NightShiftAnon / OnlyFansart incident

The NightShiftAnon / OnlyFansart incident refers to the events that arose out of suspicions against host NightShiftAnon !!9A2duD1C25+ following the finals of King of /v/ 2023. The primary subject of these suspicions was that NightShiftAnon (NSA) had secretly not only been one of the tournaments' most recurring artists, but also attempted to smear certain candidates throughout 2022 and 2023.

Many have considered this to be one of, if not THE, biggest incidents to ever come out of the tournaments depending on the severity of what happened.

Background

Early incidents in 2022

Following Ms. /co/ 2021, beloved host stats anon would suddenly disappear prior to the start of Mr. /co/lympus 2021. After people picked up on this, a thread on /tnt/ was opened to look for new hosts to take over instead. This led to three hosts taking up the mantle: NightShiftAnon, DominosAnon, and BracketsAnon. Despite the sudden shift in hosts, the tournaments for this year would mostly be smooth going forward barring one smaller incident surrounding Persona 2 villain Fuhrer during King of /v/ 2021. Following the alleged retirement of Dominos due to incidents during Tag-Team 2021, NightShiftAnon would continue to hosts alongside two hosts with new trips: BallsAnon and Ghost. Despite the smoother sailing the previous year, NightShift found himself caught in a large controversy during Ms. /co/ 2022 when he alleged that several remaining contestants (mostly furries) had actually been rigging the results at various points during the tournament. This led to a lot of mixed responses as well as some speculation around some of these accusations. Beyond this, however, people were generally upset with the way NightShift had set forth these accusations. This led to a vote at the end of the tournaments for hosts to remain more tight-lipped about rigging, something NSA would reiterate on multiple times during future tournaments.

King of /v/ 2022 was a somewhat weird tournament. It was highly dominated by the up-and-coming Jack Garland all throughout, and a lot of bigger campaigns dying in earlier rounds left a number of anons disappointed. Outside controversies surrounding this and the "Jack-Off" finals, one of the most pronounced incidents in the tournament ended up occurring after Wesker's loss to the somewhat controversial pick AM from I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream. Wesker had up until then been carried in large part by a single dedicated artist. Upon AM's victory over Wesker, an anon appearing to be said artist started to go on a tirade against AM and tried painting him as a "silent pick". This led to backlash at the time by anons in the thread, seeing this person as a poor sport over this single loss. The silent accusations against AM also received criticism as being hypocritical, with AM having only gotten this far due to his own campaign that was largely made up of roleplaying over art like a number of other picks. As time went on people wouldn't bring this incident much up in the following year aside from the occasional mention, but it would end up being instrumental once later accusations were set forth.

King of /v/ 2023

One of the infamous pieces of Ammy in a muzzle

After the finals in Queen of /v/ 2023, the hosts began the extremely controversial losers' finals between the runner-up Amaterasu and the losers' bracket victor SHODAN. Many anons expressed open backlash at this idea and felt it would only lead to heavy spite against the two as well as the finals (and later overall) winner, Curly Brace. In response to these reactions, one artist created several pieces of art depicting Amaterasu in an overtly negative light or simply mocking people who were against the extra rounds. The most infamous of these were two pieces depicting her in a dog muzzle, with a number of anons calling this out as in poor taste. While people eventually voted during the grand finals to simply prioritize the main bracket's Elite Eight and subsequent matches in the results, the muzzle art would continue to circulate around much to the ire of many anons.

The post that began the initial allegations against OnlyFansart

During the middle of King of /v/'s afterparty threads, one anon using Erika Furudo as an avatar dropped a huge post accusing one of the tournament's artists for having been responsible for the muzzle art, as well as a fair share of art involving a number of popular candidates. They shared a self-inserted tag from the booru highlighting art that was either uploaded by an account presumably tied to this person, known as lgg on the new booru, or sharing overlap in art style or supported picks. The accusation over the muzzle art stemmed from similar mobile filenames in this person's art along with the muzzle art conspicuously being uploaded in the same time frame as some of this person's other art under the separate account "lollmao". The original post also included a mention of this artist's DeviantArt account known as OnlyFansart. Between the tag and the DA account, anons discovered this person apparently supported a decent variety of popular picks: these included Midna (the Queen of /v/ 2022 champion), GLaDOS, Bayonetta, Albert Wesker, Wuya (the Ms. /co/ 2023 champion), Zim, and Black Hat. In a later post, it was also mentioned that the Erika poster believed this same artist had hosted both many of the Magma drawing sessions and the popular tilemap collaborations throughout the main tournament threads.

The initial response was a mix of shock and disgust toward this artist, especially when anons began looking through their DeviantArt account. (A short-term negative reaction came from some anons over the "they/them" pronouns on this account before it was pointed out DeviantArt simply uses this if no specific gender is set by the user.) Many turned against OnlyFansart after their name had now been tied up with the mostly hated muzzle art and possibly general smearposting. There was also disappointment over a number of beloved characters having largely been carried in art by this same person. As time went on and the next thread began, however, some people did start to become more skeptical of the Erika poster. Some felt the connections were not solid enough for all of this to be the same person, and doubts started to rise about this all being a huge falseflag. One particular claim that got a lot of backlash was OnlyFansart apparently being the mapanon, with said anon seemingly coming out to defend himself as being tied to this artist. As a result, many left the afterparty threads feeling either mixed or negative toward these posts. Still, people would remember these allegations, and they would soon come up again during discussions on /tnt/.

History of the Accusations

NightShiftAnon's Discord account is discovered

The Magma session where several artists shared contacts

The Discord account that seemed tied to NightShiftAnon

A few days after King of /v/ had concluded, one anon in the off-season thread on /tnt/ made a sudden post asking if they should be concerned over NightShiftAnon's Discord account being shared during a Magma draw session. The account in question seemed to belong to him based off it being shared as a contact during the /tnt/ thread discussing how to work around the sudden disappearance of Stats back in 2021. A few anons began to inquire on this, and the anon quickly shared a screenshot of someone in the session sharing the account in question, TabithaTwitchitt#0314. People noticed that this artist's layers were focused on both Zim and Black Hat, two apparent favorites of OnlyFansart. A few caught onto this connection and started to get concerned. This led to a pair of posts exploring this idea, with the second outright pulling a ton of specific messages and pieces of art to elaborate off this. People were set into a frenzy soon after these suspicions were set forth.

After initial skepticism, the general response from anons discovering this information both in real-time and in hindsight was largely negative. Many began to feel a sense of distrust toward NightShiftAnon, and some even felt betrayed by her double-sided nature both in terms of secret campaigning and presumed attempts to smear certain candidates. This response was escalated by both previous issues in her hosting career and his lack of a direct response over a course of at least days.

Responses

OnlyFansart Response

OnlyFansart responding to an anon on DeviantArt

Following the potential connections to NightShiftAnon first coming up, one anon would actually go through with contacting OnlyFansart on DeviantArt about the accusations coming up. They would actually respond, but seem directly dismissive of the apparent connections. They claimed to have been following all the main tournaments since the start, even claiming that the drawing of a Samus trophy for Queen of /v/ 2019 was her first /v/-related piece as could be confirmed by the "same basic pencil sketch" used in all their sketches. Anons in the threads on /tnt/ weren't convinced by this response. The initial point of interest was just the incredibly short and non-specific length of the response, but a particular claim by OFA about NightShiftAnon not being around for the first Queen and King of /v/ was singled out by several anons simply off the fact that it was apparently new information. At best this seemed to still confirm a direct relation between OFA and NSA, and at worst it came off as a huge gaffe giving away the two being one and the same. The anon who initially got into contact with OFA would later confirm that he had sent more messages asking for further clarification, only to be met with silence. These responses would only further fuel the fire of the two being the same person.

NightShiftAnon's Initial Response

During a stealth thread on /co/ discussing the upcoming 2023 Tag-Team Tournament, people unsurprisingly brought up the discoveries and suspicions around NightShift. This led to NightShiftAnon herself coming out to try and defend herself. People began to point holes in her responses, with her slow time between posts (over an hour in one case) adding to anons' frustration. One notable point brought up was the screenshot where she had been found campaigning for Black Hat with her trip on, which she kept deflecting for most of her time in the thread. After only a few replies spaced across several hours, NightShiftAnon quietly stopped responding and left everyone else in the dark.

Ghost Response

Confirmation that Ghost was actually Dominos Anon

During the same stealth thread mentioned above, one anon alleged to have gotten a response from NightShiftAnon on a Spooktober Discord server. The initial screenshot did not share any specific details outside the message itself (including whoever had posted it). This post addressed the same post he had responded to first, but did not entirely match. More curiously, this post mentioned there being "two NSAs", with the one sharing his Discord being different from the one who actually handled the tournament forms. This post was initially met with mostly skepticism from anons, with many feeling it was faked due to lack of context or more information. Later on /tnt/, a person with Dominos Anon's name claimed to have been the one to contact her, but it was shown that the trip did not match. This led to skepticism until Ghost appeared with his trip to confirm the validity of the message, among other information. This was off another reveal: Ghost had actually been Dominos under a new name after the Tag-Team 2021 incident. (Some had speculated this to be the case in the past, but it had never been verified nor investigated in a serious capacity.) Other screenshots would come out that seemed to display her as being confused and shocked by these allegations around NSA, feeling some sense of distrust as a result. Ghost would later come onto /tnt/ and confirm she was pissed by the messages being leaked, claiming to have planned a more thorough response before that. She then claimed he would only answer questions further the following night.

An example of art that NightShift made for Ghost / Dominos

NightShift elaborating on previous tournament art he's made

The next day, Ghost / Dominos would indeed appear and begin talking with anons. Her first response had him claim that she had outright told NightShiftAnon to try being more open in his responses, something seemingly confirmed by a later screenshot. She seemed skeptical that NightShift was actually OnlyFansart, in part because she had actually commissioned art in the past with a different art style. Despite being hesitant due to the element of distrust, Ghost would reveal a conversation where NSA outright went over art she's done in the past. She claimed to have drawn characters indiscriminately, including those he barely knew. She even stated that he drew Midna despite not playing her game. She claimed to have also done art of Jack Garland, Curly Brace, and Eggman in the past, although not with any examples. Despite dismissal from Ghost, NSA claimed that going over actual art she's done would not help her case.

The response thus far has been mixed. People seem torn between NightShift being horrible at addressing these issues or her simply continuing to deflect, but many have retained a sense of distrust towards her. One of his claims that he used generic fonts on Procreate ironically helped one anon discover the source of OFA's infamous font, now known to be Eina 01 Semi-bold. As of right now, NightShift has not responded again publicly outside her spare few posts on /co/ the previous day.

More connections come to light

With Tag-Team 2023 coming to an end, people on /tnt/ started to bring up NightShiftAnon's supposed promise of a Pastebin response addressing all the allegations in detail. As the then-current off-season thread for Mr. and Ms. /co/ was getting close to bump limit, there were questions if it would even be shared anytime soon. This was followed up by one anon finally compiling archived posts of TabithaTwitchitt's Discord account being shared across /aco/. This was significant evidence, with this person even making mentions such as being able to "recreate any style", a known talent of OnlyFansart and strong counter to the idea NSA is relatively bad at drawing, or making "'edits' to still images." There was also a single instance of the account being shared on /vg/ in April 2020 during an Animal Crossing thread, relating to previous information shared by OFA in their previous response. While initially buried amongst other discussion, several posters would soon pick up on these findings. The context of these posts lined up significantly with OnlyFansart and further drove the connections to NightShiftAnon. Still, this would soon end up feeling supplemental when Black Hand, the head administrator of /tnt/, finally got around to the threads and answered the call to confirm whether or not posts associated with OFA actually lined up with NSA. After being caught up on the situation, he outright confirmed that the suspect posts were indeed not only from the same person, but also under various names branching from "NightShift" in a number of cases. To further the connection, he even confirmed that several of these posts had been from various other locations in the western United States with time intervals that lined up in terms of distance, which collaborated NSA's claims in the past that he would be on the move due to his job. There was some shorthand dispute over the exact nature of NightShift's ISP. Black Hand would clarify in a later post that said ISP was a common one, to the point that at least one other poster in the thread arguing against NSA also matched it despite being in the midwestern United States. At least one other anon would also come out later to state that they had been framed as NSA by a few people due to sharing the relevant ISP, after arguing against the specific level of her doxxing (namely, revealing the exact cities that she seemed to frequent). This mistake was clarified on in a later thread.

Despite tiring on the issue, Black Hand would answer one more request and confirm the identities of various main tournament hosts over the years. While most was either straightforward or already known, including Ghost being Dominos and Numnuts being tourney anon, there was one more mention of Brackets either being NightShift all along or at least being in a similar location. Outside of all this, one last tidbit came in of OnlyFansart claiming that SHE was actually a woman, which would by extension presumably also apply to NSA.

A conversation between Ghost and NightShift, leaked by an anonymous user

The above revelations from Black Hand would reinvigorate discussion around this issue tenfold, with it adding more solid credence to the NSA/OFA connection than even all prior information. Ghost would end up contacting NightShift on Discord about her location being revealed. This led to her expressing her disgust on the matter and wondering if anons would try to paint her as being various other hosts in the process. NSA would go on to claim that she had no plans to respond direction on plus4chan after her location had been doxxed. While Ghost chose to hide NSA's profile and name, another anon would disregard this entirely to confirm that she had indeed been posting with the TabitaTwitchitt account. Outside this very notable revelation, the leaked messages confirmed that NSA wasn't prioritizing the Pastebin at the moment and that she still denied being OnlyFansart. Coayynon would later chime in to confirm that NSA had already felt scornful towards /tnt/, making a direct response on the board seem unlikely even prior to Black Hand's info dump. Despite her denial, the consensus that NSA is indeed OFA has only grown even stronger in light of all this information.

As of present, the Pastebin is still yet to be shared and likely will never be shared.

Latest Responses

As of February 18, 2024, Ghost has posted to confirm that she, alongside Coayynon and Samaritanon, had given NightShiftAnon an ultimatum of the week after /cov/ ended to post her Pastebin in any attempt to give her defense. Otherwise, she would be forcibly dropped as a host of future events. Despite this final chance, many anons were already skeptical that the Pastebin could change much considering the current circumstances. BallsAnon (see right below) outright stated he just didn't see it happening at the current rate.

BallsAnon Returns

The full response by BallsAnon, clarifying on his sudden retirement and several questions around NSA

In a surprise to many anons, BallsAnon would return to /tnt/ in early March 2024 after his sudden retirement as a host during King of /v/ 2023. He would only learn of the NSA drama a couple months after the fact. In response to all that went down, he would share his own response on March 18 clarifying his side of what went down. Beyond giving some insight on why he had suddenly left at the end of the previous year, he would give at least some elaboration on what he perceived as a host alongside NightShiftAnon. Despite a prior mention of "50/50 bombshells", a lot of what was revealed was more clarification or reassurance off prior information. He did express skepticism at any potential rigging by her, but did point out that she was given leeway by the other hosts to handle a lot of results sharing and other tournament decisions. Some of the most notable information to come out at this time would be how NSA was the one largely pushing several decisions, including the implementation of the losers' bracket and keeping the original voting forms closed instead of making responses public. He made a mention of micro-management becoming "too much to handle" after a rigging incident surrounding Peridot during the Ms. /co/ 2023 qualifiers, revealed to have encompassed over a whopping 230 votes. Off concerns of NSA campaigning alongside hosting, Balls would come transparent on some of his non-trip posting activity during tournaments where he was host. (These principally came down to hosting the unofficial losers' tournaments during Mr. /co/lympus 2023 without informing the other hosts, alongside partaking in non-candidate RP with characters like Freeza or Trump.) He did stand by the hosts not expressing direct bias while acting as hosts, and would reveal the simple rules set for deciding what art got featured in thread OPs. Balls admitted that he had chosen the now-infamous muzzle art for this purpose simply for finding it to be funny, not being aware of the sheer amount of controversy surrounding it.

One unfortunate revelation from this response was that Balls had lost access to a lot of information he had previously possessed as host, having deleted a lot as a result of his poor mental state when he departed as a host the previous December. Despite this, he would express serious skepticism at direct rigging having taken place.

NightShiftAnon is removed as a host

As promised, a timer for one week was set once /cov/ ended on March 31st, giving NightShiftAnon until the end of April 6th to drop her Pastebin. In a matter that was presumably coincidence, plus4chan would go down for most of the final day that NSA had to drop her response. An obvious stealth thread had been made on /co/ as the site remained down, meaning she could have responded on there instead if so desired. Once the clock hit, various anons jumped in to either celebrate or joke about her being formally fired as host. Samaritanon directly said it was over at this point, with other hosts joining in on the shitposts around the incident. While it is unknown what NSA will do come the start of Ms. /co/ in September, as of now she will no longer have the support of other hosts in regards to future tournaments.

Further allegations

Potential for rigging

In light of NightShiftAnon seeming a lot more distrustworthy under the assumption most if not all the alleged connections were true, people began to speculate out of worry whether she had actually rigged results in the past. One of the first allegations to come up was Goo (Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends)'s surprisingly high seed out of nowhere during Ms. /co/ 2023, after someone noticed OnlyFansart had mentioned her in the past. People similarly questioned whether the incident with Mr. Boss back in Mr. /co/ 2022 had been a ploy to let Dr. Livesey in as the 128th seed, although people were less critical of this due to Livesey's overall positive reception. Another series of past incidents that came up were both Gardevoir and Muffet being left out of the Elite Eight during Queen of /v/ 2022 and 2023, respectively. Both instances had some overlap in terms of earlier results having been pulled seemingly by accident. Gardevoir had only lost to Morrigan by two votes in the official results and apparently would have won by five if not for the small gaffe. Muffet's loss on the other hand ended up going way more public off her fairly passionate campaign and her mistaken loss being revealed later on by another host. (In the case of Muffet, it is worth noting she was thrown into one of the four-way matches on the losers' bracket the round following this incident, with NSA being the only one known to control the voting forms). Some questioned the validity of these incidents being mere mistakes, with some going as far to make the connection their anthropomorphic natures might have made them seem less tasteful in NSA's eyes considering the furry rigging incident during Ms. /co/ 2022.

One of the most concerning incidents was around AM's loss to Jack Garland in King of /v/ 2022. While many did believe Garland to have won fairly there, the vast margin he did such over AM was shocking even at the time it went down. This was compounded by NightShiftAnon making an off-hand mention following the semi-finals results that she had apparently seen AM losing by over 75% at one point during that round. With the context that she had been Wesker's main campaigner all along, fears began to rise that she had either rigged against or at least allowed for rigging against AM after turning after him following Wesker's loss. While this might seem somewhat shocking, there are several odd occurrences that might lead credence here. For one, having AM go from around 25% to 37% is a fair jump in votes unless the former number was taken quite early into the round, meaning that NSA might have at minimum been bluffing about AM's worst margins against Garland that round. Another point is that Wesker actually had a weird incident already earlier into the tournament, when his reported Round 4 win against Agent 47 had around a 100 less votes counted compared to the other matches that round. While not enough to have given 47 a win, this came off as suspicious to some even at the time. Unfortunately, the most concerning part about the 2022 semi-finals were that no other hosts are able to collaborate seeing the results at the time. Ghost was absent due to personal matters, and Balls has already left the tournament community entirely following his retirement. This means that NSA is the only active person who could confirm the results back then.

The characters most under scrutiny, however, would end up being Midna and Wuya considering both had actually won tournaments under NightShiftAnon's watch. While a very popular character on /v/ and the initial 3rd place woman in Queen of /v/, Midna's final two matches against Alipheese and Hornet were both within very close margins of votes. One message pulled up pointed towards OnlyFansart jumping from GLaDOS to Midna as a "last hope" after the former lost in a wider margin to Hornet. On the other hand, Wuya didn't have much obvious to analyze in her winning run aside from a believably close match to Velma, with the threads at the time continually pushing for both Eris and her. Conversely, she did go from an immediate Round 1 jobber to an outright champion, and was among OFA's most apparent favorites on top of all this. Despite all these connections, there has been some serious skepticism over the idea of either champion being rigged. The main cases that have been debated are the particularly close matches involving Midna, as they would have been easier to silently manipulate. While not a winner outright, some have also pondered Zim's very close win over Optimus Prime during the semi-finals of Mr. /co/ 2023. Notably, a vast majority of anons have not considered the other winners under NSA's tenure to have had any real chance of being rigged. Despite there not being a clear consensus right now, there haven't been any serious pushes to actually revoke or even slander any of the past winners over the incident with NSA and OFA.

Despite the above speculation, there has not yet been any confirmed rigging on NightShiftAnon's part. The incidents involving her art and attempts to slander certain picks in secret are the main incident and the one with heavy evidence behind them. Samaritanon later confirmed that all hosts have the ability to see the voting form results, making direct vote rigging far less likely. In his own response, BallsAnon would doubt that NSA had actually partaken in any rigging. Despite no longer having access to the direct results relating to his sudden departure from King of /v/ 2023, he didn't express any concerns over recent tournament champions and claimed both the Mr. Boss and Muffet snubs to be from mere human error.