I owe a lot of people some apologies.
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It's probably fine. @Reimesu and I certainly find it suspicious that the specific questions being asked seem like they would come from the playbook of Andrew Tate, but the underlying point of 'are the rules enforced equally' is at least a fair question. Which is why I answered in the specific way I did, despite Tapewyrm's objections to the form of the answer.
If this is part of a legitimate inquiry? Great! The questions have now been asked and answered.
If it's some kind of setup for something silly, then I think that we've shown as admins that our tolerance for such games is incredibly low.
We'll see! I'm optimistic but cautious.
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I guess I wonder why they're quoting something clearly ancient. Also the 'civil war' comment definitely ticked some box, somewhere.
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@Macha One time while minding my own business, I randomly wandered into the Intel plant here in town (never been there) to look at one of the pictures on the wall, and then felt suddenly inclined to grill their HR department on the treatment of a specific employee I haven't talked to in 5 years on events that happened 5 years ago.
So I suppose it's possible it could happen organically, out-of-nowhere-like, and be a face-value thing
Note: This is not trolling or sarcasm. I actually did this. I swear.
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@Ghost said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@Tapewyrm said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
Exactamundo. That's why I'm essentially asking you if you are sexist against men, as part of my assessment of this environment.
Alright, let's be constructive, here.
You're (allegedly) an old personality from WORA, having just made an account, and have all of these very specific questions regarding conduct and sexism of all things being asked in the air of "do you follow your own rules?".
No, I asked a very specific question about whether or not the reference to toxic femininity was pounced upon with such vigor because of sexism. In fact, scrolling back, it is remarkably clear how specific my question was.
Now, it's possible that you're simply some long-lost 3rd party WORA-ite suddenly (out of nowhere) walking in for a "spot assessment of the environment", but I'm assuming it's far more likely that this is related to some kind of pre-loaded Q&A routine.
LOL what? No, I just browsed Thenoman's profile, saw something posted in some thread, read the thread a little bit, and asked my question.
So why don't you stop asking these questions and start asking the ones you plan to ask 3 or 4 questions down the line,
I already did. Are you guys sexist against men around here? Because I find a lot of internet spaces these days are sadly dominated by problematic ideology, and I'd rather know now before I find out later. Thus far, the answer to this question has been evaded.
or stop assessing the environment and explain why after all of these years the sudden interest in MSB and their policies requires this thorough an analysis?
Because I literally just walked through the door like 2 days ago.
I don't want to come across as unfriendly, but I've been in this hobby way too long to believe this is some kind of random, completely organic interest in the forum's policies on sexism. And if this IS somehow some sudden random person's desire to assess the policies of this forum, why this forum?
Because I came looking to see what had become of WORA, and/or the hobby. Reddit pointed me to this forum.
You folks are way too paranoid. I'm literally just asking if you're anti-male douchebags.
If you're not then the inquiry ends here. That's literally all, folks.
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@Macha I mean, the multiple references to whatever culling or banning of people/boards took place are littered throughout the threads I perused.
Look, I get that Something Happened. I honestly don't care about whatever it was, and yes, if the Hog Pit or whatever was anything like old WORA, then it probably is better to have closed down a sinkhole of unpleasantness.
I really just came looking to find where all the people are these days. That's as far as this rabbit hole goes.
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@Tapewyrm not much help, but there was a thread fairly recently (as in within a few months) where the status of some various game finders were discussed. It might be worth tracking down, but I do think the general news was many are static, but the ares one mentioned and maybe some others still had newer games listed.
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@Misadventure Thank you
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@Tapewyrm if you're looking from people from the WORA era, you may have better luck posting in reddit in r/MUD
I say this with as little bile as possible, but since the WORA era, a lot of the more level-headed people left the hobby between then and now. VTTs and MMORPGs were a welcome escape from the normalized bullying and drama in the "Hog Pit" section of the forum. When the admin closed it down there was a rift in the community between two groups:
- People who wanted the personal attacks and bullying to end
- A large group of people (citing the moral high ground, btw) wanted specific admin punished, claimed the ability to bully and mistreat people in the Hog Pit was healthy, created their own forum, proceeded to high five each other for missions to get banned on this forum, and still occasionally check over here to sow dissent and throw mud.
A lot (and I mean a lot) of players quit the hobby between then and now because a certain "vibe" kind of got normalized and "dishonest character assassination" became more popular an approach than "communicate with each other and resolve your issues". It was simply easier, when it came to people who disappointed you or didn't go with your design, to chase or bully that person into feeling unwelcome on the server.
Edit: (And if that doesn't work, use drama/lies/accusations to isolate them from the people who like them and then they'll leave! Again...moral highground )
Then, naturally, people with that mindset started getting in with staff or opened games of their own, resulting in a whole 2nd string crowd of people who partake in the "Hog Pit" style of bullying so that they also get RP opportunities.
If you're truly coming back, you're coming back at a very exhausted and contentious time for the Mush/Mux crowd. Many from the WORA era, myself included, have stopped playing on the games altogether.
In my estimation, there were a number of game staff/coders during the WORA era who kept people like this in check, but those people either got sick of it, aged out, or went to do other stuff. Without that stopgap the "PHBs" now want control of who is or isn't welcome in the community.
It's at the point that a code base used by many, many games (Ares) own creator doesn't partake in the hobby, but that other group (claiming the moral high ground, btw) seems to claim that everything will go back to normal so long as certain admin from this forum are sufficiently exiled, the Hog Pit is reopened, and the ability to publicly humiliate people on this forum is reestablished.
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@Ghost said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
It's at the point that a code base used by many, many games (Ares) own creator doesn't partake in the hobby
That's mostly due to a lack of spoons and personal issues, not quitting the hobby as a whole. I think many of the Ares games are lovely, but I have very narrow tastes (which is why I've usually run my own games.)
@Tapewyrm said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
Thus far, the answer to this question has been evaded.
Derp gave a pretty clear answer, I felt, about how rules are applied equally?
But you seem to want black and white answers on a nuanced issue. Someone could use the term "toxic femininity" as part of a healthy discussion on social expectations, tropes, etc. or they could use it as an epithet to shut down a conversation in an insulting, dismissive fashion. Same with "toxic masculinity".
Whatever you think of the context that sparked this in the first place (and I have half the convo blocked so I couldn't weigh in on the particulars even if I cared to), that context does matter.
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@faraday said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
That's mostly due to a lack of spoons and personal issues, not quitting the hobby as a whole. I think many of the Ares games are lovely, but I have very narrow tastes (which is why I've usually run my own games.)
Oh I know and I apologylize if I spoke FOR you, hence why I didn't name you. Regardless, you, me, and a lot of people have been affected by the whole "normalizing lord of the flies" stuff
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@Tapewyrm said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
You folks are way too paranoid. I'm literally just asking if you're anti-male douchebags.
Hah well, let me give you another unfiltered response on this.
I don't think anyone here is an "anti-male douchebag". I think Derp and Rei have been focusing more on just getting people to knock it off with the personal attacks. In the last few years "____________ is a misogynist" has been a regular, go-to attack for a number of people to smear a reputation, and you're probably 100% right that there hasn't been enough pushback against the people who use regularly use that tactic as an easily-followed way to get others to dogpile on their target.
So for here (MSB), I think it's more about stopping the attack (regardless of the method, without overall gender bias) whereas on the other forum you're welcome to ask them about sexism and if they're "anti-male douchebags" and see how well that goes for ya.
If you do, I wouldn't get too attached to that, there login at that other place. Or, if you're looking to troll people on a place that's still about fucking with people Hog Pit style they're still into that stuff, but again...don't get too attached to your ability to log in there.
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@Ghost That makes a lot of sense, and yeah, I wandered away a log time ago from WORA because I felt it was just (by that point) a place for nastiness and never ending drama. So, I can understand things going down the way you describe.
Sad to hear about the hobby in general though. I took about 10 years off and recently came back to an old game I knew, only to find it dead, and my attempts to revive it have meant waking up some of its own PHBs (lol I had to think about that for a sec to get the reference).
Is there any hope at all that the level-headed peeps could come back to the hobby, if they found places to play which don't carry the ugliness of the past with them?
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@Ghost said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@Tapewyrm said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
You folks are way too paranoid. I'm literally just asking if you're anti-male douchebags.
Hah well, let me give you another unfiltered response on this.
I don't think anyone here is an "anti-male douchebag". I think Derp and Rei have been focusing more on just getting people to knock it off with the personal attacks. In the last few years "____________ is a misogynist" has been a regular, go-to attack for a number of people to smear a reputation, and you're probably 100% right that there hasn't been enough pushback against the people who use regularly use that tactic as an easily-followed way to get others to dogpile on their target.
That's... a large part of where I'm coming from, yes. It's extraordinarily easy to dismiss arguments and people under this guise, and typically such crowds don't tolerate any criticism in the other (gendered) direction. So for me, I draw a large correlation between the two, and hence me asking right from the get-go.
So for here (MSB), I think it's more about stopping the attack (regardless of the method, without overall gender bias) whereas on the other forum you're welcome to ask them about sexism and if they're "anti-male douchebags" and see how well that goes for ya.
I'm good. If, as you say, that's where the crazy went to live, I'm okay with leaving them to it. I did find a thread or two about active games there, so it wasn't a total loss checking it out.
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@Tapewyrm I haven't said "never" about getting into the games, again, but I think by design there's a number of guidelines (for me) that keeps this from being realistic.
- There are a number of people I feel are just downright poison to a game, and I'm not gonna bother wasting my time on a game where they are prevalent or "in" with staff
No sense in investing a ton of time for what years of experience has shown me will always be the same result with those people.
- A game where staff will punish players for abusive/bullying behavior for OOC "PVP" on forums
Staff are afraid to legislate against the people in #1, because that group tends to try to corner off entire factions in-game and then use meta-RP to achieve over players. Then, they go back to forums and attack players for things they do (or things they refuse to do FOR the bully) on game, which IMO should be grounds for punishment.
Otherwise, why try again?
I started the hobby back in the day during WORA, and it's just gotten progressively worse for the crowd who tries to approach the hobby ethically, and progressively better for the old-school PHBs who just do all of those stupid human tricks like "huge accusations, zero logs", calling people misogynist/homophobic/sociopathic to try to dry up their ability to find RP, create a quid-pro-quo environment where YOUR ethical blind spots are acceptable but must see people punished for impacting your fun, etc etc etc. Retaliation, deserved or not, is huge on games.
None of that stuff has changed, only there's a lot less people these days openly telling unethical "PHB" type people to go fuck themselves, and even less who are willing to do so and have their own gamespace to keep them out.
I'm not about the Hog Pit or what happened on WORA back in the day. There were a lot of mean people there, too, but back then there were a lot more people (not in that crowd) willing to say "Bye Felicia" and it seems these days there are more games that would rather placate that crowd to avoid retaliation or their game drying up.
Using WORA slang, of course.
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@Ghost That's very disheartening to hear. I was hoping time would have had the opposite effect, and that the hobby at large would have just finally stopped tolerating the PHB behavior. Sounds like the wrong team lost.
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@Tapewyrm Well, all I can say is if anyone here enjoys Tolkien and wants to try to RP again, let me know. Thankfully the game I played on is relatively unknown to these boards (or at least back in the day), so there's a high chance that none of the traditional PHBs will find it.
At least, I hope!
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@Tapewyrm I also recommend checking out the VTT world now with stuff like "startplayinggames". I know a number of amazing GMs there and it might be easier to put together a VTT game that wants to also do dramatic writing. There you might find people with the similar interest in collaborative writing without the stigma of 20+ years of unresolved interpersonal drama.
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@Tapewyrm It largely depends on where you play. Good people still exist. I've been on games that were pretty chill. This is not to discount Ghost's experiences, which are wholly valid, but I think we run in different game circles and have had very different experiences.
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@faraday said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
@Tapewyrm It largely depends on where you play. Good people still exist. I've been on games that were pretty chill. This is not to discount Ghost's experiences, which are wholly valid, but I think we run in different game circles and have had very different experiences.
I concur with Faraday. There are definitely still good people/games out there. For the past year-plus, I've been somewhere that has been amazing, with people who are some of the best people I've ever had the pleasure of playing with/knowing. They're out there. And when you find them? It's worth the rest.
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@Hella said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:
And when you find them? It's worth the rest.
Yeah, I don't mean to downplay the drama and toxic behavior, which has always existed in MUs. All I mean is that -- for me, personally -- the good people and fun have always outweighed the bad. Otherwise I would've quit long ago.
But there's some selection bias there. I don't play on WoD or L&L games, which tend to have more PVP-oriented shenanigans, or Comic games, which tend to have fights over who gets to play (or hook up with) Batman or whatever, etc., etc. That's not to say my games are happy unicorn utopias - it's still strangers playing games on the internet, and sometimes there are issues. But they're not the cesspool of bullying that Ghost has seen, either.
