What happened?

[indolering]

It's been a long time, so for people who weren't around since Namecoin rebooted in the 2015ish era ... hello! I was extremely active on the project during my college years: starting with helping the community get back control of online infrastructure, I built a JavaScript DNS polyfill (speech.is), and I spent a few years trying to get funding. I burned myself out on the project and then was hit with some really bad medical issues. I had to move back into my parents and it was touch-and-go for a while.

In the middle of that, I ran into an announcement on the Namecoin subreddit posted by Jeremy Rand (biolizard) claiming that everyone had “became aware of past activity by our former UX engineer, Zachary Lym (AKA indolering), that we cannot ethically condone.” I was never contacted over this and don’t know what behavior Jeremy was talking about. This was an extremely painful development for me, given how much I had sacrificed for the project personally.

Initially I got angry and jumped onto IRC and said some dumb shit to Jeremy that I should not have, for which I am very sorry. I planned on following up but at that point I thought I was going to die, so I just went back to crying in bed.

I have been better for a while now, thanks to some new treatments. But I have a big resume gap and it’s been very difficult getting a job in IT. This is compounded by the fact that I can’t reference the biggest accomplishment of my university career. I live in fear of an employer finding the Reddit post.

Every 6 months or so I get a bit of emotional strength to try and face this directly. When I reached out to people who (in most cases) were still listed as active core members of the project (ryan-c, Midnightmagic, domob) they were unaware of the accusations. When I was a core member something like this would have required a consensus of ACKs but even Domob claims to not know why I was expelled from the project. I don't understand why I was never contacted nor allowed to defend myself yet my behavior was so terrible that this project felt it necessary to burn my reputation (in an industry built on reputation).

I’ve tried to contact Jeremy directly and through others, but he refuses to speak to me directly. I’ve tried searching online, but Google doesn’t show any results for my name on this forum from between 2016 and 2019 and the forum search itself keeps erroring out. I do remember reading some weird accusations about how a joke project was a sign of mental illness. But that’s about it.

So I don’t know what behavior I am being accused of and was never asked to comment on it. I was very sharp elbowed back then and I’m certain that I’ve hurt Jeremy - someone I considered a best friend. But I feel that I was very transparent about my actions at the time and don’t know what new information came to light.

I am here to ask what happened and what I can do to make amends. Hopefully I’m strong enough to see this through this time, but this whole thing is still very painful for me. If I just stop responding ... it will probably be a few more months until I can get back the courage.

Please help me.

-indolering