Posts made by Ghost

I recently posted a blog message to friends and family about genAi...and then I realized I mentioned generating character images using Ai...and then I realized the community probably has a growing use of Ai:

• People prolly using Ai images
• People prolly testing code updates against GPT or other engines
• People prolly using Ai to generate text/writing now

So I figured...what the heck. May as well post it, here, too. Might protect some of the lesser savvy folks.

For people who aren't aware how Ai (Generative Ai) works, and why regular people should be aware of it.

(Please read if you want to protect your data around Ai engines, let me put on my "IT guy" hat, and please ignore if you already knew this stuff)

Ai isn't some "intelligence" inside of a machine. It's just a "learning engine". Here's an example:

---

You ask a brand-new Ai engine about rocks:

You: Please explain rocks to me
Ai: What is a rock?
<you give it access to a bunch of information on rocks>

Now the Ai engine has access to that definition of a rock and can/will apply it to future references of "rock"

You: What is a rock?
Ai: (now with data) "A rock is a..."

Now just picture thousands of repeated/refined saved data on rocks over a year, questions others asked about rocks, and the engine will attempt to use all of that data to get the best response.

This is how "ChatGPT" became "racist" in 48 hours. It isn't a childlike mind that needs to learn, and it surely has no bias against race. It's just that racist USERS of the software flooded the Ai engine with racist sentences, questions, and racially-charged responses to the Ai's queries. Due to the % of racist data on the server (which the Ai has no true understanding of racism), ChatGPT thought it was giving accurate data.

So...

You: What is the best weapon to use against <race>
Ai: No data

You spend 20 minutes flooding the engine with false data related to how rocks are used to attack <race>

You: Tell me about rocks
Ai: <bunch of data about rocks> + "often used to kill <racial slur>"

---

++HOW IS THIS A RISK TO YOU???++

IF you are messing around with a generative Ai engine, it requires the INPUT of data to GENERATE data. It TAKES data from the user, searches for other data within the engine with similar tags, and generates a response based on what it finds.

You must FEED it prompts (you type into the bar what you're looking for), it saves that data, then returns data based on what you asked for.

• if you accidentally paste private info into a GenAi engine, that data will REMAIN INSIDE OF THE ENGINE.

• so if you accidentally paste your email address and password into an Ai engine, it'll remain in there. There's no guarantee it'll show up on a search about rocks, but it's in there SOMEWHERE

If you do not own the Ai engine, you cannot confirm the data is in there or can be removed. Your Uid/pass may show up in images or other GenAi searches because the data remains.

This means that, in theory, all generative Ai engines that are not properly maintained and audited may actually be hot targets for data mining. This means that if you search an Ai engine with higher classified company data into an Ai engine, that data may have just been leaked. This means that all art you make (digital or scan) and upload to an Ai engine remains in the engine for others to generate off of

So, please, consider this before entering anything personal, private, or important into a GenerativeAi engine. I suspect in less than 5 years, we may hear a lot about the GDPR, data retention on Ai engines, and Europe's "right to be forgotten", and a need for Ai engines to purge personally identifiable information stored in their databases.

@Juniper The shit part about when people do that, is that it clearly wasn't about quitting.

People who want to quit something just walk. You quit. You go do something else.

Whenever anyone (in any group setting) does something like this it just comes across to me as some undignified child shit. That they wanted to quit was a sham. What they really wanted was to cause a scene and hope that people rush in with praise and support to convince them not to quit. It's pretty awkward and vulnerable stuff. You see this a lot in online gaming, especially with mostly anonymous people (I've had it happen multiple times in RPGs and VTTs).

It's no different than threatening to leave your partner to see just how much they don't want you to leave, only the person doing it isn't smart enough to calculate how doing it will damage their relationship as a whole.

Mine (Ghost) is due to the tongue-in-cheek running joke that I can be whoever I want in the hobby or the forums at any given time and...

• my belief that constant monitoring and tracking of individuals in the hobby has impeded innocent people more than the "bad people"
• an attempted constant reminder that almost everyone in the hobby presents who they want to say they are but are likely, truly (on perhaps some insecure level) not that person (everyone presents an idealized version of self to strangers)
• that the shocking twist of this community is that there are a lot of "people playing characters who play characters" and I, myself, could literally be a convicted 4x felon and the only way anyone would know it is if I gave them actual personally identifying information to reveal that to them.

Not trying to provoke, but this is literally why I go as Ghost here. On an internet anonymous text-based, non-video/voice hobby...we are whoever the fuck we tell you we are until figured out otherwise.

-edit:
I actually just recently got a discord ping from a MUer I hadn't talked to in maybe 3 years. I don't even remember truly who they were but I could read our chat history in back-scroll about MU. They tried to get me to download a piece of software that was clearly malicious, and I thought:

• Did they get hacked?
• Is it the same person, but they're trying to scam me?
• Did they (as an actual MUer) send me a link to a website or game hoping to determine my IP to try to lock me out of some MU or prove I wasn't on some game?

I realized from what I've seen over the years, all 3 were realistic possibilities so I reported the person and blocked them. So feel free to use "Ghost" as much as you want or whatever, there really are no guarantees

(Also: I don't think I ever repeated charnames so can't answer 2nd)

Another idea I had or came across a while ago was to complilate a collage that encompasses the look and vibe of the character. So their face is ultimately less important to their vibe and presentation, right?

It's fun to do this anyway to get into the character design mindset.

@Juniper tldr you basically align with my original point. I never did like PBs because I found the usage of the likeness of an actual person to be somewhat "non-consenting". Prefer art.

@faraday said in Stranger Danger?:

Might come down to the games, dunno.

I will say that when it happened it usually on WoD games , and on one occasion I had someone paging me asking about my RL kinks. I can't remember how I worded it, but I was polite about it and said I'd just rather rp it through and even then (when they could have just said something like "sounds like we aren't compatible writing partners, gonna move on, good luck" and moved on) they still used some excuse about needing to pick someone up.

It wasn't constant by any means, but I'd say maybe 1 in 10 new attempted rp partners.

@Tapewyrm said in Stranger Danger?:

I rarely play IC relationships with others, unless they're my actual RL partner, since I like to save that side of myself for that person, and it saves on drama.

That's a great policy to have; it stops it before it starts.

Do you have issues finding/maintaining RP with players once they find out you're not open to IC-relationship stuff? That was always kind of my issue: I was able to find a lot of available RP, but people would suddenly have "electrical storm" or "rl emergency" or "sorry gotta go" when it was established I wasn't into TS/relationship RP with the person.

@reimesu said in Stranger Danger?:

Frankly, I don't understand how anyone can leave MUshing due to bad experiences and distrust and then complain that those of us who stayed want to be able to know who we associate with on a regular basis. That's a pretty big disconnect, thinking that it's OOC drama to ask for that information. It's not, it's called informed consent. If someone is on the receiving end of the question, that's not OOC drama, it's someone being self-protective due to past incidents, or actively trying to avoid OOC drama.

I wouldn't understand either, if such a thing were actually happening.

Simply asking isn't drama, but the overall concept of some light interrogation and demanding personal information really, in a nutshell, is drama/dramatic/Etc. It's pressuring, and while I understand your argument is greatly valid...all I'm saying is that that the existing need to validate for self-protection is, in itself, an uncomfortable place for a hobby to be. Especially considering that anyone, at any time, is capable of introducing their new 'identity' as being whoever they choose.

I ain't judging. Fuck that.

I just think "what would a completely brand, new, walk-in, never-heard-about person think about getting into the hobby with ___________ ?", and I think the level of drama and fear would just be so weird to someone new. And then I think "shit, I got used to that, so maybe I just got weird." ...or some varying theme of that.

But we should probably get back to the topic (how one approaches the stranger Danger factor) before people get too judgmental.

@faraday said in Stranger Danger?:

Isn't that true of any relationship, though, online or off? Someone who's had bad experiences is naturally going to be more leery than someone who hasn't, but it almost seems like you're saying it's better to just never engage OOCly at all. (Maybe I'm misunderstanding.)

True, absolutely. Like I said, my approach led to somewhat of an isolationist stance that led to me ultimately leaving the hobby; it worked for me mentally but may not work for many others. As @Misadventure said it's a question of knowing yourself and how to manage your own bleed. Leaving the games, in the end, was the right call for me per my mind, how I work, etc.

I'm not convinced it would really insulate you from drama.

Part of where I came to with my decision is that I felt drama couldnt truly be avoided. A while back I tried just being somewhat anonymous on a game and it resulted in a ton of WhoAreYou and Where have you played and random pages about how people were concerned I was (satire/example) "Burbleboxoloxicoth on Arx who used that PB", and maybe 50% of the time that happened I had no clue who the person was asking about, and the player said something like "if you won't tell me who you are, I don't trust you and won't rp with you".

It was as if to mitigate the attack surface of drama and not making who I was OOCly a topic, I was immediately opening myself to suspicion. Which, I feel it was logical to assume that to avoid that drama, I would need to expose myself, which would then lead to being tied to whatever drama, past or present, was associated with an entire buncha HogPitters.

But yeah, in my perfect world, the right to remain anonymous and partake in roleplay without needing to expose who you are as an OOC persona would be important. I think that should be everyone's right to do so without being treated with hostility.

The topic of "needing to protect oneself from so-called "dangerous" players (a term I feel is often leveled at innocent people, annoying people, in the absence of actual dangerous people) absolutely clashes with the ability to be anonymously cordial and enjoy the hobby without partaking in the mud-slinging side-game.

I see saw no good answer, so I chose what felt right for me. It's disappointing, but I'm enjoying my new hobbies.

@faraday said in Stranger Danger?:

@Hella said in Stranger Danger?:

I enforce firm boundaries, period. IC, OOC, all the boundaries, everywhere.

Oh yes, very true. I only call out IC relationships specifically because that's been the #1 source of boundary issues through the years.

Which makes sense, because "ic relationships" sometimes seem to be tied to RL personal vulnerabilities, so it's a minefield.

A few people have told me that they adamantly believe that all Mu chars are extensions of the players, and disagreed when I said that a player could be so divorced from the concept of the PC that it could be treated as a separate entity. So if you combine this concept with the sheer vulnerability some people wade into in IC relationships, it's no wonder why the boundary issues happen.

This isn't meant to be provocative, but with all this in mind it is wholly possible that someone in an IC relationship with your character, even if they're not aware of it, may be getting that feedback as actual intimacy. This in mind, it then makes it possible that some players may have felt they had some kind of actual relationship with the player or character, which forms an attachment. When the other player goes away, it turns into some kind of grieving (loss, sadness, anger, retaliation).

^ I write this because it again highlights how quickly these things can get personal despite your best intentions, and whoever it is they say they are one needs to just hope they're stable enough not to impact your RL.

@Misadventure said in Stranger Danger?:

Know, learn or guess what your personally vulnerable roleplay topics are.

I liked that one a lot.

For me, I learned after a certain point to do what I call "guarding my space". I decided that only the 1 or 2 people I was actively friends with (friends as in "not an acquaintance but someone I'd known long enough to be sure who they were), but even then I tend to be vague about my personal life issues. I started holding back on personal details after an incident where I had to put some distance between myself and someone oocly who i was somewhat close with, and their response was to tell everyone my private business and that I was some kind of leech. People are absolute dog shit sometimes. Weaponizing someone's RL issues as a means of retaliation is pretty bad. Then again, it could have been way, way worse.

But in terms of "guarding my space", I took a deep look at where my "blind spots" were. It's hard to be honest about that kind of stuff, but it did me well. I reminded myself that people in the hobby were strangers in the actual sense, and like most people they tend to present an idealized version of themselves because ultimately they're text, strangers, and could really be anyone. Even that person who fucked me over was really a stranger then, too, and who the fuck knows why I shared personal details.

At some point (lol) I just stopped even caring or thinking about who I was RPing with and just accepted them as "stranger who roleplays well". I have it on good authority from the gay community that some gay men tend to present as female to get solid TS from assumed actual men, but then something in my head tripped and I realized I could have at any time done the same if I wanted to.

I mean, fuck, it's theoretically possible that people have unknowingly TSed family members or celebrities. Even Bin Laden was allegedly super active on Xenoverse/Xenoverse2, and definitely under an assumed identity.

Now, my approach ultimately led me to caring less about game stuff and stopping MuRP altogether because whatever attachments I had kinda disintegrated into "fuck it they're strangers, I have plenty of RL friends", and whenever drama started I just...stopped giving a fuck. This worked for me, but probably not everyone, but that's my big tl;dr suggestion:

Guard your space.
These people are strangers, and it's better for you to guard your information going out (Pii that can get you stalked, harassed, abused, put in danger, public ridicule), than to find yourself trying to wrestle control from someone who has taken it from you due to them knowing too much.

After all, it's pretty possible that at least one (or more?) of the dozens of people in the community has catfished their "persona/identity" on an ooc-level, for good or bad reasons. Just be careful.

@Derp Yeah I saw the other thread first and was about to ask "what in the mildly constructive fuck?" Glad I checked this other one first

This is more a question than anything, really.

WHAT ARE PEOPLE'S VIEWS ON THE 'STRANGER' FACTOR?

Was thinking about this a few days ago, but with (far) more than a handful of my own creeper/unethical experiences in MU, I thought the topic of approach to the fact that text-people are complete strangers might be interesting. There's threads about people being "dangerous", the hobby has its own "Rogue's gallery" that people actively seem to fear, and God knows me and my whole thing about what some others refer to as "harmless underage character TS" (myself and most psychs use a different term, but I digress).

So I think it's fairly established that people think there is a constant fear of dangerous person stuff, but I'm somewhat ever-curious about how people who are still in the hobby mitigate those risks. Example:

Given the fact that anyone could be anyone at any given time (and one can only assume the person is who they say they are), what do you as a person do to mitigate the risk when seeking potentially personally vulnerable RP (TS/Relationships) or sharing personally identifying information?

@Derp said in I owe a lot of people some apologies.:

@Hella

You say this and then you end up with Dirty My Little Pony. Careful what you wish for.

I do not wish for this to be.

@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.

@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.

1. 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.

2. 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.

@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.

@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

@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.

@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.