You are reading version 1 of the document, released on April 1, 2024. Find the latest version here.
Do not worry, I am not going to go on for nearly as long as in b3313drama. In fact, let's get straight to the point.
Why Chlorobyte now?
Perhaps the better question to be asking is: why Benedani?
If you think about it, there is not much of a valid reason for the 'Benedani' username that I had been carrying for the rest of my life thus far. Why exactly was I 'Benedani'? Well, erm... uh...
On the contrary, I can find at least 3 reasons to NOT have this username:
- Difficult to spell. How the fuck do you spell 'Benedani' correctly in English? Honestly, I have no clue, either. Everybody who has attempted simply went with their own pronunciation.
- How do you shorten it? This is an issue inherently created by the name being difficult to spell. It is also its own rabbit hole. People found 3 different ways to abbreviate this username:
- 'Bene'. This was the commonly accepted form.
- 'Ben'. Erm... incorrect. Being more of a 'Dani' enjoyer myself, I didn't feel great with people referring to me as a 'Ben'. That being said, I understand from an outside perspective why 'Ben' would be so easy to find, and that it is my fault for choosing to stick with this username.
- 'Dani'. It's a particularly rare find - shoutouts to those who did!
- It is a soft-doxx.
Leaving the past behind.
Another motivation for leaving this username behind is how much shit has been associated with this name over the years.
The Everybody Edits botting scene had been filled by script kiddies at this point. I will not deny being one of those - note that I had just barely made it to double digit years old, discovering the programming scene all on my own. For that age, it is honestly impressive that I had a feature that, somehow, no other bot at the time had - being able to undo all of a certain user's changes to the map.
This came at the cost of the global ban list. There was a little tiny bit of sense of goodwill in this ban list - horrible people that the game's staff had been completely allowing to go wild, such as historical griefers and malicious botters, would be exiled. Sensitive child me, however, used it for more than that. I proceeded to use it as a card in arguments, to threaten anybody who crossed me with a good ol' 'global ban'. It was simply a list of people I disliked.
Users were requesting a way to disable the global ban list, which was force enabled. This would be a good request, should the feature actually be for its purpose - you don't worry about griefers in worlds that don't give away 'free edit', for example. However, you know the drill at this point. It was force enabled, to make it clear that the features I was spending my hard work on were only available to those who didn't go out of their way to be hostile towards me. Which there was plenty of reason for, by the way.
Funnily enough, this banlist still exists to this day. (technical note: copied to the web server to keep the document self-contained. Downloaded from https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/y40snil9krwjndh/globalbanlist.txt on 2024-03-31).
I distinctively remember an entry saying something like 'I just wanted to help, and that's how you got banned', or something along those lines. The context was modifying someone else's build, which they were not happy about... although I'm not exactly sure where that particular entry went. There is still an entry that says 'Questioning the Global Ban System', so perhaps there was a prune of anybody who didn't explicitly engage in malicious griefing (we referred to this as 'trolling') or botting. Let me know if any of you have a previous version of globalbanlist.txt, so I can add it here.
In the same Dropbox, I found some rather bad, incriminating evidence. I had forgotten a lot, but this shows that it had been going on all the way until 2017, and that I was also actively engaging in ban evasion using alts. I believe this was on a fork of Everybody Edits, where something called 'gem farming' was possible, hence the names 'gem___'.
My memory also includes the posting of a fake suicide image on Discord, and actually launching DoS attacks on other players using the ping command (to be fair, upgrade your routers against such a pathetic attack LMAO). These are also only what I can recall. These actions are easily worth a public apology at the very least. If anybody from Everybody Edits is reading this by chance, then just know that I have changed plenty since then. This extends to all actions I listed and also those I may have not.
My content was subpar, yet I was seeking a whole lot of attention. Evidence of this readily exist as posts right on my website. Scroll down to the very bottom. If you are reading this after a 'cringe barrier' of some sort has been added, pass that barrier.
This era has given birth to my projects from CuteCat, all the way up to Brawlforming. It includes comically inactive Twitch Plays streams that nobody played.
In short, I just needed every little bit of attention. YouTube subscribers, Discord members. Furthermore, numbers weren't enough - they explicitly had to participate in the community. I was desperate, and failed really hard.
Some might remember my YouTube channel before the purge. That goes here as well. I have downloaded each video before the purge, and I suppose they shall finally be made available outside of my personal backups. Enjoy the free cringe.
We are going back in time to strictly single-digit age. I believe there are little to no records of this type of activity, and for the most part, I don't believe any harm has been caused. It is more childish than harmful, however, it is funny enough to include in what is essentially a look into my past.
Funnies include, but are not limited to:
I suppose this is what happens when your social development happens completely on the internet, and there is not a single person (well, not one with actual good intentions) to point you in the right direction.
And... much, much more. At this point, the B3313 drama has also tainted my name somewhat, despite the fact that those allegations are entirely baseless, and dare I say, schizophrenic in nature.
Absolutely not an excuse, but an explanation nonetheless for my prior actions is my unspeakably horrendous life up to this point.
Despite all of what I have done over the internet, the trolling life was still much preferable to reality. I saw it as a much better option; relatively speaking, it was a safe haven.
Summary: horrible war crimes I have committed as Benedani. Optional: feel free to skip if don't care.
Examples of my prior actions include, but are not limited to:
Trigger warning: mentions of suicide, child abuse, and other, similarly beautiful stuff.
Even if you (the reader) have never heard of any of this, it does not change that there are horrifying actions associated with the name 'Benedani', waiting to be dug up from Google's index. That name is a reflection of the mass amounts of cringe only possible in one of, if not the most horrible possible life in the 21st century.
Back in 2022, even before Copper, I had already considered an alternate personality, in 'plant'. He was simply a Terraria character created for a run, and I liked the absurdity of simply being called 'plant', with the hair resembling a layer of grass or something.
But most importantly, I had a concrete character associated with me. As a 'Benedani', I was alternating heavily between random Nintendo characters.
'Chlorobyte' is an extension of 'plant'. It is attempt 2 of this identity, after I previously reverted to avoid confusion. The previous attempt was more of an experiment. But now, the more I think about it, the more I want to distance myself from the 'Benedani' name.
Chlorobyte is a plant person who passionately explores the tech world. The green can be considered a reference to the efficiency of my work, both in production time and in runtime performance. The name can be shortened as 'Chloro', 'Plant', or 'CByte'.
Chlorobyte is not only (finally) an actual, concrete avatar for me, but a declaration of leaving my prior life, behavior and actions behind. I am the one in charge, and things will go as I say from now on. I am me - no longer shaped by malice of various forms.
Do not refer to me as Benedani any longer. That name is a symbol of zero autonomy, the control being in the hands of everybody besides me. It invokes heavy trauma and cringe just thinking back at the results of trying to live with actual GTA NPCs.
The abbreviations 'Bene', 'Ben' are also to be avoided. 'Dani' and 'Dan' are acceptable in close circles, the latter being the cute one :3
Sidenote: my parents know me less than street strangers, due to their "established" "knowledge", and lack of willingness to accept that I am not who they think. In general, character development is apparently a rather difficult thing to comprehend. I fully understand the consequences of revealing my past actions for one last apology - and I have no interest in interacting with those who enjoy judging others by pointing out random things they may or may not have done in the past. We'll see the places they will go with that mindset :)
The future
With that out of the way, what happens to the benedani.xyz domain? The answer is - I'm letting it expire.
The new location for my blog is chlorobyte.me, which is currently (at the time of releasing this document) simply a mirror of benedani.xyz. The old domain is to be deprecated, and later, to no longer refer to me or my work. (It would already be fully deprecated at this point had the software engineer unemployment wave missed me :/)
Domain expiration means benedani.xyz will be up for grabs for anybody to control. The 4 stages of expiry are as follows:
| When | What happens | Consequences |
|---|---|---|
| 2024-06-01 (est.) | Complete deprecation | This is the one that involves work on my end, in order to distinguish chlorobyte.me. benedani.xyz will serve a legacy layout to end users, with a NOTICE OF DEPRECATION banner on top of each page explaining the change. I will already start using 308 Permanent Redirect to signal the change to search engines. |
| 2024-12-14 | PremiumDNS expiry | Possible reduced performance of the benedani.xyz domain. Most links to benedani.xyz are to be completely replaced with equivalent chlorobyte.me ones by this point.
The legacy layout will no longer be available. I will extend 308 Permanent Redirect to end users to redirect them to the new domain as well. |
| 2025-03-30 | 1 year before domain expiry | Instead of 308 redirections working seamlessly, all benedani.xyz links will now return a 404 error, signalling that it is no more. |
| 2026-03-30 | Domain expiry | The benedani.xyz domain is no longer under my control. After this point, anybody is free to grab it and use it as they will. All links to benedani.xyz are to be completely replaced with equivalent chlorobyte.me ones by this point, due to the security risk. |
Besides the domain expiry and related website work, there is not a lot to look forward to in the projects space. I will be focusing on the following, in very rough chronological/importance order:
- Driving school. Possibly very slightly important so I can have an actual life
- Securing myself in the industry. Either a job, or going complete indie developer.
- B3313 Unabandoned A3.
- Fixing up my current projects that are still active. Finally, after basically forever, there shall be a working Recommendation Tweaker.
- Personal development. Includes communication skills and branching out my current technical knowledge.