How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep

[Sunny]

@Pandora said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Sunny said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Asking if someone is ok is not branding someone a creep.

Yeah, in a perfect world that doesn't exist on the internet.

I am going to continue to act like the people around me are capable of being adults, and a page conversation of 'p name=you ok?' 'name pages you: yeah, I'm fine!' 'p name=OK!' is just a thing that can happen without a whole lot of issue to that. Thankfully, I've seen this play out more this way more times than I've seen the worst case scenarios play out.

[bored]

I'm just going to register another 'I would not intervene OOCly in a purely IC situation.' To me that's pretty bonkers and definitely taking this whole thing a bit down a slope to crazy.

HOWEVER (and this is a big however), someone pointed out upthread that OOC-creep and IC-creep poses look different and that is a HUGE big thing to acknowledge.

'Purely IC' is a definition that expands a bit beyond 'this was in a pose/emit' vs this was <OOC> text/page.' OOC can and very often does bleed into poses, and there's nothing wrong with applying our experience and human judgment to these things (and in fact it's a bit willfully oblivious not to). We do it easily for the 'obviously butthurt snarky metapose' shit, and I tend to find that OOC-creepery in posed/emitted form is just as obvious and cringe. We engage with one of these pretty aggressively, so leaving out the other is clearly a bit of a willful blind-spot.

Now, some percentage of creepery may slip through from much more skillful writers/manipulators but I think most of this is going to be under the public radar vs. something 3rd parties are casual witnesses to. Most of the serial, problematic, frequent creeps are kind of shit and easy to pick out, and it's fine to narrow in on that behavior sooner rather than later.

[Auspice]

@bored said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

HOWEVER (and this is a big however), someone pointed out upthread that OOC-creep and IC-creep poses look different and that is a HUGE big thing to acknowledge.
'Purely IC' is a definition that expands a bit beyond 'this was in a pose/emit' vs this was <OOC> text/page.' OOC can and very often does bleed into poses, and there's nothing wrong with applying our experience and human judgment to these things (and in fact it's a bit willfully oblivious not to). We do it easily for the 'obviously butthurt snarky metapose' shit, and I tend to find that OOC-creepery in posed/emitted form is just as obvious and cringe. We engage with one of these pretty aggressively, so leaving out the other is clearly a bit of a willful blind-spot.
Now, some percentage of creepery may slip through from much more skillful writers/manipulators but I think most of this is going to be under the public radar vs. something 3rd parties are casual witnesses to. Most of the serial, problematic, frequent creeps are kind of shit and easy to pick out, and it's fine to narrow in on that behavior sooner rather than later.

I was one of those who made that point and that was, largely, the purpose of this thread.

What I witnessed (and I don't want to go back through logs and find it just so everyone can nitpick over it because that scenario was not the point of this, but the concept of it was) flagged for this reason.

It wasn't 'oh hey this person is being an IC creep' it was 'these poses feel manipulative and like they are forcing a specific response' - in, yes, a similar vein as 'metapose snark' is trying to specifically target someone without 'allowing' a response.

Sure, it MIGHT just be IC and it MIGHT be someone who is just bad at writing out the way the character is. But in reading it, I felt 'woah, this person is trying to force a specific response out of this other individual and that feels grody and weird to me: if I was on the receiving end, I'd be booking it.'

So I think, in the future, I probably will do a quick, polite page to make sure the recipient is OK.

[bored]

@Auspice Looking back, it was actually @onigiri's comment that focused my attention on this aspect of it (to give proper credit/citation!) but regardless, yeah, its an important distinction to make. IC isn't automatically OOC, but OOC-in-IC-clothing happens.

To me (in part because I'm admittedly a horrible elitist writing wise), these poses always stand out like they were decked out in freaking X-mas tree lights, too, which is more of what I was talking about from the other post. The tunnel vision and way they tend to either ignore or pose over both the person and others around to 'win' the 1v1 interaction are often jarring to the scene continuity (ie, retconning prior interactions to pull out a seat for their 'target' or whatever). Its the exact same way that "Jane listens as Bob pathetically tries to turn her friends against her and says..." immediately scans as 'Lol, well obviously Jane is butthurt and couldn't actually RP her way out of a paper bag.'

I think the one problem here (and it applies to both cases) is that while really these are behaviors we should nip much more aggressively, they're allowed to stand because the result really would just cut too many players for numbers-focused game admins to bear. Its hard take the honest stance of 'this behavior isn't the absolute worst (yet), but we're gonna get rid of you anyway.'

[Auspice]

@bored

That may be part of why they stand out to me, also.

Continuity in scenes is such a big deal to me.

'How tf did White Knight Argus get over there to save Wilting Lily when he was all the way across the river fighting eight demons?!?!???? MAYBE LILY WANTS TO SAVE HERSELF but noooooo he's first in initiative and this isn't D&D where travel distance is a thing so no one else is saying anything but damn if it doesn't throw me out of the scene because my mental map of where people are is aaaaaaaaaaall fucked up now.'

[bored]

@Auspice The futziness of theater of the mind combat distances (since almost everyone will have their own slightly different vision of the layout) is a bit of its own whole thing.

But certainly I think 'X is clearly disrespecting the scene by posing over/retconning a clearly established prior fact' is a huge red flag pretty much in any case, be it for creepy fixation or just spotlight stealing. 'Playing with others' is basically the definition of our hobby, so if you're bad at it...

[Tyche]

@Sunny said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Can somebody explain to me why it's problematic behavior to go:

p X=You ok?

As long as you're willing to accept, "Yes, I'm a man. Of course I'm okay."

[Lotherio]

@Tyche said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Sunny said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Can somebody explain to me why it's problematic behavior to go:

p X=You ok?

As long as you're willing to accept, "Yes, I'm a man. Of course I'm okay."

Red flag. P staff=Screw Snakes!

I'm a man, totally fine. Flesh wound

[L. B. Heuschkel]

@Auspice said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:
That may be part of why they stand out to me, also.

They do. That certain kind of special, super focused attention that a character, typically male, gives to one other player, typically a slightly insecure female. I've observed it often in my capacity as guild leader, admin and so forth. I tend to present male in games myself, and thus, I get to see it from two angles -- that of recognising the behaviour as something I've seen directed at myself from people who know my OOC gender, and as a fellow male observing someone quietly separating a female from the herd, so to speak.

That's exactly what happens. It's like watching a sheepdog separate that particular sheep from the herd. Singling it out, moving it away, out of reach of the rest.

Typically disguised as special interest, decked out in compliments about good roleplay and interesting background, and then followed with hints and observations that others are not so well intentioned. Be careful with that guild member... Don't talk to her, she gossips... Unspecified dirt, quiet continuous gaslighting. And then, some day, you sit there with this person in tears, when they realise that they've been played, used, and isolated. They leave the game, or at least the social circle, because they feel that they can no longer trust -anyone-. Your game is out one good person and the creep still remains, waiting for his next victim.

Does it always work like that? Of course not. Most IC exchanges, however creepy they may seem, are quite harmless and nothing covert is intended. I've seen this happen to myself and others enough times, however, that my radar is up and when I do spot red flags, I'll rather ask than feel sorry later. Even if it nets me the occasional 'mind your own damn business'.

[Carex]

@Auspice said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

So I ask you MSB: have you ever been in this spot? What did you do, if anything?

I played on a game with a strip club on it and I saw this often. Once, we were having bar chatter and this guy just came up to one of the girls and asked if he could suck her toes. Not go somewhere and do it, but just right there at the bar. Everyone was instantly uncomfortable with the situation and he would not take no for an answer.

Rather than deal with it OOCly where I knew he would throw a tantrum I paid the stripper for a lapdance in the VIP room and we left. He had the nerve to ask if he could come with me. Pathetic. We didn't even do anything sexual in the VIP room. We just laughed at him and talked.

Creepers gotta creep, I guess.

[Carex]

Is it just me or do you automatically suspect anyone playing a wraith/mage leans towards stalker/creep?
Has that been your experience as well?
Have I just had bad luck and ran into the worst people?

[Auspice]

@Carex said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Is it just me or do you automatically suspect anyone playing a wraith/mage leans towards stalker/creep?
Has that been your experience as well?
Have I just had bad luck and ran into the worst people?

I've never played anywhere with wraith so I can't say.

As for mage I tend to lean towards twink rather than creep. Mages seem quicker to take advantage of people who don't have a strong grasp of the rules.

[bored]

@Carex said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Is it just me or do you automatically suspect anyone playing a wraith/mage leans towards stalker/creep?
Has that been your experience as well?
Have I just had bad luck and ran into the worst people?

While this is broad enough that I suspect you're going to get pushback, if we edit it to

anyone playing a wraith on older games with realm flags

...then, yes. My experience dealing with one wraith sphere on an oWoD game back in the day was that they were largely there to voyeuristically peep on TS. We ended up giving every build an automatic wraith-locked room (regardless of supernatural ability to do such a ward) just so players could have some expectation of privacy.

[Carex]

@bored

Yeah, the games where they are invisible to anyone without wraith-vision (or whatever it's called.)
I've heard so many stories of wraith players just oocly creeping on people because they couldn't be seen.

[GreenFlashlight]

@Sunny said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

Can somebody explain to me why it's problematic behavior to go:

p X=You ok?

I cannot explain why it is problematic, only that I have done it before and was told the question was extremely unwelcome. For context, this happened when someone was being OOCly harassed with sexual language and the person I was paging had just told the harasser to stop, then left the channel where he was being harassed. I did not ask why he was upset at being asked, as I did not feel it was my place to demand an explanation from someone already aggrieved.

So, to answer the original scenario, my general advice would be: approach the character being targeted by suspected creepy behavior. The character, not the player. Think of an excuse for your character to approach theirs and invite them into some kind of play. This avoids creating a conflict the player is almost certainly trying to avoid and gives them a graceful way out of whatever situation the other player put them in. If the character takes the invitation, then it might be worth your time to offer a gentle page of "hey, maybe I'm nuts, but I'm getting a hunch something's off, are you okay?" Or it might not. Read the context clues and do what your conscience demands.

[Tinuviel]

@GreenFlashlight said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

the person I was paging had just told the harasser to stop

This, I believe, is where you went wrong. The person you were paging had already taken action against the harasser, so it was quite evident that they were not okay but were also quite capable of handling things themselves.

[GreenFlashlight]

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

The person you were paging had already taken action against the harasser, so it was quite evident that they were not okay but were also quite capable of handling things themselves.

That makes sense.

[Ganymede]

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

This, I believe, is where you went wrong. The person you were paging had already taken action against the harasser, so it was quite evident that they were not okay but were also quite capable of handling things themselves.

How was GreenFlashlight to know this prior to paging that player?

[Derp]

@Ganymede said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

This, I believe, is where you went wrong. The person you were paging had already taken action against the harasser, so it was quite evident that they were not okay but were also quite capable of handling things themselves.

How was GreenFlashlight to know this prior to paging that player?

Because said player did it on a public channel, if I'm reading this correctly.

[Tinuviel]

@Ganymede said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

@Tinuviel said in How to Approach (nor not) a Suspected Creep:

This, I believe, is where you went wrong. The person you were paging had already taken action against the harasser, so it was quite evident that they were not okay but were also quite capable of handling things themselves.

How was GreenFlashlight to know this prior to paging that player?

Given how they phrased it, it appeared to have taken place on a public channel.