A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like

[Ganymede]

@Rook said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Here's a question... how does someone like this come back into the community and NOT try to do so, if their intention is pure and honest, anonymously? Doesn't the consideration of that question lend some credence, one way or the other, to understanding intent?

You could come out and admit your past shitty behavior. @Tinuviel did that at some point, and most people have forgotten what he did. I've done some shit too, and I've been called on it.

The instant person aside, a lot of people have done shit things in their time, and have admitted to the shit they did. And most of us are pretty forgiving people. The unrepentant shits either leave forever (Seanan McGuire) or find some way to worm their way back in. And it is absolutely infuriating that people let the latter happen.

[Rook]

I think my implied question should've been clearer: How do you NOT come to a game like this and make every fucking effort to be different, anonymous and someone new? My point here is - someone who doesn't do this, is either blissfully self-ignorant and in denial of accusations before, or they are (as so many have said) happily arrogant and uncaring for the reputation that precedes them.

[Thenomain]

@Rook said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Here's a question... how does someone like this come back into the community and NOT try to do so, if their intention is pure and honest, anonymously? Doesn't the consideration of that question lend some credence, one way or the other, to understanding intent?

Hello, my name is Thenomain and I fucked up.

During my headstaffing tenure at The Reach, as a part of trying to maintain my anonymity in a character, I lied to VASpider and her husband to try to take it easy on me. I knew at the time that this wasn't a good idea, but anxiety and depression got the better of me and I thought I could make it work.

It backfired. Of course it backfired. One of the extremely few people I trusted with that anonymity told Spider and she almost immediately tried to blackmail me with it, in order to get some space, in order to justify that she wasn't wrong.

I've never done anything like this before and I'm unlikely to do anything like this again, but it happened. Sorry.

--

That's how. Be honest. Be forgiving. Be understanding. Be an adult. I would also accept "back away and hope it dies down and try again", but after the fifth or sixth time then I doubt this is going to be effective. In any case it has to start with recognition of the problem. If you can't recognize the problem--whether or not the problem was your fault--then I sincerely doubt it will change. One can always hope.

[Paris]

@Rook said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think my implied question should've been clearer: How do you NOT come to a game like this and make every fucking effort to be different, anonymous and someone new? My point here is - someone who doesn't do this, is either blissfully self-ignorant and in denial of accusations before, or they are (as so many have said) happily arrogant and uncaring for the reputation that precedes them.

Correct, her critics are 'creeps' as of that last post.

[Arkandel]

Well @Rook, there are at least two potential answers here. One is more optimistic than the other.

The first explanation is you want to be truthful and honest; you don't intend to mislead anyone into playing with you under false pretenses, or to have to lie to protect your 'secret' from innocent questions ('hey, have you ever played WoD before?').

The second is you want to put your name out there as a feeler. Is the community ready for your return? Do you still have a support base? Or are you starting out with just baggage and obstacles in the way?

[Ataru]

I'm an extremely forgiving, give someone a second chance, type of person. And when/if the Dune game ever opened, there are many people I'd welcome on it that I may have issues with (though to be fair after 25+ years in this mix, I haven't really made an enemy). But I can categorically say the VASpider is one person I would absolutely not allow on the game and if she appeared and I was informed it was her, she'd be out. No chances or fucks given. I don't really see a thread like this as a witch hunt (though to be fair it could easily turn into something worse, so you know ... lets pay attention to what we're saying), but I'm not going to feel bad if its dump on VASpider thread. She obviously chose to reenter the community on FH. She can deal with the repercussions of that, including this thread which she might never see.

[surreality]

@Ataru Pretty sure she's lurking to read obsessively. While it's true this one thing may have changed, she revels in the attention threads like this give her and pursues them extensively to feed her victim complex.

She has yet to understand that simply relating the basic facts about her actual behavior is not persecution.

This is part of the problem, of course, but there are people who will always believe their seeming buddy over strangers on the internet -- that's completely normal, after all -- so she'll spin all this into 'those mean creepy stalkers'.

There's plenty I know that I have not, will and would never repeat. Some of it is second-hand (with evidence) stuff from friends, which is their story to ultimately tell and not mine, and some of it is stuff I saw go down RL, but no matter how much it would give people 'ammo' to mock or belittle her, I would never, ever share, since ultimately that is not the point of threads like this, and that would be vastly uncool. (No, really, do not PM me to ask, either; I know folks will/would and I'm serious about that.)

[Ghost]

Constructively, I think, from a certain point of view, it's easy to approach this hobby as figurative sandbox. When I was younger, around 19, so probably around 99/2000, I had this lackadaisical attitude about these games. Don't ask me where I played, I couldnt remember. Fuck, 1030, I'm digressing Back to the point:

I think it's easy to approach these games like its a community sandbox and whether your individual fucked-up-ness leads you to a place where you take a karate kick to all of the castles in the sandbox, even the ones other people are building, it doesn't matter. It's data, words on a screen, time spent, and within x# months/years the game will go away and it'll all be lost, right? If you get frustrated and destroy everyone else's creation in the sandbox, even your own, you're not destroying actual property. You can walk away anonymously. Life will go on.

Now, back then, I might have kicked a few assets when leaving a game, but I never did anything damaging, but my point is this:

Depending on who you ask, the level of value as to what is on these games and how lasting that value is, even if the game is only open 6 months, varies from person to person. It is, however, very likely that these unapologetic repeat offenders view this hobby as sandcastles made of ether and code where people merely donate their time, and that there is no actual, lasting value aside from what your own self seeks to get out of it.

The worst repeat offenders may, on some level, not take the hobby seriously outside of their own involvement, view the stories as important only so long as they're involved, and don't see the point in bothering much about anyone else's involvement or feelings because, in the end, very few of us know each other in a RL sense.

Which would explain why these people become unapologetic about the way they fuck with the sandbox. Because, what's the risk to them for doing so?

[Tinuviel]

@Ganymede I wouldn't say they've forgotten, exactly. Perhaps... it stings less now, so it's less of a concern.

[surreality]

@Ghost That's pretty much it, with a lot of folks. It's, I think, why the fact that she had zero qualms behaving that way with real property and a real home is ultimately so telling.

That, and... really, her tumblr thing pretty much proves the 'not changed one bit' already, but that whole 'time to change' was also 'time to make amends', and zero effort was expended on that front.

I can see why someone might not see the need to do that in regard to virtual property. That she feels the same way about physical property is pretty horrifying.

And if the standard scale of importance differential between RL/VR is applied, the kind of gross things she thinks are perfectly fine to do to people on a game becomes quickly apparent. Even direct parity would be awful, but we're really not that lucky.

[Arkandel]

@Ghost said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

Depending on who you ask, the level of value as to what is on these games and how lasting that value is, even if the game is only open 6 months, varies from person to person. It is, however, very likely that these unapologetic repeat offenders view this hobby as sandcastles made of ether and code where people merely donate their time, and that there is no actual, lasting value aside from what your own self seeks to get out of it.

There is no value we can get out of games other than entertainment and, if we're lucky, some friends made on the way.

It's a really common fallacy in online gaming when it takes up big chunks of our time that there needs to somehow be some sort of return for that investment; is it possible after all that you'll sink 20+ hours of your week (which is easy at 3 hours a night) into something, into anything and see 'nothing' for it at the end? Yes. Yes it is.

I was there when WoW launched its first expansion. There had been players actually shocked - and I mean you'd see reactions ranging from stunned to genuinely angry - because they had sank months of their lives getting amazing gear with finely tuned stats... and now casuals were getting better stuff than that dropping from random regular mobs on opening night. Well, yep, that's a thing. Just like it's a thing in MU* that you could bust your ass for a while only to see the game go down. There's no permanence, implied let alone promised; we get what we put in.

But having said that it IS damn hard to not have that subconscious expectation regardless. You're doing all this shit, it can't really have been for nothing... right?

Right?

[surreality]

@Arkandel said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

But having said that it IS damn hard to not have that subconscious expectation regardless. You're doing all this shit, it can't really have been for nothing... right?

Right?

...while completely off-topic for this thread, that seriously sums up the reason I'm at least temp-retired for the time being.

There really is a point at which the whole 'faith in humanity' thing gets completely scragged once in a while in regard to this hobby.

[Derp]

So, my two cents here, trying to move away from specific people to a more generalized thing:

I think that it's a double edged sword in how we go about this. Either way, there's no real way to 'win' when it comes to 'people that other people don't like'.

Personally, I try and avoid Scarlet Letters. Each game is a unique space. They might share players, themes, hell, even code, but ultimately, each game is a thing unto itself. No two games have been perfect copies of each other. Even The Reach and Fallcoast are different beasts, for a variety of reasons, and that's the closest thing I've seen to a copy of one from another.

That goes for players too. I think that if we get into the habit of treating players differently based on past experiences or whatever, it's gonna lead us down a bad road. Players can have difficulties on one game, given that game's atmosphere and environment, that they'd never have on another. I've seen it happen before. While I don't buy into a lot of the 'hivemind' stuff, there is definitely a flow that you fall into based on a game's players, stories, environment, rules, etc, and like all social creatures we'll in some way conform to that, for good or ill.

This makes some people unhappy, sure. People who have been around for awhile and dealt with the same people can be wary, and with good cause. If you don't do what they expect, then you can catch a lot of heat.

But you can also catch a lot of heat singling out players for different treatment for any reason, and not treating all players as if they were playing on a level playing field.

There is no middle ground there. You either do treat them all the same, or you don't treat them all the same. No matter how you try and nuance it, it comes down to one of those two things. And either way, one side is going to be unhappy that you chose that path.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all depends on what you want from your game. Me, I choose to lean toward the 'all players starting on a new game have a clean slate, and will be treated as equals under the same set of rules'. Partly because I feel like that's the better option, and partly because it makes it less complicated. i don't have the time, energy, or desire to track the complete MU histories of the dozens of people that have A Reputation in this hobby. I staff on two games right now, and there are literally hundreds of players that I have to manage and work with. The ones with the Reputation are a small fraction of those.

So ultimately, I think that it just comes down to preference. And as I've said before, as much as we like to make it sound like MUers are a cohesive lot when it comes to certain things, it's just really not true. We're incredibly diverse, and we see it pop up all the time. We're just never gonna agree on certain things. And that's okay.

So that's my constructive two cents on People We Might Not Like.

[Arkandel]

@surreality To be frank, although it's hard to stay detached all the time I strive to not have expectations of people either. A fair amount of cynicism pays off, especially online where folks are out for themselves, and words like 'fairness' are naive concepts. They really are; one doesn't get what they put in, and if that's what they want then it's a much better idea to invest their precious time elsewhere. Circumstances and yes, convenience trump everything else.

It really pays off to keep a bit of distance from the material we're dealing with, I think. It's the essential difference in the end between us ranting on a thread like this about "people we don't like" and raging to everyone who'll listen, or who's forced to, about the motherfuckers we despise because they wronged us.

But to get to what you're saying... the reason you might want a break now is often the same one that brings you back in the end. Was that all for nothing? Don't you want to find out if it was, says that voice at the back of your head? And so you return.

[Tinuviel]

@Derp said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

I think that if we get into the habit of treating players differently based on past experiences or whatever, it's gonna lead us down a bad road. Players can have difficulties on one game, given that game's atmosphere and environment, that they'd never have on another. I've seen it happen before. While I don't buy into a lot of the 'hivemind' stuff, there is definitely a flow that you fall into based on a game's players, stories, environment, rules, etc, and like all social creatures we'll in some way conform to that, for good or ill.

If a person has developed a reputation for being hostile, abusive, or the like then they should be ostracized. That's part of how communities self-police. If we want to encourage new blood to enter the hobby, we need to exclude those people that cause the most problems. You don't stop the antibiotics once the symptoms go, you continue the course to prevent reinfection.

This makes some people unhappy, sure. People who have been around for awhile and dealt with the same people can be wary, and with good cause. If you don't do what they expect, then you can catch a lot of heat.

But you can also catch a lot of heat singling out players for different treatment for any reason, and not treating all players as if they were playing on a level playing field

There is no middle ground there. You either do treat them all the same, or you don't treat them all the same. No matter how you try and nuance it, it comes down to one of those two things. And either way, one side is going to be unhappy that you chose that path.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. It all depends on what you want from your game. Me, I choose to lean toward the 'all players starting on a new game have a clean slate, and will be treated as equals under the same set of rules'.

People are never on a level playing field. Some are new, some are familiar with how the various members of staff react to certain things so they appear to skirt the rules, some people are just generally better players than others. There is no clean slate, no matter how much you might want to say there is. We know peoples' reputations, good or bad, and we judge them on it - publicly or not.

It's not about being happy or not. It's about being stable, and able to build. If there's a kid coming to the sandpit to kick all the castles down, don't let them come to your sandpit. Nobody is under any obligation to put up with abuse or harassment or negative behaviours in this community. Nobody is under any obligation to let everyone play their games.

[surreality]

@Arkandel I'm at that point where I would have been happy if I got back 5% of what I put in, and was still getting consistently let down for a period of several months.

It's partly my own damned fault; there are decent folk I adore who were interested in doing things, I just had reached a point that was a few miles, rather than paces, past the inevitable line we never realize is there until we've crossed it re: our personal limits, I just managed to overshoot that fucker with a sonic boom this go 'round, and the faith and hope and optimism and confidence all got jettisoned somewhere along the way like discarded booster rockets at launch.

This is a thing, too, and it's one worth mention: one of the reasons people go apeshit and become a living nightmare on games is when they don't recognize this has occurred. There's a reason I am absolutely not playing anywhere right now, even though I have bits built in a couple places I could play. There have been times I have not been self-aware on this front, and while it was a hell of a long time ago now, I certainly wouldn't fault anyone for an instant for hating me hardcore if they only knew me from back then, or that was their only experience of knowing me/etc.

[Arkandel]

@surreality said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

There have been times I have not been self-aware on this front, and while it was a hell of a long time ago now, I certainly wouldn't fault anyone for an instant for hating me hardcore if they only knew me from back then, or that was their only experience of knowing me/etc.

Yeah, I get you. And if it helps there have been times when a critical mass of disgruntlement and indignant butthurt had turned me into an (even bigger) pain to be around. Sometimes a break helps; and I assume by the fact I haven't heard again from people I know who were in assorted similar situations that sometimes those breaks are permanent, too.

But we've had this conversation before in private so you already know what my ultimate response is... you need to take care of yourself first, because no one else is. We all have our shit, our agendas, our perspectives - but none of us lives in your head or walks in your shoes.

In the context of this thread that means if there's someone we might not like we need to know how to deal with it, first and foremost. Staff won't necessarily do it, our friends won't necessarily be able to buffer us, and our emotional capacity might not be as inexhaustible as we'd like; we need to own this shit ourselves.

[surreality]

@Arkandel This is one of the reasons I'm a fan of the 'timeout' temp-ban, actually.

Sometimes, it really does become clear that someone is doing themselves (and often others around them) harm when they're stuck in this kind of position and don't have either the self-awareness or self-control to not log in and just explode everywhere.

At that point, the game environment is genuinely not healthy -- for them and those around them -- and sometimes a couple days to a month of 'forced vacation' is a necessary reality check.

(Also, yeeeeeup, that situation is not improving much. Fingers crossed and all... typically because I'm knitting like a fiend instead of coding wiki shit lately, but I digress.)

[Ganymede]

@Tinuviel said in A Constructive Thread About People We Might Not Like:

If a person has developed a reputation for being hostile, abusive, or the like then they should be ostracized. That's part of how communities self-police. If we want to encourage new blood to enter the hobby, we need to exclude those people that cause the most problems.

@Ghost,

This is my response to yours. This is the risk we can present. And so long as problem players can weasel their way back onto games, there are no real consequences for them.

This is why I am ardently pursuing my "crusade."

[Arkandel]

@Ganymede The strange thing is that games historically haven't taken that route. It's weird.

"In the name of fairness we'll let that asshole chase away good players, although we know he's an asshole, but we're not 100% sure about it/they haven't done anything particularly horrible this week".

It makes no sense.