Lucianotes: Back from the Shadows

Oh boy… that was one hell of a ride.

Warning: I suspect this article is going to be longer than the usual “no more than 800 words rule” Eric gave me when he rightfully detected I had a genetic tendency toward both verbal and written incontinence.

Like always, the next lines are written genuinely, transparently, as I think them from the head and feel them from the heart. I do not pretend to own the universal truth. Just assume that all the sentences start with “In my opinion”.

Editor’s note: if you aren’t aware of the context of this article, you may want to read “The Story of #FreeLuciano, So Far” first >

There Were Also Two Italians…

To start with: I have been the center of attention throughout the entire #freeluciano snafu. However, at the origin of all this, we were three. If not for Enrico’s honesty and Stefano’s courage, nothing would have happened. These are the kind of crazy adventures that create lifetime friendships. So whatever your position about what happened, I want them to take their part of credit or blame. To be more specific: now that I am back to my sarcastic and pedant ZI character, if it is not too much to ask I am happy to take credit and leave them the blame.

Twelve years ago I made a presentation at work about social media crises leading to massive corporate blowouts, using the example of United Breaks Guitars. 

What I did not anticipate then is that I would be at the center of a similar mess in the Zwift world. 

To be honest, I have zero perspective and distance on it. Many Zwifters who have been around for a while are telling me this was a major event and hopefully it will change Zwift culture. Others are saying it is a fart in the ocean. (That expression comes from a Brazilian colleague. I guess it is from Brazil. I cannot think about anything more inconsequential than a fart in the ocean.)

Who cares. There are way more important things happening in the world as I write. Whatever happens in Watopia is of little consequence in comparison. 

I will not enter into the argument on right or wrong, I think the positions are quite obvious by now. I believe the outcome is that the needle was moved in the right direction for the Zwift community and for the commitment to fairness in competition. We got two magnificent races for the UCI Worlds, and hopefully bugs will get fixed and the new bug bounty program is successful. 

More importantly, hopefully it will change the dynamics of Zwift dealing/collaborating with the community around those issues. A lot of hopes. I am hopeful myself, as I got the commitment these changes will occur. 

Some Lessons I Hopefully Learned (although I am used to stepping many times on the same stone)

The hope I feel won’t erase the four absolutely crazy and overwhelming days experienced from Wednesday to Saturday. For the good and the bad.

Because for me the biggest surprise is the fact that all of a sudden I was considered a threat to something that is (was?) an important part of my life and wellbeing, that I value (valued?) and cherish (cherished?). At times, it almost made me feel like a bad person. Am I hurting it? What if I was fundamentally wrong?

Zwift, until now, was a refuge, a bubble where most problems would disappear, a place representing only good things and feelings. Friendship, enriching exchanges, health, a window to the world, and, above all, the community, kind of a brotherhood, this conviction that you are never alone. 

In that sense last week has ruined it and I am not sure it will ever come back again to that state of mind. Which is a shame. 

I felt incredibly supported by the vast majority of the community. I will come back to that later.

I have received anonymous insults (never threats) by people obviously using the bug to cheat (watch out for the guys dropping their w/kg in the next weeks or mysteriously deciding not to race anymore). 

More surprising was the hypocritical criticism from old guard Zwifters and race organizers, attributing a hidden conspiring agenda to our initiative, or an intention to hurt the platform. As much as I admire them for their contribution to this fantastic tool they have created, I have the feeling that there are a few early Zwifters, very important at the beginning of the platform, who believe they are more entitled or have more rights just because they were there before. It’s a shame that they live stuck in an “us vs them” instead of a together situation. I wish them good luck in their path to joy even if I anticipate it is going to be a long journey.

I have also received very instructive and constructive feedback from people I did not necessarily agree with, but where respect and willingness to reasonably exchange ideas was predominating. Sometimes we agreed to disagree simply because we had different opinions on what to prioritize or simply because we had different levers to work with. From some others I learned a lot (tons of people evangelizing me on standards in the industry to report a bug, an exploit, etc) and this information will be very useful for me in other situations where I’ll be able to consider other sensitivities in a different way, assess correctly the magnitude of the impact some things create, to assess short term vs long term consequences, etc. To all those people, thank you very much. It has been a super enriching experience. 

An Involuntarily Evolution Into an Uncontrollable Frankenstein‘s Monster

Now the vast majority of the community has been incredible (or at least I would like to believe so even if I have no objective data to assess who was supportive vs who was not). The amount of spontaneous messages popping up everywhere and people reaching out directly… that was awesome, that was crazy. 

The creativity of the people was absolutely astonishing. Comments with #freeluciano in Eric Min’s Strava activities, in Youtube stream, in subscription cancellations, threads on the topic popping up everywhere (Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Zwift’s forums), administrators deleting threads and not being able to shut the topic down because as one was deleted three were created, thousands of likes, comments, debates… totally overwhelming. 

On a few occasions some totally false quotes, or even merits were attributed to me “Luciano said that…” or “according to the original post now deleted”, never bad things, never with bad intentions, however sometimes they needed correction. 

That’s when I understood I was fooling myself and I was not in control at all. After spending entire nights online answering everybody, trying to keep it reasonable, I understood it was useless and… well, I saw I could trust people. 

I was extremely worried someone would say or do something basically stupid to defend me, insulting someone for example. It did not happen to the extent of my knowledge. I have seen some heated debates on FB or Reddit, but at the end everyone knows what to do and self-regulate. If I learned anything this past week it is that reasonable people know where the limits are and you can trust them. Zwift should too, in my opinion. 

At some point in time #freeluciano had its own life and it was owned by the community. I was another spectator of the monster growing up and covering and swallowing more and more space. So be it.

A Round of Applause

During this time I tried to show myself as enthusiastic and optimistic, but I had my lows. Real lows where I needed a shoulder to lean on. In those moments, my two partners in crime Enrico and Stefano were pillars, as well as my two brothers from another mother Edu and Peter, Maxime the King of Bad Jokes, and Eric from Zwift Insider. Those guys I already knew. 

Before the drama I thought that my team, COALITION, was awesome. I was wrong. They are not a team. They are a family. Throughout the storm, the entire COALITION crew, as a collective but also many of them individually, were present. There was permanently someone ready to ask, to cheer, to have the right word, the right joke, the right GIF. On Friday, they also organized my first and hopefully only race as a Ghost in Watopia, through the Chase to the Underground event, where I could enjoy the privileges of being a Watopian in Review. 

I shed a tear when Rhys and Andy mentioned #freeluciano during the streaming and was dropped from the pack at that very same moment. COALITION, you are a wonderful bunch of people (by the way our Mocha team won the WTRL TTT World Champs, wohoooooo).

What I could not believe is the number of people I did not know before reaching out spontaneously or even standing by me without even knowing me. There were way too many to name, but I just want to pop three names who were particularly important for me: Chris Ovenden (Killing in the Name Of) and Jonathan Crain (the 25cm 162kg meteorite) and Lucien Didot (the guy I wrote about here). IM(not)HO, if we had more of these three guys around, it would be hard times for cheaters.

Where does that land me?

Believe it or not, my ties to the Zwift community are exponentially stronger than they were one week ago. I cannot imagine myself without it. In one way the ban was good, as it made me understand how much of a Zwift Community junkie I am, how incomplete I would be without it.

However, I now make a very clear separation between the Zwift Community and the Zwift Corporation. Healing the wounds with Zwift Corporation is tied together with the fulfillment of the commitment Eric Min took towards the community in his announcement (see it at the top of this post). 

Only 24 hours have passed since that announcement and I am quite convinced I can take that leap of faith. Without it being a blank check. I believe Eric Min’s statement is a declaration of good intentions, and the same way I trust people to make it right, I will trust Zwift to make it right. Let’s all make one step together in the same direction. 

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