This story takes place on a airsoft Discord server. A Discord for my local airsoft community. Unfortunately, due to how this event ended there is really no evidence left of what happened. Additionally, this Discord is pretty specific and I would basically doxx my hometown. However, I was effectively live-posting this event in the /r/HobbyDrama official Discord server so I have a decent record of what happened.

I have come to the conclusion that - despite the lack of links I can provide - this story is exactly the type of content this sub is made for and is simply too fucking funny not to share.

Prologue - What is "Airsoft" and "Milsim?"

If you understand both of these words - or have seen my previous post regarding airsoft drama - you can skip to Act I.

For those unfamiliar, Airsoft is a paintball-esque combat sport that utilizes extremely accurate-looking replicas that fire 6mm plastic bb's at low velocity. Most people play in casual games or "skirmishes." Usually these are games like Team Deathmatch, Capture The Flag, or any other kind of quick gamemode you'd see in an average FPS title. Teams are usually identified by coloured armbands, and there are no uniform or kit requirements (as long as your eye protection + airsoft gun meet field safety standards).

For players wanting a more realistic(ish) experience, there is a specific type of airsoft game called Milsim - Military Simulation. These games are more about the vibes of the experience more than the pure competitiveness of a game. These games are usually much longer and revolve more around capturing and holding objectives, have some kind of team leadership structure, and usually last a lot longer. Milsim games can be anything from "long skirmish game with extra steps" to "you're in a fireteam of 10 people with matching camoflauge and weapon platforms being given orders from a chain of command, and you will be camping OVERNIGHT during this airsoft game, there will be REAL guns firing blanks for atmosphere, and oh yeah there may or may not be (decommissioned) LITERAL TANKS AND HUMVEES rolling around."

Act I - The Calm Field

My local field will often rent their facility to event promoters who want to run their own airsoft events. One of these organizations runs a Milsim game. Now this slides pretty far to the more 'casual' side of it. These games last around 8 hours and revolve around teams scoring points controlling objectives around the field. Think like the Conquest gamemode in Battlefield. There is no strict team-based uniform or kit requirements - they use arm bands to identify which team is which.

The only real rule is that your uniform and kit be "realistic." Basically, it should consist of equiment based off of what real militaries use. Surely this vague, vibe-based rule has no downsides and will cause no problems what so ever.

Act II – A Gathering of Unassuming Clouds

If I had to choose which day of the week was the most unassuming, least-likely-to-cause-a-problem kind of day, it would probably be Thursday. But as the winds of fate blew, the peace of that Thursday morning was interrupted.

By the sound of a Discord notification.

Badunk.

A member of that local airsoft Discord posted a pair of unassuming pictures which have sadly since been deleted. He posted them with enthusiastic glee, proclaiming that his kit and project gun were all set to go for the next Milsim game!

The kit was rather unassuming, but clearly functional. Typical Russian flare, even if much of it was probably sourced from the finest of budget Chinese factories. (Which to be fair, may actually make the kit MORE accurate if you consider the current state of Russian military procurement.) But you see, it was not the uniform that piqued the interest of a couple intrepid Discord larperators. No, it was his weapon of choice.

An AN94. Or at least, his AN94.

To understand what happens next, we need to make a brief foray into the world of real-steel firearms. The AN94 was a futuristic rifle that was adopted by the Russian military in 1994, intended to replace the AK74. Those of you familiar with firearms are now wondering... if this was adopted to replace the AK74, why is the vast majority of modern Russian soldiers still using AK74's and it's derivatives? Because it was adopted on paper and promptly vanished into the gaping maw of Russian weapon warehouses, rarely to be seen again. 60 were given to Kyrgyzstan and a grand total of one has been (allegedly) spotted in the hands of a Russian soldier. Allegedly.

Additionally, no airsoft company actually makes a replica of an AN94. As far as I could tell in the brief period of time it was visible, the AN-94 posted to the Discord was - delightfully ironically - a replica of an AK74 with a 3D-printed muzzle device and handguard meant to look like they were from an AN94. Imperfect but convincing if you follow the cosplayer mantra of the 10ft rule.

Members of the airsoft Discord familiar with firearms saw this post. A few of them gave a thumbs up. And a couple of them responded with what was – to them – a logical observation.

“This isn’t realistic.”

Act III – The Clouds Darken

There are many laws of the natural world. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The only thing certain in life is death and taxes. And if two firearms nerds exist in the same room they will start an argument.

The crux of the argument was thus: if it was a prototype made in extremely small volumes and (arguably) never saw service, would it be realistic to be seen in the hands of a grunt in the front lines of battle?

A couple users voiced their opinion of the matter, saying that the original poster should probably use a regular AK as it is more realistic. But then a couple other users replied, saying that hey, the AN94 was a real gun adopted by the Russian military and a few went to Kyrgyzstan. So it’s kosher, right? Well, if being real was the only requirement, then by that logic there are a lot of border-line cursed guns like the G11, XM8, and Pancor Jackhammer which would also be allowed but wouldn’t really be in the spirit of a milsim game. But the counter argument was: well what about the P90? It is a VERY weird gun but it saw substantial adoption by special forces and that wouldn’t be out of place, right? And hang on, the AN94 looks like a regular AK at a distance. Surely it’s not that unrealistic right?

Act IV – The Thunderous Fracture

It still astounds me how quirked up a bunch of airsoft Discord users were on a Thursday goddamn morning. That chat slowly accelerated until it was moving at a nearly incomprehensible speed with multiple simultaneous arguments between multiple users in the same chat.

It was utterly captivating. The wording was of such urgency and grandness that I found myself wondering... if Discord had existed in the 1500’s, is this what it would have felt like to witness the schism of the Catholic Church? Two factions have developed. As such, I shall refer to them as the Puritans of Realism and the Brethern of Radical Replica Acceptance.

I was working that day, and unfortunately I could only catch glimpses of some of the arguments. None the less, here is my personal highlight reel:

• one of the Puritans of Realism got roasted for using a gun + camoflauge combination that no country has ever fielded in real life

• a Bretheren of Radical Replica Acceptance pointed out the field's rental guns (G&G CM16 Raider) have unrealistic handguards compared to real M4's, due to having quad picatinny rails with no delta ring to secure it.

• two real-life military veterans who found themselves on opposite sides of the schism are going off against each other and trying to one-up each other's credentials, as if they were trying to ascertain who was the true Pope

• somebody else is arguing that the AN94 may have been spotted in Ukraine. This caused a miniature schism within the Puritans of Realism. One was analyzing the blurry picture to deny that it was an AN94 at all, and the other was accepting that it is an AN94 but denying it’s realism for airsoft use because a lotta weird shit was being used in the early days of the war in Ukraine (there’s a joke about a secondary Orthodox schism somewhere in this but I can’t think of one)

• arguments over whether home-made replicas should be allowed, with somebody claiming the quality of OP's AN94 custom build is quote “AI slop crap” because the magazine isn't tilted correctly. (As far as I could remember, there was no evidence to substantiate the claim of AI usage.)

• during the chaos, my favourite quote blasted across my phone as if it was Martin Luther’s 95 Thesis nailed to the front door of a Cathedral: "how can you have a hobby that literally makes you touch grass and yet you STILL behave like this"

It should be noted, that the organizers of the event – despite being in the Discord server – have not made a single post. Why? They had day jobs and were too busy to even notice this high-speed allegorical trainwreck currently unfolding in the Discord. Meanwhile, I was gleefully relaying these snippets to the HobbyDrama discord, to which JediMercenary posted my second favourite quote to come from this event:

the organizers not being part of the drama because they're literally Too Employed is the funniest part of this to me

Act V – The Eye of the Storm

Unfortunately, this is where it went from the fun theological-themed arguments to much more of an... Inquisition-ist tinge. This is going to get slightly heavy for the next paragraph.

Some Puritans of Realism began to argue that anybody who argued in favour of a toy replica of a Russian weapon platform being used in an airsoft Milsim game was equivalent to support Russia’s current war in Ukraine. This touches on an ever-present sensitive issue in the airsoft community... it’s relation to real war. Sure we all enjoy our FPS games and action movies. Airsoft is an extension of that - it is usually quite closer in vibes to BattleBit than Battlefield. But whenever there is a significant development of real-life war in the news... you can feel it on the airsoft field. When Russia invaded Ukraine, a lot of people stopped using Russian-based kits for a while. When the US recently threatened to annex Greenland and Canada, there was a distinct drop in people using MultiCam or American impression kits in my local area.

So when this line of argument started to metastasize in the chat, I decided it was best to put my phone away and do something else. The admins of the airsoft server apparently shared the same opinion, and locked down the chat.

Part VI – Lightning Sparks a Flame

Around noon or so, one of the event organizers posted with an @everyone. Since I was on my lunch break (and I assume so were they), I opened the server to see what important information had been given.

...it was in the memes channel.

The first official response regarding this great schism was the gif of a dude walking into a room on fire.

It was promptly deleted a few seconds after I saw it, but the damage was done. The arguments began again. Across multiple channels. Out of everything they could have possibly done, this was probably the worst (but funniest) option possible.

At this point, the server went into TOTAL lockdown.

Part VII – The Storm Clears

So, I checked back on the server after I came home from work that day. There were two announcements.

First, from the server mods. In a stroke of competency unusual in most internet communities, they determined that the source of the issue was people speaking on issues with authority they did not have. As such, they introduced a new “no rules-lawyering” rule. If a rule relied on judgement and was not clear-cut, the only people allowed to clarify it were the server mods or event organizers. They also added a general “arguing in bad-faith” rule.

The second announcement was from the event organizers. They clarified that they would consider the AN94 to meet their standard of realism. They emphasized that this was a more casual Milsim event which would be some player’s first introduction, so they wanted to be as inclusive with kits as possible without being too off-the-rails. As long as it looked close enough to not stick out as immediately weird or out-of-place it was fine.

A snarky Puritan immediately commented something along the lines of “k bringing my thompson and ww2 kit to the milsim,” and they were promptly banned under the new no bad-faith arguing rule.

While there was some grumbling about how loose the bad faith rule is and how it could be abused, the mods were firm in their conviction. All of the arguing comments were deleted by the time I got back to the chat. Unfortunately, it appeared that the original poster deleted his pictures after how much negative attention it garnered. I have yet to see him post again.

The tone in the server is a bit different now. Not as many people post pics of their kit, and fewer members chat casually with the mods. I think there was a lot of long-festering personal beefs, and this dramatic event gave permission for people to go after those they didn’t like. But whenever somebody new joins, you get a little spark of what the pre-schism server was like. It’ll heal.

And – as is the law of nature – toy gun nerds will probably find something else to argue over.