MSB: The meta-discussion

[Gingerlily]

@surreality

"MSB: Use of the internet as Al Gore intended that time he invented it."

[Catsmeow]

MSB people can be dicks. It's because people can be dicks. However it is nothing compared to WORA. Here you sort of wince if you are called out for something, but then everyone moves on. On WORA, if your name got mentioned, you all but cried. It was phrased in the most gut-wrenching manner that belittled everything about you just because they could. I would like to think we all grew up from those times, but there were definite mean girls with just being mean to be mean (sidenote: Mean boys too).

Some psycho got her panties in a bunch against me and flamed me a few times and people were all like whatever about it. So I didn't get the evils of WORA, but I watched it happen. I did try desperately to get on the worst purple prose description board. I think Cobalt posted one of my descs when she decided she hated that char. It wasn't that bad and peeps said so. It made me sad. So sad.

Here, it just depends what you are looking for. I like to see the bad side of games that I'm thinking of playing. You have to wade through the BS but you get a clear view. Mainly as I don't want to get invested and then find out -- oh these are the people that did XYZ. On the other hand, it can handicap people who have crossed the wrong people too. I would like to think we just call people out, but there are times that people go really on a personal attack here too.

So... I suppose it serves some purposes and is the same old thing in other ways.

[Teto]

Honestly? I'm mostly a lurker here. I come in every now and again, but I'm an observer of this community. What I take away from here is best told in the immortal words of Anton Ego:

https://youtu.be/-JPOoFkrh94?t=56s

[faraday]

@surreality said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@Gingerlily I used to be a mod on the big abortiondebate forum on livejournal. I have seen some shit. <rubs salve on all the scars> So I know precisely what you're saying about it just kinda being how people are on the internets.

Just because it's how people are on 90% of the internet forums out there doesn't mean that's how it should be or how it has to be. It all comes down to what community standards you choose to have and whether you're willing to enforce them.

I think adults should be capable of reining themselves in and providing criticism while still recognizing that the person whose game/system/show/opinion you're bashing is still a person who deserves to be treated with basic respect. It's the difference between saying "I don't like Battlestar games because X, Y Z" instead of "Man, Battlestar games suck. Why would anyone in their right mind want to play that crap?" (I love BSG, for the record.)

It's really not that hard, it just takes effort.

[surreality]

@faraday That's actually the biggest difference I see between here and WORA. Here, it's ideas and actions that get grilled and shredded, and usually with nowhere near the levels of vitriol common to any incarnation of WORA. WORA, it was people, full stop.

Perfect? No. But an enormous change for the better.

[Arkandel]

What's kind of neat is how several people on MSB aren't actually playing anywhere. I don't mean folks just taking a break between games but folks who haven't been on a MU* in months or even years.

For them this forum is the community.

[ThatGuyThere]

MUSoapbox has definitely improved as a place to discuss things compared to WORA but I would be lying if I didn't say that WORA was a hell of a lot more entertaining to read.

[Misadventure]

Entertaining maybe, but the realization that what you are reading is purposeful fiction reduced utility extremely.

[Arkandel]

@ThatGuyThere said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

MUSoapbox has definitely improved as a place to discuss things compared to WORA but I would be lying if I didn't say that WORA was a hell of a lot more entertaining to read.

Now you remind me of @HelloRaptor (I hope the fucker gets back here) who left because we had gotten too soft.

[ThatGuyThere]

Though I rarely agreed with him, @HelloRaptor was one of the most entertaining folks on WORA and on MSB.

[Autumn]

The problem I've observed with online fora where vitriolic, jerkish self-presentation is accepted (or actively encouraged) is that eventually, that's all it's about.

The people who start that sort of forum often do so because they think that a lack of restrictions on debate foster a more honest and open discussion, or because they think calling people out as harshly as possible will make people consider their arguments more carefully, or because it's funny if you do it in as absurd and overblown a manner as possible among friends who know it's all just a gag.

And that works fine as long as it's a small group of friends who all operate on the same wavelength, but when you get more people involved, you get people who aren't on the same wavelength; or who don't realize that the point of being allowed to be a vitriolic asshole is supposed to be to make the discussion better, rather than just venting spleen; or who just aren't capable of engaging on the same intellectual level as the people who started the whole thing, but are really good at being vitriolic assholes and want to be like the cool popular kids.

Smart and funny people interspersing their discussions with entertainingly written and articulate insults can be fun to read and participate in. Until they get drowned out by people who aren't smart, or funny, or entertaining, or articulate.

[Arkandel]

@Autumn said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

The problem I've observed with online fora where vitriolic, jerkish self-presentation is accepted (or actively encouraged) is that eventually, that's all it's about.

The people who start that sort of forum often do so because they think that a lack of restrictions on debate foster a more honest and open discussion, or because they think calling people out as harshly as possible will make people consider their arguments more carefully, or because it's funny if you do it in as absurd and overblown a manner as possible among friends who know it's all just a gag.

You know how there are counter-games? Games basically made by disgruntled players of whatever MU* who decide to do the-same-thing-only-better and almost invariable create the same-thing-only-much-worse? The same principle applies to forum philosophies too - by trying to 'free' the conversation, but framing it at the same time, what they're doing is limiting it. A place that's made to talk shit will talk shit; news at eleven!

And in the manner of all things toxic, eventually all your users are those who thrive in or at least tolerate the toxicity, which is a smaller subset of the folks you actually want sticking around. For extra hilarity observe what happens when the founding fathers come to disagree, too.

[surreality]

I keep in touch with the original 'Jaded Gamer' from time to time on facebook. (I am almost never on facebook, so it's kinda rare.) In the last few times we spoke, a while back, he wasn't happy with where the original thing went, because it seemed like the monsters that had once been held up for exposure? Well, everybody else became monsters, too, as things went more than a little too far. I agreed with that, and still do.

There's a difference between talking about something shitty that someone has done, and endlessly fucking with that person because of it, and the old WORA had more of that going on that a lot of people could stomach. There, however, calling it out was just painting a target on one's own head.

Not so much the case here. Logs of "Look at this stupid rule on this game! Ha ha ha see how I trolled them about it?" do not get a warm welcome here, and for good reason: actually fucking with people just because you don't like their decisions or choices is not cool, it's not justified. Discussing the stupid rule here is a different thing entirely, particularly if it does not dissolve into personal attacks on an individual. We have plenty of folks who seem totally keen on personal attacks anyway (I've fallen into that trap myself, usually 'omg wtf with your reading comprehension?!' kinds of shit, which is about as far as those kinds of things go here anyway). We do not see things like the old picture of Jessica Rabbit in her underwear, drunkenly passed out in a hallway with her legs spread and propped against the walls, which was the kind of personal attack WORA was famous for.

[Arkandel]

@surreality It's a history of WORA, too.

[Thenomain]

@Arkandel said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

Now you remind me of @HelloRaptor (I hope the fucker gets back here) who left because we had gotten too soft.

HR didn't leave because we got too soft, he left because he didn't want to change his tone because someone would complain about him being a meanie poopyhead. I mean, sure I love Lewis CK, but not everyone does.

@Arkandel said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

You know how there are counter-games? Games basically made by disgruntled players of whatever MU* who decide to do the-same-thing-only-better and almost invariable create the same-thing-only-much-worse? The same principle applies to forum philosophies too - by trying to 'free' the conversation, but framing it at the same time, what they're doing is limiting it.

For those who don't know this bit of history, there were two (two!) forums that were meant to be the anti-Wora, where only constructiveness and support were allowed. The people who ran them were so tense about anything else happening that they folded quickly.

What I see here that I never saw on Wora was that people are more willing here to say, "Hey, adult more please." I've seen it happen on more games, too.

What's interesting about the history of Wora is that people volunteered to go there, to talk there, to be there, to create Wora. Whether or not it helped, it existed and has left an indelible mark on our history.

I suspect that mark says "D-, See me after class."

@surreality said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

'Jaded Gamer'

THANK YOU. His name should be on a plaque somewhere, even if the subtext says, "Yeah, sorry about all this."

---

edit: I just found this quote on Facebook, of all places:

CATO’S partizans may call me furious; I regard it not. There are men, too, who have not virtue enough to be angry and that crime perhaps is Cato’s. He who dares not offend cannot be honest.

— Thomas Paine, The Forester's Letters Number 3 (April 22, 1776).

[Cupcake]

Anybody remember that hideous WORA wiki?

[ThatGuyThere]

@Thenomain
I think a quote by Thomas Paine is particularity apt in a discussion like this. He is one of the people t the forefront of the American Revolution and with the timing of the publication of Common Sense someone whose contribution to it was absolutely vital to success but he is also someone who no one builds monuments in honor of.
Sometimes agitation is absolutely necessary to accomplish growth but no one ever celebrates the agitators.

[SparklesTheClown]

While back in the WORA days, WORA discovering a MU* could sometimes actually be the literal death of a MU*, due to all the general emotional toxicity that the forum would put on staff, MSB seems to actually make a significantly larger attempt at being constructive.

I mean, a lot of people in the hobby don't even know that MSB exists, which to me is a good thing, because it means MSB isn't being this Death Star of toxicity.

While as with WORA, I still consider MSB to primarily be a WoD thing rather than a MUing in general thing, I've noticed that MSB can have a positive influence on a new game rather than what was, in my opinion, WORA's almost universally negative influence on anything that wasn't WoD (because WoD people for whatever reason, came to accept a baseline level of toxicity, which is fucked up).

I say this as someone who literally hated WORA with a goddamned passion, so I like to think I lack bias.

[Thenomain]

@HelloProject said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

I say this as someone who literally hated WORA with a goddamned passion, so I like to think I lack bias.

I...hope that was tongue-in-cheek humor, there. You're easily as biased as I am.

[Derp]

@Tempest said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

@WhatInTheSun said in MSB: The meta-discussion:

How many people are active on here? In the few places I've read, there's a smallish group that's vocal, then another layer of semi-vocal.

This is something I've noticed that's different from WORA.

Like yeah, there might be a decent pool of people who post here and there, but MSB is mostly like...the same 5 people from the WoD-crew circle-jerking each other all over the board about how they're the only people who know how to 'MU right'.

Nobody is preventing people from other games posting? If it'still heavily WoD, that's just because the active people play WoD games. Feel free to start discussions about other active games?