I’ve been receiving text messages, e-mails, and messages on LinkedIn asking me why I left Black Hat World so suddenly. For those of you who are unaware, I was the administrator Zwielicht and a member of the community since 2013.

Going back to why I left the forum, if it had been my choice, I would never have left the community without at least saying goodbye first. Unfortunately, I was not given this opportunity as I abruptly received a termination notice via WhatsApp on Monday, March 10, 2025 at 5:55AM Pacific Standard Time. The reasoning given to me is that the company’s values and objectives no longer align with mine and that my collaboration supposedly fell short of their expectations, despite my last performance review saying otherwise.

I’m not embarrassed nor am I ashamed about sharing this because, as I’ve always said on the forum, I value transparency with the community, and I believe the community has a right to know about my termination. If anything, this termination says more about the company than it does about me.

But I want this post to be my chance to say goodbye to the community. As many of you are aware, when I joined Black Hat World in 2013, I was a teenager and wanted to start my own business. With all of the wonderful advice from the community members over the years, I grew my company and was able to support myself and my family, even managing to buy a home, purchase a car, and send money home to my parents.

I will confess that I grew unhappy with the job as time went on and even became more reticent with the community. I just struggled to continue pretending everything was all right when it wasn’t. Whilst I have my own personal issues that I often talked about on the forum, I also began struggling with the treatment I received by the department managers and those in charge at the company, especially in the last few years.

I had thought about quitting the job several times since being contracted out to because I felt unnerved by the behaviour of some of the in-house staff members. I did eventually try quitting the job in February 2024, but I’ll save this story for another time. The short version of this is because I was worried about losing my account and losing the community, I bit my tongue and stayed in the job.

But when I lost my account earlier this week, I saw a great example of how the community is much more than the forum. Those of you who reached out to me showed me that, and I saw that even though many of you knew who I was already, you respected my privacy and only reached out to me after I lost my account. All of this just means so much to me.

I really wanted to stay in this job because I adore the black hat internet marketing community more than most people realise. It’s through this community that I’ve met so many smart and talented likeminded individuals. I even made friends on the forum over the years, but because I was very shy about my identity, I kept my interactions with them only on the forum. I did start opening up over the last year after I was locked of my account last year, and even sent some of the community members my e-mail and phone number. What I’m most sorry about is that it took me this long to start reaching out to members of the community. There were points where I felt like I would be reprimanded for doing so.

Before I close out this post, I want to also take the time to say farewell to the community on behalf of my wife, who managed the administrator account Impulse. She worked right next to me every day for years helping keep the community safe and making decisions that improved the community. She’s actually the one who helped me become a better administrator, but she didn’t get a farewell thread like I did. This speaks volumes about what they thought about her, and it was difficult seeing how undervalued she was. Now that our shackles with this job have been cut, we can start building our company back up and we can move on from this chapter of our lives.

Update: A special thank you to xReminisce on BHW for starting a farewell thread for Impulse. That was very kind of you and we both appreciate this.

With all of that said, I have no plans on rejoining Black Hat World from a new account. I’ve not reached out to the company owner to inquire about this, although I do not want to waste my time doing so as I feel that the board members would not welcome me there. But as I said, the community is not the forum, it’s the people on the forum, and I’d be happy to be in contact with all of you who wish to stay in contact with me.

Thank you to everyone for the help you provided me, for being patient with me whilst I learnt how to better manage the community, and for being there for me when I needed it most. As for what’s next for me, I plan on posting more here on Sycosure, including advice articles on how to better use the forum, my experiences with the company, and what I’ve learnt over the years having written so many of the modern processes used on the forum and the marketplace to this day. In time, I will also be offering consultancy services for online marketplaces, marketplace sellers, and forum management.

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Alistair Kavalt

Founder at Sycosure

I'm Alistair Kavalt, also formerly known as Zwielicht on Black Hat World. I'm the founder of Sycosure, an internet marketing company located in Southern California. I'm a fifteen-year veteran in the online marketing industry, with nearly 9 years of experience moderating forums and 7 years of experience developing online marketplace.

Latest posts by Alistair Kavalt (see all)

• Rebuilding Sycosure: Part 1 - March 13, 2025
• From Zwielicht: A Farewell to the Black Hat World Community - March 12, 2025
• Abandoned Web Design Projects: “Globe Mix” - January 6, 2025