#despite our wildly inconsistent posting schedule | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

howwelldoyouknowyourmoon · 3 years

Text

Dying on PLA (Pure Love Alliance)

This post was written by a former BC who questioned an authority figure on PLA and experience life-threatening consequences.

I’ll start with this: the moment I was dying was when I felt my soul sinking into the ground during the PLA 2000 tour, in a lavish town house owned by The Unification Church in Kensington, one of the most expensive neighborhoods in London, UK. I was 16 when this all happened. For some reason, my soul wasn’t rising as you might imagine when people die, probably because it was too tired, instead, it sank. I was in a sleeping bag and surrounded by 300 other kids all in sleeping bags, lined up like goods in the grocery store with little room to walk. Asleep, I slowly realized that I was sinking through my sleeping bag, past my body, into the oriental rug and through hardwood floor, deep into the ground, creeping further and further below the foundation of the building. So I knew I was dying—but I didn’t feel the least bit sad or upset. In fact I was relieved—even ecstatic. It meant that the torment from my supposed fellow BCs would be over, that this pain from the infection raging through my body that left my neck, arms, wrists wrapped in puss filled bandages, and my body so fatigued (so. fatigued.) would be over. The ground felt cool, and was getting colder, and it was really actually quite refreshing.

How great would that be to not have to wake up? Who cares if these people found a dead girl in her sleeping bag in the morning. Good for them. They might be surprised but they’d get to spin some fantastic story about my soul paying indemnity for the crimes that my Japanese ancestors committed against the Koreans; that’s apparently how they were explaining my mysterious illness to friends— an illness that had my upper body oozing a relentless and embarrassing flow of thick yellow puss, that had me changing my bandages every hour if I had the energy and a clean bandage on me. I found out that this story was making the rounds through the 300 or so BCs who were also on that tour. Before that, someone who I went to summer camp with for years, actually asked nonplussed, if I was currently struggling with Satan. Another story that others hinted to was that I was fallen. Writer’s note: At that point in time, like many of you, I had not so much as held a boy’s hand, let alone kissed anyone, made out and definitely never lost my virginity. I was precocious, spirited, ballsy—like any teenager trying to find humor in strange places. Most things I did was for the sake of a good laugh. But I was in my heart a total straight arrow, and I believed in the church, seriously, like the best or worst of them.

On this trip, there were also elders who took me aside from the group dinners and recounted the amazing stories about my dad and what a great guy he was at the religious seminary, the New Yorker Hotel, Belvedere, etc. And then they would say; Why would you disappoint him so horribly?

I wouldn’t know exactly how much I was disappointing him because I was never allowed to call him or my mom, or make any phone calls for that matter. I was being guarded 24/7, my passport was locked up, I wasn’t allowed to sleep much (I would be kept up later and woken up earlier than the others), nor take showers, which caused, what I would later find to be a trio of life-threatening infections coursing through my body. I had a very different experience from other BCs who were free to eat, shower, and sleep.

When I felt like my soul must have been half a mile below ground. I stopped, because this was it. Then I felt something big—bigger than me, bigger than everything and everyone around me, pulling me up with the utmost urgency, and I knew that this big thing gave a damn— even if I didn’t. I snapped back to my body with a whiplash that woke me up, panting, freaking out. Even if I didn’t care to live (and I really didn’t), even if these 300 other people around me, even if my religion didn’t care, God, the universe, this force, without a doubt, cared violently. This is when I realized that God did not move exclusively through organized religion, he/it moves and vibrates in anything, in everything. So my direct relationship with this force was felt for the first time under those floorboards, separate from and despite the machinations of my religion.

I immediately woke up and saw in the reflection of this gigantic ornate gold mirror on the wall opposite me, what looked like at least 20-30 white, blue glowing shadows, all very tall, standing around me and the dozens of sleeping BCs around me. Who they were, I’m not sure, I was delirious, and more importantly I was terrified that I had almost died, and so willingly. I couldn’t go back to sleep. But now I had a fire in my stomach, to get through this alive and a rabid indignity against those who’d put me in this position, including myself. I would do right by the universe, by God, by surviving this.

I got here by making the mistake of questioning the director of the PLA on the modus operandi of the Pure Love Alliance, on Day 1 of the tour. My fellow BCs didn’t make the mistake of vocalizing the inconsistencies in the logic of posing as a non-denominational group when we were 99% BCs, they didn’t stand up for the not even 1 percent non-BC kids who didn’t have a choice but to read the Divine Principle and join our prayers. If you are too precocious with too many rhetorical questions for elders, you’ll see just how nasty and how quickly the machine will mobilize against you.

Why. During the previous PLA tour of 1999 I remember lying about our religious association when being interviewed by the local news in Birmingham, AL. We were vetted and instructed to withhold our association with the Unification Church so when a reporter asked me what I was, I responded “Lutheran"— my father’s previous religion before joining the church.

I hate lying about something as grand and dumb as my religion. I didn’t think that we needed to constantly lie, it frustrated me always having to hide the church from my school friends and I wanted to do away with the smoke and mirrors and live openly about this. So at the beginning of the 2000 tour that would be marching through the US in July and then marching through Europe in August, I went up to the director and I asked him: why can’t we be forthright about who we are, if we’re truly non-denominational?

I didn’t immediately realize what a total coward he was, I just thought he was an adult, he must have some good answers. But he pandered with half answers, trotted me around the ring with half baked logic all while getting increasingly upset and dismissive: you just don’t understand; this is much too complicated for you to understand (more upset); this is God’s will; do you want to go against God’s will? And I responded with: I think it’s pretty simple, God doesn’t need us to lie. We should be honest to the press and other churches about being associated with the UC. Otherwise we should stop calling ourselves non-denominational, right? The conversation went nowhere and I eventually walked away.

I was probably earmarked as being a troublemaker but it wasn’t that bad. At least in the beginning, I hung out with my BC friends, some of whom I’d been growing up with and all was well during the tour through the US.

It was when I noticed that there were 3 or 4 non-BC kids on the tour—how they were roped in to hang out with us nutjobs for two weeks, I’m not sure, but I know everyone looked at them with a special wonder. They were special to us because we were showing them that there was this great camaraderie and communal life that we had together amongst ourselves and we really believed that we were letting them in on something special.

I noticed that while we were reading the Divine Principle and praying in circles, they were expected to do the same with us, without any opportunity to decide for themselves whether or not they wanted to in the first place. This would be a small but important gesture to extend for any organization that called itself non-denominational to the outside world; to accept and respect people of other faiths; to let them have the opportunity to pray in their own way if they needed to. It really bothered me because it seemed wildly disrespectful and a bit dishonest. If I were traveling with a Christian youth group, wouldn’t I want the right to read the DP and pray my way at 5 am in the morning on Sundays?

It became a breaking point when late one night on a tour bus in Europe, I brought up the issue again during a bus reading of the DP, and I got pissed. I openly pointed out to the bus leaders the hypocrisy of a so-called non-denominational youth group posing as such to the press, all while not respecting the faiths of others on the tour.They said that this is how it’s done, that everyone does the same thing so that they can stick to the strict schedule to get through the tour. This is the will and mission of the PLA, this is God’s will, and we need to see it through. Then I said: If they aren’t allowed to choose, than I refuse to read the DP and refuse to join prayers until they do have the choice.

I’m not really sure why I cared so much but it was because I could see my bus leaders acknowledging my logic, I could see behind their eyes that they did. But they towed the line and refused to acknowledge that there was any right. But my refusal to pray or read DP, they took very, very seriously—yet in my mind, I wasn’t doing anything drastic, I wasn’t leaving the church. That would be crazy! I was just taking a stand.

These non-BC kids were, at least outwardly, complacent. But let’s be honest we were all 14, 15, 16 years old and expected to do everything en masse, but why shouldn’t they/we have the choice to read the DP or not? What was faith if it wasn’t a deliberate, and educated choice? Shouldn’t anyone be allowed the right to question things, if only to return with stronger answers?

As soon as I had this fight on the bus, that was when the horrible things really began. I was always being shaken awake on long rides when everyone else was allowed to fall asleep, even if only for an hour or two. Lack of sleep breaks you quickly. I wasn’t allowed to sleep with my friends, instead I always had sometimes two unnis sleeping and walking with me. I could mingle with others, but I was always being watched by them close by. I was escorted to bathrooms but never allowed to take a shower, they said I could take one later, but later never came until it was too late, after my infections had become so severe they couldn’t exactly ignore it.

It was 3 in the morning when the buses filled with BC teenagers and our wranglers parked on the curve of the fucking German autobahn to let us out. We were released into the cold night by our demented but well-meaning leaders, searching along the curve of the freeway in the wet grass and mud trying to find our suitcases. Let me repeat, 3 am, 300+ teenagers trudging in the dark along a sharp curve of the German autobahn before entering what, in my mind, was the Black Forest.

I don’t even remember who was in charge of me at that point but it seemed to be predetermined that one sister became my handler in Germany. She came out of the blue, barking at me to move out, and personally marched me into that forest, literally behind me nipping at my heels, always on the assumption that I would flee sideways, off the trail, deeper into the forest, to what, I don’t know. I had no desire to leave, I was just hungry and exhausted. When we reached the top it was a huge building that wasn’t even fully constructed with insulation hanging out and utility lights haphazardly nailed and dangling from the ceilings. It was in a huge large barn like space where we convened in a long line to finally get some split pea soup as dinner, and by the time I finally got some, someone knocked it out of my hand, on purpose? Who the fuck knows. I would have cried but I was too tired and I don’t need sympathy. Some other BCs said that was too bad, but my handler wouldn’t let me go back in line to get more. Instead, we had to pitch our tents in the mud incline below the barn, my tent mate was of course my ever-watchful unni/handler.

I’m not exactly sure how the tent stood up, it was lopsided because of the mud and the wet grass, and the incline, but once that was done I went to go brush my teeth, and saw behind the barn, a bunch of white statues staggered in a terrifying symmetry along the hill; literally, I don’t think I’d ever seen anything as frightening as those statues in the moonlight. They were the true family, ghostly white and with their arms outstretched like they were dancing, I went up to them unsure as to what they were. They were smooth and so white but when I touched them, they weren’t marble, just hollow and plastic—creepy, empty lawn furniture. And for the first time in my life I saw them as this insidious, careless force who either had no idea, or simply had no compassion for the ramifications of their will and franchise. That was the night when my perspective on everything started to shift.

I wasn’t allowed to shower the next day even though I could see my other friends lining up with their towels. And I was always ferried away from communal meals, to have a one on one with some important elder who would shame me for an hour. And it worked. I remember one guy telling me with beady eyes, rather emphatically, how disappointing this will be for my father, who’s such a good guy, everyone loves him, I don’t know him, but everyone loves him— when he finds out how I’ve been working against the mission. I really tried hard to imagine if my dad would be proud or disappointed in me for taking a stand but my thoughts fizzled into a murky question mark while I stared at the white statues now in daylight. I didn’t know the answer and I was so tired, exhausted and hungry, and I was beginning to slowly not care as much.

But I also began to resent these elders for believing that I was working against them, I wasn’t! I was only asking good questions! I was on their side, and I believed I was still a good person.

Instead of not really being able to hang out with my friends, I sensed they were also avoiding me. I remember incredulous looks. It got super lonely fast.

It was when one elder oppa along with a whole slew of younger oppas in training crowded around me in a circle in front of everyone after one march to give me a talk. "Stop setting a bad example to the other sisters, this is your last warning.” Their vague warning was made abundantly clear. Even if it wasn’t true, my generation believed that I was fallen and that’s why I was acting out…

At that point I didn’t even consider the sheer stupidity in this non-linear logic, clearly, I ruined my chances of a good match! That was the end for me. No one would want to be blessed to me and that was when I began to really lose it because it never occurred to me that I wouldn’t have an arranged marriage, that my trajectory would be anything less than what was expected of me, or any different from anyone else. Even when I was asking these people seemingly simple rhetorical questions, it didn’t mean that I wanted to leave. But I was beginning to realize that it would be impossible to have a happily ever after ending in the church.

I don’t remember France, France was a blur, I just felt sluggish and horrible, light sensitive the entire time, still wasn’t allowed to sleep much and was barred from the showers. I was hiding a nasty rash that was breaking out all over my skin by wearing a cardigan, the only cardigan that I had brought on the trip.

My illness was getting bad when we arrived in the posh neighborhood of Kensington, London. The buses unloaded this shocking fire hazard number of teenagers into one townhouse that strangely appeared to have a bullet proof vestibule and a security camera at the entrance which only added to my feeling that I was being held captive. Meanwhile, nobody else seemed to care about this detail, the fact that we were in a fucking compound. You wouldn’t know it from the unassuming white exterior that blended in with the row of townhouses exactly like all the others in the neighborhood.

I remember after marching through Leicester Square, my subgroup broke off to Trafalgar Square where we shouted our testimonies at one of the fountains and anyone else who would care to stop, but no one did. My leader wasn’t really convinced by my conviction to Pure Love. It was a bit hard, being exhausted, with a fever, to be shouting about Pure Love all while being slut shamed by my generation for no good reason at all. I didn’t really feel like shouting, I just wanted rest and to be alone.

My illness was getting from bad to worse quickly, I had a fever, felt hot, then clammy cold, sweating bullets, in addition to huge open sores spreading on my neck and arms, but whenever I asked to see a Dr. they wouldn’t allow it, I later realized it wasn’t because of money, even after I offered to pay myself, it was because they were afraid that I would talk about everything happening on the tour. It hadn’t even occurred to me to go public with any of this. With what? I didn’t know that there was a story, how bad it really was until afterward.

I did finally get to take a shower in London, I think because that was more reasonable than covering up a dead girl, probably. But the shower didn’t help at that point. Whatever was happening with the sores, it was also in my blood, I felt exhausted, jumpy, crazy, sensitive to light, miserable. When they wouldn’t let me see a doctor, when the pus was spilling out of my bandages and running down my neck, running down my arms, like in some horror film, I begged them to at least let me go to a pharmacy to buy bandages, Neosporin and hydrogen peroxide. They agreed so long as a brother escorted me, a tall one who could easily outrun me if it came to it.

Maybe it was because they were making such a huge deal to keep me on watch that I began to fantasize about getting away. Not to tell on anyone or anything, with no agenda in mind, I just wanted to go home. I asked if I could get my passport and my ticket to try and go home early but that was not possible. I just wanted to get away and so on our way to one rally, I had this brilliant idea and I jumped out of a subway train and onto the platform, I only ran 5 steps before I was yanked back into the train by my unni. After that everyone thought I was totally nuts and definitely pure evil. I had no idea where I was planning to go, I think I was just going to ask directions to a hospital— at that point my sores on my upper body were just getting bigger and were oozing, no amount of soaking the sores in hydrogen peroxide or neosporin would help. It was embarrassing because it was pus and blood soaking through my bandages and into my shirts that I could only rotate so many times. People on the subway and in public were furtively staring at me, they probably smelled the disease on me, but I couldn’t ask for their help.

In my mind today, my older self rewrites the history of that trip. In my older self’s version: I’m unstoppable even though I’m sick. In a fit of manic strength, I jump out of the train, out run my guard, and I don’t stop running until I get to a doctor or to a police station, whichever happens first — then I seek protection at the US embassy despite not having a passport or money on me, and then I get to all major news outlets and I expose this youth group for their psychological and physical abuse, and for misleading the public on the PLA. By doing so, I set a chain of events on an international scale that would bring to light all of the questionable things we’ve had to quietly endure. I put a small chink in the church’s armor and it all comes crashing down. I save my fellow BCs from a life without an educated choice to believe or not, from the waste of time spent fundraising for a thankless institution while their families struggle to get by, in questionable matchings, in a sad, vicious cycle.

In actuality, after nearly dying in a sleeping bag, I’m too tired but crazy alert and a day and a half later I’m somehow on my way to Heathrow airport via the subway. On the way there I fall asleep hugging my backpack, only to wake up to find that other passengers are just looking at me horrified; my bandages had soaked through again, I was pouring pus onto my backpack. I’m so embarrassed for alarming these strangers but there’s nothing I can do, I had changed my bandages only an hour before hand, right before leaving the townhouse. All I can do is zip up my anorak and hope I can rinse these out later.

Finally at Heathrow, I’m handed my plane ticket and finally, my passport and it turns out that the tour is over. I can’t even believe it but the elders, including my handler, are walking away to catch their own planes. I curb my hysteria and get to a pay phone where I finally call my parents in Seattle on a collect call, and I’m freaking out, I’m worried that someone will come out from nowhere and cut the line, capture me, throw me in a white van, what with my luck.

My parents are so happy to hear from me! How are you kiddo? I have to fight to keep from sobbing, I’m shattering and yelling, focusing on just one thing: that they have to get me to a doctor as soon as I land, I keep repeating this until my dad promises and repeats this to me. I’m scared I just might drop dead right then and there. Once I’m appeased, I take deep breaths to cool down and I ask my mom if anyone in her family did anything to the Koreans during the occupation. She doesn’t understand the question until I explain to her the theory behind one of these rumors.

The line went quiet.

My dad doesn’t know what to say, but my mom blew her top, she was furious.

In my mother’s adorable, hot headed Japanese mom fashion, she emphatically starts yelling into the phone about how my ancestors did nothing. No one in my family served, and in fact, my family was socially ostracized for years for accepting a Korean family who were on hard times into their farming community in Shizuoka prefecture. (see Footnote)

She was furious and I think stormed away from the phone but I was happy to know, without a doubt, that this dark age posturing was completely ridiculous. My sense of what was reality and what wasn’t was a bit diminished in my daze the past few days, I was glad to have my intellect reinforced.

My parents collect me at the airport and are stunned by the shape I’m in. The doctor explains that I have several severe infections, a staph (staphylococcal) infection and impetigo— a highly contagious bacterial infection on my skin, but it was progressing as an infection in my blood—septicemia, which would have killed me in 48 hours without medical attention. I’m given a heavy flow of an antibiotic cocktail and I’m closely monitored. When I do get home, I can hardly move, and if I’m not sleeping or sitting in a mineral bath, I’m taking antibiotics and trying to heal my skin in time for the new school that I’m transferring to. But in every waking moment, I’m trying to make sense of the previous two weeks. I tell my parents that I’m no longer in the church and they don’t even put up a fight. We don’t talk about it but they can hardly believe what happened to me.

From that point on, I’ve kept my distance from every BC. I partially hold it against them for being complacent, for not chiming in with me, for not seeing the fatal flaws that were so obvious to me. I hold it against them for not standing up for me when they saw the quiet abuse that I went through. For not speaking up for me when people were effectively spreading lies about me. But I realize they didn’t really know me enough, or really even know what was going on all around us at the time, or themselves for that matter. And if I were them instead of me, would I do it any differently?

I hold it against the church for breeding ignorance and stupidity in its members and families; encouraging them to have upwards 10 kids before they can even think about what it means to really take care of them, giving them a real, true education and a fulfilling life; for grinding these families into poverty, a life partially lived on food stamps, for what exactly, I’m still not sure; for collectively instilling this insidious belief that it’s women who are always at fault/responsible in all situations and who carry the onus of Eve’s imprint on the Fall; that men are never to blame/never responsible and therefore unaccountable creatures save for their purpose of begetting a blessed family; that if you’re about to be raped, it’s your duty to kill yourself—not defend yourself and your right to live—before it gets to that; that you are anything less in God’s eyes if you are raped; that our sexuality is a fixed binary without room to account for a full spectrum within ourselves that acknowledges and respects humanity in its entirety—homosexuality and all. I hold the Church responsible for the deaths of BCs I knew, but that’s a longer, separate story.

When and where it all went bad for the Unification Church, I don’t know. I know it was a beautiful thing when my parents joined, I truly believe that they were meant to be together. It was something that I believed in with my whole heart when I was little. I do in fact believe that I’m a blessed child— I have no doubt that there’s a divinity in me, but I know there’s a divinity in everyone, BC or not. Our lives should be lived acknowledging and honoring that little spark, that bit of magic in each of us. It’s that simple.

My only regret in leaving the church at 16 was leaving behind my fellow BCs, especially the younger ones who have no one to advocate for their choice to question. I know they’re struggling or have struggled against parents and elders who are even more forceful and too scared to ask the same questions themselves. I know their questions are harder because they haven’t seen what I have in such crazy, sharp relief. It was made almost too clear to me but for them their experience is slower, blurred and more broken. I have dreams where I’m fighting for them, but I have to leave them behind to fight my own battles. I can hardly think about the church for very long without feeling the most violent, extreme emotions, mostly on behalf of my fellow BCs. It’s part of the reason why I’ve kept away for as long as I have, I’ve forgotten names and faces, and while I’ve forgiven the church for what it’s done to me, I will never forgive what it’s done to the thousands of individuals and families raised in almost poverty because of it. In my heart, it’s not hate, it’s justice, it’s right and wrong, clean. In my heart, I am a fucking vigilante, and part of what propels me is to vindicate them. I fantasize about doing well enough in life, to have enough money so that I can buy up each of the church’s properties so that I can burn them all down to the ground, in the name of all my fellow BCs. If there is one thing that I can thank the church, it’s for making me a fiercely passionate person. To this day, I don’t think anyone can hold a candle to the flames that burn in our hearts.

Life outside of the church is hard, reprogramming the way you consider everything never ends. Dating still feels impossible even after 10 years at it. But it’s so beautiful, it’s so varied and complex and breathtaking— the multitudes, the possibilities that I’ve experienced and are still at my feet. It’s always up to me, every mistake, triumph, difficulty and opportunity is up to me, and I’m so grateful that my conclusions are my conclusions even if it’s a process. As stupid or sad as this story is, I’m grateful for it because now I have a tenacity that rivals most anything. Now, almost 14 years later, I am a fucking panther and I don’t let anyone or anything take me down. Nothing fools me, no situation happens without my consent, and I live life fully, authentically, deliberately and always on my terms. And I want that for every single BC, in the church or not.

__________________________

Silra said: This makes me so sad. I’m an ex British moonie and the PLA was a last straw for me. I was 12 during that time and remember rumours being rife amongst all the BCs. I had to say my testimony at Leicester Square where my dad was super proud. Little did he know I wasn’t happy and the rumour mill was ripe with bullshit about me. I’m sorry you had to go through that.

__________________________

Footnote

The Unification Church heavily guilt tripped the Japanese members about the Japanese occupation of Korea (1910-1945), and about the Korean ‘Comfort Women’. To understand the psychology of this manipulation used during recruitment, see:

Japanese woman recruited by the Unification Church and sold to an older Korean farmer in an ‘apology marriage’

To understand more about the Korean ‘Comfort Women’ issue see:

The Comfort Women controversy

This ‘Comfort Women’ research is very important for all Japanese members. For some perspective, here is an extract from a piece from the New York Times. There were more Korean ‘Comfort Women’ serving the US military from 1950 than ever served the Japanese military during the colonial period.

New York Times:

Ex-Prostitutes Say South Korea and U.S. Enabled Sex Trade Near Bases By Choe Sang-Hun January 7, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea. South Korea has railed for years against the Japanese government’s waffling over how much responsibility it bears for one of the ugliest chapters in its wartime history: the enslavement of women from Korea and elsewhere to work in brothels serving Japan’s imperial army. 

Now, a group of former prostitutes in South Korea have accused some of their country’s former leaders of a different kind of abuse: encouraging them to have sex with the American soldiers who protected South Korea from North Korea. They also accuse past South Korean governments, and the United States military, of taking a direct hand in the sex trade from the 1960s through the 1980s, working together to build a testing and treatment system to ensure that prostitutes were disease-free for American troops. 

While the women have made no claims that they were coerced into prostitution by South Korean or American officials during those years, they accuse successive Korean governments of hypocrisy in calling for reparations from Japan while refusing to take a hard look at South Korea’s own history. 

“Our government was one big pimp for the U.S. military,” one of the women, Kim Ae-ran, 58, said in a recent interview. 

Scholars on the issue say that the South Korean government was motivated in part by fears that the American military would leave, and that it wanted to do whatever it could to prevent that. 

But the women suggest that the government also viewed them as commodities to be used to shore up the country’s struggling economy in the decades after the Korean War. They say the government not only sponsored classes for them in basic English and etiquette meant to help them sell themselves more effectively but also sent bureaucrats to praise them for earning dollars when South Korea was desperate for foreign currency. 

“They urged us to sell as much as possible to the G.I.’s, praising us as ‘dollar-earning patriots,’ ” Ms. Kim said. ...

The Comfort Women controversy

youtube

#PLA #Pure Love Alliance #Moonies #Sun Myung Moon #Unification Church #CARP #Japanese occupation of Korea #Comfort Women

1 note · View note

junker-town · 5 years

Text

Jimmy Butler and the 76ers need each other, now more than ever

This is a gamble that both sides needed to take. It’ll either succeed wildly or fail horribly.

Late in the summer of 2016, Joel Embiid was fuming. According to ESPN’s Kevin Arnovitz, Embiid was stomping around the Sixers’ old practice facility, at one point chucking a basketball across the hardwood. He had a workout scheduled with a marquee college big man prospect, but it got cancelled at the last minute. Instead, he had to face off against a 37-year old Elton Brand who was on the last legs of his NBA career.

”The night before, I’d been watching Shaq’s highlights, and I wanted the competition,” Embiid told Arnovitz. “I needed someone to go back at me.”

It sounds like he needed a competitor like Jimmy Butler, but Butler was 750 miles away at the Chicago Bulls practice facility, busy exchanging profanities with Rajon Rondo over who got to defend Isaiah Canaan, the hottest scorer on the opposing scrimmage team.

Two years since then, the number of people the business end of a Butler profanity-laced rant has gone up, ranging from teammates in Chicago and Minnesota -- who he chastised in private and in front of cameras -- to the Wolves’ front office. When he first returned to practice after demanding a trade from Minnesota, Butler challenged Karl-Anthony Towns to post him up, schooled the starters, and turned to GM Scott Layden.

“You fucking need me!” he screamed. “You can’t win without me!”

Meanwhile, Embiid got paired with Ben Simmons, who sat out a season due to injury and then won Rookie of the Year. In 2017, the 76ers drafted Markelle Fultz at No. 1 by trading the No. 3 pick — who became superstar-in-waiting Jayson Tatum — to Boston, in hopes of rounding out a homegrown Big Three. A shoulder injury held Fultz out most of his rookie year and infamously prompted the destruction of his once-perfect jumper.

Sam Hinkie, who led the Sixers into the Process era, was forced out, and Bryan Colangelo was ushered in. At least three burner Twitter accounts, an internal investigation, and an exhausting search for a replacement later, Colangelo was fired and Brand, now a front-office executive, was promoted to the big job.

Butler and the 76ers both had to take their hits. On Saturday, they merged out of necessity.

The Sixers traded Jerryd Bayless, a second-round pick, and two Process babies who had been handpicked by Hinkie -- Robert Covington and Dario Saric — to the Timberwolves for Butler and sophomore Justin Patton. Despite their meticulous planning, the multiple draft picks, and reserved cap space, the Sixers still needed a third star, so they took a gamble on the 29-year-old Butler, who is a free agent at the end of the year.

They didn’t trade for him to put the sputtering Process era to an end, but to refuel it.

Built unconventionally around a 7-foot shooter in Embiid and two point guards who can’t shoot in Simmons and Fultz, the 76ers are prone to bouts of offensive malaise, compounded by envelope-pushing plays that too often end in multiple turnovers. They needed Butler, a nightly 20-point scorer and stabilizing on-court force.

And Butler, whose reputation for being old school has teetered into infamy over the past few months, needs a team like the 76ers — modern and analytics-obsessed, but also defensively inclined — to drag him into a version of the 21st century that aligns with his values.

Butler was consistently at odds with Towns and Andrew Wiggins, the young pillars of Minnesota’s rebuild. That’s why it came as a surprise when Embiid told ESPN’s Tim MacMahon that he discussed his new potential teammate with them and “they thought we were definitely going to get along.”

It makes more sense if you separate personality from persona.

The kid from Tomball, TX -- who used to strut around Chicago in cowboy boots, blast Garth Brooks from the locker room, stan Taylor Swift, and imitate wrestling moves on his teammates -- is more famous for his 5 a.m. workouts, locker room tirades, and throwback attitude. Meanwhile, Embiid, the NBA’s best tweeter and troll, is known as the class clown.

But it’s easy to forget how serious Embiid is and how funny Butler can be. At their core, they’re both hard-boiled workers with a nose for mischief. There’s a reason why Butler is arguably the NBA’s most meme-worthy star, and why Embiid relishes roasting big men on the floor as much as he does online. Their jokes don’t offset their intensity. Instead, the jokes are an extension of that competitiveness.

After getting blown out by the Raptors on the eve of Halloween, Embiid stewed in his own frustration. The Sixers’ new switch-happy defensive scheme was out of sorts.

“I’m the guy behind, so if I call something, my teammates gotta respect it and they gotta honor it,” he told me that night. “We have a lot of communication problems. That’s the key to a great defense.”

Later, he added, “I gotta communicate better. “If our defense is not good, I feel like I’m not doing a great job so I gotta do a better job. I don’t ever allow someone to give up 129 points. That’s bad. I’m pissed about it.”

The message was not dissimilar to what Butler has tried to get across in Minnesota: stern, public, focused on effort, disappointed in the gulf between who they are and who they could be. But Embiid has a less explosive (read: less profane) way of communicating, and he put himself on the list of people who needed to be held accountable.

And unlike Minnesota, where Butler was supposed to imbue work ethic by osmosis to a franchise that hadn’t made the playoffs in more than a decade, Embiid isn’t alone.

Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports

When 76ers head coach Brett Brown took over in 2013, he deliberately hung posters all over the walls of the practice facility that read, “Philly hard, Philly real, Philly edge.” The goal was to constantly remind the team what it meant to be a 76er, evoking memories of Allen Iverson stepping over Tyronn Lue in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, or Charles Barkley crashing against floorboards for loose balls. A few days prior to the Raptors game, after the 76ers dropped back-to-back road contests against the Bucks and Pistons, the coaching staff convened with the players, hoping to remind them who they were supposed to be.

“They didn’t call out anyone as a person but they called us out as a team,” T.J. McConnell told me. “We all took it personal and decided it’s not good enough and that we need to be better.”

In Butler, Embiid now has an aid and kindred spirit: a dogged, prideful defender who will call out perimeter switches and funnel opponents into his towering 7-foot frame. A core of Simmons, Butler, and Embiid could wreak havoc defensively for years.

But Butler will have to adjust to Philly’s culture.

Simmons and Embiid are not Towns and Wiggins, but they’re still young players: prone to inconsistency and still figuring out who they are on the court. When things momentarily go off the rails, Butler will have to be patient and measured, especially if Fultz — whose road to reclaiming his potential, let alone tapping into it, looks long — sticks around. And if Butler chides, he must do it behind closed doors. The microphone never helps him.

Butler is a rare combination: an open book, easy to read, but hard to manipulate. His intensity does not flood onto the court and blur his decision-making ability. Instead, it is defined by Butler’s need to assuage his anxieties. When something is wrong, his first impulse has always been to consider what more he can do.

Butler’s instincts turned him from a near-homeless 13-year-old to a JuCo standout to a first-round draft pick to an NBA All Star, so you can see why he hangs onto them. But in the fragile ecosystem of a locker room, Butler’s aggression rarely translates positively to others.

He has always known that, even if he hasn’t been able to help himself. When I profiled him at the 2016 All Star game in February, he joked that he had to stop telling the truth (i.e. criticizing his teammates) in the media, because it always got him in trouble. He led the NBA in minutes at the time, and he liked presenting himself as an archaic heel, the foil to a league charging in the direction of rest and injury prevention. That didn’t lend much credibility to his insistence that he was sitting out games in Minnesota because his body needed it.

But even back then, he admitted his own intensity wasn’t healthy.

“I say that I don’t wanna sit down, I wanna play all those minutes, but I really be tired of playing like I’m Superman or something” Butler told me then. “They hit me with Kryptonite, then I hurt my knee.” He hurt his knee again last year, tearing his meniscus and missing almost two months.

Butler’s mentality may run in opposition to the way analytics have transformed the game, but he isn’t ignorant to their benefits. The question is whether he can lean into those moments of rationality. The Sixers, a numbers-obsessed franchise that wants to hang their hats on being tougher, longer, and grittier than their opponents, could provide the happy medium that allows his aggression to thrive and his joints to heal. At the very least, they’ll field one of the most intense locker rooms in the league.

Butler’s favorite pop star put it best: It’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames.

0 notes

koragame · 5 years

Photo

Faking It Big: Debunked Video Game Leaks Fans’ insatiable appetite for news on their favorite games has created a market that Photoshop-skilled fakers are exploiting. For every verifiable leak, there are dozens of hoaxes spreading false information. Sometimes they are revealed quickly by their creators and their motivations are relatively benign. There are others who want their constructions to fool viewers, and they bask in the glory of tricking the unsuspecting. While most are easy to spot, these are the leaks that went the extra mile to try to fool us. The Grinch Leak (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) The recently discredited “Grinch Leak” made its first appearance in a Snapchat video on October 24. It appeared to reveal artwork with the entire roster of fighters in Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. Seven characters were supposedly unveiled, including Shadow the Hedgehog, Banjo-Kazooie, and Ken from Street Fighter. The characters where just believable enough that the debate quickly split viewers into two opposing teams: those who trusted the rumor, and those who denounced it. “Team real” pointed to a promotional image of The Grinch movie in the background, which gave the rumor its name as proof of the leak’s veracity. The image seemed to corroborate the leaker worked in advertising, and so would have access to privileged information. The skeptics were ultimately victorious when, during the Nintendo Direct on November 1, Incineroar was revealed as the last unique character in the base game, with Ken from Street Fighter introduced as an echo fighter. Spring Man (Super Smash Bros. Ultimate) Super Smash Bros. attracts a dedicated fake leak crowd. It is a long-running series that reuses a lot of stages and characters – making it easy to get a hold of plausible artwork – and fans spend years speculating wildly about the game’s characters. Which is why an anonymous post got so much attention on 4Chan back in April. It had several screen shots and a short video that allegedly exposed unannounced characters coming to Nintendo’s fighting game. Unlike many easy-to-dismiss fakes, these pictures were presented in resolution and included mundane unconfirmed – but anticipated – elements. The leak played on people’s expectations that the Ice Climbers, who haven’t been in Smash Bros. since Brawl, might return; that this generation Mario would have Cappy from Super Mario Odyssey; and that Nintendo would introduce a character from their new IP, Arms. Even though wary fans seemed to take these images with a grain of salt, they were so well done, few were willing to confidently denounce them. Nintendo E3 2018 Schedule E3 is like Christmas for gamers and leakers alike. The frenzy of excitement surrounding the tightly guarded presentations creates a perfect environment for leaks to go viral. This year, it was especially easy to pass off fake information due to the unusually high number of real leaks. For instance, Walmart Canada’s online store accidentally went live too soon and, though it was hurriedly taken down, screenshots made the rounds. Though it was riddled with questionable content, the online inventory nonetheless garnered intense attention because it appeared to show games from almost every major E3 presenter. When, in the aftermath, Bethesda hurriedly announced Rage 2 – one of the most out of the blue games on Walmart’s list – they inadvertently confirmed legitimacy on the entire leak. Taking advantage of the hectic atmosphere, a list popped up that purported to detail Nintendo’s full presentation and Treehouse schedule. The list went viral and got plastered in every corner of the internet. It promised gameplay footage of several anticipated titles like the new Metroid and the rumored Star Fox racing game. The schedule, however, didn’t stand up to scrutiny. The formatting was inconsistent throughout the document, some of the game titles – like Yoshi’s Flipping Island – were too bizarre, even for Nintendo, and the page was peppered with typos. But again, because the Walmart list had many of the same problems, this leak couldn’t be entirely debunked until after Nintendo’s E3 video presentation. Multiple Sony E3 Presentation Schedules Leak At the same time the fake Nintendo itinerary was making the rounds, several people wanted us to believe they had gotten their hands on the Sony conference schedule. It is surprising how many people believed the information despite there being two dissimilar Sony documents, but the E3 hype was at a crescendo. Like many other rumors on this list, these leaks were able to gain momentum because they played on fans’ wishes and built a valid foundation with already confirmed information. The documents promised long desired announcements from PS4 backward compatibility to Bloodborne 2. Sony quashed the rumors quickly when they broke from tradition and openly announced they would only be focusing on four Sony exclusives during the conference: Death Stranding, The Last of Us: Part II, Ghost of Tsushima, and Spider-Man. Animal Crossing for Nintendo Switch Fans have been desperately waiting for a new Animal Crossing, so leaks regarding the game were popular this year. Once again, the hoax debuted on 4Chan and it showed a title screen of Animal Crossing: Globetrotter alongside a second image of a character. This leak and others like it prompted an unusual PSA from Tristan Cooper, editing manager at Dorkly. He presented his own fake leak that began believably, and then over a series of screenshot unmasked itself as a Photoshopped fiction. He made it as a humorous warning urging people not believe unverified internet leaks. One fake screenshot even points out that an earlier picture had inserted pictures of Shrek in the background. The responses to his piece demonstrate how easily some had been fooled. While some appreciated the joke, others vehemently resented being tricked. Borderlands 3 Footage A post on reddit from ShineRise1 back in March claimed that, after six years of waiting, the next Borderlands was coming out within the year. A slew of speculation followed in the announcement’s wake. True to form for a fake leak, the camera work and resolution left a lot to be desired. A shaky video of planets ended in a single screenshot that showcased a completely made-up logo and protagonist standing in the rain. In the post, ShineRise1 describes the game’s progression from linear to open world gameplay and also indicated the game had a September release date. It wasn’t a secret that Borderlands 3 was in development at the time, a developer’s recent Twitter post that he was working on the “next Borderlands” supported the leak’s plausibility. The hoax unraveled when someone superimposed the image of the “new protagonist” on top of an image of a character in a Dark Soul II’s trailer. The mask and rain in the background matched exactly, proving that the leaker had simply cropped an image. The Survivor 2299 Website When a much-loved franchise is left alone for too long, fans begin to get antsy and leakers smell opportunity. This was the case back in 2013 when an enigmatic website with the URL thesurvivor2299.com, seemed to promise the official reveal of Fallout 4. This leaker went all-out in the attempt, as he later explained, to force Bethesda into sharing real details about their plans for the game. The website hosted a countdown clock that ended on December 11, the same day as the VGX awards, which could have made a great venue for a big announcement. That ZeniMax Media, Bethesda’s parent company, owned the domain, added fuel to the fire. The site had secret messages that referenced game characters, it had cryptic codes that sent fans on wild goose chases – it even featured some Morse code for good measure. To everyone’s chagrin, the hoaxer came clean and Fallout 4 wouldn’t come out for another 2 years. Nintendo Switch 5.0 Update In January, a video emerged claiming to demonstrate firmware update 5.0 for the Nintendo Switch. The video presented a YouTube app coming to the Switch which excited many people because fans’ have been asking for YouTube on their Switch since the console launched. A few short days later, the leaker proudly took credit for his handiwork with a brief apology and a hope that Nintendo would take notice. The power of this leak is that, even after being revealed as a hoax, everyone still wanted it to be true. Many outlets covering the story touched on this sentiment and suggested that Nintendo might be wise to consider the fan reaction. It may have taken the better half of a year, but Nintendo did introduce the long-awaited YouTube app earlier this month. Game Informer Superman Cover Many of the leaks on this list pretend their fake information came from an official source to seem more legitimate. Back in the end of May, that’s just what happened when Game Informer got dragged into a hoax. A 4Chan poster falsely insisted that they had early access to our cover, which would break the news of Rocksteady’s upcoming Superman title. The claim wasn’t outrageous, because Rocksteady was already closely tied to the superhero genre. The studio made the Batman: Arkham games into one of the most successful superhero video game franchises of all time. Though the claim might have seemed plausible at face value, anyone would have been able to see that almost the exact same debunked story made the rounds back in November 2017. The whispers became more frenzied after Twitter post from Andrew Reiner didn’t deny the rumor. Game informer’s real July cover released soon after – with Anthem on the on the cover rather than the man of steel – and the jig was up. NX controller Nothing gets fans’ imaginations going like the announcement of a new game system followed by years of silence. Back when the Nintendo Switch was still cloaked under working title project NX, people couldn’t keep from speculating about the impending Nintendo console. Enter the two-part hoax of the NX controller. Multiple pictures from different leakers surfaced of an unusual looking controller with two joysticks on opposing ends of an elongated disk that seemed to replicate an earlier hardware patent. One poster, Idriss2Dev on Reddit, even showed the supposed controller alongside a sticky note that referenced a quote from the Wii’s reveal. The internet tore the images apart looking for clues and under the pressure, David Louis-Marie revealed his hoax that he put together with a 3D printer and Photoshop. Soon after, the second poster, Frank Sandqvist, stepped forward and explained his motivation for carrying on the hoax. He was interested to see how easily he could recreate the leak just for laughs but then regretted getting peoples' hopes up. Rayman (Super Smash Bros. for Wii U) This is the example par excellence of a fake leak that had everyone going. The video showed a Super Smash Bros. menu depicting Rayman as one of the fighters. The internet went crazy with the footage, and Omni Jacala came forward himself after only a few days. We spoke with him back when the story first broke to understand what motivated him and other leakers to do what they did. In an interview with Kyle Hilliard, Omni explained that he was just a fan that wanted to display his artistic skills and love of the game. He said that he didn’t mean any harm and didn’t really think of the consequences. He created a video educating people on how he made the fake, and he now uses his YouTube Channel to analyze other questionable leak videos, many of which have appeared on this list. As technology gets better, fake leaks will become harder to spot. So, no matter how much you want to believe that screenshot of your favorite character in Super Smash Bros. or that footage claiming the game you've been waiting for forever is just around the corner, take every leak with a grain of salt. Or don't. We can make another list next year. Source by [author_name] #games #gamer #gaming #game #play #koragame #freegames #onlinegames

0 notes