hey there. this has been on my mind for a while now. i almost opened this with an apology but... what do i have to be sorry for?
as of july 1st 2025, spring is closed to people i do not personally know. all sign up requests that have not been processed in the last 2-3 weeks will be ignored or invited on the condition of passing a vibe check entirely up to me.
i almost apologized again. that's... sort of why i'm writing this the way i am, and why i've made this decision.
spring has been extremely stressful for me since the day most of you discovered the site. i have endured so much stress and pain and exhaustion because of on-site conflicts and interpersonal drama that has been left to me to clean up after. i am barely older than all of you at 20 years old. i am a shut-in that is still trying to get back on her feet after the trauma of COVID-19 and the lockdowns.
spring was hosted by me for fun. i find fun in hosting sites and sharing them with friends, and even with people i do not know. that's why i welcome people to other sites of mine on a conditional basis. that's why i allowed most new users to stay on spring after their initial arrival in march, or april, or whenever it was. i felt like i saw myself in a lot of you, i felt guilt, and i wanted to do right by all of you. but that trust i put in all of you has not only been repeatedly violated, but i have personally been insulted, disrespected, and ultimately hurt by many of you. for my sake, i cannot let this go on any longer.
please understand that this is not an easy decision for me to make. i really, really wanted to make this work. i wrestled with myself over this for weeks. i recklessly reopened the registration form as a last-ditch effort to convince myself that this could work, and my trust was immediately violated once again.
i refuse to apologize any more for taking care of myself. i will allow the current users to remain on site, as long as they do not break my rules. i am now the sole moderator of the site for personal reasons. i cannot afford to take any chances or be nearly as forgiving as i was a few months ago.
my intention is to ease spring back into a site for my friends and i. i will allow the people who remain to stick around, i won't be banning all of you indiscriminately, but i'm not leaving the door open anymore. this is the best compromise i could come up with for myself because it is already difficult enough as it is to let go; as i said in my blog post months ago, it would crush me harder to pull the plug altogether.
i want to return to working on myself and focusing my energy on that instead of spending it on moderation that seems to go in circles.
thank you all for cooperating with me in advance.