I feel like this is something important to talk about, I've been very
withheld for a while about it all and just decided it'd probably be best
to just let it out so I can feel relaxed a little more I guess. This will be
a very long read I'm sure, I'm writing this in my bath at 4am on my
phone so forgive any mistakes or confusing bits.

Back in October/November of 2020, I for the first time since when
16 had just released I decided to try and speedrun 1 16 some to
get a decent time. My goal was to get a time faster than 25 minutes,
which was a good time and fairly obtainable at the time for me
without spending months speedrunning_ We had or were just about
to switch manhunt to 1 _ 16 and I wanted to get practice for that, and
then speedrun for a better 1.15 time; because my record on 1.15 had
been beaten

After running for about a week, I got a 19 minute time (that arguably
could have been lower, ironically enough due to bad luck). started
running 1 '5 directly after; and a few day's later there were some
suspicions involving my streamed runs on 1.16. At this point, I was
cooperative but upset and confused that I was being questioned I
provided all the information that could, and assumed that everything
was fine. As chatter grew, I was confused and the numbers didn't
look to be in my favor.

At this point I reached out to the only mojang developer that I had
contact with, and talked for an hour or so about what was going on. I
told him the details and was asking if there's potential for a bug or
glitch, and he told me that no there isn't, but said some things about
how banning for luck seems far fetched and that they should improve
their system.

I felt a little reassured; but also angry that I was potentially being
dragged for absolutely nothing. It wasnt a huge thing yet, but it still
lingered in my mind and I couldnt really think about anything other
than it

As time went on and many weeks passed, I grew more and more
frustrated, convinced that was being targeted due to the fact that I
was a Youtuber and a couple of the mods (self admitted) didnt like
me at all and didn't have many kind words to I was an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥
and lashed out publicly saying the investigation was a farce and
expressing how pissed I was that I was being targeted and that it
was taking so long; as the mods kept giving me deadlines and then
missing them.

This was terribly stupid of me to do. I was scared and stressed and
said and did ♥♥♥♥♥♥ things. I regret ita lot and really wish that I had
been able to keep my calm.

Later that month, the speedrun team released a video and a
document detailing why my 1.16 runs couldnt have been legitimate
based on math and statistics. I admittedly don't know ♥♥♥♥ about math
and statistics, I didn't go to college and I hated math my whole life. At
this point I felt complete fear, as I felt like I had been publicly
smeared in a way that I have no clue how to respond to. I didn't
understand the math and I didn't understand why had been left in
the dark for so long only to have a video dropped randomly on me
right before MCC. At this point and before, I had multiple speedrun
moderators messaging me scary things about how it was a ♥♥♥♥ show
and no one could agree on things just before the release, that they
were clearly biased against me and so on. In retrospect, this may
have been out of fear and wanting to be on the good side of a really
big youtuber, or maybe they were being truthful or a little bit of both
All I know is that it scared me a lot. feeling like everything you built
might come tumbling down and there's nothing you can do about it is
really stressful.

Again, I lashed out I üeeted about the mods being clout chasers;
and said a lot of really dicky things I was pissed, I was scared, and I
was being an idiot.

Shortly after that, someone gave me the idea to hire a professional
statistician I know nothing about math. This calmed me
down a lot and brought me back to a much healthier mindset. I
and I ended up finding two professors and I emailed them
both about the situation asking for assistance. Only one of them was
available to help.

I was looking for help and I told them that I didn't cheat, and that I
just needed a second opinion on the math Eventually the professor
came back with a conclusion that the mods numbers were off by a
significant significant margin; and that's it's possible although
extremely unlikely. Again, not completely understanding math but
knowing that my experts opinion seemed to be that the mods were
off; I felt vindicated and relieved. I made a video about it, and
expressed the professors views. people hounded me for it saying
that the Astro physicist was fake; but the mods confirmed it was legit.
I just wanted a (mostly) unbiased parties opinion.

The mods came back with a response; correcting the professor and
saying that he was off and providing reasons for why. Again, I don't
understand complicated math so I sent it directly to the professor
asking for his thoughts. Later on; he came back admitting there were
mistakes in his original assessment, although he still believed theirs
was off In his rebuttal though, he came to the conclusion that It's
improbable that didn't cheat I felt like the right thing to do was post
his findings, even though he hadn't asked me to yet, I did I tweeted
them out and replied saying that I agree that It seems more likely
than not that I cheated. I didn't say anything more than that.

Funnily enough; he actually emailed me a day or two later saying I
need to post his findings, or he will (semi-threatening, but not in a
mean way), and I responded that already had before he even
asked.

At this point was lost, and was fairly confused about the whole
thing Wondering what the other options were and exploring the
possibilities. as much as I was confident that I didnt cheat, I had
never explored the option that I possibly did due to the way reacted
to the mods and perceived everything going on I was convinced that
they were out to get me. I tunnel visioned and was paranoid and
didn't think straight. had plenty of valid reasons to believe that they
weren't impartial, and had the mod team and I been completely
friendly from the beginning I it never would have gotten to the
point that it did.

After considering this, I ended up finding out that I HAD actually
using a disallowed modification during —6 of my live streams on
Twitch At the time we were just starting to record videos on 1.16 and
we had just hired a developer to help with ctxiing mods for videos
because me and George had no experience with mods only plugins.
One of the mtxis that they were working on was an overall recording
mod, that I have used in every video (with updates and
improvements) since around the speedrun controversy You may
notice it in my videos due to f3 being small or particles being
reduced, or recently on my streams things like the background being
custom or a "Dreams servers" option and plenty of other features and
improvements.

In our challenge videos, before 1.16 we always increased the
enderman spawn rates and pearl drop rates out of convenience and
we've mentioned that openly before. It makes the videos better
because we don't spend hours looking for pearls or spend so much
time farming blaze axis (a totally RNG thing, mostly pearls). When 1.16
came out, it was more complicated to increase piglin trades
then it is to do enderman pearl drops. A server side plugin was made
for our videos that slightly increases the rates. Around this time is
when the first versions of the recording mod was being made;
although it was more of a chat at this point.

I had considered at the time that this potentially could have been a
problem, but brushed it off because 1 Server side and client side are
completely different and as far as I was aware nothing had been
done client side. 2