A bit of trouble on Firefly
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@JinShei said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
@Scissors said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
It's morbidly fascinating to read about this sort of behavior. The fact that when this guy's loudly blaming people for not having "adult conversations" with him, there is a complete and utter lack of self-awareness of the irony. I mean, even a dog will recognize its own reflection after looking into a mirror enough times.
Can people really be this blind to their own faults? Sometimes I think it is by choice.
I don't think this person lacks self-awareness. I don't think he's blind to his own faults.
I think he knows exactly what he's doing and is being purposefully manipulative by accusing others of faults he knows they might care about, but that he personally doesn't. He's playing gotcha. Can't accuse people of being immature if you can't conduct yourself maturely, now can you? Don't lose face. Stay dignified. Be tolerant. Even as I behave in a manner that is undignified, intolerant and inconsiderate towards you. Gotta prove you're better than me! Otherwise we're the same, you and I; don't stoop to my level.
It's just another variation of the ol' 'so much for the tolerant left'.
I definitely got this. He gotcha'd so gleefully that as soon as I banned him he ran to discord channels with the log claiming he caught an Admin treating him badly because I called him on his shit. I was grateful for both channels owner's disinterest or rejection of his bullshit.
For me, the tipoff in my brief communication with him was this bolded part:
<PM> (to Aksel) Rosa (Romeo) says, "Hey. I wasn't sure how to approach this the other day but truthfully I wasn't comfortable with the last scene I had with you and don't think we would mesh. Your character seems very macho/aggressive and sexually forward. I'm not really into that and would prefer to avoid in future."
<PM> (to Rosa) Aksel blinks slowly, "Um, Okay. I will go ahead and leave you alone and avoid any scenes that you have signed up for in that case. My apologies for Aksel trying to be playful back with Pippin and the like after the joke that had been made. Or will find another game so you are comfortable.
My ex used to threaten suicide any time I tried to leave the relationship, any time I tried to refuse him sexually. He would make it sound like this was something I wanted, that I had asked for, when in actuality all I had said was no to a specific thing. It was done to guilt me, make me feel bad about wanting to police my own comfort levels. And suddenly in a communication where I had said something like, 'this hurt me' or 'I didn't like that', I was the bad guy, for making him feel bad about doing something bad.
Further then twisted as:
<RP Requests> Aksel would come to rp but has been informed that his character is essentially just a muscle bound asshole who makes people feel uncomfortable and that my rp style is just shit. So...
<RP Requests> Sam says, "From what he told me, he got a page--didn't say from who--denigrating his character, his RP style, and generally being very unpleasant."
Not what I said, and I wasn't even in the scene he was being invited to.
I also don't buy the innocent "blinks slowly" reaction he gave when I said his behaviour had made me uncomfortable. Looking at this thread, I know I'm not the first person to have ever said something like this to him. It's simply impossible to believe that after however many incidents of him behaving this way and having it pointed out to him, he remains oblivious.
He essentially did a mini-version of what he threatened to do to Firefly; instead of calling me out on MSB, he called me out in the public chat. And his PM communications with various game owners make explicit that this behaviour pattern of his is a calculated tactic he knows to be effective enough to use as a threat, smugly, not simply as an emotional outburst of someone genuinely hurt.
QED: I don't believe his bullshit.
I do feel sympathy for him though. It must be hella sad to go through life not being able to have any kind of meaningful relationship.
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@Kestrel said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
I also don't buy the innocent "blinks slowly" reaction he gave when I said his behaviour had made me uncomfortable. Looking at this thread, I know I'm not the first person to have ever said something like this to him. It's simply impossible to believe that after however many incidents of him behaving this way and having it pointed out to him, he remains oblivious.
I'm on psychologist or anything but from my experience that kind of behavior isn't so much deliberate psychological manipulation as much as it's a kind of delusion where they're unable to take any kind of criticism and a seemingly compulsive need to make everything about themselves. Trying to guilt people seems more of a reflex then something they think about as a coherent tactic.
Where his entire approach gets extremely nutty is in the very premise of the strategy he is trying to use.
- Claim to be banned for no reason
- Proceed to actively try to sabotage the game (an unambiguously good reason to ban anyone)
- Try to use the sabotage to leverage the staff into letting him play again
First off, if you don't get along with the staff you shouldn't play the game. There's enough games out there there's no reason to play a game where you don't trust the people running it.
Second off, you're never going to get anyone on your side by actively trying to sabotage them. That's not an appeal strategy, it's inanity.
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I tend to find it less than helpful to spin predatory behavior as something that's somehow just reflexive or the product of mental illness. His mental state is between him and whatever mental health professionals he might engage.
His behavior is purposefully predatory, full stop.
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Idle curiosity. Any pathetically 'skeery' PMs here to any staff he clocks as male, or is this just a special service for ~the ladies~?
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I think Apos was on the receiving end of them, but he can speak to that.
He does seem to prefer to target the ladies though from what I have seen.
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@WildBaboons Yeah, my impression is that his focus tends to be on targeting women, but men can get some attention by being the authority figures who deprive him of that.
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From my recollection, he was reasonable with @L-B-Heuschkel who had logged in with a male name, and focused entirely on me, with a female name...
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Fwiw, even I saw this coming, about as soon as I saw the 6'7" + all red text shortdesc, and then some totally random chat incident with him posturing about being 'the biggest viking' on the game or whatever. It's actually sort of funny how predictable these people are.
Also, lol at 'ghosted IPs.' Hack that Gibson, you crazy cowboy.
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@JinShei I completely missed any of this on Discworld... who was it? (And I'm still feeling bad about leaving, it was a lovely game.)
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@Ninjakitten His communications with us on MSB were entirely with Blu, and not with myself. Granted, that may be because Blu was the one predominantly talking to him on TSS. Call our experience neither a point for or against the theory.
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@Ninjakitten said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
Idle curiosity. Any pathetically 'skeery' PMs here to any staff he clocks as male, or is this just a special service for ~the ladies~?
He is abusive with dudes but reserves the stalking for those he perceives as 'ladies'. He also found out the real name of an Arx staffer...and then matched it to the wrong staffbit, enabling us to find out HIS REAL NAME TOO OOOOH SKARY. But yeah. He dropped 'her' name to a male staffer in some pathetic macho hur hur i threaten ur lady stupidity.
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@Roz said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
I tend to find it less than helpful to spin predatory behavior as something that's somehow just reflexive or the product of mental illness. His mental state is between him and whatever mental health professionals he might engage.
His behavior is purposefully predatory, full stop.
It's mainly that when it comes to men behaving like asshats it's common to over-estimate how much thought they actually put into their behavior. When it comes to being -helpful- I sometimes wonder how worthwhile it would be to establish a shared banlist between games for the particularly malicious actors out there. While some people might get banned because they're a bad fit for a specific game, others like this particular person seems like he's a bad for for -any- game and some pain could be saved by having them ejected preemptively.
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@Groth I tend to agree with you on the latter half of what you're saying, though a banlist only goes so far, because harasser MO tends to be to use workarounds and try to sneak under the radar.
The first part definitely doesn't apply here, though. These are well understood abusive behaviors, and they're not even a little bit subtle. That slim margin of doubt is what people like this rely on, which is why there's a strong negative reaction to that line of discussion -- it's why they're able to do what they do for so long, and why it often takes so long to ID and oust them. Alas.
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@juke
There are some people out there who are very deliberately manipulative like Athanasius/Sovereign/etc or the legendary VASpider who have made an artform out of isolating people and preying on the vulnerable. Athanasius in particular made it his MO to catch female characters in chargen because that gave him the opportunity to try to manipulate them before they knew anything or anyone else in the game.Others out there like Thrace/Issac/etc are just kind of... dumb? Thrissac has no master plan. He just keeps harassing/stalking female players because he seems to think that if he's just persistent enough they'll give in?
That said from a game management perspective it ultimately doesn't matter if it's deliberate manipulation or lashing out. If someone makes the other players uncomfortable and can't fix their behavior they should be shown the door.
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@Goblin he came after you left and never made it on the grid.
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@Ninjakitten I noted to @mietze that he has been solely communicating to me-- even about @Seraphim73. I wasn't reading much into it, but could be part of his MO.
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Things of interest--
GirlCalledBlu
Real sorry to see that you didn't take my advice to heart about trying to find a way to change your behavior. This is the escalation that we were talking about-- please do not try to "go around" Faraday's fixes. It violates the purposes of those. Game-runners have every right to have players depart their game, either willingly or with bans. You attempting to go around those measures is poor form.ZombieKerouac
I never said I was going to do it. I was just letting you know the truth of the matter.Not once did I say that is what I was going to do to your game. In fact have you seen me claim any rosters on Savage? Have you seen me inundate your game with guest logins? Nope.
Because you and rome actually discussed things and handled them like adults. And didn't outright say that I would never be allowed back. Just that I needed to change the behavior that you believe is going to be shown on every game. Despite not showing that behavior on yours. Even after banning me despite not having violated any of your games policies.
But painting a picture that there was an issue with TSS when there wasn't? And acting as if I had been a dickbag to the player base at large on that game..were false statements by both you and your husband
I don't log into this new Wora often. But people do let me know when there is shit talking going on about me. Some of them even players on your game.
So I got curious, figured I would see the shit talking being said. And the false claims of causing issues on TSS being made.
GirlCalledBlu
Have you signed onto guests and claimed rosters to harass other games?ZombieKerouac
When?I already told you that I signed into a guest account when they banned me on GH. The rosters on GH? That I can't much claim credit for. As that was an old friend who I used to code with.
But have I since? Not so much.
In fact, I hadn't for about a day when you decided to ban me from TSS despite having violated no policies.
GirlCalledBlu
Oh, dude. You know when. Please don't play that game with me. Not only does it make you look like an ass, it makes you look like an idiot. You were harassing GH less than 24 hours from when we talked. So, let's just totally agree that you violated a game's security system so you could be a dick.I know because I was on GH at the time when Guests were locked down. And even if it wasn't you who were doing the roster shit, you still knew it was happening and harassed KB and AM about it; dick move.
So, you totally did violate one of our policies: don't be an ass
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Ah, gosh. I’m gonna go there, aren’t I? Yes, yes I am.
Toxic masculinity (I’m aware half of the people reading this have suddenly tuned out) is what leads to this kind of behaviour and I tend to find it very telling, when dealing with these types of people, to look at not just how they treat women, but how they treat other men.
I noted that one of the red flags that set me off with this guy early on wasn’t just his jokes about wanting to fight/spank the female characters in the scene with him, but also his OOC “joke” about wanting to use the only other male character there in his workout. Said male character, at 6’1”, was comparatively shorter, was described as having a lean physique, had an intellectual-type job description. Aksel on the other hand seemed to have been designed as a concept purely on the premise of machismo. I mean here’s his shortdesc, as noted by @bored …
I don’t even know how he did that, how he made it red, but it seems to fit in pretty neatly with the rest of his attention-seeking behaviour, doesn’t it? And again in isolation this would be meaningless, but in combination with other stuff?
I am very wary of people who, regardless of gender, treat any encounter with individuals who share their gender as an opportunity to compete/posture. The type of abuse directed at men vs. women is obviously different in the case of toxic masculinity, but when all women are nothing more than sex objects, and that’s your main drive, it follows that all men are competition, and your entire self-worth is based on being better, more “Alpha” than other men — as defined by being more “manly”, taller, physically stronger, better at getting women.
Azazello/Cullen is another person in this hobby who’s very easy to spot for this; while he treats all female characters (if, and only if, he believes them to be female-played) as prospective rape/stalker victims, he also has a penchant for going on murder sprees anytime he encounters male characters whom female characters/players in the game seem to gravitate to, especially if they’re thought highly of and their masculinity is non-traditional, e.g. based on being a good person, an upstanding citizen, a “caretaker”, rather than raw physical power. His characters are always super tall, white, blonde, and his descriptions wax poetic about both his musculature and his very European heritage, his supreme pale-blondness.
When I want to know which men are “safe” for me as a woman, I very often look first at how they are with other men. And if you want evidence of male-targeted misogyny in action, look at PUA & InCel culture.
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@Groth It is an interesting sort of thought.
I'm really not entirely sure how it could work, with as easy as it is on a MU* to stick a finger over your lip and declare that you obviously aren't Groth, Groth doesn't have a mustache.
But I do think there are people in the hobby where, if you do know who they are on other games, it's better for everyone to just give them the preemptive boot instead of trying for this weird high-minded stance that no decade-long history of stalking and threats don't count if it didn't happen on this game, which is unspoiled frontier where anyone can make-believe themselves a fresh start (as if the hobby wasn't as incestuous as a Habsburg key party).
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@JinShei said in A bit of trouble on Firefly:
From my recollection, he was reasonable with @L-B-Heuschkel who had logged in with a male name, and focused entirely on me, with a female name...
Correct. From what I have seen, bumping into him now three times (I don't think he made the connection from Discworld to my Gray Harbor char), he's exceedingly and unfailingly polite to men. And rather not so to women. This is definitely a misogyny thing.
