August 11, 2014.
I woke up and browsed Donkdown, as I had so many other days.
I saw a "Donate" button on the top-left of the site. No explanation. No post about it by Micon. No e-mail about it to me. Just a donate button.
I didn't even know where the money was supposed to be going, since I was supposed to be holding all the money for the site. (I think you can guess where it was going.)
I then thought about a conversation from a week prior....
Druff: Anyway, I've been wanting to talk to you about all these inactive forums we have, where nobody's posted in months. I want to consolidate a bunch of them. I almost went and did it on my own last night, but I figured you'd be pissed if I made a decision like that on my own.
Micon: You're damn right I would've been pissed. You know we agreed never to make any changes without consulting the other!
So I was dumbfounded.
Somehow consolidating a bunch of super-inactive subforums without discussion would have been a sin, but posting a button for donations isn't discussion-worthy at all?
This followed "hat-gate", where we had run out of DD hats to give away, or so I thought. I posted that I wished I could give away more hats, but we were completely out, and in fact felt bad that a few deserving active users missed out. Then someone found an eBay auction where Micon was quietly selling one for $8. This was highly embarrassing, and Micon never understood why I felt this looked bad for us.
Between hatgate and the sudden, unexplained appearance of the donate button, we looked like pathetic beggars. Had I been consulted, I would have insisted that we precede it with an explanation, letting everyone know we couldn't get many sponsors due to our controversial content, and to donate if you enjoy the controversial content and free speech atmosphere. Instead, the button just appeared, and the users were already making fun of us about it in a new thread.
I posted a sarcastic one-liner in response: "Glad to see I was informed about this beforehand."
Micon saw it, and blew his top. He wrote his infamous "I CREATED THIS THING, DON'T YOU FUCKING FORGET THAT" post in response, outlining five reasons why I was terrible for Donkdown and had been holding it back from success.
That was the beginning of the end.
I was forced out of ownership there by a month later.
During that month, the trolls residing at skatz, correctly sensing serious dissent in the ranks, all returned to Donkdown with the simple purpose of enflaming the situation. I'll give them credit. They were actually incredibly successful at doing so. I saw exactly what they were doing from day one, but Micon was blind to it, believing that this was simply "the return of old NWP", and this of course caused all kinds of further problems between us. I actually still get angry thinking about this situation, because it degenerated to some of these guys posting pics of little kids in my family with just their faces censored, and somehow Micon thought that should be okay. I sat there arguing for hours on the phone with him, where he kept insisting I was being "heavy handed" to ban people for this, and he was actually trying to lecture me that people should be allowed to post stolen pics of little kids in my famly, as long as "most" of their face/body is covered. I was exasperated. I kept asking him why, as a fucking owner of the site, I didn't have a right to stop ANY stolen family pics from being posted, especially of kids. "Free speech" was the answer.
He kept unbanning anyone I banned for this or any other offense. Things deteriorated very quickly.
It should be noted that many of the same skatz guys who posted these family pics (or supported them being posted) were among the first to PM me in 2014 after I got into the admin forum and I harvested tons of info. These PMs all expressed concern that I was going to post personal information about them or their families. Funny how what's good for the goose wasn't what was good for the gander. However, I was only interested at that point in ending things, so I told them that I wasn't going to do anything, provided the hostilities finally ceased. For the most part, other than some shitposting and a few todgers, they have.
But I'm getting off course here.
Bottom line is that the events of August 14, 2011 are the reason PFA exists today.
When I left Donkdown a month later, I really believed I was leavng all of these poker forums for good. In fact, my only concern was to protect my family against further info/pics from being posted, which is why I sold my part of the site for a laughably cheap $1200 (which Micon made back from sponsors in 5 weeks) ON CREDIT. That is, Micon owned the site immediately but was able to wait until the site generated enough profit to actually pay me. In return, Micon signed a contract promising to keep my personal info off the site. The contract had no language forbidding a site like PFA being started, and in fact I told Micon there was a chance I would "start another site in 6-12 months", but at the time I left, I had no desire to do so.
Indeed, six months later I did start my own site. Several people had been e-mailing me, saying that they missed my presence both on radio and in the forums, and that they really wanted me to start a new site. Eventually I agreed to do it, and PFA was born.
Interestingly, I almost made the same mistake as I did with DD, letting someone else have a hand with being in charge. A user (one who posted here awhile but vanished around early 2014) offered to start a new site for me, and would do all of the technical work and design. At the time I had no experience running things like this from a technical standpoint, and was too lazy to learn all of it. I had the programming background, but there was still a learning curve. At the same time, I wasn't sure I wanted any kind of partner, even one who claimed he'd do it for free (as this guy was). I dragged my feet with giving this guy an answer, and he got insulted and rescinded the offer. At that point, I set out to do everything myself, and here we are.