Cherry Judas
Professor Foxay Love
ATRL Banland 101
April 9, 2011

Absolute Total Request Live, better known by the acronym ATRL, a website that has been devoted to pop culture since 1999, may seem, to the ordinary person, like just a website; a music forum; a venue for whites, blacks, gays, straights, cholas, orient-mades to run around and freely declare their love for the female pop star for whom they stan. But that is only how it seems to those who are on what I would like to call “the outside”. Once you take a bite into the apple, and by that I mean join the site, you can finally view the core. And at the core of ATRL is more than just stan wars and ebonics; rather, an experience. It was an experience that I took for granted, and only months later came to appreciate.

Perhaps, to best understand my story, I should provide some background information. In the summer of 2010, I joined ATRL under the username Poison. Then a highly-delusional (and possibly mentally ill) Lady Gaga stan pretending to be a girl, I knew nothing of the rules, quickly had my derriere handed to me, and was banned just a week or so after I joined for too quickly accumulating 20 points on my account. In just a few quick days, I learned of the dangers that came from rubbing Beyonce Giselle Knowles stans the wrong way. A second attempt at rejoining shortly after the ban was shot down, and then I abandoned the site for a few months. In September, I tried yet again to rejoin and was quite surprised when my account was approved and I was, yet again, free to roam the Absolute Total Request Live server. Now known as Cherry, and finally identifying myself as the male that shot out of my mother’s womb on April 2, 1995 in Charlotte, North Carolina in the beautiful country known as the United States of America, I had a shot at redemption, a shot that I knew I could not blow.

Hiding from everyone my former identity, which was quickly forgotten, I fell victim to the core of ATRL. ATRL no longer became an online hobby, an extracurricular activity of sorts, if you will. It became an addiction. Just like fellow legends such as Whitney Houston and Amy Winehouse did before me, I became the servant to a drug. Not cocaine, not alcohol. My drug became canceling social events and locking myself in my room for hours upon hours, perfecting my ATRL lingo and inflating my post count. It became a nasty, sick, filthy craving. My family and friends doubted my sanity, and so did I eventually. And then it hit me.

Just a week before my favorite, Lady Gaga, was set to release her new single “Born This Way” and ATRL was about to have a massive explosion, one of my fellow stans – a traitor to me, though I presume Professor Love and her fellow moderators would consider him or her a good Samaritan – exposed my previous ways, which led to me receiving a permanent ban, just as the addiction reached its peak. The ban knocked me down a few pegs, and helped me to sort out my life. I took it as a sign from God that I needed to improve my offline interactions, which I did for awhile. But about a week ago, I could not contain myself any longer. The months of lurking, watching my fellow Gaga stans pitifully drag stans of lessor pop girls, and wishing I could be there to help spill tea on a – excuse my usage of profanity in this semiformal essay – bitch ass mother****er, and I finally caved in. I did something that I should never have even considered – I made a third account, despite already being banned for being on my second account. I figured I could crack the system since I was not at home. I was at the beach for spring break, and thus had a different IP address, which allowed me to slip by the admins and have my new account, Judas, approved. My fellow ATRLers saw right through my ploy, though I managed to place the moderators on my side for awhile, with successful IP check runs. But shortly after my arrival back home, the good Professor Love caught on to my ways – how she found out, I do not and may never will know – and issued me another permanent ban. This placed me in a terrible situation, as an attempt to create yet another account would be seen through by everyone, and chances of having the Cherry account unbanned became slim to none after two sock puppetry attempts. But Professor Love made an offer in the No Holds Barred thread that, while difficult to perform, was an offer I could not pass up. And this is the reason I am here today – I am writing a 2,500 word essay explaining why I want to be unbanned from ATRL and why Professor Love, whom I shall refer to from now on as “the good Foxay” – is a bad ass bitch. I think my dedication to this site shows by me writing this essay, one of the many reasons I feel I should be unbanned.

Now, for the next part of this essay, I will explain all of the great things that came from my experiences at ATRL. Second, my vocabulary expanded greatly after taking some lessons in what I would like to call ATRLics – a combination of ebonics, gay slang, and generally terrible, atrocious, poor grammar and / or education. If I had never had joined this amazing, fabulous, and all-around perfect website, I would never have known such iconic vocabulary such as “teas”, “slay”, “gorl” / “gwarl” / “gerl” / “gurl”, “gives me life”, “shade”, “fagg”, “chile” / “ch”, and others. I believe I have said some of these phrases in my offline interactions, which, as one might possibly expect, was met with strange looks and “Are you okay?”s. ATRL also gave something great to me. It gave me something far greater than a more urbanized vocabulary - something much, much greater than a forum for me to ruthlessly defend my favorite and drag all who come for her. It gave me a home. I do not really like talking about this, but offline, I am rather insecure. I was bullied for much of my middle school years and am still bullied somewhat often today in high school. I feel awkward, like I cannot fit in. I am insecure due to my appearance, my weight, and the fact that I am far shier and more reserved than many of my outgoing and popular friends. On ATRL, I get the chance to abandon those insecurities, let my freak flag fly, and get to express myself, let loose, and have fun. It may sound cheesy, but it is true. In the two months and some days that I have been banned from ATRL, excluding the week that I got to briefly return under my third persona Judas, those insecurities came back to haunt me yet again. With no way to let go of them, I became depressed and reached an emotional low, often feeling worthless and crying myself to sleep at night. Not even my queen’s new single “Born This Way” (which you can buy on iTunes today as well as The Country Road Version and Born This Way: The Remixes Parts 1 and 2!), a beautiful self-empowerment and liberation anthem, could help me all that much. I needed my drug, my addiction, my apple core – ATRL – to truly (and this is a testament to how much I have been impacted by the site’s iconic language) “give me life”. For the last few or so days that I got to return, I finally got to enjoy myself again and stop worrying about my insecurities. It may seem a little sad and downright pathetic that I need a website to give me self-validation, but I already have plenty of issues to start with. Have I not already mentioned that I pretended to be three different people online, one of whom was not even of my gender?

Now, let’s move away from Cherry’s Debbie Downer mood for a little bit. ATRL has impacted me in a few more ways. I made several friends while I was an active member. I still keep in regular or semi-regular contact with other ATRLers to this day: Haus of Nicole, Haus of Navin, Cahleb (as much as I do not want to keep in contact with him, he just refuses to leave the IMDb boards and so I must interact with him from time to time), If You Seek LEM, Sammi, and Jonny Lightning, among others. In some ways, I can vicariously enjoy my ATRL experience through them even though I am no longer on the site. I also learned a few things about stan wars. I learned that they can be totally and unapologetically brutal, leaving many wigs snatched from basic bitches’ scalps. I learned that, aside from my fellow Gaga stans, there are two other stanbases who you must watch out for as they refuse to be denied – Beyonce stans and Britney Spears stans. I also learned that, well, you can learn a lot from them. I found lots of interesting tea on artists that I otherwise would never have known if it weren’t for stan wars. All of the things I learned from stan wars helped me when I started or otherwise participated in wars on other sites, such as IMDb and Oh No They Didn’t. I also learned a lot about iTunes and radio charts while I was a member. Fights that I would often get into also taught me some great insults that I have used to own mother****ers who try it with me in the flesh as well as behind the computer screen on other sites. My experiences on ATRL shaped me, made me, and turned me from a boring drag into a perfect, flawless, and (in some ways) ghetto fab human being. I lost all of those qualities the day I was banned. Would we really like to keep depriving a good sis of their right to be without flaw?

All this ranting and rambling has come from me pounding this keyboard frantically for the past hour or so, but I certainly have not forgotten the other task at hand that is required for me to have my ban lifted. Foxay. My good, amazing sis Foxay Love. I must praise the queen Foxay and sing her praises of why she is such a bad ass bitch. This will not be very hard for me to do. Without the generosity, kindness, and mercy of the good Fox, I would still be camping it out in Banland – which is one of the worst vacations I have ever taken in my life, may I say. Foxay is amazing for several – no, not just several – many different reasons. First, she is an incredible stan of Britney Spears. No offense to the rest of the Britbots who may possibly read this sometime in the future, but many of them just flat out suck. Foxay is different. She handles herself with class, integrity, and dignity, which is not easy to do when you stan for that woman. But enough Britney / Britbot shade. Foxay is also great because of her tireless contributions to fighting racism on ATRL. She sticks up for a wonderful community of flawless black people that both she and I are a part of, but also does her deed sticking up for other persecuted races such as Latinos. A true humanitarian, indeed. I would give her the Nobel Peace Prize if I could. Also, she is an excellent moderator. She is shady, yet kind and approachable; funny, yet able to do her job with seriousness when need be. She is one of the best moderators on the ATRL team because of the way she is with people. She is an excellent people person, and quite a popular member on the board, if not one of the most popular members or even the most popular. When she was announced as a moderator in late December 2010, I was very excited and happy for her, because the spot could not have been given to a more deserving ATRL member. I would like to thank her yet again for this amazing, incredible, and once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hop back on the ATRL train. What a clever idea, indeed, to have me write an essay about why I should return. Not only so that she can see my dedication to the site, but also so that I have a way to explain myself for the many wrongs that I have done as an ATRLer.

I have been given a great opportunity to come back to ATRL and redeem myself. If unbanned, I will never use a duplicate account again – simply because I have no need to. If for some reason, I end up with another ban – 30-day or permanent, whichever it may be – I will not use a duplicate, I will simply behave myself and wait and / or type out another essay like this if need be. But I do not think that I would be banned again, because I vow to be on my absolute best behavior. All trolling will remain in Stand Your Ground. All insults will remain in No Holds Barred. All goat gifs will remain in the Loud thread. (Kidding!) I think that if I get this amazing opportunity, I can shape up and prove to everyone what a great ATRLer I can be. I would also like all three accounts – Poison, Cherry, and Judas – merged together under the Cherry name, if possible, so that I and everyone else at ATRL can move on and forget about these previous duplicate account incidents.

My fingers are sore. I am extremely tired. I need 10 pounds of Starbucks right about now. But I have stayed up much, much later than I needed to so that I could write this essay and give back to myself something - a website, a drug, an experience, that I hold very dear to my heart. If ATRL is an apple core, as I said earlier on in this essay, then I wish to yet again be one of the worms crawling along it, in a community that I love and enjoy and that gives me great confidence and self esteem. I would like to thank the ATRL community for amusing me during my ban, as I definitely lurked around a lot. I want to thank all of the members who have been supportive of me during this difficult and long two months. And I have said it many, many times already, but I would like to give a huge thank you to Foxay for allowing me to do this. Thanks so much. You won’t regret letting me back into the club.

**** me and my life.

[Didnt read gif here]


But in all fairness everyone deserves another chance , Interesting read

When the hell will you LESSOR ATRLers gon dew it?

NO WAY?


I can't....

I'm impressed that he actually wrote the essay lol..

So are you gonna un-ban him then?

A ****ing mess

lol.. I really can't believe he did the essay. He really really wants to be back , I guess.

You queens on ATRL are messy as hell, this is why I love this damn site.

He forgot to include can't in his essay. Like I ****ing can't believe he wrote that damn essay. Ch...

Oh please, everytime he apologizes and you let him back in he comes back as the same troll. Let's not forget this is his 4th account an counting, girl please.

You better stan for me boo!

This is a mess.

So you gonna bring him back?

I read it and I must say its beautifully written. Very coherent, smart and witty

And the way Foxay uses her position of a moderator is very admirable for me. She uses it creatively and manages to bring out the best in people. True humanitarian indeed