Ruiz

[Ghost]

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

One of the big problems with our community is that we have opted for identifiability with handles, but still operate with a Web 1.0 culture of anonymity when it comes to our actual identities.

I fucking LOVE that you said that. Thank you. Maybe you understand then the little joke in my head that came with choosing "Ghost" as a handle and the reason why every now and then I make jokes like "I quit playing MUs...OR DID I?"

There are both positives and negatives with solidifying histories and identities, and pos/negs with reinforcing anonymity. The trick is understanding that for some the anonymity protects them from bullying, where for others the lack of anonymity has now created potentially decades of identifiable harm and bitterness.

The people I like in the community are equally "strangers" to me as the people I don't. There's a probability that some of my least favorite people in the hobby could be a great friend in RL, were it not for the lens of the community's drama and the inevitable dysfunction and lack of empathy that comes from text-based communication.

[Bessarion]

@Ghost Yeah. It's all fraught and weird and I certainly am not qualified to come up with a solution for it other than making a reminder to myself that the person on the other side of my computer screen is real and has feelings and exists beyond my need for cheap dopamine and a flaming dunk when I'm pissed at them.

I get that a lot of us have issues and I guarantee that all of us nerds have been bullied, and I know that we all have some degree of trauma from MU-related interactions. I think that we are all verging on middle age now and accountability needs to look different than it did twenty years ago. I wish I was smart enough to propose a better model, but things as they stand are not healthy.

[Ghost]

@Bessarion In Buddhism there is a concept of "attachments and aversions", and the only way to achieve peace is to understand them. I generally think this concept could be good for everyone, but particularly the MU community.

Like all things in life, attachments can seem negative and aversions positive, right? Not exactly. An attachment (a thing you love or feel you NEED) can be enjoyable or a source of negativity based on the attachment to the thing you feel you need. Aversion can be healthy (probably best to avoid walking past the neo-Nazi rally) but can also become a festering impulse in your life (your NEED to avoid bad days has made it near impossible to enjoy ANY day).

A while back I realized that being on the games had become a sort of attachment/aversion minefield for me. I loved the writing and some people, but ultimately the drama felt unavoidable, the Hog Pit was exactly the kind of "attachment" to something negative that I felt made positivity near-impossible, and I simply wasn't happy. I couldn't MAKE myself happy enjoying my ATTACHMENT because my AVERSIONS were so under my skin. So I quit playing under the belief I still hold today, which is that there is simply too much difficulty in the games/community that it would likely never be the kind of relaxation I am seeking. Sure, I had ups and downs with communicating with people here (it's natural) but ultimately think that the split in the forums presented what could be a positive opportunity.

Ultimately, the people who dislike me on BMD did themselves a favor by creating a place where I do not exist, and I, in turn, return that favor by not disrupting their space. It feels mutually beneficial and healthy, but (attachments and aversions, again) peace will never be achieved so long as those attach/avers are still in play at either forum.

So I think the more people think about this concept the more they'll find happiness. Hope it helps someone.

[Ghost]

If anyone is interested in these concepts, but prefers the concepts to be explained in a more digestible or less "religiousy/vague" format, check this book out

The Dharma of Star Wars https://a.co/d/fdDD5zc

Concepts like "Anakin's attachment to Padme became a source of negativity to him, and in his aversion to her dying (which everyone does) caused damage to himself and others." Help puts things in perspective for the nerdier mind.

[reimesu]

@hobos
Just as a note:
conjecture: an opinion or conclusion formed on the basis of incomplete information.
accusation: a charge or claim that someone has done something illegal or wrong.

The last game of Cobalt's that I know I played on for certain was Darkwater and so long ago that it was several computers ago, I have no receipts. Any opinion I advance about Cobalt would have no evidence, just personal anecdotes. Anything I said would have to be conjecture, I have no logs. So I've kept my mouth shut because no logs = no proof.

But let's be fair, just that pre-banning of @Ganymede for...what? is enough to make me wonder what other bad decisions are being made. And Macha's logs showed that a) she was being slut-shamed and b) it was a consensual log that she was being shamed for and is still being shamed for.

Pretty sure that the bad decisions aren't the ones being made here.

[Hella]

@reimesu said in Ruiz:

@hobos

But let's be fair, just that pre-banning of @Ganymede for...what? is enough to make me wonder what other bad decisions are being made. And Macha's logs showed that a) she was being slut-shamed and b) it was a consensual log that she was being shamed for and is still being shamed for.

Pretty sure that the bad decisions aren't the ones being made here.

See, the above is good. It's proof you can point to and go, I believe this supports my conjecture that xyz. But I'm agreeing with @hobos that coming in saying 'I think X is plausible because Y, but I'm not offering any tangible proof of Y' is exactly the thing that this board used to do that was damaging. And that did seem like what @Derp was doing. It was a bit disheartening to see.

Eta: do I think that makes it okay for people to come and do the equivalent of 'nyah nyah, told ya so!'? No. But that's just distraction from the heart of the matter.

[Ghost]

@reimesu for the record, I legitimately empathize with the situation Gany got put in and think it downright sucks they had to choose between their conscience and appeasing the demands of the people who thought they had them in their pocket.

[Misadventure]

Some day I shall create a wiki that has statements, counter statements, and thread logs, and game logs.

It will have a section for active predators, and for people who routinely damage without a plan or intent.

It will have MU* player posting tropes.

Ideally, people will be able to annnotate conversations with trope names much like games of chess are recorded, or logical fallacies. Or enticement scripts.

[Ghost]

@Misadventure I think you'd be better off creating a series of forms and pre-generated blocks of text to simply cut and paste to save time.

Stuff like:

"______________ is one of the most toxic people in the community."

"______________ isn't apologizing correctly."

"I am being gaslighted by _____________ "

"____________ is the new Cirno."

And the blanks are filled by drop-down list with a series of names.

AND THEN have a section where entire pre-written paragraphs of text can be copied and pasted to save time, like:

• SOCIAL DICE ARE BAD BECAUSE
• FIRAN WAS GREAT BUT HORRIBLE
• WE ARE NOT A CLIQUE BUT MY FRIENDS AND I ARE COORDINATING OUR RESPONSES AND BULLYING
• MY DOWNWITHOPP STORY
• WHITE PLAYER; POC PB
• ITS NOT CHEATING, IT'S ART
• SPIDER IS THE WORST
• THIS PERSON IS THE WORST SINCE SPIDER
• THIS PERSON IS THE WORST SINCE THE LAST PERSON WHO WAS WORSE THAN SPIDER
• IS IT STILL FETISHIZATION IF YOURE A FEMALE PLAYING A SUPER PROMISCUOUS GAY MAN? (yes, it is)

Sooner or later the algorithms will be able to heuristically complete an entire year of forum chatter, but in the meantime users will be able to simply click twice and respond to everything. THEN we could just get entertainment out of the AI engine recreating 10+ years of circular forum chatter without any of it being a direct attack against anyone.

Work smarter, not harder

[Derp]

@Ghost

May I also suggest:

“EVERYONE’S MENTAL HEALTH IS THEIR OWN PROBLEM BUT IF YOU ACCIDENTALLY STUMBLE INTO MY OBSCURE TRAUMA IT IS YOUR SOLEMN DUTY TO TRIP ALL OVER YOURSELF TO APPEASE ME YOU INSENSITIVE TOXIC JERK.”

[Ghost]

@Derp Yeah there's that.

I've been told that detailing the DSM definition of mental illnesses and poring through them to determine if an unpopular person is lying is a thing, now.Which, doing so is potentially fuckoff levels of damaging on a RL scale while also being the exact antithesis of providing a safe space for people with mental and emotional difficulties.

So obviously the DSM5/6 definitions of everything from ADHD to Sociopathy would be useful to cut and paste into a forum chat.

Snark aside, I will say that the people who did that should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves, as well as the people who chose not to call it out.

[TouringNate]

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

One of the big problems with our community is that we have opted for identifiability with handles, but still operate with a Web 1.0 culture of anonymity when it comes to our actual identities. I'm not saying that we should all post our pictures and addresses or whatever, but this disconnect leads to identifiability without humanization and I think this is what leads to so many of the problems we have seen historically, here and on WORA and on BMD.

I don't know if I have a solution for this, but I do think that is a central issue of the cultural dysfunction of the community.

Call me a cynic, but I think all that would happen is that some of this abuse would drift from online to RL harassment.

As someone who has had someone threaten their RL due to having put together various pieces of discrete information dropped over a fairly wide period of time by myself and others to identify who I am on the other side of the keyboard, I think the more separation that people can have, the better.

If you think that none of the people that exhibit socially divergent tendencies online would show those same tendencies if they got a hold of someone's RL info, contact info, employer, etc (or simply threaten to do such to get what they wanted online)...

[TNP]

@Derp said in Ruiz:

But I’m also not an idiot, and people like TNP and Tez aren’t coming here to engage in good faith. They’re just coming here to fling shit because they can, and I have no intention of being so bound up in bureaucratic red tape that I just shrug and go ‘but what can you do? Rules.’

Yes, I have such a track record of posting merely to fling shit. To correct your mischaracterization, I did not 'come here'. In fact, I never left and would check the board every day. As a rule, I do not post unless I have something to say and that hadn't occurred here in quite some time. Which is unsurprising since this board is, for all intents and purposes, dead unless someone reading Brand Mu Day brings something over here to cause controversy.

It's a safe bet that this thread has more posts in it than those made in all other threads combined since The Great Banning. And on that note, I have nothing further to say so shall truly depart and let you all fade into irrelevancy, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

[Derp]

@TNP

Hey dude?

We.

Can.

Read.

Who are you trying to fool?

[hobos]

@Hella

Exactly. Thanks for understanding and re-explaining in a better way.

[reimesu]

@hobos @Hella
I see what you guys are saying. However, my take on it is this: @Derp was directly addressing Cobalt when he said what he said. It was a reminder.

I'm not asking what happened, because for me, what's telling is this: Cobalt came on, saw people were asking questions that dared to question her integrity, flailed around, yelled "how dare you!" and pre-banned four of us from any future games. And missed the point that she pulled something that entirely lacked integrity and didn't apologize for it.

Whatever happened in the past? Don't know, don't care. What's going on NOW is that Macha got raked over the coals based on HER past reputation from a bunch of people who don't like her and reportedly, is continuing to be targeted by said people, in spite of the fact that the person she was RPing with is a known bad actor and was pulling some shady shit. And somehow, she's still the bad guy?

And you guys are worried about Cobalt? Y'all don't need to worry about her, clearly she's got a teflon reputation at this point because no one is pointing out that the banning someone over a consensual scene and then closing of that game is pretty PHB territory. This isn't even me pointing out past misjudgements on her part, I can't be arsed to remember them. This is me looking at what's going on NOW and thinking it's pretty shitty.

[Hella]

@reimesu I don't think we're looking at any one person. Just the content. It's not a defense of Cobalt, per se (I have nothing against Cobalt, afaik I don't know them that well?), just a defense of the ideal in general.

[Devrex]

Also worth noting that @Derp said, multiple times, that the history between he and Cobalt that he referred to was ancient.

I, personally, couldn't access any logs for any game stuff that happened for me any earlier than 2016. I took a pretty long hiatus from MU*ing between I think 2012 and 2016, and wasn't doing cloud-based log captures back in 2012. I don't remember that being an option at that point, in fact.

When the history is super ancient, I don't know that anybody's going to have the receipts to bring.

But he said that. Several times. "This is old history. She might have changed. I have seen this specific action in the past. It wouldn't surprise me if I were seeing that again."

Pretty mild stuff.

Comparing it to literal name calling, which @reimesu mildly called out with a "Hey, cut that out," or pretending that those two actions are the same actions at all, makes no sense to me.

[Ghost]

@TNP said in Ruiz:

I have nothing further to say so shall truly depart and let you all fade into irrelevancy

Please do. I've been asking yall to do it for ages.

[Ganymede]

@Cobalt said in Ruiz:

Just so we’re clear, @reimesu @Ghost @Derp @Ganymede Do me a favor, and don’t come around to any game I run in the future. Because you won’t be welcome.

I mean, I won't if you don't want me to, but what the hell did I do to deserve condemnation?

---

@Bessarion said in Ruiz:

Is it possible that no one was acting in bad faith there? That no one here is a manipulative mastermind and people are just all fucked up and react to things? Isn't that far more likely?

I concur.

---

@TNP said in Ruiz:

It's a safe bet that this thread has more posts in it than those made in all other threads combined since The Great Banning. And on that note, I have nothing further to say so shall truly depart and let you all fade into irrelevancy, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

I have come to the conclusion that seeking relevancy through either forum is a sign of some underlying mental disturbance.

For the record, though, I'm more concerned about Ruiz being a creeper than anything else being said here. I thought I said it clearly before to Tributary, but I'll say it again: I would be more than happy to work with folks from BMD to identify creepers and predators on games to out them and keep them the fuck out of the hobby.

If BMD folks need information buried somewhere here, just let me know. If I need to go mining for information to identify bad actors, please let me know.