Pen Spinning Board of Directors
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The Pen Spinning Board of Directors, often shortened to PBoD is a private invite-only discord server that organizes the Pen Spinning World Tournament, Pen Spinning Olympics and Pen Spinning World Cup events, starting from 2019 onwards.
It was originally formed by active UPSB users and their contacts in 2018 to organize the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2019.
PBoD has been subject to numerous controversies, related to its friends-only membership structure, lack of communication, inherent secrecy and fickle behavior. The PBoD server has, amongst other things, been used to promote unrelated content by its members behind the scenes, manipulate tournament scoring based on personal spats, and discuss measures against undesirables in the community.
History
In 2018 the organization was formed in a discord server to organize the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2019 after Zkhan had reluctantly organized the originally cancelled Pen Spinning World Tournament 2017 before quitting organization of events. Early members invited included i.suk, coffeelucky and DArkT. The server has representatives from many boards with the intention of spreading the news of the events, but only comparatively few members read and contribute to the discussions.
In early 2021, the contents of the server were leaked on a stream and discussed live, with screenshots being taken of the memberlist, contentious events in the server and the channel list. The leaks brought extra behind-the-scenes context to previous controversies and unveiled the elusive group as a disorganized fraternity-like space to air gossip and complaints about unrelated pen spinning events. Notably, i.suk used the server to help promote his general tweets as well as complain about incidents in other servers.
Controversies
Byoru CT Incident
In 2020 a famous modder, Clyde, replied[1] to an adult Patreon cosplayer Byoru with a zoomed in image showing that there was a Dr. CT in the background on the shelf. This was after Clyde had already asked once, and later on attempted to ask again about the object in the background of the image a couple of months later. The post got widespread attention in the pen spinning community for a short time, ranging from amusement to inappropriate remarks.
In the early 2021 PBoD leaks it was revealed that it was shared in the PBoD server by Tidus, with remarks from Tigres and Ketain of "Is that a wig" and "is that a garbage bag wrapped around her titties". The leaks revealed the informal, fraternity-like subgroup in the server that constituted most of the discussion and activity in the server, in contrast to the majority of the members who mainly lurked and did not reply.
"Who told you about PBoD?"
The Pen Spinning Board of Directors was unknown about to the general public until mid-2020 when the acronym "PBOD" was vaguely dropped in the WC-2020 discussion between the board members. Attempts to ask about what PBoD was in the early days in text and voice, particularly to Tigres, a member formerly from UPSB, resulted in defensive demands to explain who had told them what it was. This led to the "Who told you about PBoD?" meme and jokes that the group was an evil supervillain society. This was further exacerbated by discussions about the early 2021 leaks, where mentions of what went down in the leaks were denied consistently despite it being clear that those who read them had specific knowledge about what went on in the server. Later on, once it was apparent that not only was the information known but also evidence saved the denial turned to personal attacks against those who had the leaked information.
By the time WT21 was finally announced, the Pen Spinning Board of Directors publicly came out and revealed the name of the organization and the involvement in organizing the events, but declined to share any further information about the membership or organization process. The results of these events created a secretive reputation for the organization.
PSO 2020 Mumm3y Penalties
Background
In the Pen Spinning Olympics 2020 "Power" category, American spinner Mumm3y submitted an under-time combo. It was to receive high points from judges and would have been second place before time penalties added.
There were discussions on how high the penalty should be. Initially the penalty was agreed between Mumm3y and judges as -2 points for 0.5s under-time. Coffeelucky, a PBoD member who wasn't judging, argued it should be -4 points instead due to personal spats with Mumm3y. Afterwards Coffeelucky made a video claiming it was 8.5s measured by taking the latest first frame and earliest last frame possible and rounding down the half second to equal -6 points. Later, the judge sheet came out with Mumm3y nearly at the bottom of the rankings after the severe -6 penalties suspiciously placed by every single judge.
The event was controversial because the process was both uncharitably harsh and only performed on Mumm3y's combo and not on other short combos, with the process involved likely to dramatically change results in other categories if it was applied, showing the process was targeted and unfair.
PBoD leaks reveal
The 2021 PBoD leaks revealed that the penalties were fixed on every judge's result by Ketain, one of the judges, and not each individually. The leaks also showed that Ketain was unaware of the actual time of the combo, incorrectly claiming it was -3s under-time, revealing that he was acting on the suggestion of coffeelucky for the process and claiming it was an "objective fact" for him to do so.
ESPC Grouping
For the Pen Spinning World Tournament 2021 the question was raised on how to handle the fragmented communities such as LSPSC/SPSC as well as UPSB/Fen Spinner. Despite prior precedent of PSH/HKPSA as well as PDS/KPSA/KIPS in allowing multiple communities to enter despite being in the same country, the decision was made to lump Fen Spinner and UPSB together under the new name English Speaking Pen-spinning Collective, a decision which pleased neither community and caused confusion. LSPSC/SPSC were due to be lumped together but the communities merged before the event started.
Initial cancellation of WC22
While boards were preparing from WC22, discussions around the tournament's announcement date began to spark up in the second half of 2022. In a surprise twist the PBoD member Tigres began asking why people expected World Cup 2022, and snidely revealed that they weren't doing it and did not feel an obligation to communicate that they were not organizing it until it was almost too late to hold the event.
The resulting crisis and backlash caused Padrace to be made de-facto manager of PBoD and organize World Cup 2022 and the Pen Spinning Olympics 2022, but put increased strain on the community as PBoD had now been revealed as unreliable with hosting the events.
Cancellation of WT23 and WC24
The group chose not to host WT23 and WC24, leaks show that inside the server the channels had been created, but that discussions on the tournaments were repeatedly pushed back and not replied to, showing a total degradation in the organization's structure.
With nothing being done, Tilt had been nominated as a representative for Spindys and Fen Spinner, although in the latter case it was chosen for political reasons: Tilt is not a staff member for Fen Spinner, but with the collapse of The Workshop the majority of the English-speaking community now resides in Fen Spinner and Spindys. With key PBoD members openly expressing a desire for the destruction of Fen Spinner, this would be the 4th year that Fen Spinner is denied representation in international events.
Members
The total amount of members is unknown as the server is private, but leaks in early 2021 revealed the members in the server at the time.
Two members are known to have left the group: Allwars who left when LSPSC merged with SPSC and RPD who left citing "I also joined in hopes of fixing all PBoD's problems with my infinite knowledge and I just left with way more anxiety than accomplishments".
Known members from the 2021 leak:
- Arteq
- Chobi
- Juzzle
- Dustfall
- AiMo
- Beige
- coffeelucky
- DArkT
- Dentol
- eg9099
- Herenz
- HUI
- Huwng
- i.suk
- Ketain
- kin
- Patchwork
- Rotation87
- San
- Tidus
- Tigres
Known former members: