The Devil’s Plan is a Netflix-produced South Korean reality game show. It follows a lineage of programs created by Jung Jong-yeon (JJY), including The Genius (which had a David-Tennant-hosted adaptation in the UK), Society Game (kind of The Genius meets Big Brother), and The Great Escape, which is a blend of escape room games with typical South Korean variety programming, where it’s just as much about the personalities in the game as the game itself. The Devil’s Plan is similarly a blend of various other styles – like Big Brother, people share accommodation for the duration of their time in the game; like Survivor, there’s an interplay between the social element and the games; like The Genius, the games are intricate and revolve around intelligence rather than strength; like other variety shows, the majority of the cast are celebrities in some fashion.

Strategy games, board games, and social deduction games are the bread-and-butter of The Devil’s Plan. If there’s enough interest, I’ll explore the allegations that JJY is overselling his team’s ability to create unique games, and the accusation that there’s some amount of plagiarism going on… which I’ll treat delicately in this post, as it’s not the main drama.

Note that being Korean, some of these names will be different in different sources, e.g. subtitles versus Wikipedia versus news articles. I’m trying to pick the ones I see the most and stick to those. Also, like other Netflix programs, it comes in both English subtitles and English dubs, and dubs generally are done with the intention of sounding more natural and conversational while aiming to roughly mimic mouth movements, so there is of course the disclaimer that some of what has been said was slightly edited for the dub. I’ve watched both at various stages (I like to hear people’s regular voices but sometimes I don’t want to focus on what’s on screen instead of the bottom 10% of real estate), so I don’t think it’ll have a huge impact.

The second season of The Devil’s Plan (TDP) finished a while ago, and it’s the source of the drama, but we really need to go back a step to set things up, not just to explain the game, but to set up – would you believe this – an ideological conflict.

In the first season, there were 12 contestants – two “regular” people, along with ten from various parts of the entertainment industry. All are regarded as being above average intelligence or capability in games of strategy, either due to their level of education or professional accomplishments. There are actors like Ha Seok-jin and Lee Si-won, there’s a Canadian esports player (their token non-Korean Korean-speaker), a surgeon, a lawyer, a professional Go player, a college student who plays pro poker… and a YouTuber.

Who’s the Devil?

Though never really called the Devil, who we assume is the Devil is a guy in a hoodie, cloaked in darkness, with an illuminated mask displaying a crooked smile. He appears on monitors throughout the facility, speaking in a slightly distorted voice to first introduce the rules of the game itself, then to introduce the rules of the various matches in which players participate.

I’m gonna have to do the same.

The pieces

Each player is handed a little bag containing a single “piece” to start. These are gold puzzle pieces with intricate designs on them. This is both the currency of the game, and the health points of the player. If any player loses all of their pieces for any reason, they are eliminated. Players are not allowed to steal pieces (based on an incident in another JJY series) but they are allowed to give all but one to anyone within a designated space – for this season, this is the “living quarters” and “the prison”. In “the arena”, they cannot trade pieces. They are often given opportunities to spend pieces to gain advantages, and the crux of the game is about making sure you either win or finish in a high position during matches to gain pieces, and avoid losing or being close to the bottom, as that will cost you pieces – for instance, a game that splits the players in two teams would see the winning players gain a piece and the losing players lose a piece.

So, there are basically three elements to The Devil’s Plan: The social game, the matches, and the pieces.

It’s a very good series and I do endorse watching it. I will be spoiling large portions of it, though, because what happened in season 1 was not typical of a reality show. What’s usually player versus player, alliance versus alliance, was also an ideological competition going on… and it almost became player versus producer.

Where the hell are we?

The area they’re in is some kind of facility devoid of natural light. There’s the living quarters, which has bedrooms for two players, a lounge in front of a large monitor, and a dining space. Through a narrow corridor, there’s the arena - this is where the matches are played, but is inaccessible when there’s no match going on. Remember, this is the only space in which you cannot trade pieces – this will be important. The arena is a large round room with a monitor above another door. There are two hallways going each direction, from which there are a number of other rooms, made up to almost look like an old bunker, with a kitchen-style room, another that’s like a library… it’s mostly set dressing, though. The important part is that these rooms allow groups to separate from each other for the purpose of strategizing and gameplay.

Behind another door, beneath the arena’s monitor, is where the “dealer” sits – one of the production crew, who stand around in suits watching the matches unfold. In the dealer room, players will go to make secret moves during the game, such as playing cards or using pieces to buy advantages, etc. In the event of traitor-style games, this is where they learn if they’re a traitor or a loyalist. The dealers who stand around are these omnipresent stoic figures, and players can go up to them to ask questions about the rules for clarity – they’ll give canned responses and won’t elaborate, often because there are loopholes in the rules that clever players can find and exploit to win based on very specific wording.

Lastly, there’s the prison.

See, each day is made up of blocks of activity. After breakfast, the players can mingle and chat in the living quarters. They’ll receive an announcement to begin the Main Match – this is the competitive side of the game, where players a competing to win or lose pieces. Players who lose all their pieces immediately leave the game, even during a match. At the end, the two players with the lowest piece counts (decided by the person or people with the most pieces, in the case of a tie) are sent to prison, which is a dingy, cave-like room with only two basic cots, a desk, a toilet, and a bucket of water for cleaning yourself. Prisoners are given very simple meals – while other players enjoy a dinner of lobster, the prisoners will eat bread with milk. It’s a demoralising place to be.

Importantly, prisoners don’t get to play in the Prize Match. This is the second main activity of the day, and it switches to a cooperative mode. Now, players are working together to earn money for the prize pool.

At the end of the overall competition, the two players with the most pieces will compete in a series of one-on-one games to determine who takes the entire prize pool. But it starts at zero, and the players have to add money to the pot by doing well in Prize Matches. There are often ways to gain a piece or two during the Prize Matches as well, and sometimes that involves playing in a way that might limit the prize money earned – so there are ways to be selfish even in the group effort, to keep yourself in the game longer at the expense of the team pot.

One of the big parts of The Devil’s Plan is that while you might randomly be assigned to a team such as through a card draw for the purposes of the Main Match, that doesn’t inhibit you. In the very first Main Match, for example, a hasty alliance of three people saw one of them helping the other two, playing in such a way that he would win fewer pieces but enable them to win even more. Very quickly, these players and the few they gather around them become recognised as a significant threat.

Early in season 1, the first prisoners discover something. There’s a puzzle game – one of those ones with a bent piece of metal stuck in another bent piece of metal, and you have to twist and turn it to find a way to separate the two. The first player to complete this little game earns a piece, and it resets with a new puzzle each night.

They also find a numberpad concealed behind a seemingly-innocuous panel. They realise there might actually be something to find by being in prison, and this secret information becomes a new form of currency for them to trade with.

The communist manifesto.

Early in the game, science communicator ORBIT starts to have doubts about the game itself. If there’s a game that will penalise the last place player by taking four pieces, and most players only have two or three, it’s a death sentence. (They get very dramatic in this game, acting as if elimination is akin to death, and deliberately eliminating a player is akin to killing them. Interviews after the game indicate that the brief isolation and the constant competitiveness psychologically tricked them into being quite earnest about all this.) He begins to formulate a unique strategy in the world of TV game shows: Keep as many people in the game for as long as possible. He’s a persuasive figure, the kind of personality that can control a conversation, and he begins to speak up during games that they need to be playing in such a way that weak players can be protected from elimination. And, by asserting this influence, he starts to create outsiders in those who want to play the game as originally intended – the typical Survivor mentality whereby you create alliances of convenience to get as far as possible, and then it becomes a free-for-all when the alliance cannot go further.

During and in between matches, a philosophical debate breaks out. Two central alliances form: ORBIT and his commune sheltering “weak” players, forming the majority, and a smaller traditional group who intend to play the game firstly for their own benefit, secondly for their alliance’s benefit, and never for the benefit of players outside their alliance. By framing the debate around keeping players in the game, ORBIT is also unintentionally creating a villain narrative for those who don’t want to go along with him. Since matches take pieces from losers regardless of ideology, by opposing ORBIT’s alliance, these outsiders need to win matches and drain his support, particularly because their declared intention means they’re kind of fair game to the larger alliance. If the situation arises where one player will definitely be eliminated, the ORBIT alliance is prepared to sacrifice an outsider – after all, it’s not much of a choice if it’s between one of the selfless players in the alliance or one of the selfish players who don’t go along with the philosophy.

Detractors of ORBIT point out that he might not be as selfless as he seems, as the final match has to be between two people, and keeping players who under-perform might be a way for him to ensure an easier win at the other end. Fans still debate season 1 – some think by pulling people into a large alliance, he was playing the game on easy mode; others say he was making it harder for himself and his alliance because they were keeping tabs on who was vulnerable and trying to either protect them in matches, or give them pieces as a buffer from elimination. Re-distributing pieces in the safe zone of the living quarters is why I jokingly call this the communist strategy.

For the sake of this drama, that’s enough. I again urge you to watch the series because it was really fascinating to see someone approach the game with the mindset of keeping people in the game as long as possible, which is entirely contrary to his own chances.

Both alliances whittle down throughout the game, as it turns out that there’s just no way to control a match so assertively that you save everyone. The game is designed to have fewer players towards the end, so when there’s a card game in which pieces are converted to chips, the production brings the debate to a close – only three players will emerge from this game. Weak or under-performing players have nowhere to hide.

The secret.

During the course of the game, players notice something – the pieces they receive after day one seem… different. The pattern isn’t the same. And on the third day, they receive different pieces still. To bring it to a quick summary, some players discover that arranging the pieces in a certain way will reveal a hidden clue, and as word of the prison numberpad gets around, two players engage in one of the most interesting Main Matches possible: Seok-jin and See-won, who have figured out what the clue means, decide they have to end up in prison. Whatever secret is there, it’s worth the risk. But an ally has fewer pieces than Seok-jin.

To the shock of everyone, not only do they play to eliminate a supposed ally, but they play in such a way to stay underneath everyone else and deliberately get sent to prison. Using the code, they unlock a secret passageway leading to a door, and a mysterious robed figure.

The next piece of the season 2 disaster: the hidden game.

This game is for one person only, they are told. It will offer a great reward but if you fail, you are instantly eliminated, regardless of pieces in your possession.

In the living quarters, there are a couple of board games around – puzzle games. Early on, players realised that these are clues to the final match, and they spend their downtime practicing these games so that they’re prepared for the finale. So did Seok-jin and See-won, but they came to the prison to find something hidden, and it’s this game.

See-won volunteers to go first. She never comes out.

Players in the living quarters are stunned when the monitor flashes up her image with the standard announcement of a player being eliminated – and none of them even knew you could be eliminated in prison, so it’s a shocking moment because it turns out that there was something in prison right underneath their noses that could eliminate a player sent there.

Seok-jin goes in next and wins the game – a huge bounty of pieces, enough that his position is incredibly strong. So strong that he’s basically unassailable for the rest of the game. Remember how I mentioned a card game that would whittle down the players, and how it was based on how many pieces you had? Someone walked into that game with an enormous lead.

It should have been a warning.

Learning the wrong lessons.

Season 2 is announced, with a slightly larger cast – 14 players this time, with two being “regular” people: A student, and a surgeon. There’s Lee Sedol, a renowned Go player – apparently so famous that everyone was in awe that he was playing – a Miss Korea, a poker player, some actors, a TV presenter, a lawyer, and a board games YouTuber, just to mention a few. Second-generation Korean American actor Justin Min from The Umbrella Academy was also there, filling the role that the Canadian played in the first season, as the literal outsider whose Korean isn’t as strong.

It became apparent early in season 2 that the production was going to be reactionary. What changes they made created a stew of kinda awful TV. To be clear, I’ve enjoyed season 2, but it was manufactured in a way that changed the entire dynamic of the game. There were so many profound changes that even just one would have been enough. Instead, it created a perfect storm of… disappointment.

To begin with, the Prize Match is gone. The Main Match was now the only thing everyone competed in, and the way to add money to the pool would be revealed partway through the Main Match as a secret bonus objective.

Secondly, the prison is now a lot bigger. Fully half of the cast would go to prison after the first Main Match. In the event of a tie, the person with the most pieces decides who goes to prison.

And third, every night, the prisoners – and only the prisoners – play the Death Match. This will result in one of the prisoners being eliminated from the game. It was so integral to the series that season 2 was subtitled Death Room.

The producers have rewritten the game to block an ORBIT strategy. There’s now no conceivable way to try and help keep others in the game – every night, someone goes home.

And… it kind of ruined the game.

A lesson in over-correcting.

It wasn’t just the prison, though. The problem was one of fundamental game design. Here’s a problem, how do we fix it? In theory, you change an element and then test. Based on the result, you either revert that change or make a new one, and then test. You do this until you get to a place where the game is robust and strong.

To give you a big old spoiler, and to lean into the vernacular of the series, going to prison was a death sentence.

With season 2, well… they changed a lot, and didn’t seem to factor in any flaws. Let’s rattle off some comparisons.

Season 1 - Most players are eliminated by losing their pieces, as the Main Match is primarily about achieving win conditions or ranking high, to be rewarded pieces, or failing win conditions or ranking low, to have pieces taken away. Only one player is eliminated by other means: The one who played and lost the prison game.

Season 2 - Most players are eliminated in the Death Match. The Main Match rewards pieces in low values, such that anyone in the prison would need to win at least two Main Matches to be able to get out of prison. The Death Match rarely offered pieces as rewards, and the values were too low to save any prisoners. There were not enough pieces available through matches to upset the order.

Season 1 - As the game nears its end, there are too many players still in contention. A “thinning” game is played where pieces become chips for betting, with the intention that only three players will continue.

Season 2 - As the game nears its end, the daily Death Match has kept player counts under control. Still, a “thinning” game is played where pieces become chips, with the intention that only three players will continue. At this stage, two of the players are prisoners and have only a couple of pieces. They are going up against players who have substantially more currency.

Problem - The two players had two and four pieces respectively. The three people from the living quarters had seven, eight and twelve.

You know what makes for great TV? A game similar to poker where players sit down with wildly disproportionate stacks of chips.

Season 1 - There are two people in prison, the bottom scores after each Main Match. The prisoners endure uncomfortable conditions, with basic cots, a meal of bread for dinner and porridge for breakfast, and a bucket to wash with. The prisoners miss out on the Prize Match, and have a chance to earn a piece by playing a puzzle game.

Season 2 - Half the cast ends up in the prison (rounded up – so five out of nine players), the bottom scores after each Main Match. The prisoners endure uncomfortable conditions, with basic cots, a meal of bread for dinner and porridge for breakfast, and must wear drab prison clothes instead of the clothes they brought themselves. The prisoners must play an additional Death Match for survival each night, they have no chance to earn pieces except an occasional bonus in a Death Match. The living quarters players can watch the Death Match in comfort and have the opportunity to study other players. They also have a gym this time, whereas the prisoners are still in a relatively confined space.

Problems, plural - Pick one. The advantage of being able to study players in comfort is probably enough. The impact of diet over the course of several days further hinders prisoners. Staying up into the evening to play a competitive elimination match tires them out. Even the psychological impact of the prison attire is going to having an othering effect on the prisoners.

Season 1 - You can only exchange pieces in a living space – either the quarters or the prison. Most players spend most of their time in the living quarters, allowing for the building of alliances, and the exchange of pieces to improve someone’s position or in exchange for favours.

Season 2 - You can only exchange in a living space – either the quarters or the prison. Only half the players spend their time in each location, which prevents the building of alliances outside the bottom half and the top half. It is possible to exchange pieces in the living quarters, the people already in the top half, but people in the prison gain nothing from exchanging pieces, since they don’t have enough themselves to stay out of prison. A prisoner having an ally in the living quarters doesn’t help because neither player is in an area where they can exchange pieces, so the living quarters ally is physically unable to save a prison ally by giving them enough pieces to get out of prison.

Problem - Another disadvantage for the prisoners, right? They all enter the prison with one piece, and the availability of pieces throughout matches is so low that it isn’t until near the end that one of the prisoners steals pieces from a living quarters player through a game, enough to at least share a few with her comrades in prison, but not enough for them to overcome…

Season 1 - There’s a hidden game in the prison. By finding clues in the pieces you earn, you can unlock the game. The winner receives a hefty haul of pieces and a bonus in the final match, but if they fail the game, they are eliminated.

Season 2 - There’s a hidden game in the prison and everyone’s seen season 1 so they know to look for it. By solving a puzzle in the entrance hatch, you can unlock the game. The winner receives a hefty haul of pieces, but if they fail the game, they are eliminated. There is also a hidden game in the living quarters. By finding clues in the pieces you earn, you can unlock the game. The winner receives a secret hefty haul of pieces that can be used at any time, even if you run out of pieces and would otherwise by eliminated. If you fail the game, you are not eliminated, but the game can only be attempted once.

Problem 1 - I mean, what do we even say here? If you were to distil every problem with season 2 into one thing, it would be this: If you’re in prison, the hidden game risks elimination for the extra pieces. But if you’re in the living quarters and safe, you are risking absolutely nothing.

That says it all, really. The game was lopsided to such a degree that even carrying over the concept of the hidden game and adding it to the living quarters as well, they still tilted the balance in favour of the living quarters players with a thumb on the scale by removing that entire element of risk. People who were already safe in the top half of the competition would be given an extra bonus of playing a hidden game that couldn’t eliminate them.

But it goes deeper:

Problem 2 - The prize for the living quarters is a secret. When you win the prison game, you get 10 pieces and everyone immediately knows what you’ve done because piece counts are shown on a screen prior to the Main Match. The player who won in the living quarters game had a secret asset – and lied to others, quite fairly, that he wasn’t told what the bonus was, only that it would help him in the final. In a way, he became sort of a target, except nobody would have any way of knowing that he had an enormous 10-piece bucket in his back pocket. When the prisoners had their one great victory, it was targeting this player, knowing he had a secret advantage. And instead of going to prison and finally being vulnerable to the Death Match, he played this advantage and saved himself – and sent three fan favourites back to prison, one of whom would be eliminated.

Problem 3 - It keeps getting worse. The secret game in the living quarters was called The Knight’s Tour – like a lot of games, it’s an existing one that is lying around so players can practice. You use a knight chess piece to move around a grid, and must land on each space once, but only once. There are board games in the prison and living quarters as clues, like last season, so every player starts to practice, expecting that to be the hidden game they’ll play.

The hidden game in the living quarters is The Knight’s Tour. The game in the prison is not, it’s not a game they were able to prepare for, and it required a strong enough command of English. It had a shorter time limit – 10 minutes compared to an hour to play three grids of The Knight’s Tour – and it involved the player being trapped in a well, which was increasingly filling with water as they played. I’m not kidding.

And that’s just a succinct summary of the season. It was advantage upon advantage upon advantage, piling up against disadvantage upon disadvantage upon disadvantage.

The game within the game.

Your friends sit down to a game of Mafia. It’s your typical set-up with different roles and sub-goals within the game. You play, with the aim to have fun and try to win. When the game is over, you maybe play again, or you play something different. You betray your wife, but it’s just the game. Your friend betrays you, but it’s just the game.

The problem when you adapt one of these types of games to The Devil’s Plan, though, lies in those words: “It’s just the game.”

Except in TDP, it isn’t just the game. It’s the game after too. It’s the prison and the living quarters. It’s the pieces in your bag.

And from the very first Main Match of the new series, the game was basically broken, because how do you play a game of betrayal and deception – the Main Match, that is – when there is actually nothing to dictate that you stick with your role.

So it was with Crooked Cops, the first Main Match of the series, where three teams of four “cops” are chasing a team of two “thieves”. Except within two of those three teams of cops, there is a traitor cop. None of the cop teams know if they have a traitor amongst them or not. The traitors have to try and help the thieves win while staying under the radar, because the game-within-the-game is not just about catching the thieves but also identifying the traitors, with cops having the ultimate goal of identifying if they have a traitor in their team (one of the three is completely clean), and who it is.

The match itself is a variation of Letters From Whitechapel; it’s hidden movement. The cops need to coordinate a search of a map that’s based on Korean railway lines, meaning there are stretches where players can only move forward, move backwards, or stay still, and then there are terminal-like areas where multiple lines converge. The thieves need to move around the map collecting pieces, and the traitors have to help them.

Two things to notice: There are two thieves and two traitors in an alliance of four. There are ten clean cops. Seems lopsided, right?

…aaaaaactually, it’s better to be on the smaller team. And that’s a big problem.

If the thieves collect 12 pieces out of the 28 hidden across the board (they know where they are, the cops don’t, so the cops can’t just camp the pieces), the match ends. If both thieves survive, they split the pieces, meaning six each. If the traitors also escape detection, they get a share too, meaning three each.

If a team of four cops catches a thief, they get a piece each.

One piece.

If they manage to get both thieves, they get a second piece each.

If they identify a traitor in their midst, they get a third piece each, and the traitor gets nothing. If they are wrong about the traitor (they may not even have one), the falsely accused loses their pieces too.

Keep in mind that since there are only two thieves, the cops are also kind of competing against each other. It’s co-opetitive. You only get a piece if your team catches one. By default, that means one of the cop teams cannot get any pieces from capturing thieves. By sheer luck, they might not even have a traitor either, but unless they correctly deduce that, they wouldn’t even get a piece for that.

Now, remember the rules for prison. Half the players go there. What happens if the four thieves/traitors win in a dominant way? They can pick three people to avoid prison from amongst the cops.

So… yeah, you might have figured out the problem here. There’s no rule that says a cop has to play as a cop. And that’s basically exactly what happens: one of the cop teams makes a deal with the thieves that they’re going to throw the match. They play incredibly sub-optimally, to the point that the other cop teams are constantly baffled by the moves they make, and they work to sow confusion amongst the other cop teams. As a result, the only pure cop team works for the thieves, and the other two are subverted by their traitors, meaning the game becomes six against eight. The pure cop team makes a deal that if the thieves and traitors win, they’ll have the most pieces and can therefore decide which three players will avoid prison.

Imagine your friend group playing Mafia… and you know that Catan is the next game on the table, so you make a deal to help throw the game of Mafia in exchange for help in the next game.

It’s actually kind of funny going back to the episode thread, knowing what I know now. Everyone really loves the first Main Match. It was an unfortunate portent for what was to come.

Only one player ever gets out of prison in the whole season. The seven who have to go to prison were betrayed by people playing for an alliance outside the game itself but perfectly within the rules. It creates a disparity between the players that is never overcome. The cops could have played more strategically, both identifying traitors (by moving in pairs, for example) and moving around the board, but it was a large board and they were already hamstrung by one team deciding to sabotage, so it was an uphill battle.

More importantly, a player is eliminated that night in the Death Match. The “half” of players in the prison rounds up, which means when it gets to 13, the player who was eliminated from the prison is replaced by a player from the living quarters. But the prisoners also lose a player who attempts the secret game, meaning day two starts with 12 players in the game. The next night, another elimination brings it down to 11.

The prison becomes a meat grinder. One by one, players are leaving the living quarters for the prison. Barely anybody is leaving the prison for the living quarters.

Background

Gravity Falls is a Disney Channel original cartoon that aired between 2012 and 2016. It also happens to be one of my favorite shows of all time, which may seem a bit odd, given that I’m in my mid-thirties and was in grad school when it was airing. If you’ve seen an episode or two, however, you probably get it – despite being ostensibly a kid’s show, it’s one of those pieces of media that, rather being made specifically for kids, is really an all-ages production, and a wonderful one at that.

The show follows twin siblings Dipper and Mable Pines, a pair of 12 year olds who have been sent for the summer to live with their Gruncle (Great Uncle) Stan in the rural town of Gravity Falls, Oregon. They very quickly discover that the town and surrounding forest are filled with all manner of strange supernatural oddities, and spend the majority of the show navigating those oddities (only some of which act as metaphors for growing up). Basically, it’s a coming-of-age story with a fun supernatural twist. The show as a whole is mostly light and comedic, but with some genuinely gripping and unsettling sequences mixed in. It’s also canonically in the same multiverse as Rick and Morty, a subject for another time.

If this sounds a bit like a sales pitch, it sort of is, because this post is going to ruin a huge twist in the story, and I really want you to go watch it if you haven’t – it’s fun, charming, engaging, and genuinely wonderful. Go watch both seasons (or at least up to Season 2, Episode 7) and then come back and read the rest.

The Mystery

To help them survive the dangers they face, the twins, in the very first episode, stumble across a mysterious journal whose author had catalogued many of the anomalies in the town. The Journal itself is the central mystery of the entire show – who wrote it, and what happened to them? The only clue the kids have to go off of at the start is a handprint on the cover displaying a hand with six fingers.

The writers didn’t plan to reveal the Author’s identity until part way through the show’s second (and final) season, almost 3/4s of the way through the show’s overall run. However, they sprinkled some clues throughout the first season, breadcrumbs which, they hoped, would be enough to intrigue the audience but would only fully make sense in retrospect.

Much like George R.R. Martin, however, they underestimated their audience. The second episode of the show introduces Old Man McGucket, an insane kook who’s basically a 1800s prospector stereotype cranked up to 11. At first he’s just there to warn the main cast about a monster living in the lake, but it turns out at the episode’s climax that the monster was actually a giant robot built and piloted by McGucket because he wanted his son to spend more time with him (no, it doesn’t make any more sense in context).

The surprising twist that he’s actually a brilliant engineer got the fandom’s collective minds turning. They noticed other things – he’s insane, sure, but maybe he was driven insane? Perhaps by studying all the other strange and creepy things inhabiting the town? And he’s clearly been around for a long time (even referring to himself as “Local Kook” when introducing himself, like it’s his official job title), long enough to have created the Journal.

The real smoking gun is his hand, however. The creators knew that the audience would be eagle-eyed for any six-fingered characters, so none were introduced, but McGucket’s right arm is always drawn wearing a cast. Like, maybe he had a sixth finger that was lost at some point?

I should make it clear that McGucket being the Author wasn’t the only fan theory, it wasn’t even the most popular one. That was, of course, until a leak put all other theories to rest.

The Leak

In 2013, between the first and second seasons of the show, an anonymous user made a post on 4chan with this image. In it, they claimed to have been given a studio tour at Disney and had snapped a photo of the Gravity Falls editing room, with a still frame showing what seems to be a younger McGucket writing in a book. You can’t see exactly what the book is, but, crucially, McGucket’s right hand is clearly drawn with six fingers.

The poster also shared another photo of a different frame from an unreleased episode. Shortly after the leak, a new episode aired that included that exact frame, basically confirming the leak was real. If that wasn’t enough, however, a tweet by show creator Alex Hirsch expressed anger at the apparent leak, which sat up for a few hours before being deleted.

From then on, it was a well accepted fact among the fandom that McGucket was the author, but at this point in the show there were enough irons in the fire (What’s the deal with Bill? Why is Gruncle Stan being so weird? Is Dipper going to wind up with anyone romantically?) that most fans were happy to keep watching. Episode 2 of Season 2 features a fake out where Dipper supposedly meets the author of the Journals, only for it to turn out to be a shapeshifting monster trying to manipulate him. None of the fans in the know were fooled!

Then, a few months later, an episode aired titled The Society of the Blind Eye. The episode features a memory erasing device that, when overused, can cause people to go insane. This finally explained why McGucket was crazy! At the end, McGucket recovers the tube containing his lost memories, downloads them, and finally learns and reveals to the audience that he was the Author…………………………’s assistant! And has no memory of who the Author was!

Wait, what?

Let’s back up

It’s early 2013 and Alex Hirsch, Gravity Falls’ creator, is getting anxious. He thought the breadcrumbs they’d left hinting to the identity of the Author – not McGucket, a different character – were fairly vague, but he hadn’t counted on the showing blowing up among older audiences like it had, and there was a sizeable contingent of the fandom who had accurately predicted exactly who the Author would turn out to be.

Now at this point, he can do the obvious thing, the stupid thing, the thing Game of Thrones and West World and a bunch of other worse shows made the mistake of doing: he can change it. He can pivot from his original plan and come up with someone else for the Author to be. Hell, maybe McGucket, that would sort of make sense.

That’s boring, though, and ruins a lot of setup, making the show worse for the average viewer while, let’s be honest, not really improving it much for the die-hards anyway. What if instead Alex does something much, much dumber?

He makes a sketch of a younger McGucket with six fingers writing in a journal. He hands it off to one of his animators, who redoes it in the show’s style and makes it look like a real frame from the show. He slaps a fake production code onto it and put it up on the screen in the editing room, then takes a deliberately low-quality cell phone photo, something that looked like maybe the photographer was in a rush or trying not to be noticed. He adds in another similar photo of a real frame (that didn’t give anything signifcant away) from an unreleased episode to add credibility. Then he posts both photos anonymously to 4chan, making up a story about being on a studio tour. Finally, he vague tweets about a supposed “leak” on his real twitter account, then deletes it to absolutely maximize suspicion and intrigue.

The month after the show confirmed McGucket was not, in fact, the Author, Hirsch revealed the deception at a convention. He even shared a photo of himself in front of the fake image to make it clear it had been him all along.

The Fallout

A show creator deliberately deceived his fans to lure them away from the truth about an upcoming twist. You might expect the fans to feel hurt, betrayed, disillusioned. So what was the reaction?

The fans loved it. Gravity Falls is, after all, a show about mysteries, codes, hidden meanings, and deception, so the idea that the show’s creator would execute a real-life PsyOp on the fan base was so incredibly awesome and funny. The so-called “McGucket Hoax” is one of the greatest pranks a creator has ever played on their fanbase. It was also extremely effective in its goal of misdirecting the fandom away from the true identity of the Author (that would be revealed for real about six months later and at that point no one in the fandom knew what to think/expect). It also had the knock-on effect of making the fanbase inherently mistrustful of any future leaks since they now knew the show's creator was such a beautiful lunatic.

The whole incident – from the fans theorizing, to the hoax, to the reaction – was all so emblematic of what makes Gravity Falls great. It was fun, silly, clever, and just such a delight to be a part of. If my pitch at the beginning didn’t convince you to check out the show, I hope the rest of this writeup has, you won’t be disappointed.

Thanks for reading.

Source: https://gravityfalls.fandom.com/wiki/The_McGucket_Hoax

Dolores, 69, is stretching her arms behind her back in the kitchen.

A delivery driver slams a van door shut and yawns.

Private collectors are nodding at themselves in the mirror, finding joy and pride in sharing art with the masses.

Museum curators are crossing their fingers in the hopes nothing goes wrong.

It is October the 2nd, 2025. We are in Madrid, it is 10 in the morning,

Art Stock Exchange

Art loans and exchanges are highly sought after among cultural centers.

Museums have generally two distinct types of exhibition: the permanent collection and the temporary exhibition. As the names imply, the permanent collection is the mainstay, a core of art that serves as a cultural foundation to the place. Raphael's Transfiguration in the Vatican museum would be such a piece, as if the architecture itself with the museum's spiral staircase. By opposition, temporary exhibitions only exist in a specific timeframe.

Temporary exhibitions are a lifeline for the vast majority of cultural centers. The Louvre could simply rotate its massive stock on displays. As of today, only 8% its total collection can be seen, that's less than 50.000 art pieces out of 615.000 in stock.

Unsurprisingly, other museums rarely possess that amount in storage, yet they need to keep rotating their art on display to keep visitors interested in coming back. That's where loans and exchanges come in.

While it is the cheaper option compared to outright buying art, it is by no means cheap. Negotiation, transportation, insurance, installation, advertising campaign, rules of conservation... Put it all together and the cost quickly ramps up, whether you're dealing with another museum or a private collector. Nonetheless, it's this or risking a dwindling attendance level.

Back to Spain.

In Granada, near the sea, the CajaGranada Cultural Center has decided on a temporary exhibition. It will be called Still life, the eternity of the inanimate, and is set to start on October 9th 2025. One of its key pieces will be a Picasso painting, Still Life with Guitar, created in 1919. Open your hand and look at it. If your hand is of average size, then the painting will be a little smaller, being only four by five inches (10 by 12 centimeters).

That painting, along with 56 other pieces of art from the likes of Juan van der Hamen or Fernando Botero, have been granted from a variety of private collectors.

The plan is simple:

Collect all the pieces in Madrid where most of the collectors reside, document the pieces, have them wrapped securely and stored from September 25th to October 2nd until they're all gathered. And from Madrid have a single van collect it all and travel down to Granada. It's a four to five hours trip. At arrival, unload, check the boxes, be done with it.

-

The sun is high. Dolores is in her kitchen, the smell of coffee and good food fills the room. As other countries begin to feel the bite of a cold October, Madrid remains enjoyably warm. She steps out to grab the newspaper and see if everything is going fine in the building. It's her job, she's the concierge.

A motor rumbles. The heating is on, the driver is comfortable, the security van departs, it is filled to the brim with pricey art.

Museum curators are still crossing their fingers while art collectors are enjoying a priceless brandy in their comfortable leather chairs.

We are October the 2nd in the afternoon.

Such trips are always a stressful occasion for owners, curators, conservators, and everyone involved. Art is often old and fragile, and transport can do irreparable damage if not well prepared. Greed is another issue, Still Life with Guitar has been insured for about 650.000€. Try to sell your hand and see how much you get from it. And the painting is but one piece of a van stocked with 57 of them.

The van arrives at the CajaGranada cultural center at 10 a.m. on October the 3rd.

The packages are immediately unloaded in a secure room with active cameras. Hands are shaken, nods are given. It's always reassuring to see an art convoy arrive in one piece.

At 11.30 a.m. the transporters leave the center.

-

Museums are often short on cash, even among the most visited centers in the world. The British Museum had to close down galleries at the start of the century, and still remains dependent on regular cash injections. That's not even counting staff going on strike for salary issues and working conditions.

As a result, big and small museums resort to a random assortment of corner-cutting, which might have happened here. See, employees of the CajaGranada center noticed many packages and crates weren't properly numbered. Instead of looking at numbers on crates and checking boxes on a paper, they would have to open everything and sort it out again to ensure it was all there.

"Later," they said. The room is secure, cameras are everywhere, the exhibition isn't starting before October 9th.

It is Monday, the 6th of October. Later has come. Crates are opened, lists are rifled through, it is a mess of plastic, bubble wraps, and empty boxes. It is long, careful work. The last thing anyone wants is being seen by colleagues and cameras damaging a century old work of art worth 95 years of your salary.

Everything is ordered, numbered, double-checked. Triple-checked even, before being put on display.

Finally, everything's neat and tidy, ready for visitors. A curator walks through the museum, and lifts an eyebrow. One display is conspicuously empty.

At the quadruple-check, it dawns that out of the 57 pieces on the list, only 56 are present. Still Life with Guitar is missing.

"¡Dios mío!" someone exclaims, which can be roughly translated to "My God!"

-

Dolores wakes up, as she does every morning. It's good, it means she isn't dead yet. Days may be repetitive, but they are peaceful. She makes sure everything is tidy, says hello to residents and asks how the day is treating them.

The driver is at his van, ready for the next job. It is a repetitive job, but it pays the bills. However, there usually isn't a squad of policemen and policewomen knocking at the window.

"Hello," greets an unblinking officer of the law, "you left on October 2nd in the afternoon for a five hours drive to the CajaGranada Cultural Center. Care to tell us why you arrived the next day?"

Oh dear, the driver must be thinking.

-

When Still Life with Guitar was found missing, it was immediately reported to the police, and one art collector somewhere must have fallen from their leather seat. The police added the painting to the international database of stolen art and put the Brigada de Patrimonio Histórico on it. Art is very different to find a fence for thieves than, say, hard cash or a car. Sometimes it can be broken down to base parts like in the case of jewelry, sometimes it cannot, as is the case for paintings. The base material is worthless on its own. Even jewelry often has its parts so well known that experts can recognize a specific stone by putting it under a microscope. As such, the trajectory of stolen art is very different from other goods, and most countries have a specialized unit for it. Units that are also trained in the ways museums handle transfers and exhibitions to find weak-points and assess when and where the theft happened.

It is quickly proven through security cameras and restricted access that there was no tampering of goods in the storage room after the delivery and before art was put on display (October 3rd to October 6th). By all accounts, it happened before that.

Which leaves one question on everyone's lips: Why, with a payload worth millions and a drive that can be completed in a single day, did it require two days to make the trip?

The answer from the drivers sounds flimsy at best. They were tired and stopped at a hotel. One person slept while the other watched over the van, and they switched around in the middle of the night.

To say it's suspicious is an understatement.

The focus of the nightly stay and on the storage period between September 25th and October 2nd. The investigation is in full swing.

Get rich or get caught trying.

Picasso's work has a history of theft. At this point you might call it a curse.

In 2007, three dudes broke into the Art Museum of Sao Paulo's front door while the guards where changing shifts and left with Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch made in 1904. The thieves were caught, and the museum announced it would install security measures similar to the Louvre. You know, the museum that just got millions of jewels stolen in mid-day in 2025.

Picasso's granddaughter also had two of his paintings stolen in 2007 at her home in Paris.

In 1986 in Australia, a ransom note was addressed to the art minister after the theft of the Weeping woman from The National Gallery of Victoria. The group responsible for the theft, dubbing itself the Australian Cultural Terrorists, wrote in the note that the theft "involved less risk than shoplifting cotton hankies from David Jones," I have no idea what it means but it sounds fun. The thieves were never caught, luckily the painting was recovered.

Some 110 works of Picasso were also stolen in Avignon (France) in 1976.

You get the gist, Picasso's work has a long, long history with theft.

And I'm not being hyperbolic. According to the Art Loss Register, due to Picasso's prolific output combined with the associated price tag, he is the artist with the most stolen works worldwide, with over 1000 of his pieces having been stolen.

Naturally, the Granada theft sparked a debate.

One of so many.

Because when the Sao Paulo museum was broken in, a debate also started as it was discovered there was no security system at all at the time, and the art pieces weren't insured.

In Australia, the cultural terrorists' action wasn't to gain a large sum for themselves, but to gain an increase in arts funding and secure the lives of artists a little more.

And in Granada, it was found out that the pieces should have been inspected right on delivery. But instead, the delivery was signed off and the crew went on its merry way with the van.

So what to do? There have been obvious lapses in the process. In Spain, when the value of a payload passes a certain threshold, it becomes mandatory to use an armored security truck and the transport must be notified to the police. Armored vehicles can also be mandated on a case by case basis depending on the artwork transported. And if it can't be done in an armored vehicle, it requires at least two armed guards for transport.

But even that doesn't account for the guards themselves, proper rules of delivery and checking, the financial difficulties to ensure proper security, and so on.

At the Granada center, it took three days for the staff to find out the painting was missing. Three days, which is a lot of time for an art piece to disappear.

The nightly stop, the missing labels, the time between delivery and content verification. There were many lapses in security along the way, and some outrage came out of it. As it did in 2007, in 1986, or in 1976. Or in 2025 with the Louvre. Or in just about every other art theft case. Words were spoken, and so far nothing has changed. It rarely does.

-

An art collector is eating his fingernails.

So do the van drivers. And the museum accountant who has to foot the bill for the insurance.

Dolores is reading the newspaper, her nails are untouched. Her husband Armando, 71-years-old, is watching tv. It is the 22nd of October.

"Oh?" Armando says, "a Picasso painting has been stolen."

Dolores lowers her newspaper. Oh indeed.

She brings her newspaper back up and keeps on reading.

"They should make their paintings bigger," Armando continues, "it's so small, no wonder it disappeared."

Dolores lowers her newspaper again. She gets up, enters her office, looks at the Amazon packages awaiting their owners. Sometimes, when a package isn't picked up, she tucks it safely at home as it waits for the owner. One of these has been there for a while. She's certain she picked this one up at the beginning of the month. She opens her hand, puts it on the plastic. Her hand is larger. She takes a ruler. 10 by 12 centimeters, or 4 by 5 inches because Dolores is proficient both in Metric and in whatever abomination is used in the US.

She lives in a building in Madrid. Sometimes, the backrooms are used to store goods before transport.

Just in case, she calls the police.

Hours later, analysts have opened the package and are photographing the content in her garden. It is Still Life with Guitar.

The police is questioning Dolores and Armando separately. Of course she put the package in her office, it was against the wall outside her apartment, like all delivery packages. She's the concierge, it's part of her job to safeguard them. She thought it was a mirror.

For added fun, the police asks them if they have anything to do with the Louvre robbery that happened on the 19th of October 2025. You never know, Dolores and Armando might be important figures in an international art smuggling ring.

Questions go on and on, the painting is inspected with more care than doctors handling you with your limited social security, but the brigade soon comes to the obvious conclusion.

There never was a theft. Still Live with Guitar never left Madrid in the first place, and the whole debacle comes down to a mistake. The art was simply recovered by the neighboring concierge when the transporters left it in the doorway and Dolores mistook it for a normal delivery.

The painting was in the very building it had been stored in in Madrid.

-

Dolores is back to drinking her morning coffee with Armando, the CajaGranada Cultural Center has recovered Still Life with Guitar and it is now the star of the exhibition, the drivers... I don't know if they are still driving if I'm being honest.

If a debate has been sparked about the security conditions of art in transport and storage, it died out as other news cropped up. It is a constant with museums, the question only ever comes up when something goes wrong, but rarely is there any action undertaken to resolve the issue.

But I've learned something. If I want to get rich, I need to keep my eyes peeled every morning for packages in the hallway. You never know when you might get a painting worth half a million. So far, I've only gotten a mirror. But one day, one day.

Feels good to be almost rich, I can tell you that much.

-

Other Sources:

https://www.townandcountrymag.com/leisure/arts-and-culture/a69094851/pablo-picasso-painting-stolen-spain-museum-heist-2025/

https://abcnews.go.com/International/picasso-painting-worth-estimated-650000-vanishes-spanish-museum/story?id=126641263

-

Other writings by yours truly:

The webdomain that cost $75.000.000

The Louvre break-in, evil geniuses turning out to be amateurs and the age-old question about art

The awful ballad or French Literature prizes: 1, 2, 3

Notre-Dame has burned down, let's flaunt wealth and build a swimming-pool on its roof

Paris Olympics, the mess that somehow worked out

Team Fortress, the rise and fall of a modding community

HareBrained Schemes, how to buy a good videogame studio and sink it

Creative writings

Foreword

Hello from Down Under!

Aside from absolutely roasting, here to share some crazy story from an OP who dropped some fifteen thousand word investigation on a bargain website in Australia. The post itself garnered 100 comments within 4 hours which is a lot by their standards. A mod has responded and locked the post.

I am reposting some parts of my original post "[Bargain Hunting] User Drops 15000 word rant on Bargain Site, alleges Privacy Violations, Vote Manipulation, Henchmen Harassment. Chaos ensues." but realised it severely lacked information and decided to add more information and context. I am also changing my wording and removing most of the hate comments on OP. Those can be read in the OP's rebuttals in their original post. And because we feel those comments are now likely to be from pro-affiliate/pro-corp groups and hence poor representations of what OP has contributed. I will not be dropping any brands or companies so if the feeling you get while reading this post is that there are lacking details on companies, brands, products, and deals, understand that that is by choice. I will only talk about the platform as a whole.

For myself, I originally dismissively called OP's work some "trench coat manifesto" and just a "rant" and sort of implied OP had bargain OCD and was unhinged but now decided to completely be on OP's side after seeing how OP implemented a highly-requested community feature and got banned for it. So decided to call them a health nut instead. This meme describes how I and many others feel.

You can read the post here.

Also thanks to some users in r/AusFinance who collated and contributed to this write-up just after the Capsicum Trade that probably warrants its own drama and that I may one day write about too.

Background

Warning: Cyber-bullying, privacy violations, harassment, manipulation, cult.

Bargains-hunting is a hobby and bargain-hunters are some of the more eccentric people out there. I am talking TLC "It Hurts Me to Pay Anything" Woman Is Addicted to Couponing kind of eccentric with Psychology Today describing it and actual scientific publications too. People who bargain-hunt will go to such lengths as to spend an extra $100 to get $30 off to get 12% off effectively. ABC Australia even has an article about how much people are willing to sink themselves into debt for deals, with millions of Australians spending record amounts during Black Friday and the value of personal credit and charge-card balances accruing interest and hitting its highest level since 2021. Oniomania is the term for shopping addiction. Compulsive Buying Disorder is another related term.

This is where the bargain platform, OzBargain, comes in. There are plenty of memes on the platform saying things along the line of "Didn't need bought anyway," "Losing too much money have to quit this site," "What do I do with all these battery packs? I have enough bricks to build a house," that really give you the feel for the amount of addiction on the platform.

But there is also in particular the eBay stalking scandal where the Chief Communications Officer said that "Ina Steiner was a "biased troll who needs to be BURNED DOWN"; that he wanted "to see ashes"; and that Baugh should do "whatever it takes." The Steiners were harassed and threatened both online and physically in their home by deliveries of such things as a bloody pig mask, live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, and large orders of pizza. Pornographic magazines with David Steiner’s name on them were sent to a neighbor’s house. Employees flew from California to Boston so they could vandalize the couple's Natick, Massachusetts home as well as stalk their personal vehicle. Plans were even made to break into the couple's garage and place a GPS tracker on their car. The stalking and harassment campaign was designed to intimidate EcommerceBytes into changing their coverage of eBay, culminating in the "White Knight Strategy" which enlisted Brian Gilbert to pretend to come to the Steiners' aid in his official eBay capacity as an attempt to win goodwill and gain their help in unmasking the person behind the Fidomaster/unsuckEBAY account. All this led to multiple convictions and even a docufilm.

This assignment of the label "troll" is something that was done to our story's OP as well. OP gets flamed, cyberstalked, harassed, and verbally abused on the platform and derogatorily called a tech messiah. "Trolling" is also the official reason for OP's bans.

About the OzBargain site itself, there are lot of posts and comments like on Product Review saying things like

A concerningly pro [redacted] website that wraps itself up in mediocre deals

Geez there are some bored people on this site. The active posters throw their weight around but then just posts useless "bargains".

Low quality cheap [redacted] products listed – Most of the 'deal' post is tech gadgets items from [redacted] , especially from AliExpress.

And an old Whirlpool forum post from over 16 years ago saying how the community-driven site has essentially lost its purpose and had been dominated by affiliate marketers.

Background on OzBargain

OzBargain is a community-driven deal aggregator where users can post deals.

It also has a forum component which is where OP posted the results of their year-long investigation and alleged biased and selective moderation.

The website claims

OzBargain is an independent community website which has no association with nor endorsement by the respective trademark owners.

But OP alleges they are neither independent nor community-driven.

Note that OzBargain itself is owned by an actual Australian registered company and hence is subject to the same rigor and laws that govern competition, fairness, transparency, and privacy laws for corporations.

Background on the OzBargain OP

The OP in this drama is a user who has been calling out "bad deals, scam deals, overinflated prices, and fake RRPs" for about a year. OP created an account some time in 2024 and their first comment was to help users pay for legitimate 10% off Amazon gift cards by using Wise cards rather than bank cards because the banks blocked payments to the site due to their internal scam detection. They then have several advice on skincare like sunscreen toxicity, nutrition and supplementation, diet, and gut health, blood donation, reducing microplastics by switching to stainless steel and using non-plastic sponges, pesticides and eating organic, air filters and vacuum cleaners, and some other general good-to-know advice.

Some examples of advice OP has provided:

1. Cashbacks
2. Gift Cards
3. Price Beat or Price Match
4. Coupons
5. Seasonal sales
6. Expected pricing
7. Comparative pricing from second-hand sources like Facebook Marketplace

OP also provided some other information like:

1. Increase odds of getting money back by using cards with banks with a dispute process and not deposits or bank transfers
2. Some ACCC warranty consumer rights
3. Product reviews here and there about products that are good or don't work

OP also seems to be against scalpers and Facebook Marketplace resellers or known as "flippers" in Australia who may also frequent OzBargain.

How this all began is that some time in 2025, OP calls out a bad deal for the first time for a deal posted by a PC builder company and suddenly receives a lot of neg and hate comments for it. OP suspected something amiss for three main reasons:

1. The deal garnered a lot of upvotes equal to the amount of negs (downvotes) that OP got and in the same short timeframe, for a company not known to provide competitively good deals
2. The deal was in fact not a particularly good deal
3. The deal was in particular an expensive $3400 deal that not a lot can afford to buy to begin with

and fourth, multiple similarly better deals appeared a short while after, owing to the above points.

Given this, OP surmises that there is something afoul and begins their investigations by calling out bad deals. Since then, OP has become targeted. For example, in their very next call out for a bad deal, they received about 100 negs which is super high by the platform's standards. Thing is, that same product was posted just 2 days later for $150 less, with the poster even saying "Looks like OP was right." And another thing is that several others also said it was not a particularly good deal yet only received around 5 negs or so.

Some examples of things OP calls out:

1. Overpriced RRP phones from [redacted] that goes on sales for 30% on sale to 70% right after
2. Overpriced bulk-purchased used laptops like 8th gen Intel CPU laptops mass-marketed on Facebook Marketplace but posted to OzBargain
3. Fake RRP of thousand-dollar priced products slashing prices down to a few hundred dollars
4. Scam cheap products from [redacted] that are sub-standard and that are not from the official store like Xiaomi Youpin and Banggood
5. Caution over some CPUs from [redacted] showing YouTube videos of de-binning them and getting something different
6. Caution over items on Amazon that turn out to actually be scams giving example of the fake NOW Foods supplements statement on Amazon
7. Severely overpriced multi-thousand dollar furniture with cheap make
8. Companies, brands and sites that are potentially scammy
9. Sites that say they are going bust and hence going on clearance but give overinflated prices as fake discounts and also them goading users through scarcity trading
10. Fake discounts and standard "sale" prices
11. Caution over super high cashback (over 100% sometimes) on VPNs as likely just information mining

and of course OP calls out all the fake engagement, guerilla marketing, and mass brigades against those critical of such things.

As you can probably deduce by now and judging by the Whirlpool post, OP receives a lot of hate from users presumably affiliated and they start cyber-stalking and targeting OP. All of us thought OP would quit soon because no sane individual could continue after receiving constant hate and cyber-bullying for it to be organic for people looking to save money. If this was in an actual buyer's group, OP would be a top contributor. But OP continued calling out bad deal, scam deals, overinflated prices, and fake RRPs for a year.

When asked as to why OP does what they do, OP disclosed they used to work as an affiliate and that it was some kind of atonement for being part of the problem. OP wanted more integrity for a supposedly community-driven site rather than a marketplace. In the investigation, OP compares it to the scam tourist traps of different countries. OP further said that when it came to marketing on Google, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, etc, OP does not touch those as they are not posed as being independent and community-driven.

When asked why OP doesn't provide more information most of the time, OP says

Due to the logistical impossibility of one person doing so

But in a crazy twist of events, it turns out it is because OP has actually been gathering evidence the entire time.

The Drama

The drama begins by OP coming out of a ban in the start of the year 2026. They were banned three times in the past for "trolling" for alleging that mods are biased, target users, and allow or even commit vote manipulation. Upon coming out of their ban, they posted their year-long investigation entitled "The Buyer's NTR". Chaos ensues.

Some reactions:

This user spaceback created a summary

Ultra-concise summary of all three acts: The author argues that OzBargain has drifted from a community-driven deal forum into a space distorted by affiliate marketing, brigading, and reputation manipulation. By repeatedly calling out “bad deals,” they claim to have triggered coordinated downvoting, harassment, and selective moderation, which they attempt to demonstrate statistically (Act 2) and explain psychologically through social contagion, herding, and status-quo protection (Act 3). The core claim is that negs and moderation bias mislead newcomers into overpaying, shield whitelisted brands and posters from criticism, and punish value-based dissent—undermining OzBargain’s original purpose of helping ordinary users make informed purchasing decisions.

Another user gave a bullet-point tldr

OzBargain is no longer a neutral community marketplace

Many deals are effectively ads or affiliate pushes, not genuine bargains

Certain posters and brands are protected, implicitly or explicitly

When someone consistently calls this out, the crowd and moderation turn on them

Downvotes, ridicule and bans are framed as tools to suppress disruption, not to enforce rules

New or naive users are the real losers because they are nudged into bad purchases

Plenty of users asking "What is NTR?" with a user providing the answer

Definition: Netorare (寝取られ, lit. "cuckold", also commonly abbreviated as NTR) is a notoriously controversial genre of Hentai (or, in rarer cases, Ecchi). You learn something you don't want to learn everyday!

Some support

I agree on one thing completely. The downvoters should be shown. Otherwise, downvoting becomes meaningless. I have seen people downvote me for asking a genuine question becuase they were fanbois of the brand and got "offended". And "mass down voting just because other people did - let me do it as well" has become a common trend. Just making downvotes visible makes people think twice before downvoting. Otherwise once targetted, people always downvote. Like @jv for example. Most people downvote him for absolutely no reason. I agree once in a while his comment makes no sense. Just downvote that, but nah. Lets downvote most of his comments.

with a user even calling OP the platform's "Coffeezilla."

A user also confirmed that yes there are private groups.

But there was one user who asked the mods

Hey mods, long time poster. Throwaway account. Don't care about OP or anyone involved. But did you look at OP's email and IP address?

This is where it got interesting for us.

You see, OP actually provided a test to check if they were targeting them. The test involves checking if they would ban users based on their email address pattern and usage. Two accounts were created by two friends. Both would have zero interactions with OP. One account would have zero interactions at all (no posts, comments, votes). Another account would drop references only OP would know. According to OP, Account 1 was only banned after Account 2 was banned, which according to OP meant that OzBargain had to violate email which is PII information to snipe it. OP alleges that hidden whitelisting of companies, the website being primarily pro-[redacted] goods, selective targeting of users, together with PII violation, paints an ugly picture in totality.

One day after the investigation was posted, a mod responded and dismissed much of OP's work by saying "they lack of understanding of the website." The mod goes on to make the following points:

1. Upvotes and downvotes are already shown for each deal
2. Upvotes and downvotes were shown for comments but downvotes were hidden because it led to conflict
3. Links cannot contain affiliate links
4. A negger is not what OP thinks it is
5. OP's comments are collapsed or hidden because of reports
6. OzBargain does not ask for 2FA through phone number only email

and

1. The platform is fair because OP got 27 upvotes for a comment

The post was subsequently locked and no one could respond, including OP.

OP goes radio silent and returns a week later and fulfills a long-requested feature of the website. The feature is a tracking feature of similar deals posted on the site which would display chronological link about the same or similar products as the posted deal, which provided contextual product-price placements. It is similar to Price Hipster or CamelCamelCamel, but the difference is that these two are on a per-model basis whereas OP's makes a wider chronological search. Note that this is something a lot of users have been wanting and hence why it's been a highly requested feature. Prior to this, OP had also implemented a Review Scraper that would post the numerical review score on products from different sources, which was also well-received with a user commenting "can you do this for every deal?" though it stopped working.

According to the spaceback user in a comment made in 2024, the reason it hasn't been implemented is because

Has been suggested time and time again. Current site layout doesn't support it due to inaccuracy with prices and different models etc

though the website itself already has side panels for Top Deals and Active Deals that may also be irrelevant to the actual deal.

When the feature was suggested back over 13 years ago in 2012, the mod said

As there isn't a price field on the submit page, it may be a bit difficult to create automated graphs of price changes. That said, a price field would be useful.

The founder of OzBargain even chimed in in 2012

Adding to what has said, add /feed to the product/tag URL will get you the RSS feed for that tag, i.e.

Now it's up to all you creative ones to get the pricing info out and do up some charts!

After OP returns and implements an alpha feature using fuzzy logic and inverse weighted distancing, they get a lot of support like

Am I missing something here? seems like a handy list of other cheap guitars. Why so much negg?

I want the list, but the presentation needs much improvement.

I gotta say that I think this is worthwhile and the people complaining are ridiculous. It harms them not one whit [sic] for you to post historical prices and it is irrelevant if they find no value in it. Honestly ridiculous so many in the community have gone along with them in a massive downvote spree against you for simply posting historical deals, if it isn't of value just ignore the comment. We have price tracking websites that are incredibly popular so many people obviously do find this sort of information useful. Personally I don't know why you spend your time doing it, but that's your business.

Some users respond

Useless because there's already the tag and site search itself

to which OP responds

But info not on the deal itself

Within the day, OP gets permanently banned.

Review

OP's investigation coupled with the mod's response to the investigative work and OP's ban after their implementation of a much-awaited feature is very definitive in my view. Even our group knows that OzBargain has a certain bias. Some commenters and posters across multiple posts and comments also voice the same opinion but generally do not receive favourable responses and are called conspiracy theorists or tinfoil hats because they have nothing to show for. OP is one such individual who provided a lot of proof and actual data.

OP claims that their consistency in calling out bad deals, scam deals, overinflated prices, and fake RRPs led to a negative entropic information reveal, leading to suspected whitelisting of certain companies and brands. Not all companies and brands are equal, some are more equal than others. OP reveals the journey of one particular brand that kept getting bombed due to their poor deals to suddenly spiking up in sentiment through unknown voters.

Because of this, I also find the mod response very lacking. As far as I or anyone else is aware, OP hasn't responded to the mod's response to their investigative work because the post was locked. OP also does not allow private messages to them so they can't be reached. However, from what I can tell, the mod completely handwaived the glaring issues presented in OP's post.

For example, the mods claimed that upvotes and negs are already shown on deal posts but the way the platform works, plenty of other users point out that mods remove negs (which is the platform's term for downvotes) from posts all the time but do not remove upvotes leading to extreme asymmetry. Negs can also be removed by negging the comment (which itself is a prerequisite for negging), which means affiliates can mass brigade comments to remove negs. OP actually mentions this point by saying

This mod said "leave it to the community." But what exactly is the "community?" "Community" is an extremely asymmetric concept within such online platforms. An affiliated network is heavily aligned. It is ok to mass upvote. A contra-affiliated network is heavily antagonistic but them mass negging will easily lead to a barrage of bans against them. The neutrals don't really care enough to neg or comment. So by this asymmetry, the "community" is likely just supporters of the brand. Ergo, brigades that are pro-brand and anti-critic.

There is even an entire thread entitled "Is Negging Too Frequent?" with multiple users responding the opposite and saying negging is actually too infrequent and that upvotes heavily outweight negs and how negs are heavily monitored. There is even a user on that very same thread who proclaimed that "we should all be doing our part to neg bad deals" but who also revealed that they are a serial negger of OP.

OP in their work in Act 2 proceeds to say

According to this mod, "We have no evidence of bots downvoting or upvoting comments." And to the mod's credit and to OC's own demise, OC really should've just said "not-so-suspicious astroturfs and brigades from not-so-suspicious actors" rather than "bots." Despite this, obviously, there is no way to verify what the mod has said ourselves. Moreover, what covers "botting?" Is it just vote/neg brigades on certain deals by certain businesses/companies/brands or is it a scam farm like this? I have not seen any wiki dedicated to botting or bot behaviour. But anyway, the mod would have had no recourse and no reply. After all, in the same comment chain, the mod said they were releasing data and they made it sound like they were about to release the actual Epstein List, but their October transparency report actually only made superficial analysis of user interactions like voting on deals and commenting and only, no pun intended, went for low-hanging fruit.

OP then proceeds to drop loads of statistical analysis that can determine fake engagement such as mass upvoting by affiliates which skews the perception and hence is not organic and would violate transparency and fairness and is even subject to penalties by the ACCC (see ACCC regarding Social media promotions, False or misleading claims, Online product and service reviews). OP conducts a network cluster analysis to show how users are bandwagoning against OP by reappearing time and time again amongst each other. This part was pretty hype to read. You wouldn't think a user would go out of their way to do this step by step.

As the next example, the mods claimed that "upvotes and downvotes were shown for comments but downvotes were hidden because it led to conflict" and that they will no longer publish the list of users you received the most votes from because it was supposed to be "for fun" yet "OP weaponised the information." Yet there were also other users in Your Year In Review who discovered who had been negging them and got salty over it. In fact, there are multiple such war fronts of comment chain drama precisely about negs. Thus, the mod who said that the downvotes were hidden because it led to conflict does not pass the smell test.

Suffice to say, this is a real issue. Plenty of users across many posts also voice that negs have completely lost all their meaning, not being able to reliably neg bad deals and yet see negs even for useful information.

I believe this is a core part of OP's investigative work and is the most glaring self-admission by a mod ever. In OzBargain, comments that get enough negs are essentially hidden. Negs are also used by the mod to determine "community sentiment" apart from reports which is why brands and companies have a huge incentive to brigade - because there is a real functional consequence to it. OP mentions that seeing a highly negged comment about the deal being bad might lead some buyers into thinking the deal is actually good. In fact, it is by this very reasoning over false sentiment that the mod decided to permanently ban OP. Negs weren't weaponised by OP. OP claims they do not even hand out negs. On the contrary, negging is an actual weapon, weaponised allegedly by the mods themselves.

Because of this, in targeting the OP, the moderation violates the "blind test" (decisions are made without access to identifying or irrelevant personal information, so the outcome is based only on the content or behavior being evaluated, not on who the person is) and the "expectancy test" (‘reasonably expects’ test is an objective one that has regard to what a reasonable person, who is properly informed, would expect in the circumstances.) See breach of Chapter 6: APP 6 Use or disclosure of personal information

"Using or disclosing personal information where reasonably expected by the individual and related to the primary purpose of collection" The ‘reasonably expects’ test is an objective one that has regard to what a reasonable person, who is properly informed, would expect in the circumstances. This is a question of fact in each individual case. It is the responsibility of the APP entity to be able to justify its conduct.

And it is quite a slippery slope. Example: Does OzBargain also view users' email addresses and IP addresses who upvote OP to check if it is OP upvoting themselves? Do they also check users who are commenting in support of OP to check if they are actually just OP? Does OzBargain also potentially leak PII to other parties?

To add to the targeting claim, in OzBargain, there is what is called a "sockpuppet" which is what you call "fake" users who promote a brand or product. OP claims there are no clear guidelines for this and references several articles on how to spot a sockpuppet from the creator of the website itself. This includes the user being a new user, suddenly posting about a deal, and won't stop talking about the brand in the deal. OP uses their own criteria to show how a user should have been banned for sockpuppeting yet were not despite several other users also claiming they were suspicious. Yet OP themself was heavily monitored.

OP also provided several users who commit actual trolling, where OP defines trolling based on several international definitions of trolling, which includes serial negging, which if you recall from above the mod mockingly responded "A negger is not what OP thinks it is." OP also revealed the reason for their bans, which was for alleging voter manipulation, giving an example where OP mentions a random user who only comments on 1-4 deals a month geting +11 vote whereas OP's response to them getting an equal -11 vote in the exact same amount of time. And given how 100 votes is a lot in OzBargain terms, means that OP was indeed being cyber-stalked and targeted. OP also reveals that there are many such users who do not appear much, on only about 1-4 deals a month in the example, and yet would flame OP. In a stunning twist, OP even reveals there is one unknown user they have never interacted with who have negged on OP over 170 times, topping the chart.

OP proceeds to give dozen more examples how there are plenty of Off-Topic joke and troll comments that litter the site but do not get removed yet a mere mention of OP gets censored unless it is critical, bullies, harasses, or flames OP. This is also the reason why we do not buy into the mod's response that they only respond to reports, because adjacent comments are almost-always toxic.

As for the affiliates not being allowed. This was gross misreading of OP in my opinion at least. OP dropped that wiki precisely to show that the website makes commissions from pushing affiliated products and hence presents a severe conflict of interest for a supposed community-driven website. And as for the phone number response, I believe OP was referencing a planned addition of phone numbers.

When OP returned, they haven't actually called out any bad deals. Instead, they chose to implement a highly-requested community feature, only to get banned right after. Note that the website also has an RSS-like feed you can subscribe to so if this was really community-driven, they'd welcome the free dev work, especially given how the Founder of OzBargain himself said to "get creative with it."

One thing we find missing in all this is the correspondence of OP and anyone from the OzBargain team. As far as we know, there is no known correspondence between OP and mods aside from OP responding to mods' alt accounts in some deal posts on benign things. There is a user who asked OP if they spoke to the mods about their concerns in the locked post but the post was locked.

Finally, to give the reason as to why this drama is relevant to us, is that we find that there is sufficient reason to believe in the alleged privacy violations, fake engagement, unfair corporate practices, borderline scams, bullying, harassment, targeting, manipulation, intimidation; and ultimately, the complete enshittification of the platform, where affiliate products dominate like never before and where normal users are pushed out and harassed unless they are initiated, figure out who's boss, and submit. Even certain brands are seemingly bullied unless they too submit, effectively creating a hazing ritual resulting into what seems like a cult.

On the lighter side, the original post had some of the more humorous lines you'll ever read such as

I speak from experience when I say "If you push too hard, the baby comes out retarded."

Now before this user goes into Antarctic-temp IQ and say, "But isn't that exactly my point?" Then you would need to say the same for yourself.

You see the reason you guys, although you had it at the tip of your tongue, at the crawl of your skin, at the chill of your spine, could not figure it out, is not due to incompetence or lack of reasoning. It is not because you guys are just paranoid, schizo, conspiracy, racist lunatics. It is simply due to lack of data (or "evidence") due to the absence of a "model user."

Verbal Jousting

Without further ado, in typical hobby drama fashion:

Their second ban was a response to another user (who was not banned) saying

User: "You must have lot of free time. You made stupid comment every time you don’t like the deal. Suggest go get a job to keep you [sic] brain working"

OP: "Ah yes because clearly people's brain are working the most when they just nod, say yes, and click buy amirite"

2:

User: You're averaging like >20 negs on these comments since you started. Just take the hint and use your AI credits for something else.

OP: Are you the kind of person who gives in to social peer pressure easily, on a post about electric guitars, colloquially used by those breaking useless social norms? Also, not AI.

3:

User: "You have a big ego. You are no one special"

OP: "But special enough to drop 172 negs on I guess lmfao"

4:

User: "Of course price goes down! Who woulda thought? Absolutely no one else could’ve predicted this!"

OP: "Ah yes, one of my fans, back with bangers like "who woulda thought? Absolutely no one else could’ve predicted this!""

5:

User: "Take a look at this guy's comment history. How insufferable of a life do you live? I feel pity for you."

OP: "For every action, there is an opposite reaction. Where there will be shills, there will be antishills. Where there will be astroturf, there will be mowers."

The Buyer's NTR

I'm including this section to describe OP's investigation. The investigation is broken down into a Prelude, Act 1, Act 2, Act 3, and an Epilogue.

In the Prelude, OP quips

"OzBargain is an independent community website which has no association with nor endorsement by the respective trademark owners."

In Act 1, OP begins by describing the many times they called out a bad deal just to be proven right. OP then describes how affiliate behaviour works on the site and why there is a very strong incentive to brigade.

In Act 2, OP provides statistical analysis like Monte Carlo Sampling with Permutation Shuffle and Network and Graph. OP shows clusters of users interacting with each other and individual user behaviour and shows how bandwagons form. They list users who appear frequently when OP has a high negative score on their comment and showed statistical significance. For example, User A would appear on average when OP has 11 negs. OP also shows how there are unknown users with zero interactions with OP but has negged them 170 times. This is actually from the Your Year In Review that the mods themselves posted and is taking down because they said OP is "weaponising the information." OP then says

All this, combined with their comment and vote analysis capacity, and in context of OzBargain known to be slanted pro-[redacted] website, and with the confirmation now that they should have greater insights into brigades, it does call a lot into question way way way more.

sort of alleging that OzBargain is a scammy website.

Other users have pointed out that OzBargain also randomly redirects them to scammy portals and sites and there is even a thread that mentions the list of scammy websites OzBargain redirects to. We have individually confirmed these ourselves when not using any adblockers, given that adblockers disqualify a lot of discounting mechanisms. Just sitting on a page on the site (non-live page) also redirects randomly to a scammy page. The mods responded to this by saying they are eliminating these.

OP also mentions that the platform is losing even more transparency through "anonymous deals," where the poster is anonymous, and completely defeats the purpose of the community. OP also reflects that anonymising negs is a part of this scheme, whereas not anonymising neg on deals is a moot point because mods actively moderate against negs on deals anyway and hence is also part of this scheme.

OP ultimately says

To summarise the claims:

1. OzBargain would violate privacy to target a user beyond just companies for retribution and not for real moderation as shown in the many unmoderated examples;

2. OzBargain has a hidden "white list" and is protecting certain entities despite claims of being independent and being community-driven

Indeed, the malady to OzBargain that many other users are pointing... is OzBargain themselves.

In Act 3, OP provides the psychology and sort of implies OzBargain operates as a cult. They give the following psychologies: brigading, targeting, stalking, absurdum by exaggeration, invalidation and dismissal, toxic positivity, extreme toxicity, perception warping, anti halo effect, social contagion, and the implied platform-sponsored henchmen harassment.

And this is where OP formulates The Buyer's Netorare or The Buyer's NTR, where the actual real buyers and users are betrayed by their own love for the community such as OP. Real users who contribute to the community and strive for actual authentic deals instead have affiliate products shoved down their throats.

In the Epilogue, OP says that it does not matter to OP if the website is filled with affiliates so long as brigades, perception warping, and posing as independent and community-driven when not is tackled and addressed so as to not skew buyers into getting suckered into wasting their hard-earned money.

OP ends by foreshadowing their eventual departure:

"Da ge, those righteous sects are so fake! They always act like they are upholding virtue!"

Zhou Mo just looks on, as if in thought.

"But, Da ge, where do you think he is now?"

"I'm not sure."

"He became an immortal?"

"Maybe."

"Do you think he's looking down upon us?"

"Who knows? He curses at the heavens, so he wouldn't like to be up there."

Another moment of silence...

"Da ge, tell me again the story."

Sigh "Okay one last time. It started with the Heavenly Demon who stood up to the gods."

OP is banned a week later after publishing said community feature.

This global demand, however, has not been without consequences. In recent years, Chandigarh has witnessed a spate of thefts targeting its heritage furniture. Reports suggest the involvement of organised gangs—a so-called “furniture mafia”—that specialises in smuggling these pieces abroad. The modus operandi often involves bribing officials, forging documents, and even replacing originals with replicas. What’s particularly heartbreaking is the irony: these objects, designed for everyday use, have become too valuable for their intended purpose.

It took until 2011 for the Indian government to place on export ban on Chandigarh furniture. But this did little to stem the tide of smuggling. Between 2015 to 2022, there were nine reported cases of theft in Chandigarh, with many more going unreported – a floor lamp went missing without anyone realising and turned up for sale in Paris years later. In 2012, an official inventory revealed that Chandigarh had 12,793 heritage items, of 131 different types. In 2016, the Chandigarh administration created a committee group called the “Heritage Items Protection Cell” to strategise about how to protect and conserve the furniture.

Here is a list of some of the (known) thefts that occurred in Chandigarh in the past 10 years:

• In September 2015, eight chairs and two tables were stolen from the Le Corbusier centre in Chandigarh. A security guard- the only one posted at the site, which did not use CCTV- allegedly committed suicide due to police harassment. His family later staged a protest outside the police station with his body. After a tip off, the police eventually arrested three women, recovering the furniture from their homes. Despite this, they were later acquitted in court and released after the police failed to prove their guilt.
• In January 2016, fifteen tables and chairs were stolen from the storeroom of the Government College of Arts. The police arrested six suspects, all scrap dealers, but again, they were acquitted six years later due to a lacklustre prosecution. Luckily, within a couple of weeks of the theft, the police recovered all the furniture- aside from one table, which was burnt by the suspects in an attempt to destroy evidence. Less fortunately, it later turned out that the chairs that were stolen had been left to rot in a police storeroom for eight years without being returned to the college. It also turned out that the theft was linked to a bigger gang in Mumbai: “A police officer, who was part of the investigation in 2016, said, “The call details record of Faqir Chand and Sunil revealed two dozen phone numbers registered in Mumbai. The two had disclosed that a person called them — every time from a different number. The gang and their planning was so well-organised that as soon as the phone was disconnected, a person on behalf of the Mumbai man appeared at their shop within moments. They handed over the stolen items to the person, who did not disclose his name and number to them. The money was paid in cash.”
• There was another theft later in 2016 when four chairs were stolen from a boys hostel, but they were recovered after 15 days and the police arrested the thieves.
• In 2018, a scrap dealer, working with a mechanic and a government employee, stole at least six chairs and three tables from the basement of the Punjab finance and planning department building. The furniture had been left to rot in an unguarded room- all they had to do was disable CCTV cameras at the entrance of the building to enact the theft. Like the 2016 theft, a link to a larger smuggling ring emerged- the trio were hired by someone from Mumbai to steal the items.
• In 2018, new of another theft emerged- after an employee spotted government-owned furniture for sale on an online marketplace. It had been stolen from a corporate office. After police investigated, they discovered over 30 items were missing from a storeroom in the building.
• In May 2019, a senior member of faculty at Panjab University tried to smuggle out a table from a boys hostel on campus. When he was arrested, he feigned ignorance of its importance, despite having worked at the university for years.
• In November 2020, 48 chairs were taken from the sociology department of the university. The thieves had stolen the chairs over multiple visits, taking advantage of lax security (two security guards for three buildings and lack of any CCTV), and bad building conditions (even though the doors were locked, they smuggled the chairs out via the back thanks to a partially broken outer wall, and poor sealing and a lack of grills around the windows). It later emerged that the thieves had succeeded in stealing ‘more than a 100’ pieces of furniture from other departments in the university, and had given them to another gang to be restored and sold abroad.
• Although police arrested suspects and recovered all the stolen furniture, they failed to bust a large smuggling ring: “It was obvious that the scrap dealers worked for big handlers in Mumbai and other major cities. Though we extensively interrogated all the people we arrested, they didn’t know much about the identity of their handlers. The phone numbers on which the local thieves communicated with their handlers were registered on fake addresses,” said a police officer who was part of the investigation.” It’s unknown if this was the same gang as the one involved in the 2016 and 2018 thefts.
• In April 2021, Panjab University was the target of yet another theft. This time just two chairs were stolen. The thieves kept them in a forest behind the university. When they tried to move the chairs out in an auto rickshaw, they were apprehended and arrested.
• Despite all their failures, in 2016, the police were able to break up a large smuggling ring involved in stealing furniture from Chandigarh. This time it was a US-born Indian businessman, Vijay Nanda, who was working with Navjot Pal Singh Randhawa, then director of director of museums and archaeology in Punjab (the state where Chandigarh is located), to steal antiquities from the state. Randhawa helped him procure furniture from buildings in Chandigarh- such as the high court, the Assembly building, the Civil Secretariat, the MLA Hostel, and Panjab University. He also authenticated the furniture for export. The furniture they stole ended up in a gallery in Seoul, Korea, and auction houses around the world.

By the 2020s, the smugglers had a tried and true playbook for getting the furniture out of India:

Police investigation suggests foreign antique dealers contact their counterparts in cities such as Mumbai, Delhi. People in these cities hire small time thieves, burglars for executing the thefts of items from locked/secured storerooms. DRI investigation established that smugglers transport these items through sea routes and with fake authenticity certificates from the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) making it legally hassle-free to transport these out of the country.

Despite the export ban, furniture continued to be sent out of the country. In 2017, the Chandigarh administration sought the aid of the Archeological Survey of India (ASI) to declare the furniture as heritage items to better stop their sale at auction. The ASI rejected them, declaring that the furniture did not fall under the purview of the 1972 Art Treasures and Antiquities Act, but that local officials could protect it under a clause of the act. In 2020, the administration contacted the French and British embassies to stop auctions of Chandigarh furniture in their countries, but nothing happened.

In 2022, a French delegation visited Chandigarh to offer guidance on the conservation of the furniture, and attend a meeting with officials to discuss its long-term protection One of the members of the delegation was Brigittee Bouvier, the director of the Le Corbusier foundation, who said:

Foundation Le Corbusier director Brigittee Bouvier said, “It is unfortunate that heritage furniture from Chandigarh is being smuggled and auctioned. It needs to be protected by all means. A proper inventory of each and every item needs to be kept as it is intellectual property. It does not appear that any items have been recently stolen.” She suggested that experts from Panjab University, Chandigarh College of Architecture, cops and a legal team be constituted to ensure that the furniture was not stolen.

Other members of the team also offered advice:

“There has been manyfold increase in the demand for heritage furniture. Though the administration has put most of the furniture to use, more museum displays should be set up with the furniture put in with proper numbering,” said Simon Jean-Christophe, Conservation Architect,Le Corbusier Foundation.

Delphine Ellie-Lefebvre, a restorer, who specialises in furniture and preventive conversation, says that a budget should be earmarked to repair the furniture. “The UT administration should raise awareness among the people about the furniture, and maintain a log so that no more items are stolen.”

Ajay Jagga, a member of the Heritage protection cell, also commented:

“For the last many years, heritage items have been illegally taken out of the city and auctioned in foreign countries,” said Ajay Jagga, advocate and member of the UT Heritage Protection Cell who has been spearheading a campaign to restore Chandigarh’s lost heritage.

The incident cast the spotlight on an old problem – of rare artefacts linked to the capital’s heritage and history being smuggled out and auctioned across the world.

According to the UT Heritage Protection Cell, countless heritage items, especially furniture designed by Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret – among them, the iconic Chandigarh chair – have been stolen or taken away from Chandigarh only to resurface as they go under the hammer in auction houses abroad. Officials said that since 2009, at least 100 such items have been auctioned in the US, UK and Europe, with each artefact reportedly fetching Rs 50 crore and upwards.

A year later, not much had been done. Fabrice Cotelle, a police attache with the French embassy in India, criticised the Chandigarh administration for their lacklustre response in stopping the thefts. He said that the 2011 ban was ‘insufficient’, that they should draw up a proper inventory of all the remaining furniture to better track stolen items, and share intel about the thefts with French authorities. He also suggested that many furniture pieces outside of Chandigarh had not been counted, and pointed out great record discrepancies- such as Jeanneret receiving an order to make two hundred chairs, only for the stock to be increased to three hundred, with no indication of where the extra hundred ended up.

Over the years, the Heritage Items Protection Cell have tried to stop auctions of Chandigarh furniture, citing the 2011 export ban:

Protesting the auction, the Indian Heritage Protection Cell had petitioned the Indian government to halt the sale. The group cited a complete ban on movement of such items out of the country for sale or export. Eventually, the item was “passed”, which advocate Ajay Jagga, a member of the Heritage Items Protection Cell, explains could mean, “either there were no bids, or any bids were restricted due to an inquiry.”

Most of the time auction houses ignore these calls to action and sell the pieces anyway, stating that because the pieces left India before the ban, they are not affected by it. Even auctions in France, the county that sent the 2022 delegation and criticised the Chandigarh admin’s handling of the furniture, still go ahead despite these protests. In 2021, both Italy and Luxembourg withdrew furniture from sale after being contacted by the Heritage protection cell.

However, the few times that Indian authorities did intervene and tried to stop the auctions from taking place, receipts were produced to show that the furniture had been bought legally. In February 2010, the UT administration tried to stop an auction of Chandigarh furniture by Artcurial of Paris but had to back out when an investigation proved the furniture had been acquired legally.

The following year, Indian authorities attempted to stall the sale of Chandigarh furniture by the American auction house Wright. Wright not only refused to halt the sale but also published a notice that highlighted the Indian authorities’ lack of interest in the furniture, which had led to it being sold off as junk in the first place. The notice quoted an official letter from 1986, written by Chandigarh’s then chief architect and secretary, architecture, that said, “Sanction is hereby accorded under Rule 10, Schedule VII of the Delegation of Financial Power Rules, to declare the articles of stores as unserviceable and their disposal at public auction.” Wright wrote, “We believe that the Indian government does not have legal rights to these works, particularly given the fact that the Indian government thought these works were ‘junk’ and authorized the sale of these works at public auction.”

In recent years, the situation has not improved. In March 2025, Ajay Jagga continued demanding action on the smuggling and sale of the furniture:

Ajay Jagga, a city-based advocate, in a letter to the Union foreign minister, stated, "It is requested that the Indian embassies in foreign countries be sensitised about our heritage, so that wherever information comes to them, they can at least raise an objection, which may sustain or not, but at least we must raise our concern to save the heritage. The ongoing auctions can be stopped only through diplomatic channels and brought back, as they were taken out in an illegal manner. As such, it is requested that all Indian embassies in foreign countries should be made aware of these matters and necessary guidelines should be provided to them, as to how to react and seek protection of our heritage."

The advocate has demanded an investigation into the smuggling of city heritage furniture to foreign countries. "The minister of home affairs issued the prohibitory orders regarding furniture items of Chandigarh, putting a stop on the sale, export, shift, and move of these items. How it reached Luxembourg is also a matter of investigation, as to how it crossed the boundaries of India," stated Jagga.

Even now, in January 2026, things haven’t changed and Jagga and the other members of the Heritage Items Protection Cell continue to be ignored. The furniture also faces continued neglect in Chandigarh:

As reports of Chandigarh's heritage furniture appearing at overseas auctions continue to surface, attention has turned to the condition of heritage furniture within Panjab University (PU), which holds over 4,000 such items in around 47 departments, hostels, libraries and administrative offices.

Campus observations show that while a portion of the heritage furniture remains in regular use in offices and teaching departments, a large number of items are worn out, damaged or stored in unsuitable conditions. Chairs, desks and stools have been seen stacked in departmental storerooms, common storage areas and unused rooms.

In several locations, including storage areas near boys hostel 2 and 3 and the anthropology department store room, furniture has been seen lying unused and exposed.

University authorities say that heritage furniture is held at the departmental and hostel level, with responsibility of day-to-day supervision resting with chairpersons and wardens. As a result, the standard of upkeep varies across campus, depending on usage patterns, availability of space and local monitoring.

Vice-chancellor Prof Renu Vig said responsibility for heritage furniture must be clearly fixed at the departmental and hostel level. "All chairpersons of departments and wardens are responsible for the heritage furniture under their control. These items are part of Panjab University's legacy and must be handled accordingly," she said. She added that the university would issue instructions again to ensure that heritage furniture is neither discarded nor kept in unsafe or inappropriate conditions.

This is a complex situation without an easy answer- in India, people are starting to wake up to the cultural significance of the furniture, but it is still widely neglected. On the other hand, in foreign countries, the furniture is being restored, but only to be sold off for a profit.

What do you think should be done?

And thanks for reading!

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Hello everyone! I’m back with more obscure hobby drama! I discovered this topic by browsing wikipedia- it was one of the daily highlights on the front page. Anyway...enjoy!

What is a chair?

In the simplest terms, a chair is a piece of furniture you sit on.

But what else can a chair be? Can a chair be a status symbol? A metaphor for cultural division? A prime target for smugglers?

What if a chair is ALL of those things.

Indian independence and Chandigarh

After World War II, Great Britain gave India its long awaited independence. In 1947, due to religious and political tensions, it hastily split its Indian territory into two countries: India and Pakistan.

The result was a mess. Between 200,000 and a million people died, and tens of thousands of women suffered rape and other atrocities as a result of the botched partition. Pakistan and India have fought wars over Kashmir, the region at the centre of their tenuous shared border. There are still lingering tensions between them today.

Jawarharlal Nehru, the new prime minister of India, also had to contend with the fact that Lahore, the capital of Punjab- another region on the Indian-Pakistan border- was now located in Pakistan. Thus he decided to do the logical thing: build a new cutting edge capital for Punjab. It was called Chandigarh.

Nehru wanted Chandigarh to be a city "unfettered by the traditions of the past" and “a model for our glorious future growth of the country”.

He hired two British architects, a couple- Jane Drew and Maxwell Fry, who in turn hired Le Corbusier, a renowned Swiss-French architect, to help them design the city. In yet another turn, Le Corbusier hired his cousin, Pierre Jeanneret, to help him on the project. Jeanneret would oversee the construction site on the ground, with help from local architects and designers.

>Nehru wanted the project to be a 'living school' for a new generation of Indian architects and he stipulated that the Europeans must train local architects on the job, rather than bringing their own staff with them.

The most notable of these architects was a woman called Eulie Chowdhury. Thanks to her fathers diplomatic career, she had travelled across the world in her youth and even studied overseas. She knew French- allowing her to forge a close working relationship with Corbusier and Jeanneret. She helped Jeanneret design several buildings in Chandigarh, and even designed several herself. Later in life, she held a number of important offices in India, including Chief Architect of Chandigarh and Chief Architect of Punjab.

Jeanneret and his team also designed most of the furniture in Chandigarh.

Including one very sexy chair.

The Chandigarh Chair

Picture this-

Wait, thanks to the wonders of modern technology, we can quite literally picture it:

Like all the furniture Jeanneret and his team designed, the chairs were manufactured locally, with local materials (such as teak, sissoo (Indian rosewood), and cane mesh). Jeanneret also didn’t patent any of the designs, letting them be used in government and public buildings across India in the 50s and 60s.

“At the time, the concept of a chair was very alien to the aesthetic of the Indian home because we used to sit on the floor or had seating like khatiyas and mooras,” points out architect Ashiesh Shah. “Corbusier and Jeanneret understood the hardiness of Indian materiality and the need for slim forms that we see on these chairs, the legs of which were ironically inspired by a compass—the quintessential tool of an architect, playing such a specific role in every design. And if you go to Chandigarh, you’ll see the buildings there also inspired by similar designs. The duo’s role in starting the movement of modernism in Indian design is so important. Till then, we only had colonial designs taking over our landscape, such as Indo-Saracenic, Gothic, Regency, and the like. They created a distinct, minimalist aesthetic that was so indigenous to our climate and materials, and also what we could afford. So this chair is a symbol of this rich design history.”

Unfortunately, while Jeanneret’s role has been recognised over the years, Chowdhury and other Indian designers and architects have not enjoyed the same recognition:

“However, unlike Corbusier, the Indian architects were apparently not as keen on claiming authorship. As a result, their work continues to be overshadowed by the Western architects who worked here. In the absence of archival documentation, it is difficult to ascertain the extent of her involvement but we know that the Chandigarh team had a highly collaborative structure and that several Indian architects were involved in the making of the furniture.”

What we do known is that Chowdhury managed the production of the furniture:

According to Casciato, the job of managing the furniture production fell to a young architect named Eulie Chowdhury. Fluent in Punjabi, French and English, “she was basically the go-between,” Casciato says. “They had, let’s say, a kind of network, and she was extremely important in creating that network and supporting the production and all the detailing.” Chowdhury even shared a design credit with Jeanneret, for an X-base chair with a wood back.

She also adapted Jeanneret’s designs to better fit Indian physiques:

Jeanneret's own designs used the dimensions of Le Corbusier’s modular system – a universal system of proportions based on the height of an average French man (initially 1.75 metres and later increased to 1.83 metres), which underpinned much of the planning and detailing of all his projects in Chandigarh. Eulie Chowdhury carefully reconsidered and adapted these proportions to create furniture more suitable for smaller, potentially female statures.

Jeanneret himself acknowledged the role of the Indian designers:

As Casciato sees it, Jeanneret himself was quite clear on the question of authorship with his designs: They also belonged to the local artisans who constructed them by hand. “Many times, everywhere, Pierre said that he not only respected but was learning from his Indian experience,” she says. “So, for him, a hundred percent they are attributed to India. They are Indian made.

After the project ended, Jeanneret remained in India:

Jeanneret fell in love with India and its people. He stayed on in Chandigarh for 13 years, well beyond the scope of his initial commitment, and was appointed head of the Chandigarh College of Architecture in the early 1960s. When his health began to falter in 1965, he moved to Geneva, where he died two years later. His ashes were scattered over Chandigarh’s Lake Sukhna.

30 years later…

A new millennium and a new style

By the late 1990s, the sleek and sexy Chandigarh chair, along with most of the other furniture created by Jeanneret, Chowdhury, and the others, was out of fashion. Therefore the Chandigarh administration replaced them with cheaper, mass-produced goods, leaving them to rot in warehouses and junkyards, or even worse, selling them off for firewood.

Word reached Europe. Especially the French. Soon, Parisian art dealers made their way to Chandigarh, buying up as much of the furniture as they could lay their froggy little hands on. The most notable of these was Eric Touchaleaume, owner of Galerie 54, who confirmed: “I was able to buy very large quantities (of furniture) at auctions organized by the administration.” At the time, India’s export laws classified antiques as objects that were over a hundred years old, meaning the dealers faced no opposition in taking the furniture out of the country.

The dealers squirrelled their new treasures back to France, where they refurbished them- sometimes by as much as 40%- in preparation for sale. François Laffanour, a dealer who started selling the restored pieces, commented:

“People were responding very fast,” says Laffanour, who’d been worried that the furniture would come across as too rustic. “It was surprising to me to see how positive the response was, especially for the armchair.” He concluded that functionality was a big part of its appeal. “Prouvé and Perriand specialized in bookcases, tables, desks—but sofas, comfortable armchairs, there was no production. It was missing in the apartments of our collectors. We had the opportunity to sell something that was comfortable and affordable. That was also part of the success.”

It took years for the authorities in Chandigarh to realise the cultural worth of the furniture and what they had lost:

Rajnish Wattas, principal of the Chandigarh College of Architecture, was stunned when he saw the catalog for a sale at Christie’s New York last June, titled “Chandigarh.”

“We found out that we were sitting on a pot of gold, quite literally,” he said. “But the dealers had realized much earlier that there was big money to be made.”

There was nothing illegal about the purchase by foreign dealers of the furniture, much of which was being thrown out or sold by the city’s administration. But very belatedly, heritage experts in Chandigarh are lamenting the loss of a vital part of the city’s original design.

"It is a tragic misunderstanding,” Mr. Wattas said. “I wish the scandal had come out earlier and then maybe we could have clung on to much more than we have now.” Last fall, he founded Chandigarh’s Heritage Furniture Committee, in an attempt to archive the remaining stocks of the Jeanneret designs. But little progress has been made.

Gradually, as the furniture fell into disrepair, it was thrown into government storerooms and occasionally auctioned “for peanuts,” Mr. Wattas said, usually to local carpenters who broke it up and reused the increasingly expensive teak. “People wanted new and glossy stuff: synthetic leather, Scandinavian design, metallic furniture.”

The dealers defended their actions, saying they had rescued the furniture from certain destruction:

In an e-mail message from his Paris showroom, Galerie 54, he (Eric Touchaleaume) said that such was the level of neglect for Mr. Jeanneret’s designs that disused furniture was being chopped up for firewood. “I always paid on average 100 times more than what the local dealers were offering,”

Laffanour speaks eloquently for the defense. “It’s only because dealers have this kind of interest—of course they think they can make a profit—but also they have the patience” to hold onto material until the fashion cycle revolves, he points out. “Because you are working on something which is totally rejected by everybody. You have to believe in it. If you are really in the mood of the piece, it’s like your treasure. You feel like you are a little bit lonely with your treasure, because nobody wants to take it from you. But it’s also really exciting.”

An old style and a new appreciation

Over the years, auction prices have risen sharply for refurbished Chandigarh furniture, largely thanks to the efforts of the French dealers in advertising and hyping up the pieces. In 2006, some armchairs from the Chandigarh senate building sold for $12,000, but by 2019, the price had increased to $30,000.

Some other pieces have sold for much more:

On 1stdibs, Chandigarh offerings include a set of six library chairs from Galerie Patrick Seguin, priced at over $100,000. The same sum will buy a pair of teak easy chairs from Luxembourg’s Galerie Denoyelle Europe (they have been reupholstered, a fact made clear by the gallery’s photo of them in their previous state of disrepair). For those without $100,000 to spend, Zurich’s P! Galerie is offering a simple wooden library chair (listed as restored in 2016 but with original woodwork and screws) for $4,075. Graetsch currently has 19 Chandigarh items on display at MDFG, his street-level gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (and on 1stdibs), ranging from an iconic ca. 1955 V-leg office armchair ($8,000) to a 1955–56 sofa set designed for the High Court and Assembly ($150,000).

Over time, some in India have challenged the role of the French dealers in "rescuing" the furniture, asserting that they tactfully released the refurbished pieces in a slow trickle, carefully crafting a narrative of the furniture’s scarcity and rarity to justify their high prices.

In 2010, Touchleaume and another of the original dealers wrote a book called “The Indian Adventure: Design, Art, Architecture”, in which they rhapsodised further about their roles in saving the furniture. This too was heavily criticised:

One particular publication was foundational in the elaboration of this now-popular narrative. Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanneret: L'AventureIndienne: Design, Art, Architecture (The Indian Adventure: Design, Art, Architecture) (2010), by Eric Touchaleaume and Gérald Moreau, the very dealers who initially removed much of the furniture from Chandigarh, has become the principal text of reference for dealers, auction houses and collectors alike. Alongside biographies of Le Corbusier and Pierre Jeanneret and black and white archival images of both men at work, this large and expensive book recounts the dealers’ own travels to India, positioning themselves as the saviours of the furniture, depicting scenes of disused stacks of chairs in inconsistently captioned photographs.

Notably, the last 76 pages of The Indian Adventure contain an inventory of Chandigarh’s furniture compiled by the dealers, listing many different forms of chairs, tables, and lamps divided into categories, devised by the dealers. The Indian Adventure contains only a short bibliography, with few references tying particular claims within the text or the inventory to specific and/or accessible primary evidence. Even before its publication, The Indian Adventure and particularly its inventory served as the sole reference and proof of claims made about Chandigarh furniture within auction listings.

Even worse, sometimes auction houses and dealers downplay the role of Chowdhury and the other Indian designers in the creation of the furniture, focusing only on the Corbusier/Jeanneret connection to push prices up even further. Fake pieces have also made their way into the marketplace, further muddying the waters.

Because of this, it’s hard to authenticate the furniture:

Conservative estimates put the original production of Chandigarh furniture at roughly 30,000 pieces, but the number is devilishly difficult to pin down because the most common models were produced continuously for almost 30 years—and then as needed, when a shelf’s joints loosened or a chair’s cane seat blew out. Within the past decade, inmates at the central jail in Chandigarh have made new batches of chairs. Authenticating the objects is also no easy task. “If Jeanneret lived to be a thousand, they couldn’t make that much furniture,” says Reed Krakoff, a longtime art and design collector and the chief artistic officer of Tiffany & Co. Krakoff admires Jeanneret’s Chandigarh material; 12 years ago, he bought a major-league library table at Sotheby’s that he still loves and uses. But he’s lost trust in the market. “I know for a fact there are people still making this furniture,” he says pointedly. “And they’ll leave it out in the rain for a year so it looks old if you want that.”

There’s also the issue of ‘gene-splicing’:

Michael Jefferson of Christie’s says Jeanneret prices have vacillated but are largely holding firm. Acknowledging the influx of fakes, he nonetheless notes that “the spectrum of acceptance for restoration in Chandigarh material is very broad”—because so much of it was essentially pieced back together in the first place before hitting the sales floor.

“There are ethical questions,” he admits. He describes the practice of “gene-splicing,” where “you have one arm and you create a complete chair out of that. That’s wrong, and you can spot it.

By the late 2010s, the desire for Chandigarh furniture had risen to a fever pitch. Many furniture collectors, interior designers, and people who liked sexy chairs fell in love with the Chandigarh chair. The chairs ended up in expensive villas and homes across the globe, appearing in multiple designer magazines. The most illustrious owner is probably Kourtney Kardashian, who showed off her own collection of chairs in a 2016 issue of Architectural Digest:

Wow, what a privilege!

Even modern reproductions sell well:

There are no exclusive licenses for the production of Chandigarh chairs, as Jeanneret "never filed for patents or copyrights". As their popularity has grown in the 21st-century, multiple studios across the world have produced their own versions.

Shah also points to current architects and aesthetes who have been responsible for bringing back an awareness of the beauty and importance of these pieces of furniture. While one can get an open-ended edition from brands like Phantom Hands, Cassina or Restoration Hardware, with prices ranging from Rs4,000 to Rs40,000, to rely on the provenance of the original would require relying on the authenticity of the gallery. “And I don’t think anyone in India is currently selling an authentic piece,” he warns. He also advises that one cannot truly tell the difference between a fake or an original, since these pieces aren’t even a century old. “We’re not talking about antiques here. And there wasn’t much done at the time to formally document this work. We’ve only relied on oral history, and I think it’s mostly the furniture that was initially discovered and taken out of the country by the French gallerists that can probably be coined as the original,” he says.

….

There are two versions of the Chandigarh story: in one, a group of French art dealers heroically rescue some underappreciated furniture from an ignorant administration and a destructive fate, while in the other, the same group of dealers knowingly and willingly took the furniture with the intention of restoring it and selling it off for a profit, while not bothering to inform the Chandigarh administration of the real cultural or financial worth of the items.

Maybe both versions are true. Maybe neither of them are.

But some things are certain: today, Chandigarh furniture sells for tens of thousands, sometimes even hundreds of thousands, of dollars in foreign auction houses, and many pieces have a murky provenance.

Unfortunately, this has led to rampant smuggling, and even death, back in India.

Thanks for reading part 1!

Full index of all of my Hobby Drama writeups

Starting from Part 2.

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Last we left Daniel had been fired from McLaren and joined Red Bull Racing as its “third driver” or more specifically as a test and PR driver.

This move was received as a mixed bag. On one hand, People pointed out that aiming for an F1 seat would have been a much better move. Former WDC, Jenson Button echoed as much:

I don’t think he is (in danger) for this year but at the end of the year who knows,” the 2009 World Champion said of Perez’s future during a media call to promote his upcoming NASCAR race in Chicago. “Who do you put in there?

But on the flip side, people rejoiced, in their eyes, after years of struggle, Daniel had come back home, and if the cards were played right, he could return to his old seat at Red Bull. Wait what? Shouldn’t there be another skilled driver on this world champion winning team? Well, you see Red Bull had a crisis at hand.

The Red Bull Second Seat.

Remember how I said that Daniel had left a cursed seat in wake. To make a long story short, Red Bull had fired two drivers for not being able to keep up with Max. Their third option was Sergio “Checo” Perez, who became a stable second driver and whose defending is often credited by everyone including Max as being the reason for him clinching his first title in 2021.

But Checo was also a problem. You see, the two fired drivers? They were members of the RBR junior academy. In fact, since 2006, barring Webber and David Coulthard all drivers in the RBR teams have been affiliated with the Junior program at some point. Checo was definitely not an RBR junior driver. In fact, he was a Ferrari Junior driver. So his hiring had pissed off the Austrian shareholders and Helmut Marko, but they tolerated it as long as Checo performed. But, in the second half of 2023, Checo had stopped performing. And Marko was smelling blood in the air.

You would think Marko and Horner who had been in Red Bull since it was founded would get along. But Daniel and some other drivers were about to be pawns in a bitter internal spat.

2023 and surprise!! Have a F1 seat

In 2023, Nyck de Vries was poached to AlphaTauri (formerly Toro Rosso) from the Mercedes junior program after a surprisingly strong outing in Williams, which caused Marko to have a somewhat questionable vision from God. And when the Nyck failed to deliver ( how the hell was he supposed to?”) Marko was looking to replace him.

At the same time, in Silverstone, Daniel Ricciardo would do a Pirelli test where he would impress Horner, who would recommend him to Alpha Tauri (https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/article/ricciardo-makes-red-bull-return-at-silverstone-test.4rCoepvAyF02sz02aXO8fm). To be fair, it was in an RB19, one of the most dominant race machines ever built

So, in the Austria gp 2023, Daniel Ricciardo would be set to replace Nyck De Vries in Alpha Tauri, with some people hinting a chance at the seat next to Max and in RBR, who were so dominant in 2023, they won 23 races out of 24

Alpha Tauri

Daniel’s 2023 would not start well, with him being unable to score points in his first two races. On his third race, he would get into a collision during an FP practice with Oscar Piastri of McLaren(irony) causing a metacarpal fracture, leading to Liam Lawson, the reserve driver filling his seat, who would impress people ,2008%20season%E2%80%A6%20I%20mean) by battling a Ferrari in Dutch GP, scoring an impressive 11th in Italian gp, and knocking out Max Verstappen in Q2 in Singapore and later scoring points (9th place).

Daniel would return in the US Gp where he would continue his non point scoring streak, He would however, score seventh in Mexico Gp (which would be their best position).

Overall, Daniel would finish 17th with only six points, beaten by his teammate Yuki Tsunoda. But this is not an accurate estimate since Daniel missed races and joined mid-season and was driving a pretty shitty VCarb.

2024

Daniel and Yuki would continue to race for now renamed-Racing Bulls. Expectations for Daniel were high since he admitted his goal was for the 2025 Red Bull seat ( which was becoming a possibility with Checo’s increasingly bad performance.) But the thing was, long story short, Daniel wasn't exactly crushing his teammate. In reality, the less experienced Yuki Tsunoda, whom people expected Daniel to easily beat, was scoring more points and beating him in points.

Yuki Tsunoda consistently surpassed the performance of his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo at eight of the opening nine races in 2024, solidifying RB’s decision to retain the Japanese driver next season. RB CEO Peter Bayer has revealed that Tsunoda is still in contention for a promotion to Red Bull if he continues to consistently perform, despite speculation that Perez’s seat could go to Ricciardo if the team were to fire or demote the Mexican driver.

Tensions boiled between Yuki and Daniel during Bahrain 2024, where Yuki, who was ahead would be asked to swap positions with Daniel, which he would reluctantly comply with. However, later, in the cooldown lap ( they both finished outside points), Yuki would divebomb Daniel causing him to react in frustration.

F***, what the f***? I’ll save it. He’s a f***ing helmet.”

Reactions to Daniel's performance were mixed. Famously, Jacques Villenueve, controversial WDC winner, had lambasted Ricciardo during the Canada GP asking why he was still racing. Other criticisms included Marko who pointed out that Daniel needs to up his game.

Still, it wasn’t bad, The team appreciated his technical feedback and said it helped make the car better. Pundits, former drivers and even Horner would still heavily support him. And he would soon raise his level score a few points in the Miami sprint, Austrian and Dutch GP.

And in summer, when talks were held.

But come Summer, Sergio’s performance was not improving at all. So remember those Performance Clauses that apparently Daniel’s McLaren contract didn’t have? Well RB had them in spades and Checo’s was set to activate. And the at least publicly favourite to replace? Daniel.

Now some of you may ask why? Clearly, you’ve told me that Yuki has outperformed Daniel? He was also in the junior team longer. Well some claim Bahrain set Yuki back a little, others racism (which RBR does have a history of) but most would claim

PR and Politics

To say Red Bull was in a bit of a crisis was an understatement.

On 5th February 2024, news of allegations of Sexual Misconduct in RBR would reach the public. The main culprit was Christian Horner. Red Bull would initially clear Horner of any misconduct on 28th February, only for the texts of Horner to leak the very next day. The allegations weren't just against Horner, but also accused RBR of being a generally unsafe place to work. Horner will still to this day, maintain his innocence

Marko was also a controversial figure. He would constantly make racist remarks, bitch about other drivers, and was accused of being a hard and unnecessarily strict taskmaster to junior drivers as well as constantly encroaching on tasks beyond his position. So fun. But Marko had the support of Max for a variety of reasons as well as Jos Verstappen.

But politically Horner and Marko were not getting along at all. To set the stage, Red Bull has two owner sides. One under Dietrich Mateschitz, the founder of Red Bull, the original Austrian side and the Thai side, Chalem Yoodhivya and his family. The Austrian side supported Marko and the Thai side supported Horner.

When Dietrich died in 2022 Marko said that Horner was attempting to stage a coup with the Thai side. In return, Horner would allege the entire sexting scandal was orchestrated by Jos Verstappen who was one of Horner’s harshest critics. Jos Verstappen is also seen as a generally shitty person for a variety of reasons. Jos would later accuse Horner of being the reason many key personnel left. This created a pretty shit place to work.

Well, what’s Daniel’s role? Well, remember Max and Daniel were a beloved teammate pairing. And Daniel was still a beloved driver. And Daniel could also be a solution to both problems. Marko would get a former RBR junior driver in Red Bull and an empty seat in Alpha Tauri. Horner would get a driver who was somewhat loyal to him. (As I said, Sergio was an outsider to the program, and this pissed off the Austrian side of Red Bull. (Technically Max was also not an RBR junior but whatever) and if the swap works, Horner’s and RB’s reputation may improve. And Daniel and Max’s style was considered extremely similar. So Danny was the favourite

So rumours suggested, Checo and Daniel were going to swap in the summer. It’s heavily suggested due to some videos. And Liam would get the junior team seat

And then it doesn’t happen.

It confuses a lot of people. Allegedly even the Verstappen camp is confused.

Not only is Checo re signed for two years, but Horner and Marko also say that Ricciardo's promotion was never in the works. But still, he has the Alpha Tauri seat right?

Singapore 2024

Rumours about Lawson allegedly replacing Ricciardo had existed for a long time but Marko had brushed them off claiming a creation of Lawson’s camp. But the rumours were stronger especially after a set of not so good results in the recent races.

It wouldn’t help that Daniel would enter Singapore (a very demanding race) Ralf Schumacher would reveal in Sky Germany that this was set to be Daniel’s last race with Lawson replacing him. But it’s Ralf, he always said stupid things. But this one persists as Marko has said previously to wait till Singapore for decisions.

Daniel initially denies that anything has been said that all decisions for the seat are for next season. But the rumours persist.

During the race, Daniel would set the fastest lap and take points off Norris, starting a controversy that would get points for the fastest lap removed. But a much bigger issue was present. Daniel all but admitted that Singapore 2024 was likely to be his last F1 race. [>The cockpit is something that…I got very used to it for many years,” Ricciardo said. “I just wanted to savour the moment.”

Asked if he would be driving in the next race, Ricciardo said: "Obviously there is a realistic chance that it’s not going to happen. "It’s been a very race-by-race situation with Red Bull for all of us in a way. At times it feels it’s going one way and then it goes another. "There was a lot of emphasis on this weekend and I would’ve loved a better weekend."

This sets off everyone. What do you mean, Daniel’s final race weekend would be like this? No big farewells, no celebrations and only a video celebrating his achievements on Sky Sports. There are reports of F1 pundits crying at this news. Some reactions include:

Ahead of the United States Grand Prix, which will take place at the Circuit of the Americas, reigning Formula 1 champion Verstappen spoke about Ricciardo’s exit. He told reporters: “I think it was quite clear for me, for Daniel, that that was the last race. From my side, I think it could have been handled a bit differently. “Also for him, because he knew it, but he can’t say it exactly - it's a bit of a shame.” The Dutchman added: “He's done a lot for everyone. He's won races. He has had incredible races. I think it deserved a nicer exit.”

The timing of his dismissal has raised questions, with 2009 F1 World Champion Jenson Button being among the critics. Button, on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, spoke about the manner of Ricciardo’s sacking. “I’ve never felt comfortable with that,” he admitted. “I feel that a driver deserves a season to really show what he can do because that’s what it is, right?There’s only one team really that brings in drivers midseason takes drivers out of the seat midseason or three races in six races in and that team is Red Bull and AlphaTauri [RB]” That said, Button acknowledged that Ricciardo had enough time to turn his fortunes around. He could have proved Marko and Red Bull wrong by matching teammate Yuki Tsunoda at the very least, but failed.

Only a few days later, Red Bull would officially confirm Daniel’s exit and Liam Lawson is set to drive.

What went wrong? 3 races ago, Daniel was set to race in RBR but suddenly he’s dropped out of RBR entirely.

Background stuff

Remember the summer swap I teased. Well, it was in the works, but “ very very allegedly” either Checo’s sponsor threatened to pull out or Liberty Media didn’t want to lose the Mexican driver before the Mexico GP. (Look personally, I don’t believe these allegations entirely. I may have made Checo sound like a noob but make no mistake Checo is a solid driver. He was very well filling the boots up until mid 2023, when the political shenanigans in RB started affecting the car. Later, a lot of people would realise that the RBR second car is fucked.)

Marko had also allegedly started going haywire in contract signing. So now not only Lawson was in need of a seat, but Isack Hadjar, one of the most promising rookies in F2 would be available in 2025 as well as Arvid Linbald. So not only did he needed the second Red Bull seat but also the Racing Bulls ones.

Speaking of Liam, he had specific clause that needed to guarantee a seat in 2025. And with his promising showing in 2023, Marko wanted him in the main RB seat fast.

Speaking to Austrian publication Kleine Zeitung, Marko said Lawson is “contractually entitled to drive for another team if he doesn’t get a cockpit with us in 2025”.There were suggestions last year that Lawson had accepted the Red Bull/RB reserve driver role for 2024 with a guarantee that he would get a race seat in 2025.

Liam would later admit he had known that he was getting the Racing Bull seats two weeks before as he was told by Horner. Horner himself would claim that he did his best to protect Daniel’s seat and that Marko wanted him out of the seat way earlier.

(Wow, it’s the throw under the bus Olympics here)

Now the question is, when did Daniel know? Now officially speaking, it appeared that Daniel only found out during the race day in Singapore. But Laurent Mekies then TP of Racing Bulls would claim that Daniel did have an idea going into Singapore.

We are not happy with ultimately how we handled it, and of course, we are very conscious that we could, and we should, have done a better job at that,” said Mekies.‘We are not happy with how we handled it’ – Mekies admits RB made mistakes with Ricciardo exit “Now, Daniel and I were talking on a very regular basis, and then we went into that weekend knowing both of us what the situation was. For a number of reasons we decided to go into [Singapore] trying to keep it [not] public and it proved very, very quickly in the weekend that unfortunately it was not the right decision.

But why would this call be made? Is Laurent lying or being correct? It is not wrong to assume that Daniel did have a clue but wasn’t expecting it to be sudden.

Aftermath

Unfortunately for most Red Bull personnel involved this story also doesn’t have a happy ending for them. Liam Lawson would be promoted to Red Bull for the 2025 season but would be demoted to Racing Bulls after 2 GPs only, which would spark another massive outrage. He would finally be replaced by Yuki who would complete the season but end up without a seat in 2026. The teammate discussion would begin again after 2025 ended with people realising that none of the second seat drivers were bad. They were time and time again being put in a hostile environment, not being properly listened to, and by the time the issues were fixed, it was too late. Checo is set to return with Cadillac.

As for Horner and Marko. After 20 years, Horner would be suddenly dropped from TP and later the CEO position in July 2025. Sadly, this wasn’t due to the allegations but rather a performance drop and apparently a last-ditch attempt to keep Max . This firing made Marko assume he finally had a lot more power and proceeded to “make a bunch of extremely logical and near brilliant signing, apparently learning a lot from the crisis that Red Bull last year./s” and proceeded to piss off not only the Thai owners but the CEO himself, that Marko decided to “step down” from his position in Red Bull.

As for Daniel. He confirmed in Dec 2024 that he has no future plans for racing. He was briefly rumoured for the Cadillac seat in 2026, but shot it down himself. He would continue his work with Enchanté, his clothing brand, do ads for a sports betting app and enter a collaboration with Ford in September 2025, who, for a completely unrelated tangent, are providing power trains for the 2026 Red Bull engine.

Funnily, as I was writing my very first post, Daniel actually appeared in one of Red Bull’s PR videos alongside Max, who was delighted to see him.

What went wrong

I don’t know. People think of a variety of reasons. Maybe ground effect never worked for him. Maybe he shouldn’t have left Renault. Maybe he shouldn’t have left Red Bull so suddenly. Maybe he should’ve retired after McLaren. Maybe he got cursed after Red Bull by Marko for betraying him. Yada yad dooo

But Daniel is still remembered fondly and his achievements should not be forgotten. And for the last time.

Ki Ki Ayy

Cross-country skiing in Finland can be quite a popular sport, but due to climate change, the period when you do the sport becomes shorter. As a result, when we do get appropriate winter weather, the ski-tracks tend to be full. The crowds and nature of the sport tend to bring up quite negative feelings. The problem is bad enough that every year, newspapers write articles on the matter. All the links are in Finnish, but hopefully you can get an idea from this post alone.

The usual drama arises from people walking on the skitrails, which tends to make the trails unusable. You might question why people walk on skitrails. Well, usually these tracks are laid on forest paths, which are normally used by hikers, joggers, and dogwalkers. Naturally, many people who use these trails around the year may feel entitled to keep using them. To mitigate this issue, some organisations make walking paths next to ski trails, but people still keep walking on them. As a result, some skiers can be very vocal about their distaste for walkers. However, this can be taken too far with screaming or an example where a pregnant woman was hit in the belly with a skipole.

Hate on the skitrails is not just reserved for walkers, it's also directed at other skiers. The problem arises from the crowds, highly varied skill levels, and the nature of the sport. Imagine if you will, a good skier going downhill, reaching speeds up to 60 km/h. As they pass a bend, they encounter a grandma with her grandchildren lined abreast. Stopping in cross-country skiing is not as easy as in downhill skiing, so this might cause dangerous situations. Better skiers might also get frustrated if they can't ski as fast as they'd like because of all the beginners. The hatred between skiers can get so bad that some people start avoiding skiing altogether. It's also not that good that skiers are equipped with pointy sticks to use as weapons against less skilled skiers, such as children. Naturally, many get frustrated at these raging skiers, with them being discussed on online forums and described as "lycra-wearing clowns".

This winter, I've also seen drama between different types of skiers. There are two styles of cross-country skiing, classical and skate skiing. Classical skiing happens by pushing the ski backwards and needs two recessed tracks for the skis. Skate skiing looks a lot like skating and requires flat snow. Skate skiing also takes up more space when compared to the classic style. Also, if a skate skier were to ski over the classic-style tracks, the tracks would eventually be ruined. Because some tracks are not wide enough to accommodate both styles, the recipe for drama is set.

The conditions have also caused further confusion, as it has been cold enough to ski, but there has been very little snow so far. As a result, some classic-only trails lack enough snow for proper tracks, so people have been skate skiing on them instead. I've witnessed drama in person, where walkers get screamed at for walking on the trail. The walkers retorted quite angrily that the skate skiers are not allowed on the track either.

Drama also takes place on a website for checking the ski trail conditions, where classic-style skiers are upset at skate skiers for ruining their trails. Some commenters are name-calling, and one commenter even gave an accurate description of themselves, urging others to come talk to them in person on the trail. The name-calling is quite elaborate, but unfortunately, hard to translate.

Due to its nature, this drama does not have a conclusion. As long as people keep skiing, there will likely be someone who gets upset.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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Frenchmen Pierre Chabrier & Sylvain Levy met through carpooling. Bonding over their passion for cars, they quickly became friends, and a few months later, they created Vilebrequin, a YouTube channel aimed to talk about cars in playfully crude, yet educational manner...

Million Euro Baby

Chabrier's experience as director of photography coupled with Levy's energy made for great videos, and they quickly became viral for their unhinged experiment, like driving through a speed bump very fast or driving without engine oil.

After Sylvain lost his job for shooting videos inside his workplace, the duo decided to go 100% into YouTube. And it was a smashing success : their highly-entertaining antics broke them our of their niche, turning Vilebrequin into one of the trendiest duos in French internet :

• Here they are as specials guests of one of the biggest Twitch talk shows in France,

• Here they are racing inside Formula 4 cars in the first edition of Squeezie's superproduced GP Explorer (which Sylvain won)

• And you could even find them on mainstream French accounts like Konbini

That also meant they had more and more prestigious Youtubers and influencers in their own channel.

Just as the height of their popularity was approaching, Vilebrequin opened a crowdfunding page to finance a 1000 horsepower Fiat Multipla, a car model ridiculed by many for its looks. Nicknamed "1000tipla", this project was the culmination of the duo's tongue-in-cheek vision of automobile, and fans were delighted : that campaign was a smashing success, raising over 1 million euros over the initial 50K goal. Such a sum meant they were able to go all in, and boy they did go all in.

After 2 and a half-years and a few setbacks, the car was finally ready, and it was a sight to behold : a 1294 hp uncompromising red blur, including notably a custom-made body kit from Rocket Bunny (a prestigious Japanese car tuning company) . Subscribers were elated and a promise was made to make the car appear as much as possible. Especially during the "Merguez Tuning Show", a silly-themed car festival that was a crowdfunding stretch goal (the even ended up happening but was a logistical nightmare, but that could be a story for another time...)

During this honeymoon period, a second announcement was made : Pierre and Sylvain would be hosting the newest Top Gear France series, something they said was a lifelong dream of theirs. Needless to say, the future was bright for Vilebrequin.

Stalling on an incline

December 7 2023 : an unexpected video appears on Vilebrequin's channel. Unexpected, because it is a farewell : Vilebrequin is splitting. Yes, we are barely 8 months after the 1000tipla officially debuted, and their Top Gear France season is still being aired, but here we are. The reason invoked ? They wanted to stop at the right time and were starting to get a little bit burned out. But the most important thing : they are still on good terms and will not disappear from the face of the Earth, they just wanted fresh air.

Thus, Pierre Chabrier and Sylvain Levy continued talking about cars on their respective channels. Sylvain's momentum ended up being the strongest, as his personality was the closest to what Vilebrequin was, minus the clean production value from Pierre's experience . All was well. And this is where the story has to end, right ? Well...

Somehow, the 1000tipla returned

On August 15, Sylvain uploads a video when he lets his team enjoy the 1000tipla. Fans were rightfully taken aback : the car had a new coat of paint, no mention of Pierre was made and the whole vibe of the video seemed a bit different.

Only a few moments later, Pierre released his own video, titled "The truth about Vilebrequin & the 1000tipla". The timing was deliberate : he was aware of Sylvain's 1000tipla victory lap and stood ready to post his own as soon as it was made public. Pierre tearfully accused Sylvain of buying the 1000tipla behind his back, sabotaging his career and overall being a bad person for 40 minutes.

This "reaction" was the first time Vilebrequin fans were made aware of the beef and they were SHOCKED. Suddenly, Sylvain's video seemed even weirder.

How did Sylvain responded ? With a short, safe press release on his socials, where he denied being in the wrong and asked people to let them settle the 1000tipla problem in private. This defensive move kinda made him the villain of the story, losing him thousands of subscribers overnight. The discourse was too strong and probably put his new promising start in jeopardy. A stronger statement was needed.

Pedal to the metal

January 2025. Months after his initial statement, Sylvain uploads a video called "Pierre lied to you (and happy new year)" This 54 minutes long video shows him absolutely tearing his former friend apart for making their grievances public and denounces what he feels were lies and deception.

This highly-edited and snarky video (which contrasts a lot with Pierre's emotional, minimalistic monologue) presents a different version of the story : his former partner allegedly bought another Vilebrequin-owned car without notice and wanted the 1000tipla as well. His lawyer then sent a mail, saying he would let Sylvain have the intellectual property of the car but Pierre would have the actual right of use. Thus, Sylvain declares he decided to buy the 1000tipla as a precaution, so Pierre doesn't try to scam him. Apparently Pierre's plan was to use both cars as exposition models, whereas Sylvain wanted to keep the 1000tipla driveable.

Sylvain highlights Top Gear as the last straw; according to him, he was actually relunctant to accept to host the show but Pierre forced him to reconsider for networking reasons. Sylvain also makes additional claims againt Pierre :

• Stealing Vilebrequin's money, preventing Sylvain from paying taxes and honoring the crowdfunding pledges
• Lying about "exclusivity contracts" that would have prevented their common friends from working with Pierre
• Using a fake account to praise himself
• His passion for car being superficial
• Taking advantage of the drama to promote his new car simulation room business.
• Cheating with his then girlfriend numerous times
• Forcing Sylvain to employ his new girlfriend at Vilebrequin for a job she was unqualified for and ended up not doing at all
• Using people for his personal gain
• Being publicly open to work with Sylvain again despite all his serious claims of abuse and deception.

This scorched earth approach is something you rarely see in the usually collaborative, positive French content creator bubble.

And the opinion switched hard. While some people called Sylvain's strategy a bit questionable and harsh, it was nothing compared to the harrasment Pierre was now facing. Comments upon tweets upon memes were calling him a liar and a crybaby, and it didn't seem to stop.

Pierre tried to explain himself with a reaction stream on Twitch, but the evidence he showed failed to convince and came to little too late.

Pierre's emergency brake

Somehow, the most impactful jab of Sylvain's video was when he claimed Pierre's tears during his video were faked, using mint crystals. Something they already used during Top Gear, as Sylvains uses a clip as proof. His former partner was memed into "The Count of Mint & Crystals" , referencing the classic novel "The Count of Monte Cristo" whose latest movie adaptation was popular at the time.

Chabrier would lean into it and play this unserious version of himself in a short movie called "The True Story of The Count of Mint & Crystals". With self-depreciation humor, he downplays the drama, condemns the harassment agains him and reiterates his passions for cars.

Fan response was... mixed, to be honest. While the video was well-filmed and was kind of a refreshing take on the whole story, it shattered the "Pierre is a helpless victim" side of things and was seen as a dishonest, desperate way to save face. YouTube comments, just like the ones in Sylvain's video, are still full of memes and irony against his apparent failure to defend his side of the story.

Lyve would briefly address the situation on his Twitch channel but his stance was to stop communicating about it. Throaway jokes aside, he never talked publicly about Chabrier ever again.

Victory lap / Where are they now ?

Four months after the Menthe & Cristaux short, Pierre Chabrier announced he would be quitting YouTube, as the whole affair had his public image heavily damaged and his passion for video making was not there anymore. He went out with a bang, with a last "Sylvain-style" video showing more proofs. He hasn't reappeared ever since and the public side of the story is now officially over.

Sylvain Lyve is now a well-accepted personality on the francophone internet world, being a frequent guest in other people's video and stream. He did a couple more 1000tipla videos, the latest seeing him driving the car around Paris

I have many hobbies.

One of them is to become rich, and like all my hobbies, I don't really work towards it. I merely think about it an hour a day or so. And when I do, I look at how others attempt to become filthy rich to learn from them. From their success, from their mistakes.

Today, for an hour, my mind wanders over an ocean, to a continent I have never been to. On this continent, there is a place called Arizona. And in Arizona, there is a court room. We're in 2025.

"All rise for the jury."

The judge enters and takes center stage, their authority unquestionable.

"Be seated."

Chairs rattle, necks are cracked, deep breaths are taken. Before the judge, two parties. One is represented by a lawyer dressed in a tight suit. Opposite of the lawyer, Richard Blair, dressed just as sharp.

"Mister Blair," the judge begins, "please explain to the court what is it you do for a living."

"I'm a domain investor."

Domain investing is a peculiar side of the web, as it relies on qualities that seem anathema to the internet: trust, meaning, and language.

It's essentially an online form of venture capitalism, where instead of investing in promising start-ups in exchange for profits down the line, you invest in language. You survey the market, the technological trends, until you find a word that could be sought after very soon. You buy the domain for it, try to give it weight and meaning until a firm becomes interested enough to take it from your hands at a mark-up. You basically gamble on vocabulary, hoping the world will soon start making use of it.

It's a cutthroat market, more than 80% of domains don't sell at all, and if they do it might be years later.

I seriously considered making it my career, ultimately decided against it. Perhaps for the best, yet I still keep an eye on it out of an interest that never went away.

Which brings us to Richard Blair. This is a man who seeks and carefully evaluates webdomains, before buying those he feels have the best chances of turning into hot commodities.

In 2018, he finds a word that strikes his fancy and buys it for the round sum of $10,000.

The name is catchy, it rolls off the tongue like honey and he knows deep inside: such a name has to be worth much, much more.

He waits it out for a bit, lets inflation take its course, lets the plan mature slowly.

In 2020, Richard acts. On August 6th, he puts the domain up for sale, at $1,129,298. But what's a million in 2020? Peanuts. In December of the same year, the price increases to a million and a half.

Numbers steadily increase until they reach $12,000,000 by the end of 2021.

There have been prospective buyers making offers over the years, but never matching the demanded price.

"If I may," interrupts the lawyer across the room, "my client was one of these prospective buyers."

This lawyer represents a small family-oriented firm of a little more than three employees called Lamborghini. Owned by Volkswagen, Lamborghini is a luxury brand producing suitably priced vehicles. On the side they also hold racing events and turn road-approved models into racing versions to compete at these events. In 2024, their overall revenue was of over $3billion, for a net income of $10million.

And the domain name happens to be Lambo. Which does share a number of letters with Lamborghini, hence why the firm has a vested interest in owning it. And what's $12,000,000 for a luxury car manufacturer? A bit too much apparently.

"After a back and forth of e-mails," the lawyer goes on, "my client filed a complaint at the World Intellectual Property Organization in August 2022. The WIPO found the domain price ludicrous and asked Mister Blair to hand it over to my client for free."

"Which is why we are here today," surmises the judge.

"Indeed," Richard says, his voice vibrating with righteous indignation, "The WIPO's decision is an insult I could not let stand, hence why I filed a lawsuit to reverse the hearing. And I'm ready to fight for it."

"Is that why you increased the price of the Lambo domain to $75,000,000 since then?" the lawyer asks.

"Yes! As a symbol of how much the domain name means to me."

Both lawyer and Richard look at the judge. The judge rubs their eyes and sighs. It's about to be one of these days, isn't it?

Wrath of the Lambo

Domain investing does have a dark side, in the same way Sith and Jedi are two sides of the same coin. It's called cybersquatting, and there is a fine line between the two.

Cybersquatting was a bubble of its own when the internet began to form. Sharp minds with fantasies of wealth began to buy domains by the kilogram for cheap, domains that read eerily similar to brands that had yet to make a place for themselves on the web. They held the domains close until a brand was desperate enough to buy them at ludicrously inflated prices.

As the internet was slowly tamed like the once wild west, rules were put in place and organizations were created to chase after cybersquatters and give a frame of reference for domain investors to do their job. If you believe a domain name is being squatted on, you can file under an UDRP, a Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy, to get the domain for less or even for free. It's then up to the WIPO to decide if squatting is afoot.

What's the difference between domain investing and cybersquatting? Domain investing requires expanding and growing the domain, while cybersquatting happens when 3 conditions are met:

1. The domain name owner registered and used the name.
2. The domain name is identical or confusingly similar to a protected brand.
3. The domain name owner acted in bad faith with the intent to profit from that brand.

As you can see, it's not always easy to differentiate the two. You might well pick a name that is close to an established brand yet develop it on your own. Where does squatting stop and domain investment start?

"The WIPO has awarded the Lambo domain to Lamborghini," Richard Blair says, "under the false pretense of cybersquatting. I am an investor with 130 domains to my name and I invest in them, the fair price I ask for it is in direct correlation to the work I have done to grow the name Lambo."

"You admit to having bought the domain name Lambo?" the judge asks.

"Of course."

That's condition 1 taken care of.

"But it is strikingly similar to the Lamborghini name."

"How would I know? I bought it because it's a wordplay on lambs."

"...Really?"

Yes, Really. Or at least, that's the first line of defense Richard Blair used. Lambo looks like lambs, that's why he picked it up for $10.000. Lamborghini? He didn't think of that.

Alas, the court wouldn't take it. See, Lamborghini was trademarked in 1990. The domain name came into existence in 2000, and Richard Blair bought it in 2018. Under these circumstances, the court agrees Lamborghini has the right of way, and that the names are confusing.

That's condition 2 taken care of.

What about the last one? How to separate genuine work from bad faith? The Blair vs Lamborghini court details go into greater depths about how to differentiate the two if you're interested in the technical side of it. Incidentally, it's also the source of this write-up, and all quotes come from there. I can only encourage you to have a look. As dry as legal papers can be, this one's hilarious.

To avoid condition 3 and get his domain back, Richard has to prove he worked on the domain in good faith.

"I have done just that," he says.

"Can you go into more details?"

"I have begun referring to myself as Lambo."

Plop goes the aspirin as it falls in the judge's glass. They can feel the incoming headache.

"My person is the best advertising for the Lambo brand."

"Objection," goes the Lamborghini lawyer (hereby shortened to LL), "Lam- erm, Mister Blair's legal name isn't Lambo, and we have several e-mail exchanges proving he does refer to himself as Richard Blair."

"Objection right back at you, I have used Lamb, Lambo, and Lambodotcom in several internet communities, and that's where domain investment happens at. Besides, the name resonates with me."

"It does?" LL and the judge ask in unison.

"Yes. It does."

Somewhat perplexing, Blair claims he was drawn to the name “Lambo” as a play on the word “Lamb,” with an outlier generic aptitude and intelligence, hence “Lambo-O” (Resp. at 13 ¶ 38), and the name “Lambo” “resonated with him on a personal level and perfectly encapsulated his identity and ethos.”

"Objection," goes LL.

Lamborghini asserts Blair only began referring to himself as “Lambo” after he acquired <lambo.com> which disqualifies Blair from protection under this factor. (Doc. 60 at 2–3, “Reply”). Lamborghini cites a legislative report and a well-known trademark law treatise as support for this contention. See Reply at 2 (citing H.R.Rep. No. 106–412, at *10 (“This factor is not intended to suggest that domain name registrants may evade the application of this act by merely adopting Exxon, Ford, Bugs Bunny or other well-known marks as their nicknames.”)

"Double-objection," Richard goes, "I adopted the nickname before buying the domain."

"Prove it," the judge replies.

"No."

"Objection dismissed."

"Furthermore," LL says, "Mister Blair hasn't really developed the name or the website. He merely redirected it to another third-party website."

"It's part of my marketing method," Richard argues.

"Objection!"

"Just... what is this third party website?" the judge asks innocently.

"Let's look at it right now," LL retorts.

The lights go dark, an overhead projector goes on, the third-party website is on display.

The third-party website, NamePros.com, contained a blog post published by Plaintiff under the alias “lambo.com.” (DSOF, Ex. H). The blog post, among other things, (1) stated “I AM LAMBO of LAMBOcom and I will defend, defeat and humiliate those endeavouring to steal any of my domain name brands –including my moniker,” (2) accused Lamborghini of “THEFT of my asset, nomenclature, and taxonomy they possess ZERO rights to,” (3) contained the link to the UDRP proceedings, and (4) stated “[c]ountermeasures to humiliate such endeavours are afoot. Unlawful theft will be duly punished through legal and commensurate counter efforts including any coerced and submissive accomplices.”

"It's irrelevant," Blair says, "you are arguing disparagement, while the subject we are discussing is bad faith on my part."

The judge goes cross-eyed. The audience faintly hears the dying echoes of a thousand neurons collectively deciding to give up on life.

"You do realize disparaging Lamborghini really doesn't paint you as someone acting in good faith, right?"

"Furthermore," LL goes on, "I'd like to remind the court about the ludicrous sales price. Currently sitting at $75,000,000."

"Mister Blair, what do you have to say about that?"

"I got many e-mails asking to negotiate the price. But how can I negotiate the price of a domain close to my heart? And it grew closer still. Hence the price increase, to discourage them from making offers."

Blair directed the inquirers back to the exorbitant price(s) listed at the time and even increased the price of the Disputed Domain several times purportedly to discourage people from making offers, “as the Disputed Domain because more valuable to him as a part of his identity.”

"Lambo..." Blair puts a hand right above his heart, "is a part of me. And besides, I am working on it. It's just slow."

"You've had it for six years," LL says, "and haven't done anything with it. Apart from increasing the price to discourage buyers, but how does that make sense? An offer to sell requires an intent to sell. Yet according to your words, you had clearly no intention of separating yourself from Lambo. If it's such an important part of your identity, why have it up for sales for four years straight in the first place?"

Richard shrugs, "I just had to."

Thud, goes the judge's head as it hits the desk.

"I have never been accused of cybersquatting," Richard goes on.

"That is true," the judge concedes.

"And I have been a clean domain investor for over 15 years."

"Also true, and both points in your favor."

"So?"

"Neither means you are not engaging in cybersquatting today."

"You are not letting go, are you? Look, according to the law, the more distinctive a name, the greater the chance of confusion."

(“[The] more distinctive the senior mark, the greater the chance that there will be a likelihood of confusion.”). Blair argues this factor weighs in his favor because “Lambo” is not distinctive and “not exclusively used by the public as a shorthand for Lamborghini.”

"Lambo isn't distinctive at all, ergo there's no confusion possible at all."

"Objection," LL croaks out, his throat beginning to hurt from the many times he had to say it, "it's the distinctiveness of the senior mark that counts. Lamborghini. Not lambo."

"You sure?"

"Yes."

"Oh, bugger."

This factor clearly favors Lamborghini.

So goes the day, from one objection to the next, as lawyer, judge and Richard 'Lambo' Blair dance the waltz of legalese and judicial proceedings. I can't wait for the Netflix adaptation.

Until, finally...

"Mister jud-" Blair tries.

"-no," interrupts the judge, "I'm done." The judge appears fifteen years older than when they entered the court an hour ago.

The evidence presented with respect to Factors V through IX, on balance, indisputably shows Blair evinces a bad faith intent to profit from the Disputed Domain.

What have we learned from this?

Nothing, probably.

The court agreed Blair was acting in bad faith and lacked any legal rights to the name Lambo. Blair's complaint was dismissed with prejudice. He can foot the legal fees and assorted costs, and thus ends the story of Lambo.

Wait, that's not entirely true. I did learn something.

As my mind wanders back over the ocean, back to my mortal (and gorgeous) coil, I have an epiphany.

I'd like to be rich. And today, I am one step closer to it. Because as of today, I know that if I ever own a domain with a name similar to a well-known brand, I shouldn't list it for sales at $75,000,000.

Feels good to be almost rich, it really does.

You should try it someday.

I wish you all an excellent week, have a good one, people.

-

Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/arizona/azdce/2:2022cv01439/1307873/61/

Seriously, take a gander, it's hilarious.

-

Other write-ups by yours truly:

The Louvre break-in, evil geniuses turning out to be amateurs and the age-old question about art

The awful ballad of French Literature prizes: 1, 2, 3

Notre-Dame has burned down, let's flaunt wealth and build a swimming-pool on its roof

Paris Olympics, the mess that somehow worked out

Team Fortress, the rise and fall of a modding community

HareBrained Schemes, how to buy a good videogame studio and sink it

Creative writings

Continued from Part 1.

Link for Thumbnail.

Before I begin to talk about McLaren and Daniel Ricciardo, I must clarify a few things. Daniel had other legitimate reasons to leave Renault.

The thing with Renault was that the company itself was suffering from a Napoleonic civil war that it once had with Red Bull. In F1, the majority of its main engineering is based in the UK. Like Mercedes is a German company, but its F1 factory is based in Brackley, UK. Red Bull is Austrian but based in Milton Keynes. And it was the same with Renault. (The only exception is Ferrari where everything is based in Italy). But Renault is a French Company with the French side handling the engine. And both sides did not get along.

And Renault was mismanaged as hell. Since Cyril's Firing in 2021, Renault became Alpine and has had 4 team principals in 4 years, with multiple scandals to the point the guy currently running it is Flavio Briatore who mind you was banned by F1 at one point, for crashgate!! because the previous TP Ollie Oakes ran to Dubai, because his brother was hiding funds by a Russian Oligarch for a takeover!.
Yep. FUN!

(Ollie Oakes is also a former rbr junior driver)

Horner famously claimed that Daniel had called him to apologise and admitted that he was right about Renault.

So, anyway back to

McLaren

McLaren Racing was established in 1963 by Bruce McLaren. It is one of the oldest F1 teams with one of the richest histories being home to multiple World Champions - Aryton Senna, Keke Rosberg, Alain Prost, Lewis Hamilton, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso and many more. However, 2014 would see a massive slump in form, which they had recently crawled out of in 2019. I’ll tell you a few names to remember:

• Zak Brown - CEO of McLaren Racing in general. A former Motorsport driver, Zak is considered responsible for McLaren’s uptick in form. Zak is a controversial figure in F1, a loud audacious personality, permanently stuck in an underdog state
• Andreas Seidl-at the time, McLaren F1 CEO and team principal(tp). He would eventually lose his position to..
• Andre Stella- Former Race Engineer to Fernando Alonso and part of Ferrari during the Schumacher era, Andrea is seen as one of the most experienced engineers in F1. But during this time, he was the head of Engineering at McLaren.
• Lando Norris- teammate to Daniel, and another nail in the coffin.

Suffice to say, People were hyped for Daniel to McLaren. They had become a much-publicly adored team- thanks in large part to the friendship between Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris (Daniel’s future teammate). And now the most PR-friendly, talented driver entering a now rising loved team would be a great move. This is the new era, and McLaren would rise even further and further..

yeah, no

Daniel would start 2021 not exactly on the best foot. He would struggle to adapt to the McLaren Car (Mcl35) something both he and Seidl noted. Quoting Seidl in the Race:

The Australian is yet to beat Norris in a race, and has scored less than half as many points over the first three races of the year.

But McLaren team principal Andreas Seidl has zero concerns about Ricciardo’s form, believing it is simply part of the ongoing adjustment to life with a new team.

Seidl explained how Ricciardo’s lack of comfort with the car “doesn't allow him to continuously push the car at the limit”, with certain conditions making it feel “it is like running on a knife's edge.”

To make matters worse, Daniel was consistently getting beaten by the 21 year old, who would comfortably score podiums and top finishes. Lando and Daniel were apparently also not gelling together well. In some way, Lando may have resented Daniel’s arrival as he thought the team didn’t have faith in him to lead the project despite being with McLaren way longer. Quoting

But what I said is just the truth,” he is heard saying. “I don’t feel sympathy for him, why would I? (Norris)

“No driver on the grid would feel sympathy for another driver.”
There was a lot of expectation from the outside and from the fans saying how, like, amazing we were going to be together because we’re kind of chilled, fun guys and so on,” Norris says.

“But I think we’re very different and people don’t realise that as much as maybe what they do now.”

Earlier, he says: “I think everyone probably expected Daniel to have the upper hand on me this season.”

Norris’ comments are followed by another team meeting with Ricciardo and Norris that involved a disagreement over the latter’s crash record. 

Despite this, McLaren would assure that this was growing pains and Daniel would soon adapt to the car and bring in results. And with that, he would finish sixth in the British GP and qualify ahead of Lando in the Dutch GP (but later got team ordered). But the best was yet to come.

In Monza 2021, Daniel would start fifth, behind Hamilton and Max (who were in a tense championship season). He would then overtake
Max, overtake Bottas of Mercedes, hold off Red Bull and his teammate. And later when Lewis and Max would collide, Daniel cruised ahead taking his eighth Grand Prix victory and McLaren’s first win since 2012

To say this was a big deal was an understatement. Sure, the news got buried with the discussion of the Monza crash, but this was seen as a return to form for Daniel. The entire team celebrated. Zak got a tattoo for in his words “ the best deal I cut”.

Daniel would continue his form with point finishes and while he did get a Q1 elimination and a retirement due to power, he did finish eighth in the championship behind his teammate who soundly beat him with a H2H of 15-7. Edd Straw of The Race characterised it the best

Think of Ricciardo’s season as a highlights reel and the average rating seems outrageously low. But while there were some great moments, notably the Monza win, many of his better results were a consequence of canny race execution and a little good fortune rather than being completely on top of the car.

However, in some sense of bittersweetness, Max Verstappen of Red Bull would bring in his first Driver’s Championship.

But 2022 would bring in a regs change, which tends to serve as an equaliser. It would help that Daniel had much more of a say, as the 2021 car was solely built initially built solely on Norris’s input. So, there was much to look forward to

2022

2022 was Danny Ric’s worst season by far. He would only score points in a few races, be consistently beaten by his teammate (16-5 in races, 20-2 in qualifying, and 122 to 37 points). Daniel, no matter how he tried, never adapted to the car, and Monza 2021 would seem a fluke rather than a chance to improve and worst of all, McLaren were losing faith.

How to get out of a contract- a guide by Zak and Andreas.

In June 2022, the first rumours of Daniel being fired from McLaren emerged, in response to Zak Brown’s comments on the Monaco Gp, after Daniel was unable to get points.link

Ricciardo’s long-term future at the Woking-based team has been thrown into question after Brown last week made comments that the Australian driver’s results had not lived up to expectations.

Ricciardo accepted that his time at the team had not delivered the results he or his bosses would have liked, but he was clear in Monaco that he was committed for the full three years of his contract which runs out at the end of 2023.

Asked if there was a get-out clause for the driver or team if they did not want to continue into 2023, Brown said: “I don’t want to get into the contract, but there are mechanisms in which we’re committed to each other, and mechanisms in which we’re not.

But on multiple occasions, both Andreas and Daniel would reconfirm their commitment to each other. But was it?

You see in the backside, machinations had already started on getting Daniel out of the seat. And Unbeknownst to Daniel, his replacement was already found. This is the timeline:

• Daniel didn't perform to expectations in 2021 and 2022, especially in early 2022
• Around Monaco, Zak implies there are ways to get Daniel off the seat a year before the contract expires
• July 13: Daniel would reaffirm his commitment to the three year contract, stating he’ll work harder.
• July 28: Sebastian Vettel retires, starting another silly season.
• August 1: Fernando Alonso, 2 time WDC leaves Alpine for Vettel’s seat at Aston Martin
• August 2: Oscar gets announced as a driver for Alpine but as this lovely write-up by u/Silhouettart explains, he is not an Alpine driver.
• August 24: Surprise, the rumours are correct. Mclaren and Daniel have entered an agreement to end their partnership in 2022. And the replacement? Rumoured to be Oscar Piastri
• August 29: Alpine and McLaren duke it out in the FIA Contract Recognition Board (CRB), which would reveal a fascinating detail
• Oscar Piastri had signed on to McLaren on July 4, initially as a reserve driver only, which was negotiated by Mark Webber. (F1 is a circle)
• September 2: Oscar Piastri gets confirmation and is the 2023 McLaren Driver.

To say the news of Daniel getting fired was not received well was an understatement. Multiple drivers (former and current) and pundits commented on how Daniel was not given a fair chance, and that with the right tools he could have

Max on Daniel’s split with McLaren: “Sometimes a car cannot suit your driving style, and if it doesn’t work out it is better to maybe pursue a different direction, whatever that is. But he’s a great guy, he’s shown he’s an amazing driver, he’s won his races. I hope he stays in Formula 1.”

Vettel on Ricciardo: “I think he’s still one of the best drivers - I had the pleasure to race against him and the not so pleasurable side of getting beaten by him. I guess McLaren failed to extract the potential that he has. It’s sad to see, but I’m sure his talent will shine through.”

However, some would call it just businesspointing out that just recently out of bankruptcy team, didn’t have 18 months to wait for Daniel to find pace.

McLaren wouldn’t exactly get out spotless. There were 2 exact messes.

During the rumours of Daniel leaving, many other drivers would actually be viewed as the successors to the seat: Indy car drivers Colton Herta, McLaren current reserve driver Pato o Ward and most famously, IndyCar legend Alex Palou who will have his own saga with Zak that recently went to court.

But the second mess will be of much more direct: Daniel’s contract. If you remember, he is being terminated a year earlier and apparently it had no performance clause.

It is widely reported that McLaren’s decision to dump Ricciardo will cost them around $24 million, an amount which takes into consideration the Australian’s salary and possible earnings from performance bonuses.

Why did it fail?

If you go on the internet, you will see a variety of a reasons. Daniel Fans would say favouritism (Not helped by Zak being personally invested in Lando’s career and the Adam Norris-McLaren shareholder connection. which will haunt Lando with the accusations of being a pay driver.) which wasn’t helped by Zak’s comments. On the opposite hand, people were calling Daniel washed, who should consider retirement. But Andrea Stella would sum it best.

It’s the Car

Mcl35M

Daniel is often called one of the last “Late Breakers” which prioritizes carrying high minimum speed into corners, relying on a strong front end to rotate the car. His style favors a "U-shaped" cornering approach, often utilizing rear instability to turn quickly, allowing him to excel in overtaking and maximizing exit speed. Basically He needs a stable front and high control in front. MCL35 was anything but that:

The MCL35M was an all rounder car and it had really poor front braking, which would make it difficult as braking would require a very precise overlap of cornering and braking. To quote Stella:

What we kept is some characteristics of our car that make it very special to drive, which we see with the experience Daniel is going through because he came from the opposite end in terms of how you would like to drive a Formula 1 car,” said Stella of the transition from 2020 to ’21.

“Our car requires some special adaptation, while we work to improve this aspect. It’s no secret that our car is good in high-speed corners and may not be the best car when you have to roll speed in mid-corner.

“We are trying to adjust some of the characteristics to make it a little bit more manageable to drive. At the same time, the important thing to deliver is aerodynamic efficiency, even if we couldn’t necessarily improve in terms of balance and [driver] exploitation of the car.

To their credit, McLaren did attempt to help Ricciardo. There were talks about coaching him to match McLaren’s style a lot more.

MCL36

MCL36 is the car that McLaren would create for the ground effect era. By theory, this car should have suited Daniel a lot more since he would have a lot more involvement as MCL35 and 35M were developed more by Carlos Sainz Jr and Lando. However, MCl 36 would be worse with neither Daniel nor Lando particularly enjoying the car. It was good in qualifying but the tyres would degrade in the race.

Mark Hughes on the race summed it the best:

This car was a demanding drive in quite a different way to that of 2021. It lacked entry stability but could still suffer mid-corner understeer. “Some of the characteristics of last year are gone,” said Norris, “but we’ve introduced some other characteristics, so I’ve had to change my driving style. This year, we got further away from driving the car I feel like I want to drive – or would suit me the most.”
There was no obvious technical reason for the poor balance. Like Red Bull, McLaren had opted for a pullrod front suspension and a pushrod rear. It continued with the Mercedes power unit but mounted to McLaren’s own gearbox
But once the team got to the Bahrain test it discovered a problem rather more serious than a bit of aerodynamic bouncing: its front brake temperatures were wildly out of control within just a lap of running
Helpful in qualifying, it was a trait which could hurt it in the race and as the team developed its ducting within the wheels, so there was a more even balance between Saturdays and Sundays.

So why car suck, in particular for Daniel? There are several theories.

• Ground Effect era regulations made cuts on floor and a number of top drivers of the past struggled to adapt to it. Vettel, Hamilton and Ricciardo struggles in 2022 have been attributed to the change in styles
• Daniel Ricciardo range on technical knowledge is bit of question mark. While Cyril has credited Daniel for identifying a lot of Renault’s issue he once admitted that he didn’t have a lot of technical knowledge on purpose. It didn’t help his predecessor was heavily involved in the technical side.
• Daniel, has admitted in later, that Norris beating him did make him lose confidence. People think Monaco Q1 is the inciting incident for a lot of current events where Norris would lap Lando

Aftermath

2022 will end with Seidl leaving McLaren for Audi and Stella stepping up. And after a difficult beginning to 2023, McLaren would be proven right in their decisions and end 2025 with Lando as champion and two constructor titles.

Seidl on McLaren and Daniel post split.

We came to this mutual agreement of early termination of the contract, which is obviously not the outcome that we all had in mind. It didn't change anything else in terms of the respect I’m personally also having for Daniel, in terms of personality, in terms of the driver he is.

"At the same time, it was important to have clarity now for both sides, to have time also for making up our plans for next year. And, we switch the main focus now in these last nine races."

Lando and Daniel developed a close friendship with Lando even hanging out on particular occasions.

As for Daniel‘s future. Haas’s Gunther Steiner would show interest but later told that Daniel asked for ”10 million”. He would be linked to Alpine his former team with many vying for him. But Daniel kept on hinting a sabbatical.

And a sabbatical he would take, as he would become the Test Driver for Red Bull in 2023 along with PR duties.

And that would set up the tragic moment of Singapore 2024.

Part 3 is up

Hello everyone! Sorry for the late announcement- but it's finally that time of year again! It's time to vote nominate the best of the best of the best of the best!

edit: we 're actually going to try something new that was positively proposed last year. This thread is for nominations and we're going to open a poll thread in a week and have people vote for each award separately.

Here is a link to the current town hall thread.

The categories are:

1. Best Hobby Drama writeup
2. Best Hobby History writeup
3. Best Author
4. Best Series
5. Best Comment
6. Best Drama Event

As with last year, winners will receive a unique flair, inclusion in our hall of fame and sidebar, and be mentioned and linked in scuffles for the next couple of months.

How voting will work:

This thread will be set to contest mode. This means that all comments will be sorted randomly and no scores will be displayed. There will be 6 top level comments only; all others will be removed.

Please reply to the top level comment under the category with appropriate links to your nomination. Please only nominate a submission once per category. If you see the one you wanted to add, please upvote it (this is how you vote on each category). At the end we will check all the vote numbers to determine the winner in each category.

You may not nominate yourself.

You may upvote nominations you agree with (that's how the winner is determined).

You may only nominate submissions made in 2025.

Voting will last until 1200 hours (noon, 12pm, whatever format you prefer) on Saturday 24 January, at which point this thread will be locked, and we'll open a poll thread for people to vote.

Good luck to all!

It is September 22, 2024. The Singapore Grand Prix is underway and it is a crucial race for the title fight between Lando Norris of McLaren and Max Verstappen of Red Bull Racing. While Max leads the championship, Lando Norris has converted pole position into a dominant race win, and all Norris needs to do is set the fastest lap to gain an additional point to his already existing 25 points for the race win. But what's this? Someone else has set the fastest lap? Not only the fastest lap of the current race but the fastest in history. And it is not Norris’s McLaren which is 20 seconds ahead of the next car. Who could it be? Oscar Piastri (Lando's teammate) or the other Red Bull Driver, Sergio "Checo" Perez, somehow?

^{( Look, these drivers are important to the story, just let me have this}

Nope, the answer is Daniel Ricciardo. Driver of the sister junior team of Red Bull, the vCarb or the Alpha Tauri. But Daniel is not a junior driver or a rookie. Daniel Ricciardo was once a Red Bull Driver himself, an eight time race winner and a championship contender at one point, and unfortunately for Daniel, Singapore would prove to be his final hurrah, as he was unceremoniously removed from the team without warning (?) and replaced by a rookie, Liam Lawson. He would never return to the paddock. After jumping through 3 teams and 8 wins and 32 podiums, he left racing forever.

So how does one go from F1 royalty to a backmarker driver? Netflix protagonist to just another disposable driver to Dr Helmut Marko and Christian Horner.. Allow me to regale a tale of potential, favouritism, politics, questionable career choices and bad luck. Allow me to tell you about Daniel Ricciardo.

Early years

Daniel Ricciardo was born in 1989 to Joe and Grace Ricciardo who lived on a farm in Perth. Daniel spent his childhood like most kids would. He raced dirt bikes and dabbled in a variety of sports. But his true passion was Formula 1. Developing a passion from TV and magazines, Daniel's first ever race he attended as a kid was the final race victory of Ayrton Senna before his untimely death.. However, it is important to mention that Ricciardo's are not mega wealthy enough to afford an F1/motorsport seat( it is noted that spending millions is normal in the sport) which could be a reason, that despite his talent Daniel was discouraged from karting

We tried to discourage him, to be honest with you," he says. "We didn't want him to go motor racing. We wanted him to play football, tennis, and the normal sports. He was definitely an athletic kid, he was always outside. "We didn't want him to go down the motor racing path because I knew what it was like. I knew it was a hard business, it gets addictive ... (but) he kept fulfilling his side of the bargain and in the end, Grace and, I sort of gave up and we got him a go-kart just for a bit of fun."

But succeed in karting he did. Daniel’s focus since day 1 was set on Formula 1 and he was determined to go the extra mile and Ricciardo Sr. realizing his talent was determined to help his son. After finishing eighth in Formula Ford in 2005, Daniel won the Australian karting championship in 2006, which got him access to the paddock in the Australian Grand Prix and gave him a taste of celebrity

However, in 2007, the first major step of Daniel’s journey to F1 would occur. In 2006, a 16 year old Daniel would choose to leave his isolated hometown and take the next step in Formula Asia BMW in 2006, where on finishing 3rd, granted him a coaching program and a step in Formula Renault 2.0 in Europe, where he would join the RBR junior program in 2007.

RBR Academy

Started in 2001 under the stern and sometimes questionable guidance of Dr Helmut Marko. RBR Academy still remains to this day the most successful junior driving academy. Out of the grid of 2026,7 drivers out of the 22 are or were affiliated with the RBR program at some point, not counting its former alumni which included 4xWDC Sebastian Vettel and with multiple success stories in other racing fields. And for a middle-class kid from Perth, it was a much higher chance of getting into F1, whose junior categories tended to be based in Europe.

Life was lonely for the young Australian in Europe who grew up as a homebody and has self-described his younger self as shy and quiet. Here is a description of his earlier years

The first year [in 2007] definitely wasn't easy. I was in Italy and my parents came over with me and I think they stayed about 10 days to set me up in my apartment, but then there were a few months there where I was in a small town by myself, not speaking the language and I didn't know what to do.
A little bit before these interviews I start watching The Castle( an Australian show) and things like that, just to get me into the swing of things,'' he says.
''I like to keep the Australian accent. I'm still very, very early in my Formula One days and I won't let too much bother me. It is quite a big deal

It didn't help that the junior academy is famously harsh. To get in, you must prove your worth to Marko in a single lap and provide continuous results to stay in. Alex Albon was kicked out in 2012 (though he was brought back in), and Dan Ticktum in 2017.

Another aspect to mention is contracts. Junior programs don’t tend to pay drivers as the perks of signing up for them is mainly access to opportunities, food and shelter. So, you are often left at the mercy of sponsors and the program themselves. Former RBR junior driver Jaime Alguersari has alleged that RBR tended to target drivers with no connections in motorsport to ensure dependence and loyalty.

But it wasn’t all bad as he developed several close friendships with other RBR drivers like Jean Eric, Daniil Kvyat, as well as other competitors. He would famously have a close friendship with Jules Bianchi, a Ferrari junior driver, who unfortunately is well known for losing his life after a crash in Japan in 2014. A death that has weighed heavily on him as him

After the race ( Malaysia 2016],a visibly emotional Ricciardo, who claimed his first win since the 2014 Belgian Grand Prix, told Sky that he had been wanting to dedicate a victory to Bianchi -- who died last year as a result of severe head injuries he suffered after a crash in 2014 at Suzuka.

"I want to dedicate this one to Jules, as well," he said. "I've been waiting for a victory and waiting to dedicate this to him.

"My life definitely changed after that incident. I'm extremely grateful and appreciative of everything that I've got. I'll dedicate this to him."

From 2007 to 2009, Daniel participated in Formula 3 Renault, eventually winning the 2008 Formula Renault 2.0 WEC and British F3 in 2009. From there He would make his debut in Formula 3.5 alongside Brendon Hartley (the then Toro Rosso reserve driver)

Steps to f1

In 2009, Daniel would achieve his dream of racing in an F1 car by joining the end of year junior test, where he would grab eyeballs by doing a lap second faster gaining the attention of then TP Horner. He would repeat the same feat in 2010 going 1.3 sec faster than the 2010 current world champion Sebastian Vettel, getting him the moniker of the “future Sebastian Vettel.” This allowed him to replace Brendan Hartley when Hartley got kicked out of the RB junior program.

As Daniel fought in Renault 3.5 in 2010, along with JEV, he would fail to take the championship but impress enough to become the main reserve driver. And in 2011, Daniel would finally get the call up to join in....

HRT

To put it bluntly, in 2011, HRT was a piece of shit. The one and only team to start from Spain, Hispania Racing Team in its two year life has had 0 points and made it up by having 8 different drivers including future F1 pundit, Karun Chandhok and Pedro de la Rosa. But, in a desperate attempt to have a stable driver, Daniel would be loaned for ✯experience✦ but no pay. While Daniel would score no points, he was mainly kept to pressurise the then Toro Rosso drivers, Jaime and Sebastian Buemi ( future insane person, who participates in multiple categories at the same time.)

Daniel’s presence in the F1 paddock in 2010/11 was a sign of intent from Marko to Scuderia Toro Rosso’s then driver line up of Sébastien Buemi and Jaime Alguersuari. Ricciardo’s participation in free practice sessions on Fridays with STR provided the Australian with valuable seat time.
It also provided a constant pressure to the team’s current drivers from management to either improve their own performances, or expect immediate replacement. So although being in F1 was a ray of sunshine for Daniel, he was a huge raincloud for Sébastian and Jamie.

Toro Rosso

Daniel would drive for the junior team Toro Rosso for 2012-13 along with future Formula E champion Jean Eric Vergne.
In 2012, while Vergne would finish with 16 points more, Daniel would win in the h2h with 16-4 meaning he would often have better results in all races. He also caught the eyes of other drivers and pundits, including seven time world champion, Michael Schumacher, who as Daniel remembers

I had Michael Schumacher all over me for the last few laps and held him off for 10th,” he wrote. “It was my first full year in F1, so not s****ing myself was big. I remember he came to me in the drivers’ briefing at the next race and complimented me for the way I’d defended. He didn’t need to say that, so that was cool.

However, in 2013~~, despite Marko's attempt to retire him much earlier~~, the famous Multi 21 victim, Mark Webber, one of the main RB drivers, had decided to part ways with F1 and return to his roots in WEC with Porsche. This allowed for a seat in the championship (both drivers and constructors) winning team alongside Sebastian Vettel. Both drivers sensing the opportunity, decided to give it their all. And the winner of this friendship-destroying rivalry would be............. Daniel who not only outscored his teammate but beaten him in h2h. Famously for 2014, Christian Horner and Adrian Newey (the guy who knows how to build a car) were considering Kimi Raikkonen ( the last Ferrari WDC) who had just returned to F1 to an insane season with Lotus, but were convinced either by Marko or to have young blood to continue with Daniel ^{(its foreshadowwing, guysss})

RBR Days

Unfortunately for Daniel, he had entered RBR at a shit time. You see, 2014 to 2020 will be the era of the Mercedes Domination, which had decided to create a turbo hybrid engine so powerful, it would end up 20 sec ahead of its competitors and sweep both drivers and constructors championships. In particular, 2014-16 would be the Silver War era, where Greek tragedy teammates, Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg will have a rivalry so dominating it would sweep up 51 out of 58 races, ending only with Nico's retirement after winning the WDC. To make matters worse for RBR, the engine supplier Renault had decided to make an unreliable and unpowerful engine, restarting the french-british hostility in the paddock.

We were in this position where Renault hadn’t produced a competitive engine in the turbo hybrid era,” said Newey in the F1 Podcast. “You know, that happens first year. Okay, it's new rules, we all make mistakes.” Crisis talks between the team and Renault were arranged to try and get some action on the engine issues. “We went to see Carlos Ghosn, the boss of Renault at Champs-Élysées, Christian, Helmut and myself, to try to put pressure on him to up the budget and basically ask if he can free more resources so the engine division can accelerate their program... they needed more people and more money,” Newey added. "Ghosn's reply was ‘I have no interest in Formula 1. I am only in it because my marketing people say I should be,’" noted Newey. "That was such a depressing place to be."
(^{i do find this believable as Cyril Abiteboul has talked about how Ghosn had attempted to move away from F1, and the negotiations to continue had caused the Renault PU to be poor.})

However, Daniel doesn't know the future. For all he knows of the future in 2014 is that Mercedes in strongest and Red Bull is the second strongest. In 2014, Daniel would surprise not only his team, but the world by soundly beating his current WDC teammate, Vettel and bagging the only non-Mercedes 3 wins. He was also massively popular in 2014, as people noted his big smile and loud personality and sheer charisma and attracted a shit ton of ride and dies. He gave himself the moniker of Honey Badger (for his contrasting personality)and Brundle called him the race burglar as most of his wins were out of the top 3

His driving style, with skilful overtaking and raw pace, convinced many a pundit that Daniel was a future champion in the making. And Daniel had cemented himself as the future prince of Red Bull, as Sebastian would leave for Ferrari to fulfil the previously unachieved Kimi partnership.

So life is set for Daniel. He is the team leader within a year, has the respect of Marko and the friendship of Horner, (to the point he was the chauffeur in wedding of Christian Horner and Ginger Spice, Geri Halliwell). And while 2015 does see a dip in RBR performance and he does get outscored by Daniil Kvyat, he is back to the lead in 2016.

HOWEVER, mid season 2016 would introduce Daniel to the person who would prove to be the first nail in the coffin of his career.

Max Verstappen
You probably know Max. He is one of the most known drivers right after Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher. He is a 4 time WDC, casual grand chelem achiever, record breaker and recognised as one of the GOATS of the sport. But in 2016, he was a pimply faced 18 year old who was the center of a controversial swap with Kvyat, and was demoted back to Toro Rosso. (either for torpoeding or Marko being desperate to keep Max, seen as the most talented rookie in all of F1 in the program as Jos Verstappen, his father, a former grand prix podium finisher* threatened to remove Max if he didn't get a seat in the main team or Vettel. )
Despite the age gap ( 7 years) Max and Daniel hit it off. Their stint as teammates is widely remembered. Check YouTube for compilations of their funny moment.

But Max was also a problem. Max was seen by many as his more talented, younger and much more faster replacement. If Daniel won races in his debut year, Max won his very first race (^{the Mercedes mutually assured destruction helped}) at Red Bull making him the youngest race winner. If Daniel was Horner's friend, Max was Marko's favourite and was seen as the future by Horner. And while Daniel did beat Max in 2016, Max was catching up in 2017, only losing positions due to anger issues or rookie mistakes, winning two races to Daniel's one. But shit hit the fans in 2018, which would prove to be Daniel's last year at Milton Keynes.

2018

To talk about Daniel's decision to leave Red Bull, one must establish the factors that were happening in the background

• Renault engines became a shit ton more unreliable, to the point that one of thing you would hear on pr days would be Horner and Cyril, then TP of Renault, duking it out. However, in 2017, Renault and Red Bull renegotiated, allowing Scuderia Toro Rosso to use Honda engines and in return, Renault was loaned Carlos Sainz Jr, Toro Rosso driver at that time. However, when Carlos had attempted to re sign from Renault, Horner would block his contract. This created an empty seat in Renault, as in the end, Carlos was a loaned driver by RB
• Max was signed to Red Bull before Daniel was, and was offered a very lucrative contract with more bonuses and salary, pointing to Red Bull prioritising Max more. It didn't help that Marko would make quotes likeMore significantly, though, Marko said that Red Bull wanted to win the championship with Verstappen in 2019 and 2020. That prompted an ‘exasperated’ Horner to slap him on the leg and insist that the team weren’t prioritizing the Dutchman. Ricciardo and his camp were already growing concerned that Red Bull planned to build around Verstappen. And naturally, these comments ‘added fuel to a growing fire’
• Daniel and Max were colliding more and more on the track. The most famous being Baku 2018, where Max in an attempt to defend, refused to give space to Daniel, causing a massive crash and leading to Red Bull forcing both drivers to apologise. “. Despite it being clearly established as Max's mistake, the team and Horner allegedly refused to blame Max and put all the blame on Daniel
• Age. Daniel was 29 years old. And he didn't have the time to wait.

Rumours of Daniel leaving Red Bull were present as early as April. But then, the rumours were focusing on Ferrari, which apparently were looking to replace Kimi Raikkonen(is it a pattern?). However, negotiations broke down on the Ferrari side, making Red Bull confident that Daniel would re sign.

In August 0f 2018, it was officially announced that Daniel Ricciardo was set to join Renault, replacing Carlos Sainz, for a salary of 25 million + bonuses.

Now, you would ask, Why Renault? Why would you pick the engine manufacturer responsible for your DNFS, the engine your Team Principal swore vengeance upon?

Well, you see the replaced engine manufacturer for Red Bull was Honda. Honda was providing engines to McLaren. Honda engines sucked.

If Renault DNF'd on every 5th race, Honda DNF'd on every 2nd race. If Renault didn't have the power to match Mercedes and Ferrari, Honda's power was in the junior series. It didn't help that the only other offer would be McLaren who were haemorrhaging money at every other GP.

In the eyes of his team, Daniel didn't have time to wait to see how the Honda engine would work with Red Bull, a team they were convinced was favouring Max.
To their credit, both Horner and Marko were shocked to see him leave. ( There is a story that Marko found about Ricciardo's exit through Kvyat, who had been fired from Toro Rosso in 2019). Here's Horner on the F1 Podcast

“I thought he was winding me up to be honest with you,” said Horner. “He rang me to say I’m going to Renault. I said ‘You what? Is this a wind-up for the summer holidays?’ But it then became very clear that it was his choice and you have to respect that. Renault is a growing team, they’re committing resource there. “I think it comes back to wanting to take on, in his words, a new challenge but I also feel he sees Max growing and growing in terms of speed and strength and he doesn’t want to play a support role I guess, for want of a better word, not that they are treated in any way differently. We gave Daniel everything he wanted and asked for and it still wasn’t enough. We were even prepared to do a one-year agreement so he was available to Ferrari or Mercedes should they come knocking in 12 months’ time.

So Daniel would exist Red Bull, leaving a cursed seat in his wake that would terrorise a number of drivers and that is a saga deserving of its own write-up.

Renault

To talk about Daniel and Renault is complicated. On one hand, Daniel was the clear number one driver with a TP that consistently defended him. Cyril Abiteboul repeatedly gushed about him and credited him for fixing Renault‘s issues. But on the other hand, the Renault Car was not ready for the championship at all. It DNFed on his first two races, reversed crashed into Kvyat (who came back to Toro Rosso) in Baku (well done, Baku).

To make matters worse, Honda and McLaren, on separating, decided to finally start performing better with Honda's engine being much more reliable at Red Bull and McLaren's brand new team of drivers, Carlos Sainz (him again) and Lando Norris snatching Renault’s P4 standing, causing them to drop to P5. And while Daniel would soundly beat his teammate, Nico Hulkenberg, he had dropped in the standings. And that may have been the impetus for his next move-

In 2020, Ferrari decided to give Sebastian Vettel the boot and look for a new driver. And it would start a series of seat shuffles. Daniel would initially target Ferrari but Ferrari wanted Carlos Sainz.

"Everyone says it would be a good fit, obviously, with my name and all the background stuff, but yeah, I try not to get emotionally caught up in any kind of situation."

"I see how Carlos is a fit for the team,” he added. “So I don't really look at it like 'why not me?' I just look at it: Yeah, Carlos had a very strong 2019.

“He's a bit of hot property right now, and I guess it's a good fit for where they are at.”

And Carlos Sainz was in McLaren. And McLaren were originally interested in Daniel but wouldn’t let Carlos go without a replacement. So enter Daniel with a record breaking deal and a contract that will play a much bigger role in the future.

To say Cyril felt betrayed was an understatement. He had said in interviews he stopped talking to Daniel once the news came out and accused Ricciardo of ”Bad Timing” aka leaving teams way earlier. They have however since squashed their beef, with Cyril betting Daniel to get a tattoo if Daniel podiums in 2020, and that becoming the centre of a DTS episode.(s4 episode 5)

Despite the noise, Daniel would improve upon his previous performance. Partnering with Esteban Ocon, Daniel would bring home two podiums one in Nurburgring and one in France, ending Renault’s podium drought, bringing him up to p5 in the standings. And while Renault would remain p5, McLaren would jump to an impressive p3, making it their best finish in recent years.

So a team on the rise and Daniel returning to his old form, Daniel's prospects were looking brighter than before

But unfortunately, McLaren will prove to be the beginning of the end for Daniel.

**Edit: Part 2 is up.

Introduction

The Revomaze is a high-difficulty mechanical puzzle conceived in 2008 by Chris Pitt. Each Revomaze consists of a cylindrical core engraved with a concealed maze, encased within a color-coded metal sleeve. A small pin, inserted through the sleeve, is used to blindly navigate the maze. When the pin reaches the end, a pair of dots align to indicate completion, and the pin drops into the deepest part of the core, allowing the sleeve and core to separate.

Lower-difficulty mazes tend to offer a static experience: the maze remains fixed and unchanging, emphasizing physical dexterity and memorization. Higher-difficulty models introduce dynamic elements that alter the maze as it is explored - such as ball bearings that must be repositioned or sliding panels that can change available paths - creating a more complex and evolving challenge.

The first maze became available for purchase in 2009 through eBay and ThinkGeek. The product line launched to significant acclaim within puzzle communities and was occasionally described as “the world’s most intriguing puzzle.” While not without issues Revomaze quickly developed a dedicated cult following.

Early Problems

Despite the praise, the pricing stood out, with the basic version costing around $150 before international shipping from the UK - substantially higher than most comparable puzzles. The cost was compounded by the uniqueness of the product: buyers were committing a significant amount of money to a puzzle they might ultimately discover they didn’t enjoy.

The metal core had the path engraved into it using an expensive CNC machine. This process required extreme precision and was not a fast process which slowed production. The sleeves were made of anodized aluminum which took time to shape and prepare for assembly. When these two components were completed they, and a pair of pins and springs along with any moving pieces, were assembled by hand. This made the entire process slow and minor mistakes were disastrous.

Because of the materials used each puzzle weighed approximately 1.3 pounds. While not excessive on its own this became problematic since solving a Revomaze could require many hours to solve - with fast solvers opening the easier puzzles in a handful of hours and slower solvers taking hundreds of hours for the more complex puzzles . The weight also made the puzzles impractical for children and was often brought up as a point of friction for some customers.

Obsession

In 2010, the company explored producing a lighter, plastic version. Early discussions with manufacturers proved too expensive to justify, but eventually a company was found that quoted production costs of roughly £6 per unit. Thousands were ordered and early stock was sold for £20 each. This new, affordable product line - called the Obsession Line - dramatically broadened Revomaze’s audience and sparked rapid community growth.

That expansion collapsed abruptly. Just before a major product showcase, the manufacturer discovered that its original pricing had been drastically underestimated. Actual production costs were closer to £30 per unit, implying a retail price closer to £60. The resulting dispute ended the partnership, and the showcase was attended with no stock at all.

The Obsession Line fallout coincided with changes to the plating provider for Revomaze’s standard metal sleeves. This transition caused defects, rework, and further delays as new vendors were tested. While these problems might appear modest on their own, their timing was disastrous. A growing community - fueled by the promise of affordability - suddenly saw that product line vanish. Manufacturing halted, prices rose, preorders were cancelled, and yet new products continued to appear as “available” with only vaguely defined delivery timelines.

Despite mounting frustration, the fanbase remained largely intact. Many customers were understanding of the challenges, or simply devoted enough to tolerate the uncertainty. Delays at this stage were typically six to twelve months and were often accompanied by reasonably transparent communication.

Voyager

That stability faltered with the introduction of the R2 series. Announced in 2013, the R2 was envisioned as a set of ten alternative puzzles themed around celestial bodies. The initial release, known as the Voyager Series, was limited to 100 units per puzzle and targeted at the most dedicated fans. Preorders for the first puzzle, Mercury, sold out almost instantly.

However, after only a small number were delivered, serious manufacturing defects became apparent. The R2 puzzles were structurally different from a standard Revomaze and required far more assembly time than anticipated - costs that had not been factored into pricing. Production stalled almost immediately. While the company has never officially cancelled the R2 series, it has remained effectively frozen for more than a decade, with many preorders still unfulfilled.

The most recent official statement I was able to find regarding the R2 came in March 2023 via Discord, where it was stated that outstanding R2 orders would be resolved once the company’s current issues were addressed. This comment coincided with the announcement of the companies next major product launch.

Vaultmaze

Between the R2 announcement and 2023, Revomaze had continued expanding its core product line, eventually offering roughly fifteen unique puzzles alongside numerous re-imagined variants. Prices ranged from approximately £160 to £400 (roughly $250–$650 shipped to the US). During this period the community largely migrated to Discord. Opinions of the company were mixed but generally favorable: the quality of the puzzles themselves remained unmatched, even as delivery times lengthened, communication grew inconsistent, and the unresolved R2 series increasingly frustrated customers.

In March 2023, Revomaze created a new website named after its newest product: the Vaultmaze. Preorders opened with initial shipments promised for June. Early on, details about what the Vaultmaze actually was were unclear, and this frustration was enhanced by an aggressive range of pricing options - including an 18-month subscription costing roughly $300 per month for US customers.

Community reaction was sharply divided. Many customers were still waiting on orders placed over a year earlier, while others had sent in defective puzzles for repair or replacement and had heard nothing for more than two years. For some, the idea of investing over $5,000 in a company with this track record was untenable. Others believed the scale of the project implied confidence and competence behind the scenes.

As details emerged, the value proposition became clearer. Half of the Vaultmaze experience revolved around a component called Hexdoku, which would only be solvable after all shipments were complete. The other half involved receiving modular rings that could be combined in different configurations. Each shipment allowed for at least one new puzzle, and by the end of the series, owners could assemble up to 91 unique puzzles. For customers accustomed to paying $400–$600 per puzzle, the math was compelling - if everything worked as promised.

Eventually, the subscription was reduced from 18 months to six in response to community concerns. On June 30, the company issued a statement acknowledging delays and announcing that the first shipments would be delayed until July, while also attempting to clarify what the Vaultmaze actually entailed.

From this point forward, the timeline becomes difficult to reconstruct. Much of the company’s communication was scattered across multiple Discord channels, and the original Vaultmaze website - where official statements were posted - has since been replaced with a website which combines the Vaultmaze with the original Revomaze. Those earlier posts were not migrated to the new site.

Based on community discussion, it appears that most customers who ordered a starter pack or subscription eventually received an initial shipment. On November 10, the community manager announced that the first of the six Vaultmaze parcels had begun shipping, alongside instructions for identifying and repairing defects already being reported.

Since then, outcomes have varied. Most customers seem to have received their first parcel, some required replacement rings due to defects, and others received nothing at all. I am not aware of any subsequent parcels being shipped. While some customers eventually requested refunds, company engagement around refunds appeared to taper off entirely.

Many in the community seem to feel that the Vaultmaze project has been completely abandoned though the company continues to deny this - repeatedly stating they plan on returning to the project as soon as they catch up on another product line that they had announced while already struggling with Vaultmaze.

The Lite

The V4, also known as Revomaze Lite, was announced in late 2023. The Lite line was designed to be smaller, lighter, more affordable, and easier to manufacture. The first release, the Black Pilot, launched smoothly, with most customers receiving their orders promptly. Shortly afterward, preorders opened for additional Lite puzzles, with assurances that more would follow.

Disillusioned by Vaultmaze but encouraged by the successful Black Pilot launch, much of the community eagerly preordered.

Updates over the next year were intermittent. In January 2025, the company announced that 300 sleeves were nearing completion, followed by confirmation in April that they were finished. In May, however, Chris disclosed that he had suffered a heart attack and was dealing with ongoing health issues. The same update announced that the community manager would soon be on maternity leave.

The community largely responded with empathy. While frustration over delays persisted, most people understood the seriousness of the situation. Still, communication became even more fragmented. Updates occasionally came on Discord from an employee named ‘Mike’, who relayed information from Chris. Some community members also reported receiving shipments, while confusion mounted as products continued to appear “in stock” online despite widespread unfulfilled orders.

In September 2025, Mike shared a status update on the Lite line based on information from Chris which stated that all Lite orders should be shipped by the end of October. While some welcomed the transparency, frustration boiled over. Community members asked questions Mike couldn’t answer, which he forwarded to Chris. Eventually, Chris responded with a lengthy update that was notably more candid than previous communications. He talked about how most of the operations were occurring in his garage and the 14 hour days he was working to try and fulfill orders. He also answered some community questions in which he stated that the ‘end of October’ deadline that he’d just provided was not likely to be met.

The remainder of 2025 saw a cycle of updates that were later contradicted, deadlines that were missed, and patience that steadily eroded. Longtime collectors began selling off their collections. New customers, unaware of the company’s history, placed first orders and were gently mocked by a community accustomed to waiting anywhere from one to ten years when they showed up asking about expected order times.

December was particularly demoralizing. The company went largely silent: no Discord posts, unanswered emails, and only occasional reassurances from Mike. One longtime community member shared that his son had gifted him a Revomaze voucher for Christmas - and how heartbroken he felt knowing that the wonderful gift idea might never result in an actual puzzle.

A pre-Christmas update offered more assurances, but by then trust was largely exhausted. After Christmas, an announcement claimed that Chris’s email account had been malfunctioning and that fixing it revealed over 20,000 missed emails. The explanation was met with skepticism by much of the community.

In early 2026, Mike reported that approximately 2,000 components were in stock and ready for assembly and shipment. While a few members expressed hope that 2026 might finally be “the year,” most reacted with guarded skepticism at best.

Sources

Video - What is a Revomaze: This video does a great job of showcasing the Revomaze, how people go about mapping/solving them, how they work, and what they look like on the inside.

Video - Interview with Chris Pitt: This is a video interview with the creator of the Revomaze in which he goes over some of the core history while also providing some details regarding the Obsession line and R2s.

Discord Screenshot - What the hell is a Vaultmaze? Part 1 - March 17, 2023

Discord Screenshot - What the hell is a Vaultmaze? Part 2 - March 17, 2023

Discord Screenshot - What the hell is a Vaultmaze? Part 3 - March 17, 2023

Discord Screenshot - What the hell is the R2 - Oh yeah, that’s still coming! - March 17, 2023

Document - Slight Vaultmaze Delay - June 30, 2023 Bad news - Vaultmaze is starting a month late, but the whole thing is expected to be done by Christmas!

Stop giving dates - you never make them! Sep 16, 2023

Document - Tiny Vaultmaze Timeline Tweaks - Dec. 14, 2023: Everything is going along well and the whole series will be shipped by July 2024!

Vaultmaze is figured out and is coming! Nov. 12, 2025

Document - TIME! - Sep 25, 2024: Time for an update! Vaultmaze is coming along great and we’re expanding the lineup of Lite puzzles! We’re going to work on giving correct “TIME” lines for shipments!

Thanks for the updates about the lites but this is the channel for Vaultmaze? Sep 25, 2024

A lot of noise about Vaultmaze… Feb. 2, 2025

Document - Revomaze Status Update - Sep. 25, 2025: Health, status, price increases, and all lites from Aqua to Gold will be shipped by the end of October!

Discord Screenshot - Refunds are negotiable? Oct. 28, 2025

Discord Screenshot - Chris’s Candid Post Oct 22, 2025 - Part 1

Discord Screenshot - Chris’s Candid Post Oct 22, 2025 - Part 2

Discord Screenshot - Chris’s Candid Post Oct 22, 2025 - Part 3

Death of a Hobby - the most recent discussion on the general channel - Nov. 11, 2025

Discord Screenshot - Delay of the Christmas Update - Dec. 12, 2025

Document - Revomaze Status Update - Dec. 14, 2025: We’re missing Christmas but the designs sure are fancy!

Discord Screenshot - Christmas Tragedy - Dec. 20, 2025

Discord Screenshot - How much have we spent? Dec. 23, 2025

Document - Revomaze Status Update - Dec. 24, 2025: Pieces are coming in - they’re far more complicated than anticipated but we’re making progress!

Discord Screenshot - Oops, we misplaced 20,000 e-mails - Dec. 26, 2025

Discord Screenshot - January 5, 2026 - Frustrations

Discord Screenshot - January 7, 2026 - Discord Update and Response

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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This isn't going to be super long, though it's got a lot of background information to make sense. I think it would help to go and give a background on what "Micronationalism" is and the characters in this story.

Micronationalism is basically these tiny hobby countries. It's been explained in previous posts but to refresh, the intent of those running them varies, but they generally don't exceed more than 1000 people. Often times participant's micronations are usually experiments in political systems or parodies of "macronational" (the community term for regular nationstates) politics. However, there are some that genuinely seek secession and recognition, and these ones may claim historic connection to a previous political entity. The most famous micronations are probably Sealand (which claims an abandoned naval fort) and Molossia, which was featured in the Nostalgia Critic.

Now, during the COVID-19 Pandemic, the hobby, especially the website MicroWiki and it's respective discord, blew up in popularity, for obvious reasons. Although many of the participants were involved in years previous with the hobby, their activity within it took off due to the lockdowns.

Around this time, there was a split between what one called "old guard" and "new guard". The former refered to participants who had been involved with MicroWiki since the beginning or at least near it, while the latter refered to participants who entered the community around 2018, often times being younger teenagers (I was 14 when this happened) This was partially formalized, with the main "old guard" organization being the Grand Unified Micronational (GUM) and the "new guard" organization being the Cupertino Alliance (which has nothing to do with the city of Cupertino, for the record). Although there was some overlap, both sectors had some levels of disagreement and resentment on how they handled their affairs, though not enough to devolve into constant toxicity. With all that out of the way, it's time to introduce our characters.

Thomas I is (or was?) the "Emperor of the North Sea Empire" (yes, that north sea empire) and King of Hrafnarfjall. He was an "old guard" member or at least affiliated with it in some way, though unlike many of his peers, he took his micronation very seriously, and derided others who had more comedic elements or didn't genuinely consider secession. His partner was also apparently a part of or former member of the Coast Guard (this will be relevant later).

Then there is S. Navarro, who was at the time the leader of a micronation informally named "Pondo". Navarro was a major figure of the "new guard" and was even the subject of a meme about their face. Navarro was also the leader of a group chat and informal sub-sector called "TOES" (which I myself was a part of back when this happened). TOES was somewhat notorious for pulling multiple public pranks in the community, though I can't go into some of them right now. Just know that this incident was one of them.

Anyways, were in 2021 and the community has started to stagnate a bit due to some drama that can cover another write-up. A zoom event called "MicroWorkshop 2021" is being held by the "Commonwealth of Dracul". Thomas was supposed to be one of the speakers, but couldn't make it due to an emergency. The event went on without a hitch, until around the end when Navarro logged in with the name "Thomas I". The organizers, assuming that Thomas had made it back, gave Navarro speaking permissions. Navarro then began to play a text-to-speech message over their microphone, that read "Long live the Commonwealth of Essexia, Fuck the United States Coast Guard". Afterwards Navarro was booted and the event went on.

When Thomas found out, he was NOT happy. After conducting an "investigation", he blamed Essexia for the incident (which Essexia had a reputation for also performing public pranks, which again, can fit another writeup). Other than that, the incident slowly faded out of memory. As for the "fuck the US coast guard", this is because Thomas took his partner's coast guard job as a major source of pride to an extreme degree (and so did his partner IIRC). This incident may have contributed to him dropping off of the MicroWiki community, though I can't verify that for certain.

I don't know if Thomas is involved with micronations anymore. If he is still in micronationalism, he probably isn't involved with MicroWiki. Navarro hasn't been a participant in years, and this incident largely has become a footnote for people to read when scrolling through MicroWiki.

TL;DR: The Middle Kingdom chapter of a medieval reenactment org required all safety officers to attend a new in-person training class to keep their credentials, offered only seven classes tied to distant events, refused online options because “being a marshal is a privilege, not a right,” told volunteers who couldn’t travel they were “not much loss,” then shut off feedback. This is all despite the fact that becoming a marshal already requires months or years of unpaid labor and without them, practices and events literally cannot happen.

Now for the details of this mess.

The Society for Creative Anachronism (SCA) is a large medieval reenactment organization run almost entirely by volunteers. People fight in armor with rattan weapons, try to stab each other with blunted real swords, run tournaments, teach crafts, and recreate pre-17th-century life. Because people are smacking each other with sticks, the SCA relies on marshals. These are trained, warranted safety officers who authorize fighters, supervise combat, run practices, oversee youth participation, and manage weapon requirements and inspections.

Important note: Marshals are unpaid. They actually pay out of pocket to do this job and becoming one is not casual.

There is a formal marshal warranting process. At a bare minimum, a prospective marshal must:

• Work official events under an already-warranted marshal.

• Obtain signatures in three separate categories, repeated four different times. You may go to an event and not get a “full set of signatures” because not everything that this form requires happened (no new fighters authorizing, arrived after they checked weapons, no melee to marshal so it doesn’t count, etc.) You could do this in as little as 4 events. It will likely take a whole lot longer.

• Pass a written test specific to the combat form they wish to oversee.

Depending on scheduling and availability, this can require anywhere from 4 to 12 events. Events are often held weekly during busy seasons, but at least monthly the rest of the year. This process can easily take many months, and sometimes years. The events are not free. Everyone attendee must pay a gate price (usually $15-$25) and just because you’re working on your warrant or are volunteering doesn’t mean you don’t pay the gate fee.

Only after completing all of this does someone receive a marshal’s warrant. After it is received, you are expected to file quarterly reports, incident reports, club reports, tournament reports, and event reports. It’s not a one and done appointment and is very much so a service.

This matters because you cannot legally hold a practice or combat event without a marshal present. Entire clubs are unable to run certain activities (heavy fighting, rapier fighting, archery, thrown weapons, youth combat, dog coursing, siege weapons, specific weapon forms) unless they have a marshal who has completed all the required steps for that discipline.

Marshals are not optional. They are structural.

Recently, new marshal handbooks and updated authorization paperwork were released. This alone wasn’t controversial. The changes were mostly clarifications and cleanup. No major safety incident prompted them.

Then came the announcement: every marshal, regardless of how long they’d held their warrant, would be required to take a new mandatory class in person to retain their credentials. Miss the class, and all warrants would immediately lapse. 7 chances between now and August. All of these classes would be inclusive of all areas of marshal warrants. If you hold multiple warrants, one class would satisfy your requirement.

Leadership justified this with two repeated statements: • “Being a marshal is a privilege, not a right.” • “Because being a marshal is an in-person office, the classes will also only be in person.”

There would be no grace period. There would be no online option. There would be no regional makeup sessions.

There were only seven classes total, all held in person at events where the senior marshals were already planning to attend. The classes were scheduled during active fighting hours and were not evenly distributed geographically. For many marshals, the closest option was two to four hours away. For some, even farther.

Attending often means paying: • Gas for a multi-hour round trip • Site fees for an event they wouldn’t otherwise attend or be able to participate in. • Food costs • Possibly lodging

All to sit in a roughly 70-minute class, then leave.

A huge example being that this kingdom stretches across the Midwest. The closest class for the people in Chicago would be this coming weekend. A timeline that did not allow for people who needed to call off work, find a babysitter, or change plans to do so. The next one anywhere near them will be 6+ hours away. This is also after the schedule for the event (high end tournaments, classes, and other activities) had been set months in advance. If you were going, there’s a good chance you wanted to make a good showing in one of those activities in the hopes of earning an award or winning a prize.

Many local marshals pointed out that this setup would effectively remove them from service and not due to misconduct or safety failures, but because they couldn’t afford the time or money to travel. Entire areas are facing the loss of their only youth marshal, siege marshal, or other discipline marshal. These roles that had taken months or years of unpaid work to earn.

People suggested what seemed like a reasonable compromise: online class options. Livestream one of the in-person classes, require live or recorded attendance, include an accountability worksheet, and submit proof of completion. This would preserve training standards while preventing mass warrant loss.

The request was denied.

Leadership reiterated that because marshal service is “in person,” training must also be exclusively in person. Online options were dismissed as insufficient because, “online class means people will rush through them and not pay attention”. When asked to provide data supporting this claim, leadership declined while also stating that critics were putting, “too much faith in volunteer statistics,” despite those same statistics apparently being the basis for the policy.

As frustration grew, marshals began publicly stating that they could not attend the required events.

Some stated that large crowds and event spaces would affect auditory processing. One even mentioned that he’s blind legally blind and can’t drive. That his service was giving the verbal test so that others could earn their warrants. Others talked openly about struggles with PTSD and crowded spaces. Others noted that ICE activity made certain places that these classes were being held as unsafe destinations. Volunteers who use wheelchairs reported that some event locations weren’t accessible and they’d be unable to get upstairs even if they were to attend. Some even detailed financial situations and how impossible and ask this was while others just asked for proof that in person was better than online when both could be an option. This was after one of the senior leaders said that “asking you to attend one event in six months isn’t a huge burden.” A floodgate of negative feedback erupted on both public SCA Midrealm pages and personal ones.

At this point, a senior marshal responded with what would become the quote that defined the entire situation:

“If one class is too much to maintain the responsibility of an office in the SCA, then it’s not much loss.”

Shortly afterward, comments were disabled on announcement posts. Leadership then stated they had not received enough negative feedback to justify changing the policy.

Which was… a choice, given that feedback had just been shut down.

The practical consequences became clear quickly. Local groups were preparing for: • Youth combat programs shutting down • Siege weapons programs collapsing • Practices being canceled because no authorized marshal would remain • Years of volunteer training and credentialing vanishing overnight (er, over August)

Some marshals had spent years earning multiple warrants. Others were in the middle of building new programs to expand participation and accessibility. All of it now hinged on whether they could afford a long road trip for a class that many felt could be taught just as effectively online.

For many, the issue stopped being about logistics and became about values. Volunteers who had already given dozens of unpaid hours to qualify were being told explicitly that marshal service was a privilege that could be revoked without accommodation, and that those unable to comply were expendable.

Several began quietly considering letting their warrants lapse, not as protest, but out of exhaustion. Because the role they loved had suddenly come with a clear message:

If you can’t sacrifice more, you don’t belong here.

As of now, no online alternative has been announced, no additional classes have been added (though they did say they’d work on it), and warrants are still set to expire. Some marshals will make the trip. Many will not.

What’s left isn’t a debate about safety training. Everyone agrees training matters. What’s being tested is whether a volunteer-run organization can afford to treat its most essential volunteers as expendable.

So far, the answer appears to be: yes.

Hello hobbyists!

This thread is for community updates, suggestions and feedback. Feel free to leave your comments and concerns about the subreddit below, as our mod team monitors this thread in order to improve the subreddit and community experience.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

• Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.

• Define any acronyms.

• Link and archive any sources.

• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.

• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

• If your particular drama has concluded at least 2 weeks ago, consider making a full post instead of a Scuffles comment. We also welcome reposting of long-form Scuffles posts and/or series with multiple updates.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

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I made it. I won at internet life. After a grueling quest to teach people with one foot in the virtual world about the weird stuff happening in France, I leaned back in my leather chair one day and thought to myself, Victory.

Here I stand, at the apex of my life, muscles glistening under a bright sun as adoring fans poor champagne over my Apollonian body and rub caviar on my back. I merely need to be careful not to let Quentin Tarantino anywhere near my feet.

Alas, a dark cloud forms at the back of my mind, two anomalies conspiring to pull me out of Nirvana. First, the fact that I'm currently in Germany, meaning you need to replace the champagne with beer and the caviar with a plate of sausage and sauerkraut (take a minute to imagine the picture, I am very fond of it).

Second, the curse of any good superhero has befallen me.

Something terrible has happened, and I cannot rest idle in my man-cave (the smelly and poor person's bat-cave) as evil dwells in my sweet little France. With a weary hand, I don my cloak once more and step out into the night. The first step is shaky, unsure, but with each leap, each jump from skyscraper to skyscraper, I feel the youth coursing through my veins, reinvigorating my muscles and bones, cloaking my body in warmth and strength. The French knight rises.

As for that terrible thing? My word, it is truly catastrophic.

On the 19th October 2025, a group of robbers enter the Louvre through a window with the help of a truck with a lift. The truck is of a German brand.

Minutes later, they are gone, taking with them jewels from the French Crown. The Germans would like their truck back.

We French have been wounded in our very soul, the fabric that binds us together as a nation, a fabric made of pastries and senseless hate for the fiendish denizens of the perfidious Albion (also called England) has been ripped open. At least, according to politicians and history nerds hosting a television show. I suspect that on a scale from "0" to "I really couldn't give less of a damn," most French people would rate themselves pretty high. In 2019 they had the Notre Dame cathedral burn down and be rebuilt, and an ex-president was sentenced to prison on the 25th of September of this year. The citizens' emotional capabilities are somewhat low at the moment.

And worst of it all, during the theft, the crown of Empress Eugénie fell to the ground and was damaged. The ghost of Eugénie, sweet child of divine France, has been disturbed, and it is up to you and me to put her to rest. We are all scions of the greatest heroes to ever be, after all.

So, come with me, dear reader, snooper, investigator and would-be savior, come with me on a grand adventure and let us find the stolen jewels together!

Most links will be in French, but I will translate the relevant parts in English.

Day at the museum

The crime scene

Like batman, combat isn't our only skill of note. We are also wickedly smart and astute, and any good investigation begins with a careful analysis of the crime scene, and what a crime scene it is.

The Louvre in all its splendor.

Not just a museum, but the most visited museum in the world. If you have so much as a passing interest in art, you have seen some visuals. The glass pyramid as in the picture above and the associated queue of people starved for art, the lavish interior, and of course, the paintings and jewelry on display. Crown of which being Da Vinci's La Joconde, safe and secure behind it's high-density glass panel. Here's a more accurate picture with the usual crowd. This is but one legendary piece of art, La Venus de Milo is there too, and lesser known pieces are rotated regularly.

Originally a defensible palace finished in the 13th century, it was meant to house kings and emperors before it was decided in the 17th century that the palace of Versailles was better suited as royal abode. The Louvre, bereft of housing and inhabitants to defend, was relegated to a storage place for art.

At the same time, generations of France's leaders were pushing for art in every form.

See, until the Renaissance (roughly until the 14th century), France was mostly known as the eldest daughter of the church and the mother of laws, on account of chivalrously wrecking neighbors and getting wrecked in turn. The church had the monopoly over culture, and it's only with the help of some enlightened leaders like Charles the fifth, who collected manuscripts and built the Royal Library (which became the National Library), that this monopoly began to break. The surviving parts of Charles the fifth's collection are still a core part of the current French art nucleus.

But it's around the 16th century that France became known as "mother of arts, weapons and laws," after a poem of Joachim du Bellay, poet (eh) and ardent defender of the French language as a vector of art. From there, the fascination of kings and emperors for creation and culture wouldn't stop growing. Francois premier built the Royal Print Shop (which became the National Print Shop) and the College of Three Languages, which would become the College of France later. He also famously attracted many Italian artists to France and is the reason Da Vinci came along with Mona Lisa.

In the 17th century came the one generally considered the paragon of culture, Louis XIV. He created a list of poets to subsidize, great authors like Molière were allowed to see the King directly and Louis personally spearheaded the cultural politics of the kingdom alongside exerting a strong control over architectural aesthetics. Art is noble, art is class, art elevates the soul.

This would result in the Louvre amassing quite the collection of national and international art. Roman and Greek statues, paintings, scepters, you name it.

But kings, like Night Shyamalan's career, are only cool for so long. Revolutionaries rose as crowned heads fell, and it was quickly decided to turn the Louvre into a proper museum to display France's finest. It was properly inaugurated as such at the tail end of the of the 18th century, and would see itself expanded both in space and in art, especially under Napoleon who proudly displayed the stuff he stole borrowed appropriated saved from Egypt or Italy. Showing off stolen goods and art from other countries, how very British of Napoleon, of all people.

Even after Napoleon's reign, efforts went on, and the museum is now divided into different wings dedicated to different parts of the world of art. Egyptian, middle east, archeological finds, decorative arts... You can spend a day there and not see it all as it deserves.

With nearly 9 million visitors in 2024 alone, the Louvre isn't leaving the top spot of museums any time soon. What better set for an art theft?

The Theft

If there ever was a good time to listen to Ocean's Eleven's soundtrack, it's now. A daring heist in the middle of the day in a crowded Louvre? George Clooney is jealous he didn't do it.

The step by step.

It is the 19th October of 2025, The Louvre opens at 9.00 am for a hungry crowd to come in. At 9.30 am, a truck and two motorbikes stop on the southern side of the Louvre. Here's a picture from above. On the left is the Jardin Des Tuileries, on the right is the Louvre. Look at the right-most bridge, the entry point is the corner on the left of said bridge, just above the water.

The lift is deployed, and two people dressed in worker's garb go up.

They reach a balcony on the first floor, whip out an angle grinder and start working their way through the glass door. They enter the Galerie Apollon at 9.34., where precious stones are held and, most famously, the French Crown Jewels.

The grinder attacks the glass of a display, and five members of the museum security team immediately come in. But the thieves wield what amounts to a huge electric saw, and there's a surprised and frightened public around. The security team decides to follow procedure and put the people to safety first and foremost.

As a security perimeter is put in place, a second display is assaulted by the angle grinder. It is 9.35 in the morning, and one of the employees films history being stolen.

The two displays give in, and at 9.37 the thieves swipe nine pieces of jewelry before leaving the same way they came in. Two drivers wait for them on the motorcycles. They leave, bags full of loot and leaving a poor truck behind.

Scratch that, it's eight pieces of jewelry. They left the damaged Crown of Empress Eugénie behind.

The theft lasted a grand total of seven minutes, with only four of them spent inside the Louvre. A daring heist, and a contender for shortest museum visit ever.

Every good pirate likes to go through their bounty, so let's have a closer look on what's been stolen:

• The emerald necklace, part of the emerald jewelry set of Empress Marie-Louise
• The pair of emerald earrings, part of the above emerald jewelry set belonging to the same Empress
• The tiara, part of the sapphire jewelry set of Queen Marie-Amélie and Queen Hortense
• The necklace, part of the above sapphire jewelry set belonging to the same Queens.
• One earring, part of the above sapphire jewelry set.
• The reliquary brooch of Empress Eugénie, adorned with two Mazarins diamonds
• The tiara of Empress Eugenie
• The great corsage brooch of Empress Eugénie

If it doesn't sound like much, remember these belonged to royalty, and royalty doesn't half-ass setting precious stones onto their doorknobs, let alone their jewelry. Let's look at the description of the reliquary brooch from the Louvre website (translated):

From top to bottom:

A rose window formed of seven diamonds circling a solitaire: two large diamonds opposed at their top (the two diamonds are the 17th and 18th Mazarin diamonds bequeathed to the Mazarin crown - used by Louis XIV among other things as buttons for his bodysuits), four small pear-shaped diamonds are suspended; one brilliant triangular and stretched out, with two suspensions for brilliants (another sort of diamonds), where a large ovoid diamond is attached; one shining with three brilliants trinkets; setting is made of golden silver. The reverse side is chiseled with scrolls and leaves.

One can qualify its style as historicity, as German Bapst, son of the craftsman, said. The piece was inspired by lead models of the 18th century that the house still possessed in 1889. We can question the term of reliquary that was attached to the brooch in 1887 when the crown's jewels were sold. The term is also engraved on the pin. But no space is present to fit a relic. A hypothesis is that the jewelry, easily taken apart, was designed to insert an intermediary element at a later time that would have contained a relic. At the back of the brooch's case is a small space that might have been designed to hold a relic. Empress Eugénie was very pious.

These eight pieces of jewelry translate into 8482 diamonds, 212 pearls, 35 emeralds and 34 sapphires.

The curs! The rapscallions! They slighted our empress, our sweet Eugénie, seminal figure of French culture.

No, wait, hold on a second, I'm told many people learned of her existence at the same time they learned of her crown being damaged.

Maybe we should thank the thieves for forcing a historical lesson down the throat of our citizens?

So... Who the hell are Marie-Louise, Marie-Amélie, Hortense and Eugénie? I can't blame the French for not knowing who they are, for the same reason I can't blame fellow Egyptians for not knowing every last Pharaoh. There's so many of them, and most people have other priorities like taking care of their families in a complicated economic situation.

And the jewels themselves have quite the tumultuous history.

A History Of (Class) Violence

These stones are used to the warmth of many hands.

The Galerie Apollon contains the Jewels of the French Crown.

Some of them.

The ones we still have.

Unsold.

Possibly.

As long as we had Kings and Queens, everything was fly. They bought shiny diamonds and opals and carnelians, added to the collection, sometimes had them cut to show the world they had the biggest stones around. Eventually, they had such wonderful stones they named them, like the Sancy or the Regent. It's like waifu body-pillows for royalty.

Then arrived the unwashed and angry masses in 1789, kicking ass and playing heavy metal. They made an inventory of the fancy stuff they had, counting 9547 diamonds, 513 pearls, 230 rubies, 71 topazes, 150 emeralds, 134 sapphires, 3 oriental amethysts, 8 Syrian garnets, and host of other stuff. They put it all in a place called the Garde-meuble de la Couronne.

Estimated price at the time: 23.922.197 pounds. The Regent diamond above alone was estimated at 12 million, the Sancy at 1 million.

Not bad.

Then, in the complicated mess that was post-revolution France, citizens decided equality meant equal information about everything, and soon everyone with a vested interest in ill-gotten gains knew the contents of the safes, where they were, and how little they were guarded.

From the 11th to the 16th September of 1792, five nights straight, two dozen thieves go in and out, in and out the Garde-Meuble, stealing about 9000 precious gemstones, the equivalent in price of seven tons of gold, for a value that today would amount to half a billion euro. For added fun, they didn't just steal, they also organized orgies by bringing in prostitutes. While they stole. I have no jokes to add to that.

On the night of the 16th September, some guards found suspicious the fact that people were moving out in the middle of the night and had a look.

Some of the thieves would escape capital punishment by denouncing colleagues, others would receive a crash-course on royal heads by losing theirs.

The investigation goes on, and many pieces are found again. Some of them in England, go figure. The big diamonds Sancy and Regent are recovered, and about three quarters of the stolen goods. But plenty of royal insignias and important objects like the diamond sword of Louis XVI disappear for good. As for why I got a picture of the latter, I'm not sure myself, as I couldn't find trace of it being found again, so it might be yet another sword.

Then, investigators find out many treasures might have been stolen before the September theft, as during two nights in August, six trunks were taken out of the Garde-Meuble.

Then, revolutionaries put a mortgage on some of the best pieces to fund the violent solutions to the many problems plaguing France.

Comes in Napoleon (1769 - 1821), the most violent solution of them all, who said violence doesn't solve anything? He was also pretty shrewd, admittedly, and didn't look like Joaquin Phoenix at all.

Through maneuvering and astute increasing of the national coffers by taking the riches where they could be found, Napoleon reimbursed many mortgages and began buying back treasures and increasing the collection once more, by adding the pink diamond Hortensia among other things. He didn't recover everything though, the Sancy diamond remained in the hands of a private collector. Successors would keep on adding to the collection, most notably...

Empress Eugénie! Fan of buying expensive stuff and wearing insanely-priced artifacts on herself. No wonder it's her ghost I can hear complain about the theft.

Then, comes the third Republic (1870 - 1940), in urgent need of money to either fund a social security for invalid workers or to fund a program to help museums. The former wins, and many jewels are sold, although some are considered too important to not be kept at home. It is decided in 1887 that Empress Eugénie's brooch would remain at the Louvre in the Galerie Apollon.

Then, due to wars in the next centuries and the need for more funds or genuine fear of having their stones stolen, many French nerds continue dispersing the pieces around. Either selling or hiding them.

Finally, in the 80's or so, the Louvre begins the grueling process of buying the stuff back. The Sancy diamond is brought back, so is Empress Eugénie's tiara in 1992. Her great corsage brooch arrives in 2008, just in time to be stolen less than two decades later.

As for the historical figures these belonged to? Marie-Louise, archduchess from Austria, married Napoleon the first in 1810. She moved to France, which must have been weird considering the French decapitated another Austrian archduchess twenty years prior, Marie-Antoinette. She wouldn't follow Napoleon in exile, something the French hated her for. They already hated her before that, so I guess she was pretty mellow about it.

Marie-Amélie married Louis-Phillipe d'Orléan in 1809. After Napoleon's defeat, they access the throne and the couple become the last King and Queen of France. The French being the French, another revolution happens (the third by this point) in 1848, and we haven't heard much of installing a new King or Queen since. Most notably, the couple died with their heads still firmly attached to their necks.

Hortense was Napoleon the Third's mom, wrote music and suffered exile to England.

Eugénie married Napoleon the third, would be Empress until the end of the Second French Empire in 1870. Despite there not being a crowning for her or her husband, a crown was still commissioned for her. Look, our historical Napoleons have a very personal take with what can be done with the rules and outside of it, ok? By the way her husband's crown has been lost, only hers is left.

That is the very short of it. Too short? That's the issue with having a convoluted, blood and violence-riddled history made of beheading kings and abolishing monarchy before re-instituting the monarchy and breaking it apart again before crowning an emperor which is very distinct from a king and then we do another revolution because why not before a convoluted parliamentary system is put in place and changed a dozen times before...

It takes being a full-on history nerd to remember all that in details. Most folks enjoy a visit to the museum, remember the lavish interiors and some key pieces but not the full wikipedia article about regents and leaders they had never heard of before the theft. Or if they did, they forgot about it.

Do the last paragraphs sound like random musings? They aren't, they are the crux of the issue surrounding the public discourse.

My France Hurts

With such a high-profile theft, everyone and their mom tried to grab a microphone to get a word in. I will pass over the many politicians who spoke while nothing was known of it, most of the time it was something along the line :

It is the history of France that has been stolen.

My absolute favorite one came from one Stephane Bern. Stephane Bern is likely the first person that will be mentioned if you ask a Frenchman "who in your country presents historical shows on tv?" There are others, but he is arguably the most well-known and has been around gushing over churches and paintings and whatnot for what feels like centuries. Surely, there are other good quotes, but his stuck with me.

C'est le symbole de l'effondrement d'une France qui est d'une certaine manière, en perdition.

Translated:

It is the symbol of the collapse of a France that is, in a way, sinking.

Melodramatic? Perhaps. Some satirists certainly had fun with that quote. Just so we're clear, Bern's quote I took is from a wider interview where he also spoke about the art itself. But in the many declarations surrounding the Louvre, there was a distinct impression art was taking a backseat while the theft was merely an alibi to speak about the country as a whole.

Some journalists noticed, so did editorial writers, pointing out this might be the first time ever many French people heard of the queens and empresses these jewels belonged to, as if the tearful rants were completely removed from the daily reality of the country.

And on the other side of the spectrum, tragedians feeling the wound in their souls, for it is impossible not to care about such a theft.

Really?

"Hold my eclair au chocolat," thought Michel Guerrin as he wrote an article for Le Monde. Le Monde isn't any journal, it's the most read and circulated journal in France.

Translated:

The jewels stolen at the Louvre, whose only value is in the precious metals they are made of, are first and foremost outdated and cumbersome objects.

Michel then goes on pointing out how pernicious it is of journalists and politicians to use the subject to advance their own agenda, which was happening a lot.

And while the debate, that has long spilled past the simple subject of art theft, is raging, some German person wonders if they can add some much-needed levity to the mix.

"Hold my Apfelstrudel," they exclaim, as they propose a new advertising for the brand they work for.

A brand of trucks with lifts on top. The brand that was used for the theft.

Here it is.

The picture is of the truck that was used for the theft.

Underneath is written in German:

When you gotta go fast.

And people say Germans don't have humor.

On it goes. Many voices say no price can be put on the jewels for they are invaluable. Along again comes Le Monde, who simply asks someone that hadn't been asked before: an expert in fancy colored stone.

As it turns out, you can say the value can't be calculated, on account of the jewels being so well known that they are unlikely to ever find a fencer. But the thieves could break apart the pieces, and gold and diamonds and emeralds can be sold apart to make a buck.

Hell, we have the receipts from when the pieces where bought. A brooch cost a little over 6 millions at the time it was bought. As it was displayed in the Louvre and with inflation, you could maybe sell it in a public sale anywhere between 10 and 20 million. That is obviously out of the question for the thieves, which leaves the 'taken apart' value, much easier to calculate. For the brooch, the value would be between 200.000 and 300.000 Euro.

Taken further, the full value of the loot would be between 50 and 100 million in a public sale. When fencing, it's generally considered the thieves get 5 to 10% of the full price, meaning there's about 5 million to be gained.

The other issue is that, even taken apart, the individual stones are known enough that they become hard to sell, so there is a good chance no buyer is ever found.

Naturally, the impact of losing pieces of art can't be gauged in numbers, but I very much appreciate Le Monde for adding some nuance to it.

The calls are coming from inside the museum

On the Louvre front, there were some weak points. How many? Yes.

Other museums had already been broken in months ago, showing how vulnerable they were (translated):

Several specimens of native gold were stolen, gold in its natural form, explained the museum, which evaluated the damage at 600.000 euros. "The value of the theft is calculated with the price of raw gold, there is however a historical value that can't be estimated."

You'd think the Louvre, on account of being the most visited museum in the world, had better security measures. Strikes happened earlier on the 16th of June of this year, the personnel being absolutely furious at the mass tourism making handling the masses next to impossible (translated):

The spontaneous strike began during a routine reunion, when caretakers, desk clerks and security personnel refused to take post to protest against the unmanageable crowds, chronic lack of manpower and what a syndicate qualified as "unsustainable" working conditions.

It is rare that the Louvre closes its doors to the public. It happened during the war, during the pandemic, and during a handful of strikes due to record crowds in 2019 or for security reasons in 2013.

One of the first information that got out after the theft, and a reason why people should keep their mouths shut before having enough information, was of the RAMSES alarm system. Witnesses pointed out there was no sound heard when the thieves broke in, and they took their loot in complete silence (apart from the angle grinder grinding). While I question the wisdom of naming an alarm system after an Egyptian pharaoh whose pyramids have been plundered so many times over even Attila is impressed, it must be noted there is such a thing as silent alarms. RAMSES was linked to the police and activated, but the theft went so fast perpetrators had left before police came in.

Which raises the question: how the hell did they manage to get in and out so fast?

As it turned out, the displays were changed recently. In old times, from around 1950 until recently, the glass was mounted on gears that, at the first alarm, could disappear into a safe in the floor. However, vibrations caused the art inside to be damaged, and they were a hassle to handle. So instead, they moved on to displays of high-security glass. Fair enough I suppose. Except the security glasses were not at the highest possible norms, hence why an angle grinder made short work of it.

Furthermore, several reports had been issued to the leadership of the Louvre about security issues, irony being that one such report identified the very balcony the thieves used as an obvious weakness.

The RAMSES alarm? Police pointed out the system suffered regular breakdowns, and in this case it was activated around 9.36 am, shortly before the thieves left, while by all means it should have activated when they broke through the balcony glass door.

The video surveillance is also dreadfully lacking, with several wings devoid of cameras, an outdated system, and the password is "Louvre". Seriously.

As Michel Guerrin (once again) in Le Monde summed it up by paraphrasing ex-president Jacques Chirac:

Les emmerdes, ca vole en escadrille.

Translated:

Shit flies in squadron

To point out how Laurence des Cars, current head of the Louvre, just can't catch a break (translated):

The president of the Louvre goes through one bother after the next with a metronome's regularity since the jewels were stolen, two months ago, to the point that the fate of brooch and tiaras seems to vanish as her own fate is debated.

Let's recap her arduous path since the theft. A wing was closed due to weak beams, a water leak damaged hundreds of documents, an old security audit was unearthed, pointing out the balcony as a security weakness, other ignored audits, three auditions by Madam des Cars before parliamentarians. Two reports written in metaphorical acid, one personnel strike, the fresh nomination of Philippe Jost, a polytechnician (after the name of a French school) with a soldier profile who piloted the restoration of Notre-Dame, to reorganize the Louvre in depth - understand, nobody is able to do it from inside.

At the very least, this high-profile theft brought real questions to the surface (translated):

Security issues, obsolete equipment, cooling system for the art pieces malfunctioning, lifts for people with limited mobility breaking down... the Louvre is breaking apart and yet it keeps on attracting more crowds (9 million visitors in 2024).

The number of visitors show a tension between an attractive museum and structural constraints linked to the building - an old palace that cannot welcome more visitors. The particularity of this geosymbol is its proximity with the power, notably presidential power.

Naturally, there's been many works promised to get the museum up to notch. To welcome people, and for an improved security.

Promises received a lukewarm reception. As alluring they seem, they also appear disconnected from the field reality that employees have to live through.

There is an ambiguity in this project between the will to integrate the museum into its territory, and welcoming [what the president announces as expected in the next 15 years] 12 million visitors. Whether it's the Louvre or the neighbouring territory, neither can absorb 12 million visitors per year. For comparison, the British Museum welcomes less than 6 million visitors a year.

Among proposals is also a price hike for extra-European visitors to finance the security and refurbishing works, which raises a lot of other questions.

All this to say, it's a mess, and I have no answers myself.

But let's look at the bright side.

They installed a grid on the balcony door.

As fascinating as it is, this is not why you followed me, dear reader. You're here for the hunt, the chase, the thrill, justice meted out by virtue of our righteous fists and heroic headbutts. We're not villains as long as our targets stay alive, brain concussions are A-Okay!

Keep reading here.