A Joe Update

[KoD]

First, there is still no indication that joe has made contact with anyone or has gotten online since 2011. This is only details regarding the circumstances of joe's disappearance.

I reached out to Joe's landlord after she had requested information regarding Joe on these forums twice, most recently late last year. I told her what we knew, what he's said, and when we last heard from him. She responded and informed me that joe did not necessarily leave joe.to out of frustration because of how the senior members were treating the new members & the hostility that was around at the time. She had personal reasons for asking joe to vacate. She kindly gave him $2,000 and he left with only his computer. He left behind his cat, his other belongings, and everything else. What he's done since then is a mystery.
For reasons of transparency and to show everyone at joe.to the entire picture as I know it, I will share what I know. I've removed some names from some of the quotes below.

First is joe's (second to) last post, made to the forum administrators:

following a long trend of people trashing threads and shitting on people until it got to the point where several threads had nothing but pages of people insulting on the thread starter, i asked people to be a little nicer

i expected some support, at least a little. i got none.

other than banning about a dozen people, i can't do anything on my own and nobody else seems to give a shit so i guess fuck it, you guys can have yet another online community where everyone acts like (redacted) and everyone competes to see how obnoxious and rude they can be to each other and all the nice people leave.

Moving forward, around 6-7 years with nothing from Joe, my initial E-mail to his former landlord and friend -- after she posted on the message board here that she was going to get rid of joe's belongings unless he came and collected them:

Dear D(redacted),
We have been unable to contact Joe since he disappeared in 2011. Since then he has not logged in to any of his online accounts on any website or platform. We sadly feared the worst and even debated contacting you several years ago, but wanted to respect your privacy. I'm sorry we cannot help you in figuring out what to do with joe's things. I knew joe for about a decade before he vanished, and he was regrettably quite suicidal - and you may already be aware of that. While trying to therapeutically communicate with joe, he told me of his plans. Included in these plans was his desire to want nobody to "ever find my body" as he didn't want to "leave a mess for anyone to have to clean up".

When he became increasingly frustrated and threatened to leave his own community, I was very worried. In hindsight, I should have thought something was wrong when he sold his extremely rare Steam account. He stated however that this was for financial reasons, and indeed he did apparently use the money to ensure the http://www.joe.to domain stayed in our possession for many many years. When he stopped logging in I held up hope he was merely taking a hiatus from the computer, but once I learned from you that joe had left behind his cat ... the thing he seemed to love more than anything else in the world ... I was devastated and began to think my worst fears were true. He left a final post in the private administrator subforum on joe.to, stating that he was tired of the negativity and harassment he's seen from certain community members and other people he associated with, and was not going to return. Sadly we have not heard from him since. No messages, e-mails or logins, from any website, game or messaging platform that he's ever been associated with that we're aware of - and we had been monitoring them, for years.

Sorry I have not spoken to you about this sooner. Me and the other joe.to administrators debated in private whether or not to reach out to those we knew joe was associated with in real life, and we decided that if joe were around, he wouldn't want us to do that. Seeing now that this has likely been giving you a great amount of stress and confusion, I have decided on my own accord to e-mail you and let you know everything I do about joe and his whereabouts. I'm sorry that I don't have more information, or better spirited information to share with you. I miss joe every day, he taught me many things and made me a better person. I am grateful to have been his friend. Feel free to contact me any time for any reason, and thank you for giving Joe a home for so many years.

Best regards,
-T "KoD"(Redacted)

Her response:

T(Redacted) -

Thanks for the thoughtful message. I was also impacted my Joe's intellect, compassion, generosity and frustrated by his stubbornness and depression (he talked about suicide often and asked that his body be put into a trash bag thrown into a dumpster).

I asked him to leave because he had been (at my residence) for ~7 years and my kids were graduating high school and I felt that it was time he move out and on. I gave him 2k and he left with nothing but his computer. He needed to transition - it's weird because my kids "feel" like he is still alive out there somewhere

Your community was his passion and where he found friendships and the ability to help people in a way that was comfortable for him. So I though that the Joe.to community might want a few a his personal things, pics or whatever. I'm sure Joe would want me to burn it all.

Let me know Reach out anytime -
D(redacted)

I've responded and stated I would be willing to take joe's things and pay for the shipping, and store them in case he ever returned. I would like to preserve them instead of letting them be thrown away or destroyed. I haven't gotten an e-mail back, but I sent another one today.


This obviously doesn't change anything for us since joe still hasn't shown any sign of activity, but I hope he is still out there somewhere. He always said he was happiest when he lived a simple life, working at a bike shop and riding his bike everywhere. I like to think he's currently riding a bike around, working a simple job and appreciating the simple things in life that most people take for granted.

[marbear]

Thanks for caring, KoD, I admire your dedication and loyalty to your friend. I hope that Joe is living his best life out there somewhere.

[Ian7]

Joe to me was always a ghost. I had not gotten close to him as I had not matured enough personally before he left the community. I will say I can feel the secondary effects of everything that people have mentioned about him. This community back in its "prime" really changed me as a person and helped me mature and I took a lot of things I learned from people here and applied them irl. I've always thought Joe left and reinvented himself. But thanks for the info KOD, I appreciate it.

[Django]

replace frodo and sam with joe

[Sanvich Hoovy]

Hey KoD, thanks for being transparent about all this, I never met Joe but from all that I've heard, I wish I had. I hope he comes back someday, or if not, that he's happy.

[narwal]

" I miss joe every day, he taught me many things and made me a better person. I am grateful to have been his friend. "


You're a good dude, KoD. Here's to joe.

[Neelpos]

Hey KoD, thanks for being transparent about all this,

Very much this, it's nice to hear something concrete rather than the rumors that have circulated over the years, though the truth isn't as uplifting as I would have hoped. Even though it was mentioned as not being behind his reasoning I still feel pretty guilty being one of the people who ripped on Crafties often, even with that one period where they worshiped me for some reason. I was still part of what I later realized was a problem, and I regret it.

[MrBlip]

:(

you guys can have yet another online community where everyone acts like (redacted) and everyone competes to see how obnoxious and rude they can be to each other and all the nice people leave.

let the world know that im 99% sure that redacted name is mine. i feel terrible about it, not like that changes anything.

[NIPPER]

no way it was you blip, we had some real shitheads around when he left.

I really hope joe is still out there somewhere, he was a huge influence on me back in the day.

Also I'd love to hear what he has to say about the current political nightmare we are living in.

[Nightwolf]

I do miss joe. I remember play with him BF2, good times. Sometimes we did into arguments online, but all in all I hope he is well where ever he is.

[AMMO]

If joe ever reads this, I just want you to know that playing BF 2142 with you, NIPPER, Hairy, Magnus, etc. were some of my best memories playing video games.

[otterfiend]

Was Joe a morning person? If so, I might have a solid lead:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morning_Joe

What if he's training to take over the show? Think about it
.
Also, I seriously hope Joe is actually okay. Something serious must have happened to have him leave his cat behind.

[Haymakers9th]

Thanks for the effort KoD. I didn't realize his ghosting was that sudden and harsh IRL too. I hope he's okay. The cat thing really troubles me.

[a1dan]

This is very upsetting, I hope you're okay joe.

[Coroner]

OMG! I'm sitting here thinking about Joe so I show up after all these years (Don't game much anymore) and read all this. This is some really sad stuff! Way back in like 02 or 03 my son bought CS and I got hooked. Found one of Joe's servers and he embarrassed the hell out of me. He must have buried me a dozen times when I failed to find and rescue hostages before he told me to come here and learn some stuff. He said "Hey Coroner, the hostages aren't gonna rescue themselves!" Heard my voice and called me "Old Man". He taught me how to admin a CS server in fact it was a Joe.to server that I first admin'ed on. If it wasn't for Joe I would have never found NIPPER and all his bad ass maps to load into my servers after Joe took down his CS servers.

All I can say it that I will pray that Joe is alive and well and will keep an eye on this place for any news. If there's any change PLEASE email me at nascar0u81@gmail.com or coroner@cscoroner.com.

Sincerely,
---Jim