View source for Tennis Staff

The '''Tennis Staff''' (also known as the '''Café Staff''' or more immaturely the '''Tennis F**ks''') are the ''de-facto'' leaders of the [[tennis]] community.

[[File:Mako staff.png|thumb|right]]

=Roles and Jobs=
==Origins==
The '''Tennis Staff''' as a concept initially stems from a subforum moderator staff created by RabbitSnore on the [[YouChew forums]] on May 7, 2008. Their initial purpose was to moderate the "Poop Tennis" section of these forums, which included:

- moving match threads between the "Wanted", "In-Progress", "Completed" and "Failed" sections

- posting and updating tennis rosters in the "Poop Tennis Roster Thread"

- keeping friendly watch over the regulars in the section's long-running general chat thread, "The Poop Tennis Café".
 

Their modern roles remain largely the same, easily adapting as new communication mediums like Discord became more prominent.

==Culture==
Per RabbitSnore's whimsical "cafe/restaurant/bar" theming around "The Poop Tennis Cafe" thread and its staff, it's become something of a lighthearted tradition to imagine the tennis staff as caretakers, baristas, and any-sorta-food-service-worker-related-symbolism-you-can-think-of. They have always been recognized by yellow colored names and forum insignia, consistent through forum sites and the [[The Tennis Isles]] discord group.

Besides just having subforum-specific moderation powers, the members of this staff over time have informally acquired a status and reputation of being "experts" at tennis, due to each member throughout its history having their own unique editing approaches, many having their own theories and perspectives on how different tennis matches play out, and usually having some of the greatest passion for the medium out of all tennis players. In recent years, members of this staff have been becoming seen as "role-models" for the community, effectively representing it through their respective eras past and present. This has also been becoming one of the deciding merits around which new members are selected. Besides this however, new members have almost always been traditionally chosen for their activity, knowledge, bonds with existing staff members, and/or their willingness to contribute. 

The staff have also run all site sanctioned [[Tennis Tournaments]] since 2008. While this has been historically inconsistent, all major tournaments run by staff are considered "canon".

=List of Tennis Staff=
There have been 31 total members to have served as part of the Tennis/Cafe Staff, 32 if Emperor Ing is counted amongst its ranks.

Fun Fact, in this wiki, tennis staff will have a special label (which hasn't been decided yet) as a tooltip on their name. Look out for this!

{| class="wikitable sortable"
|+ List of Tennis Staff, as of 4-12-2025
|-
! Name !! Active? !! Tenure !! Notes
|-
| {{Letycjusz S.}}|| Yes || 2025-present || First staff appointed on YellowTealPurple
|-
| {{AngryLuigi23}}|| Yes || 2024-present ||
|-
| {{system128}}||Yes || 2022-present ||
|-
| {{Vidtens443}}||Yes || 2019-present|| 
|-
| {{infinitysnapz}}||Yes || 2023-present || First staff, along with {{dani}}, to be a "Hybrid Fuck" since RabbitSnore
|-
|{{mrdoognoog}} ||No || 2019-2022 || First staff appointed during the post-YouChew era. Runs this website!
|-
|{{Gamebop}} ||No  || 2008-2018 ||
|-
|{{Mycroprocessor}} ||No || 2009-2019 || The longest serving member of staff with a recognized tenure of 10 years, 7 months.
|-
|{{Corruptionsound}} ||No  || 2014-2019 ||
|-
|{{dani}} || Yes || 2019-2020, 2024-present || First staff, along with infinitysnapz, to be a "Hybrid Fuck" since RabbitSnore
|-
|{{TheFXexpert}} ||No  || 2014-2018 ||
|-
|{{RabbitSnore}} ||No  || 2008-2010 || Formed the staff as admin of the [[YouChew]] Forums; moved to the tennis staff after retiring and held the position until the forum's closure
|-
|{{Zekii}} ||No  || 2020-2024 || 
|-
|{{strong414bad}} || No || 2008-2012 || Holds record for youngest staff appointment (at 13/14)
|-
|{{TheChutley}} ||Yes  || 2010-2016, 2024-2025 ||
|-
|{{RAKninja}} || No || 2008-2010 || Appointed staff at 27, remains the oldest ever member to serve
|-
|{{Crash2991}} || No || 2008-2012 ||
|-
|{{theHappyFungus}} || No || 2008-2009 || Became a moderator for the Youchew Forums in 2009, serving until 2010. The first female member of staff
|-
|Emperor Ing || No || 2008-2010 || The "unofficial fuck", formally an early moderator and admin of the Youchew Forums, became very inactive in the 2010s
|-
|{{Nuthead}} || No || 2008 || The only member of the staff to have her position revoked, and the only one to be banned from the Youchew Forums
|-
|{{trepmaws}} || No || 2012-2018 ||
|-
|{{NS2}} || No || 2008-2012 || Had two different stints as a moderator on the Youchew Forums between 2008 to 2010
|-
|{{LaVieCestLol}} || No || 2016-2018 ||
|-
|{{Moogle}} || No || 2008-2012 || The first European member of staff
|-
|{{MrDrunkenFox}} || No || 2010-2015 || Was a moderator for the Youchew Forums from 2007 to 2010 and from 2015 to 2016, joined the Tennis Staff after initial retirement by formal request to continue serving under RabbitSnore, who had also moved to that staff as their only site role
|-
|{{DaftPunkYoshi}} || No || 2009-2011 || Became a moderator for the Youchew Forums in 2011, serving until 2016
|-
|{{Biodegradable}} || No || 2018-2019 || Currently the editor for the "Whang!" YouTube channel.
|-
|{{AshcrementVII}}|| No || 2012-2014 || Holds record for oldest staff appointment (at 29)
|-
|{{ChrisGendo}}|| No || 2010-2012 ||
|-
|{{nm41}}|| Yes || 2022-2024, 2024-present || Brief hiatus in 2024
|-
|{{Metroid998}}|| No|| 2016-2019 || Served as interim until October 8, 2022
|-
|{{Stuart K. Reilly}}||No || 2014 || Technically a "fuck by proxy"; was initially a Janitor on the Youchew Forums until the Tennis Staff and Janitors were combined to make the Cafe Staff. Never played a full tennis match of his own
|}

==Timeline==
(this will be a really cool piece of wiki tech that has the lines of every staff member and how long they served, though for now, it is just a screenshot of a spreadsheet)
[[File:Tennisstafftimelinetemp.png]]

=History=
The chronology of the Tennis Staff has been organized by relatively arbitrary "generations" since 2019, with {{dew}} conceptualizing the original designations of generation. While dani originally organized these by a combination of relative group size (shooting for as close to seven members for each) and spans of time apart between additions, The generations were revised on February 27, 2025 by infinitysnapz, who organized them more by closeness in join dates for each group. This has additionally allowed the resignation of RabbitSnore and TINS from YouChew leadership to be better considered as a major pivot point between specified generations. 

==First Generation(2008)==

[[File:Rabbitsnore-next-color.jpg|thumb|right|RabbitSnore, drawn by black_puffin.]]

Members: RabbitSnore, RAKninja, Crash2991, {{strong414bad}}, {{NS2}}, {{NutheadElMajestico}}, TheHappyFungus (and Emperor Ing).

One of the earliest prolific players of Youtube Poop Tennis was RabbitSnore, who was the co-lead admin of the Youchew forums alongside his real life friend Thereisnospoon303(often called TINS for short) in the era that immediately followed the reign of Conrad Slater. A general chat thread unique to the newly made tennis subforum, called The Poop Tennis Cafe, was opened in the forums (and also on the backup site, Planet Freedom) in January 2008. This thread was made to discuss matches past and present, set up future matches between people, including a roster listing people that they want to play or have already played that might including variations of rules, and to have "refreshments". It would in time garner a notable reputation of mainly being a spammy thread of tennis staff members and its regulars sharing inside jokes to each other, often in the form of various different images. After 4 months of managing the section on his own, and following the forum switch-over from its Vanilla layout, Rabbit employed the first version of a new mod staff unique to the tennis subforums on the evening of May 7th, 2008 to deal with tennis related threads such as moving threads, updating rosters, and hosting tourneys. The staff at this time was made up of 7 members; Crash2991, NS2, TheHappyFungus, Nuthead and strong414bad were added first, with RAKninja being added a day later. These choices were made mainly for these seven being the most active posters in the Cafe and thusly having the closest connections with RabbitSnore. In time, they would become popularly known as the "Tennis Fucks", a term coined by RAKninja and used frequently by him to describe his fellow staff. RAKninja ended up becoming the most active and vocal of the original seven staff members, and it is with him that "theory" was introduced into tennis, as well as the tradition of staff members being the primary organizers of tennis tournaments from his [[Doubles Cup 1]] tournament onward.

It is also regarded that YouChew moderator/administrator Emperor Ing was always considered by the original staff as an "unofficial fuck"; while never actually being on the staff itself due to him already being instated with moderator and later administrator powers, Ing was close to the early staff members and had very in-depth involvement with the staff's activities in the early years to the point where he was considered just as essential. It is because of this that he is recognized as having served the staff in the past by having obtained an official service medal on the YouChew forums and also has a round made in a special multi-way match reserved exclusively for staff members only.

==Second Generation(2008-2009)==

Members: {{Gamebop}}, {{Moogle}}, {{MycroProcessor}}, {{DaftPunkYoshi}} 

The staff has since undergone many changes in its lineup of members, beginning as soon as 5 days later when NS2 would be promoted by majority vote of YouChew staff to a moderator position. GameBop would become the next addition to the Staff on June 23, 2008 upon request for the purpose of managing the 2nd Tennis Chain and being able to edit the original post created by ShadowWario/FancySanta. During this era, the "Collaborations" subforum of YouChew would be created for the first time, and would be added to tennis staff jurisdiction. Moogle would join next on November 18, 2008. {{MycroProcessor}} would join by popular demand on February 27, 2009, essentially acting as the fill-in for Nuthead who had become removed from the staff after significant inactivity, and would become the longest serving member of the staff with 10 years and 7 months in the position. TheHappyFungus would become a moderator on March 1, 2009, though would revert her name back to tennis staff colors briefly during the [[Tennis Season]]. DaftPunkYoshi would also be added to the Staff on June 25th, 2009, later becoming a moderator of the forum in order to bridge a social divide between the Tennis Staff and Moderators on August 18, 2011. {{NS2}} would resign and return to being a moderator in April and October 2009 respectively, before resigning permanently on August 6th, 2010 to return to being a full time Cafe Staff member, although activity wise would be very sparse. TheHappyFungus would retire from her moderator position on the same day, and mysteriously vanish from the internet entirely.

==Third Generation(2010-2012)==

Members: MrDrunkenFox, {{ChrisGendo}}, {{TheChutley}}, AshcrementVII, {{trepmaws}} 

Every branch of the community on the YouChew forums soon underwent a major change when, soon after the return of NS2 to the staff and the permanent departure of theHappyFungus, RabbitSnore and TINS retired from their admin and forum leader positions on August 14, 2010. RabbitSnore would then move to the Tennis Staff, as it was a staff that he helped create, with the promise of maintaining activity in that section. This would however never come to pass, and Rabbit's position on the staff marked the effective end of the era of him as an active community member. Some days in advance, RAKninja would publicly announce his retirement from the staff and forum on August 4th, 2010, the same day that MrDrunkenFox would step down from his long-time moderator position and upon personal request be added to the Cafe Staff, following in the footsteps of RabbitSnore. ChrisGendo and {{TheChutley}} would be jointly added to the staff on December 7, 2010, and from this point onward ChrisGendo would effectively take up RAKninja's de-facto leadership role as part of this newly created third generation of staff members, becoming its most active and vocal member for a period of about 2 years. 

The following year marked the only period in which members from all generations of staff up to this point were present within the tennis community, whether active or otherwise. With only select older members contributing in terms of actual staff work, and ChrisGendo effectively managing the tennis section and sanctioning its community entirely on her own up to this point, AshcrementVII and {{trepmaws}} became the newest staff additions on January 22, 2012. Crash2991 retired from the staff somewhere between the spring and summer, followed closely by strong414bad. Subsequent to this period, ChrisGendo would publicly announce her retirement from staff and forum on August 22, 2012, and was soon followed by the simultaneous retirements of Moogle and NS2 on September 21, 2012.

==Fourth Generation(2014-2018)==

Members: {{CorruptionSound}}, {{theFXexpert}}, Stuart K. Reilly, Metroid998, LaVieCestLol, Biodegradable

AshcrementVII retired from the staff after an almost 2-year period on January 1, 2014, and {{CorruptionSound}} was chosen as his effective replacement on January 10. With YouChew's collab subforum having fallen woefully behind upkeep in this period, {{theFXexpert}} was newly recruited on June 13, 2014 with almost the express purpose of helping out in this section. The following day, a major staff change occurred on YouChew in which the Janitors(moderators assigned to very specific sections, at the time it was strictly the "Poop Talk" section) and Tennis Café Staff were merged into one, thus creating the Café Staff. This change gained the staff equal control over the entire "YouTube Poop" section of the forums(Poop Talk, Media Library, Collaborations, and Poop Tennis), and by complete anomaly would transition then-current Janitor Stuart K. Reilly over to the Café Staff, although he would only maintain this position for 2 months and contribute very little. He would however later on develop a significant acquaintance with the staff and tennis regulars, even going as far as to finally produce a series of episodes of his signature "YouTube Poop News" series covering many aspects of YTP tennis in early 2015. On May 19, 2015, MrDrunkenFox left the Tennis Staff and rejoined as a Moderator after a hiatus of 5 years, the longest gap of time in-between service of any moderator so far. On May 31, 2016, {{TheChutley}} announced her retirement from the staff and was replaced by Metroid998 on June 8. Due to being short-handed by theFXexpert's sudden long absence during this time, LaVieCestLol was also added to the staff on the same day. On April 7, 2018, {{Trepmaws}} would step down from his position and was replaced by Biodegradable on the same day.

==Fifth Generation(2019-2024)==

Members: {{mrdoognoog}}, {{VidTens443}}, {{dew}}, {{Zekii}}, {{system128}}, {{Nubman41}}, infinitysnapz, AngryLuigi23

With the YouChew forums about to close and the community set to split in two in August 2018, {{MycroProcessor}}, {{CorruptionSound}}, Biodegradable, Metroid998 and theFXexpert all agreed to migrate over to the more Youtube Poop-focused YTPMania forums, opened and run by Smonge, in order to build a new home for the Tennis Section. {{Gamebop}} opted not to immediately retain their staff position, effectively stepping down with the closing of the forum on September 30. LaVieCestLol also effectively departed from the community with the forums closing. The rest of the staff at the time eventually quietly retired after a slow, inactive first year on YTPMania; Biodegradable made a final statement on August 16, 2019, followed by Metroid998 on August 17, MycroProcessor on September 25, and CorruptionSound on October 11. theFXexpert also made his most recent post on the forum on December 6, 2018 and did not return to the community until years later, in late 2024.

This was the era of a complete system reset for the community, when many of a new generation were coming into the tennis section very curious about when the next tennis event would happen. Eventually, {{mrdoognoog}}, {{Nubman41}}, Morshe and VidTens443, four members who were around for the twilight years in tennis on YouChew, started the first tournament on the YTPMania themselves, the [[Tennis League 5]]. They also managed to persuade {{dew}}, an active tennis regular on YouChew from 2011 to 2016 and the first tennis player to complete 100 matches, to come out of retirement to participate and extend a guiding hand across the new generation of tennis players. With much of the previous staff now gone, mrdoognoog, VidTens443 and {{dew}} all became promoted to the new wave of Café Staff on YTPMania on October 6 and October 22, 2019 respectively. The YouChew forums returned in a new iteration in 2020, and the staff migrated back to it, with Metroid998, {{VidTens443}} and {{mrdoognoog}} as the active staff members and {{dew}} as one of the two admins and leaders of the new site. {{Zekii}} became the newest member of the staff on April 6, 2020. The new YouChew forums however did not last, suffering a managerial crisis that ultimately led to its shutting down in the middle of April 2020, moving everyone back to YTPMania except for {{dew}}, who was banned from the site for about a year, ultimately ending her initial tenure as an active staff member. Nubman41 and system128 were promoted to tennis staff on February 3, 2022, while {{mrdoognoog}} retired from active staff on October 1 of that year. infinitysnapz was promoted to staff on August 20, 2023, followed by AngryLuigi23 on July 5, 2024 following the departure of both {{Zekii}} and {{Nubman41}} on the same day. On October 6, 2024, TheChutley, {{dew}} and {{Nubman41}} all became the first members of the staff to return to their positions, following a late-summer burst of old regulars returning to the community after long absences. 

==Sixth Generation(2025-present)==

Together, {{dew}} and infinitysnapz were instrumental in the construction, opening and current leadership of the [[YellowTealPurple]] forums, a site with which the tennis community served as an initial foundation of its active userbase. This has made them both technically the first since RabbitSnore to serve in an official capacity as both site admins and official tennis staff members. Letycjusz S. became the first member of the tennis staff to be added during the era of this site on March 1, 2025, as chosen by {{dew}} and TheChutley. TheChutley stepped down again from staff on April 12, 2025.

==The Café Today==

The active staff as it stands today is made up of {{VidTens443}}, infinitysnapz, AngryLuigi23, {{dew}}, TheChutley, Nubman41, and {{system128}}. On the Youchew archive, RabbitSnore remains displayed as a staff member in order to recognize the staff's roots of creation and his contributions to the tennis section overall during his active period on the forum. 

The Poop Tennis Café as it stands today now exists on YellowTealPurple, referred to as the Video Tennis Cafe. While it still retains some activity, it reaches no where close to where the Tennis Cafes of old used to reach as the result of the community currently being split between the forum and the discord group The Tennis Isles, which previously acted as a refuge in lieu of YTPMania losing the interest of almost everyone. The Café thread had 4 original iterations on the Youchew Forums: the first opened on January 28, 2008 and was locked on March 31, 2008 after 104 pages due to the switch from the vanilla forums to the phpbb forums, marking the moment when site leadership was turned over to RabbitSnore and TINS. The second was opened on April 2, 2008 and closed on January 8, 2010 after 883 pages, the third opened on January 8, 2010 and closed on October 11, 2012 after 842 pages(with about 4 months of posts in early 2011 lost as a result of Youchew's infamous "Oz incident"), and the fourth and final iteration opened on October 13, 2012 and lasted until the closure of the YouChew Forums on September 29, 2018 after 494 pages. RabbitSnore upon briefly returning to the Youchew forums in January 2013 expressed his complete disbelief that the then current version of the thread continued to persist. The Café Thread on YTPMania was first opened on August 21, 2018, and lasted for 1999 posts before being closed with the rest of the site at the end of the year (there are no pages in this version due to the unusual interface of the YTPMania forums). The current cafe thread on the YellowTealPurple forums opened on November 18, 2024 (with its first post being made as early as November 5 in order to establish its presence with the site's opening), and has seen a respectable 31 pages as of present. Skype versions of the Café have also existed, which has at times seemed to subtract from the discussion of the original threads, but the Café thread proper remains with a reputation of being more relaxed, controlled, and easy to follow conversation-wise nature, being considered much more refreshing and comfortable.

=Staff-Only Games=
There have been many times where two or more tennis staff played each other.

The following image documents all known staff-staff tennis matches:

<small>''(note: this image is currently flawed and incorrect. a new one is in the works.)''</small>

[[File:Staffstaffmatches.png]]

There have also been many staff-only chains and events, most prominently the [[Staff Multi-Way]].