control secret Santa had a break from work and had to start doing damage control explaining what was going on
The whole incident can’t really be blamed on any one party in particular, just a series of small errors that added up to this mess. The tofugu team is said to be sorting things out so that the people who were intended to get their gifts receive them, so nothing irreversible happened.
That’s what happened to the best of my knowledge, if anybody thinks I missed anything important feel free to add.
I actually find this part a little bit fascinating. If that coincidental connection had never been made this thread would have been completely different. I find that kind of interesting… or maybe I only feel that way because I wasn’t actually involved in it
(Sorry for flogging a dead horse, but after lurking on this thread for so long and reading everything from start to finish, and also quietly trying to guess the password just for the fun of solving a puzzle, even though I didn’t hope or intend to get anything since I’m not even a WK subscriber, just a forum member… Yeah, I just feel like I need to say something before leaving. I need closure for some reason, even though I’m not upset about the gifts. Uh… maybe it’s coz I feel like the atmosphere’s a little uncomfortable?)
I think everything that happened was just an unfortunate confluence of circumstances: it just so happened that
the notification email was kinda vague
WK has a history of ARGs (which I didn’t know about! Sounds cool!)
humans (+ the felines and other species among us) tend to be curious, and love to play, as someone noted earlier, which really got everyone going, especially with the rather tense – but possibly improving! – pandemic situation.
End result: a bit of a misunderstanding in which many of us (myself included) assumed this might be some cross-WK holiday season game. I personally think an email clearly stating that it was a ssshhh – secret – would have helped, but I tend to follow instructions from reliable sources (e.g. a Tofugu address ) kinda blindly. Maybe you guys are right: even with that, the excitement might have got to everyone anyway. Some things that were a little uncalled for were said, unfortunately, but it seems like the mystery’s been cleared up, and hopefully there are no hard feelings. I think we can all agree that no one in particular can or should be blamed for whatever has transpired.
It may sound strange to say this at this juncture, but my main takeaway from all this is that the WaniKani Forums (and more broadly, the WK community) are a truly special place on the Internet. From the way so many people came together to tackle this initially, assuming it was a holiday challenge, to the way people started to voice and defend various people and points of view when they started to realise this might not be what most of us expected, I really felt a sense of community, even if there was definitely friction at times. I’m far more used to the Internet being full of trolls and unpleasant people who will split into warring factions at the drop of a feather – imagine how much worse it would be if one dropped a hat! –, but that’s not how things usually play out on WK. I think @KyokaJiro’s gesture and the help she received from the Tofugu team deserve special mention (sorry for the tag! I know this was supposed to be a secret, private thing), simply because all of it is so amazingly nice. I didn’t think people could become such great friends via an online forum, and – as hopelessly otaku as this sounds – it really made me think of some anime in which characters find great friends through ネトゲ (MMORPGs) whom they’d never have met otherwise. Regardless of what happened, this display of community spirit really wowed me, and it was definitely heartwarming to behold. I feel really privileged to be a part of this, particularly since I’m not even a paying subscriber and I’ve been here for just over six months!
With that, I’d just like to wish everyone a happy holiday season, and I hope all the recipients enjoy their mystery gift.
-If the email specified that it was only for specific people
-If the access for the gift was on a different page of the store
-if secret Santa got in touch directly (but who can blame them, it was a lovely idea)
-if tofugu didn’t have a history of doing similar things
Any of those may have stopped things from going where they did, it was just a collection of small errors along the way
Yeah, my snapshot may have made it seem like things got nastier than it did. I’m impressed with how well everybody took things in stride after everything was explained.
The intentions behind the secret Santa thing were only due to how great the people here are, and we shouldn’t let this put a damper on that.
) kinda blindly. Maybe you guys are right: even with that, the excitement might have got to everyone anyway. Some things that were a little uncalled for were said, unfortunately, but it seems like the mystery’s been cleared up, and hopefully there are no hard feelings. I think we can all agree that no one in particular can or should be blamed for whatever has transpired.
