Posts made by Ghost

@Bellecourt Great feedback and I'm happy to chat with you here. I also 100% agree with your approach on the hate chemical. I've believed for a while now that a certain amount of the negativity was coming from that kind of thing.

I'm a survivor of domestic abuse, but I'm also that kid who was bullied early on in grade school who mitigated the bully by becoming a bully and then later course-corrected out of it. To add to this, a lot of my nastier moments on these forums was while I was in the middle of domestic abuse, and around the time I was in therapy with my abuser I pulled back from attacking others as a direct result of revelations from those sessions.

Ultimately, I know a few things to be true.

1. Abusers will often make it YOUR fault that they are abusing you, and go to great lengths to justify their behavior not of their own aggression, but because their victims are responsible for the abuse they receive. Abusers often go through a lot of work to justify and vocalize this to excuse accountability for their assault.
2. Bullies ultimately are translating their own personal issues into attacks on others, but in the sense of the schoolyard bully they NEED an audience. The existence of the audience both gives them "positive" (airquotes) feedback from people cheering them on, but also makes sure that others are able to see what happens when you hurt the feelings of the bully: you get mistreated in front of others.

Now, I'll freely admit there are people I ABSOLUTELY think are abusers and bullies. I'll admit there are some people I just flat out don't like or occasionally have made jabs at their behavior because I think it's extreme or ridiculous. Some of those people in the hobby I used to "run with" but ultimately stopped associating with them because I didn't like seeing the way they treated others and I was starting to "get off" on the schoolyard bullying and I didn't like how I was behaving.

I do feel at least reflecting on these concepts could help people get out of those habits. There are no elites in the community; everyone is just a "regular joe", but I feel some are locked in a cycle of abuse/schoolyard bullying, so realizing what that is and setting your bar at NOT joining in on that is a balancing act, but it's important to keep your eye on that ball.

Edit: I would also like to add that I think removing posting access to the Hog Pit paired with rules about personal attacks has mitigated the concept of the schoolyard bully's audience and is ABSOLUTELY key in driving down the hostility factor on the forum.

@TNP said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Honest question, can you blame them? Our board - and by our I mean all of the community - had their board basically hijacked out from under us.

I feel like this is the most real thing said on the topic.

With the other board (BMD) people are 100% capable of creating whatever environment they please up to and including perma-banning me and anyone they want from ever posting there. They can Hog Pit, insult whoever they want, make a board specifically to WHATEVER design they please...

...BUT...

...doing so and leaving MSB behind peacefully would mean accepting the end result without returning to attack people they feel took something from them. And since people from this board aren't going there to post themselves up for attack and ridicule, there's only one way to address that, which is to, at intervals, come over and try to get that pound of flesh.

I mean this as constructively as possible, but I feel the real source of the repeated negativity despite a GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY to get away from me, Derp, whoever is not that they pushed people like Derp and Ganymede and myself out, but that they feel they were pushed out. In truth all that happened was a difference of opinion on staff, the closure of the Hog Pit, multiple people banned for repeatedly being cruel, and a few dozen people voting with their feet and going to the new place.

I feel like, constructively, there's a lot to understand there both in terms of why the negativity is being driven, and where maybe understanding the source could lead to letting it go?

Here's my MSB guarantee to anyone who doesn't like me...

You will never ever ever ever ever have to put up with me at BMD.

@Raemira said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Ghost As someone who has been an impartial observer since the schism, calling people fucking punks in a post that is trying to discuss being respectful and civil and repairing a community is neither genuinely respectful nor civil. Better word choices could have been used to get the point across and maintain respectful civility. Or, just reiterating the point:

People could create a topic on another forum where they don't have to be respectful or civil to one another.

Word choices matter, especially in a discussion about trying to repair a community.

Eh, if I wanna call someone a punk, I'll call someone a punk. If I want to refer to people "being punks to each other" I'll refer to it as "being punks to each other."

Here's a well-spoken and well-crafted argument:

I don't think that everyone involved in this chat is interested in repairing things or making things better, but instead doing damage or attacking others under the guise of well-crafted responses that are designed to fly under the radar of "board rules" but directed enough to allow for going to another forum that does allow for personal insults to high five each other "Hah! GOOD ONE!"

Here's my explanation.

Say one were interested in CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT WHERE VICTIMS AREN'T BLAMED. How can that be achieved while saying that other people are trying to create an environment where bad guys can roam free, how a desire to make sure innocents aren't wrongly accused, while those people are trying to simply come up with a solution that makes sense? Accusations and these "theories about super agendas" are, in fact, victimizing others. So by attacking people for having a civil discussion...it would be victimizing people in the name of...ending victimization?

There's a logic that doesn't flow in some of these behaviors.

• Personal attacks are bad, so I'm going to make personal attacks because I interpreted your statement as an indirect attack
• I don't like people theorizing things about me, but that's because your agenda is to...
• I'm not okay with you talking about trying to be civil and respectful now because back in March of 2004 you said....

The reason why no one is shifting or yielding on these points (myself included) is because some of the counter-arguments have been proposed alongside accusations of extreme things like "trying to bring Cullen back!" or "fascist!" or "I bet you're probably someone banned for the forum trying to trick everyone into letting you back in!" Sure, these things make for great headlines, but these arguments aren't designed in any way to be civil. They're designed to throw hate. I myself have even been referred to as "one of the most vile personalities on the forum EVAR", not that anyone has an actual problem with me hunting them down to belittle them publicly in front of others. Again, looks great on headlines but isn't productive at all.

But that's kind of the point, isn't it? These accusations and clever wordings aren't dealt in private because having the audience to "OOOOO" and "OHHHH" like a rap battle IS kind of the point at play, and it's NOT normal, it's NOT civil, it's NOT respectful, and it's not designed to...make anything better. There is little point other than to throw shots and jabs to come over to "teach people a lesson" when they're trying to "discuss a concept with civility" other than to crash that party, pour gasoline on it, and laugh with your friends.

Worse yet, there's a lot of stretching in the community ethics-wise in terms of "This person is so horrible that my horrible behavior in response is both fun and justified"...thus completely dismantling the importance of "not being horrible" to begin with. In the end, it's really about "Who gets to hold the lash." So, with the topic in mind, I think that people need to take a good, long look into WHY they're involving themselves in this conversation. If it's not to DISCUSS WHAT IT WOULD TAKE TO REPAIR THE COMMUNITY WITH RESPECT AND CIVILITY then please do everyone a favor and create a topic on your forum that -does- allow people to be fucking punks towards each other, invite people to discuss it how you want to there, and call it a day. You can act like that with the people who show up for that.

There are people that are trying to enjoy an environment where they can discuss things without having to dodge bullets constantly, and the fact that these discussions (intended to be civil) continually involve people popping in to shoot bullets is probably key in terms of what the major hurdles are to actually establish some form of mature civility in the community.

I think people should meditate on that. There's a lot to think on, there. Clearly there are open wounds that have festered, but in concept I think people need to consider things like: "If someone were to BEG for civility and a cease-fire, would you honor that?"

I just think there's a lot of value in stepping back and taking a look at the big picture and asking the following question:

"There are 2 forums, and it appears that most of the people who dislike each other are on separate forums. So why so much reaching across the aisle to ensure that you're continuing to interact with people you don't like?"

And, I say this respectfully, I skimmed past a lot of the personal insults and whatnot on BMD, and it doesn't appear that BMD has a problem with people from here coming over there to insult them, sooo....what's the point of this? Is it okay if people try to discuss this topic without being attacked, or what?

@TNP Alas, referring to them as "such and such vile personality" is, which is not a universal opinion when it comes to me. I'm not bothered by it at all.

Here's the problem with what is going on in this thread right now.

• Person starts a legitimate thread questioning and polling for what would could be done to aid the community into being less toxic.
• Some people gather to share ideas and discuss, which is good
• Some people show up to use it as a sounding board to pick fights over the bannings, the difference between MSB/BMD, and attack others over stuff that happened years ago for a pound of flesh as if the Hog Pit never closed.

I'm not writing this to be personal, but I'm trying to point something critical out, and it's got nothing to do with me. It's the sort of thing that would continue if I never posted again with another unpopular target, and it's something that happened long before I showed up with other people.

There is an open opportunity in this post to constructively try to discuss making things better, but it seems like a third of the people posting are just throwing mud, calling everyone else mud-slingers (despite having mud on their hands but I guess it's justified mud?), and then getting upvoted by people who seem to be showing up only to cheer them on.

I could literally die tomorrow and this would continue because there's something very toxic going on that's been normalized for decades, and it deserves an honest eye.

@TNP said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

Having not been a Hog Pit reader, my knowledge of what went on in there came from second-hand reports of people I knew or knew of getting dragged, Mean Girls style, over relatively petty shit that just always seemed like interpersonal issues, miscommunications, or whatever

So in other words, a lot of the second hand reports you heard were told to you by those being accused of something and then declaring their innocence, or that it was being taken out of context, or that it was all a misunderstanding, or 'they' were just over reacting. Totally understandable. The guilty never declare they didn't do it or are being framed and anyone you actually know and like couldn't possibly be guilty of something.

Just because they knew someone or of someone who was getting dragged in the Hog Pit doesn't mean that 3rd party someone was some super guilty usual suspect person. So many people were mistreated on the Hog Pit you could throw a rock and hit someone who probably didn't deserve the vitriol they received.

I'm not into speculating who this person is or who they know/are friends of. They made a good point there.

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

If there's a place where you can't shame actual crypto-fascists for being crypto-fascists, I don't want to be a member of that community. And your continued use of "some of these personalities" and "they" is complete bullshit, you were one of those most vitriolic members of the Hog Pit, you just couched things in terms you thought were nice (sometimes). @Kestrel previously called you out with receipts for some of the many times you've done this. You were/are part of the problem, and you were/are part of normalizing it, and now you're trying to shove that all on people who have been split (some by their own choice, some not) from this community and are in no position to correct your gaslighting.

And yet, here I am, not insulting people and calling them out, using terms like "some of these personalities" to generalize. I'm discussing the ideas and concepts and not the people themselves, which I would appreciate you doing the same.

As far as Kestrel and their receipts, a few pages in this thread (I think) they called out stuff that happened years back, which I have since apologized for and mea culpa'd multiple times, even back in the day. I'm not going to get into a conversation about whether or not I was a part of the problem, because I was. At some point I switched gears to trying to reserve that spite for people bullying on others or trying to punch down at me, which in those cases, fuck em. I prefer not to instigate things these days, but you can guarantee I'll clap back when people are being shitty.

I literally started this topic because in theory if any of these issues or rifts are going to be resolved this type of conversation should be taking place, even if I'm not directly benefiting from the results. I'm not trying to shove anything on anyone, nor am I gaslighting. Just trying to move forward like a regular human being who's sick of seeing people being treated like shit.

Let's stay on topic.

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

And @Ghost, I'm with @reimesu -- just don't defend Spider. But yes, I would do my due diligence to see if the person was Spider... and also if they had done the thing my friend said they had done. And I would be one of the folks who spoke up to try to clear the person's name if the accusations weren't true, because people did that for me.

Sorry, I'll reiterate.

I was asking if you would do your diligence to confirm that the person wasnt being falsely accused even IF the accused WERE Spider. Not to see if the person accused was Spider.

And please don't take that question negatively. I just think that while there are people I don't like in this hobby, impartiality is a balancing act, and sometimes that balancing act means siding against popular opinion, a mob of people with pitchforks, and best friends.

I always appreciate the people who stood up for me when I was falsely accused, so I'm with ya there.

@Devrex said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I disagree with this premise. In the past, as a game runner, I tended to overreact to the first person who brought me their sad sad story, empathizing with them immediately, and bringing down the hammer with very little to no investigation...exactly the behavior that quite a few individuals say they want.
Later I discovered that by failing to get all sides of the story, I had actually played into the designs of bad actors, sent some of their victims packing, and sent a message to the other victims that I would back this person's word, making them feel even more trapped.

This is exactly where I get stuck.

It is SO fucking easy to manipulate people, and even the most even-handed people approached with these complaints often get stuck in a rough spot ONCE AGAIN where the threat of retaliation is prevalent. It always seems to come down to threat of retaliation.

Honest GM gets approached by angry player who is super upset, has a list of complaints about this fascist abuser etc etc etc with minimal evidence but they're very adamant about it:

• The want to act and protect people is a very real emotion. No one wants to allow someone else to be mistreated. Everyone wants to do what is ethically right.
• HOWEVER failure to act for whatever reason, even a good reason, runs the risk of becoming abused yourself by angry people throwing garbage, using words like "rape apologist", etc.

I've come down on people myself based on word-of-mouth accusations only later to find that I was actually being enlisted as extra muscle in what was actually an attack on an innocent person, and I regret it. I've been the target of such things, too.

So maybe the REAL issue at hand is:

1. Lack of a reporting system that has some kind of vetting baked into it to protect innocent people that DOESNT protect bad actors
2. How to deal with threat of retaliation being such a common occurrence socially in the community

@hobos Yeah I just don't think it's productive to call someone a phony, throw out the word fascist, and then accuse a poster of possibly being someone like Cullen incognito trying to use the discussion as a way to clear the case about them. It's not helpful.

@simplications said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

How do we allow a way for people like Cullen to be identified, without creating a forum that allows privileged groups to victimize basically anyone they want through character assassination? The stuff that isn't reports of actual criminals but instead the "I think this person sucks" over what are actually very minor personality conflicts, that then result in pages of someone getting dragged by the friends of the poster.

Ennnh. I don't know if it's possible. I'm trying to think of a way, but if there is a way I just can't see it at the moment. Mostly because:

• I think calling out people has become a side form of entertainment for a number of people in the hobby. Even if there was a better way, there would still be a desire for the wrong way.

The Hog Pit allowed a sort of "unrestricted public shaming Olympics" whether it was deserved or not. I think some of these personalities don't want a constructive, better way to do this. I think what they want is a place where they can shame people for being crypto-fascists and laugh about how stupid person X or Y seems to them. I think it's gone on for so long now that it has been normalized and (as you see happening in recent history) if you take away the place where people can do that they'll protest.

Fact is, there simply aren't enough impartial people to ensure things are handled fairly, and even if you had someone impartial enough to handle those accusations in good faith, it would still come down to "whether or not <forum persons handle> likes them".

@Kestrel said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

I'm calling bullshit on all of this. You're a phony. Using the language of the oppressed while siding with the oppressor is textbook fascist baloney, and while the current crop of useful idiots might eat it up, I am not buying any of it

If one was interested in making a fascist baloney sammidge, is that purchasable at a grocery store? That sounds delicious.

Oh, and could you also please communicate with other people without calling them racists, misogynists, fascists, crypto-fascists, homophobes, etc etc etc etc etc etc? I don't think everyone on the forum is a fascist.

@reimesu Yeah, I'd seen a number of people chased off a game by their unfair play, so I do understand the complaints against them. I was just trying to think of a name that wasn't like....a sexual harasser or blackmailer.

I suppose logically to me there are tiers of "usual suspects". Not sure WHERE the line is drawn between tiers, but tiers make sense to me.

@reimesu Oh no, I'm not defending Spider specifically. I have had negative experiences with them, too. Not the biggest fan, personally. I'm just using the word as an example, more or less. An <insert usual suspect> name more than anything.

I agree that they specifically are a good lesson learned for getting logs and ensuring logs. I'm a fan of logs. I'm just trying to paint a picture.

@Derp said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

But I wholly disagree that 'the crowd will rise up and defend the innocent of wrongdoing'

Agreed.

To be fair, I've seen plenty of innocent people accused by popular people, only to have droves of people who don't want to be retaliated against choose not to speak up on their behalf. There also seems to be "unlimited soup, salad, and breadsticks" in terms of goodwill for a number of "popular" people to mistreat others and punish people over false, word-of-mouth accusations and move on with life without being held accountable for it either because their friends don't keep them in check or people are afraid of being retaliated against.

What I see when I read this "even accusations without proof will have the innocent defended" is something more like "we want the right to public trials without evidence and if our friends are wrongly accused we will make sure they're safe".

Example. @Seraphim73 ? What if I told you that Spider was playing a game and was claiming they were wrongly accused of abusing the system by a friend of yours? No one has a log. No one can prove that Spider was being falsely accused, nor was actually guilty. Your friend goes online, makes accusations without receipts, and 4 pages of making fun of Spider follows.

Can you HONESTLY say you would do your due diligence to ensure that the accused wasn't being mistreated for something they may not have done? If you found out that it was a false accusation would you be willing to tell 4 pages of Hog Pit flaming that Spider was innocent and didn't do anything wrong regardless of the way you would be treated for standing up for them?

Because this is ultimately the "MU community justice system" in a nutshell.

@Derp said in Westworld:

@Ghost said in Westworld:

@Derp ugh I'm so far behind. I'm still at Samurai season. I keep getting derailed but the promos for this season make it look like I've missed so much good stuff.

Dude you have. Get caught up and we'll gab!

Sounds like a plan. I think we got derailed once by one of the star wars series and never circled back around. I'll get watchin.

@Seraphim73 said in What Would it Take to Repair the Community?:

@Ghost Dude, Spider literally ruined someone's RL house and wouldn't accept responsibility. That's not overbearing or unfair. That's just crappy.

Don't move them into your house then? I'm not here to litigate civil matters between two strangers who claim the other ruined their house. I'm not a court and I'm not some kind of MU Parole Officer.

Reality is that a person's presence on a MU doesn't damage plywood, and regardless of their RL status on whether or not they've paid REAL damages someone else says they owe them, if they're willing to be nice to people and not cheat, their behavior on the game should allow them to play. Players who don't like them will avoid them if they choose. In fact, this is part of the reason why if someone (who doesn't have a history of unsafe/threatening behavior on these games, but somewhat disliked) asked me to keep them anonymous, I probably would.

The person whose home was allegedly ruined by Spider has all of the available resources to take them to court for it and can handle that just fine in the real world. I'm not going to carry someone else's grudge against someone for them in their absence.

@Derp ugh I'm so far behind. I'm still at Samurai season. I keep getting derailed but the promos for this season make it look like I've missed so much good stuff.

@Ganymede I hear you on the preemptive bans, but still over time I'd asked myself "If I were running a game would I preemptively ban people?" I think I've even said once on these forums that I'm not entirely sure I'd ban Spider. Oh boy did I get some heat for that.

I think you have some very abusive players with a history of behavior that borders on the illegal or unsafe, with activities like stalking, blackmail, etc. But I'm not entirely sure I'd enforce a perma-ban on a player who was disliked for being overbearing or unfair (such as Spider was accused of) if they seemed genuine in understanding the past and just wanted to play nice with others. I'm a forgiving sort. I'd rather treat a person like a person, but then act when they got out of line.

In fact, over the years in the hobby I kind of learned that the people who are able to mea culpa and openly commit to doing better may be worth betting on more than the people who threaten you if you associate/allow X player around under penalty of being called some kind of rape apologist on a forum.

Hrm. I dunno.

I think the one thing everyone in the community can agree on is that if there's evidence of serious misuse/abuse that making that available to the public as a "stranger danger" warning is a good thing.

Outside of that, there are assholes, and plenty of people spend a lot of time performing assholish behavior whilst pointing the finger at others claiming that other person is an asshole. It's a highly secular environment where entrenched people get away with bad behavior, and it all comes down to which camp you're in, which person's feathers you don't want to ruffle, etc. The number of cases of players simply being shitty towards each other and then camping up to avoid accountability for it far outweighs the actual number of cases of "stranger danger" type alarms.

I think I'm in the camp that until specific people leave or "age out", this is simply the way the hobby/community is going to be until the inevitable point in my lifetime that this form of entertainment will expire due to knowledge loss (inability to stand up hosts) and lack of player life cycle.

Edit: My general point was "ousting the assholes from the community" requires behavior change to a good number of people, not just the "usual suspects". There are too many people who behave badly who comport themselves as untouchable. It's a no-win situation.