Posts made by SparklesTheClown

@dontpanda said in RL Anger:

I think the spark that ignited the movie theatre debacle was that there appeared to be inconsistent standards applied. Where the theatre originally just had tickets for sale to a "women only" night, they weren't for a specific cause - it wasn't a closed event. So, the fellow bought a ticket because he's legally allowed to do so. Contrast that with bakeries who have been sued into the ground for not baking a cake for a same-sex wedding (for that specific event), and you see that there's an inconsistent standard. No one's suing Muslim-owned bakeries for doing the exact same thing (you can check Stephen Crowder's video on that topic - he might be a troll at times, but the video doesn't lie). No one's demanding that mosques allow them to have their rainbow flag-waving, bacon-laden wedding reception there, but churches are getting sued for that same practice.

I know I've harped on this point a lot, but this entire section of the argument, again, just pretty much entirely ignores literally all context surrounding things. Now, I'm no stranger to Libertarian ideology, as I looked at most of the major popular ideologies before realizing that none of them really fit me, due to largely ignoring the world in favor of a convenient way of thinking. I'm saying this so that you understand that I have a general grasp of the ideological perspective.

That said, ignoring all context is pretty much 100% just pretending that all the situations are equal. It's basically equivalent to looking at a house, and looking at a house on fire, and then going, "These both look like houses to me, I don't know why the government has people wasting water on that other house and giving it a wash. This is special treatment".

Libertarian ideology in particular is very prone to mental gymnastics, which are largely centered around convincingly giving people the foundation for believing that we live in a society where inequality is a personal failing, and holding two very different things up and going, "These two things look perfectly even to me, I don't see what the problem is".

So it's ultimately difficult to address, because depending on what camp of Libertarianism you're from, I know that most responses to what I'd have to say are things like survival of the fittest arguments, "this research I read says what you said are factually not true" arguments, and other things. It's an ideology I have difficulty explaining things to, because it is very much built on a foundation of reaffirming feel-good mental gymnastics.

Though if you do have a solid argument for why context doesn't matter and we need to be robotic in making sure that all decisions are exactly the same, I'll read it. Just keep in mind that it's very difficult to make people accept an argument that a burning house should be treated equally to one that isn't on fire, and all decisions should be handled perfectly the same.

@Coin said in How Do I Headwiz?:

I am more and more in favor of XP being a player thing and having players distribute the XP among whatever alts they have as they see fit, logistics and logic be damned.

Since I'm using what is essentially an alternative to XP that I don't even fully grasp yet, I'm not sure if this will be possible. But if it is, I'll certainly keep this idea in mind.

I had to leave a staff team before a game even properly opened, because a staffer absolutely hated and openly admitted to bias against OCs, but no one wanted to fire this person. I found it unacceptable.

@Arkandel said in How Do I Headwiz?:

So if you are going to do this then staffing itself had better be fun enough for you to keep doing it. You might have 'a character' but that character can never be or do what other PCs get to. It'll always be the headwiz's alt, never Bob or Jane.

I actually am making this with GMing in mind, because my vision for the game will make it impossible for me to have the player experience I'm trying to craft. So that's something I accepted pretty early on.

If anything, I'll probably just play the nerd from Sailor Moon, or Mr. Popo. I ultimately plan to focus on villain NPCs so that people have shit to do, and run plot. If I do play a straight up character, I'll probably just make them the sum of the game's average stats or something, but I still won't be able to play the game properly in a fair way, so when it comes to having a PC, support characters are probably what I'll have to stick to. I don't know, we'll see, because it's not something I want to decide on right away, and without transparency and discussion (when I'm even at that point).

@Nein That's actually a problem I've noticed. The fact that staff in many games seem to have very vague positions in which they're doing tons of stuff all at once. I feel as if there are a lot of relatively harmless tasks that could be handled by low level helpers, and very few games employ some sort of helpers system. Most massive MUDs understand that you can't handle a game with hundreds of people with just a core staff base, I don't understand why MUSHes don't seem to get that most of the time.

@Arkandel said in How Do I Headwiz?:

@HelloProject The best piece of advice I have is unfortunately not actionable.

Have a thick skin.

That's it. But it's not something you can do, it's just ... developed over time. I hope for the sake of anyone staffing at all, let alone running a game, that they have it because it's an often thankless job and an endless grind which starts at 100% inspiration and creativity but ends up being 10% of that (... if you're lucky) and 90% work, maintenance, and handling people.

One thing I've noticed about a lot of places, is that the places aren't really made with the amount of work it would take to maintain such a place. Like, making incredibly long apps even though that would obviously be a huge workload if you got a ton of players, or straight up lacking a firm advancement policy, so you end up with a fuckload of jobs that all have to be handled somewhat differently, with no real guide to look at for how to handle any given one.

I'm not saying that you can entirely eliminate work, but just, from my general observations, people seem very prone to adding more work than necessary rather than designing things to the best of their ability to minimize work where ever it's actually possible to do so. MCM for example, even though I like their current app in theory, in practice this app seems like it adds a hell of a lot more and emotional labor for staff than the old one.

@Arkandel said in RL Anger:

I could care less who sympathizes with whom. I wouldn't hit anyone other than in direct defense of myself or another because that's not what I believe in or how I want to behave.

I like to think that I wouldn't hit someone due to the inner goodness of my heart, but some people require digging down very, very deep. It's one thing to disagree with someone, it's another for someone to be telling you to your face the most racist shit I've ever heard, for three hours straight, and to be trapped in the situation due to it being a point in your life where you had no idea what to even do when shit like that comes up.

I know you're probably thinking "just walk away from the situation", but it's like, we're talking about a situation where, when I mention it, mutual friends that I have with this person start going "Well, did that really happen? Are you sure you didn't just misinterpret the situation? Maybe we should just stop talking about this" and shit like that. It's frustrating, getting constantly poked at with a stick like that, and you're just kind of expected to repress it, which is exactly what I do, because there's not really an alternative that doesn't complicate a bunch of my relationships.

So I try to remember the consequences of hitting people, because there is a limit to the pure goodness in one's heart to simply not hit someone when they become grossly racist every time you're alone with them and none of your other friends are around to see it.

This is all very great advice. There's a lot of stuff I really didn't consider, but if nothing else, I'm at least more mentally prepared for a lot of things. I'm still not deterred from making this game. Choosing staff is going to be difficult (especially choosing staff who are actually willing to be staff), but I at least don't feel so in the dark from reading all this stuff.

Well, I was staying out of this happy funtime discussion, but, my perspective:

While I think all of these "white nationalists" as they like to be called, are garbage human beings, I also don't believe in hitting them, because, as much as people hate to hear this, that makes average people sympathize with them before actually hearing the crazy racist bullshit they have to say. It makes your Average Joe dude go, "Wow, this is just like the time a black person was mean to me, I guess all this white nationalism stuff must have some weight to it".

Granted, my experiences growing up in Philadelphia has painted my impression of what the average person and the average person's perspective is, that's just generally how I personally expect it to go. I think hitting these people will only give them more supporters and make them even more sympathetic to people who are just the average everyday level of racist you expect most people to be. I'd rather not push them over that far, I prefer the racism I have to be around to be at a level I can tolerate.

I want all of these "white nationalists" to be on camera saying the most racist shit possible, so that I can have a video to point to and go "See, this is what's wrong with all this shit".

I incidentally also don't want the Confederate flag banned, I'd prefer to know what kind of neighborhood I'm in, or what kind of people I'm dealing with, so I can back the fuck up and go no where near it. I prefer literal goddamned red flags so that I don't get caught in a situation where I can't tell if I'm entering a literal racist town where I might encounter a literal lynch mob or something.

It's true that the South and Midwest scare the shit out of me, and this might be an exaggeration, but I'm just being honest about how I feel. When you know damned well that there are millions of people out there who would kill you without a second thought, and probably think it was fun and hilarious, yes I am going to be prone to being terrified of an entire region of the country, no matter how reassuring people try to be about how it's "not that bad".

Swimming with goddamned sharks is also not as bad as most people make it out to be. Are you gonna go do it?

@mietze If I hurt the feelings of this large, multi-million dollar corporation whose every decision is based on maximizing profits and getting viewers at the expense of our society, then maybe I should be nicer.

@Thenomain I'm saying that CNN is both garbage for giving credibility to ignorance, and that I personally hate CNN because they're garbage people. So really, both.

@Tinuviel Oh no, by transparency I mean that I don't believe in making decisions and having players be like "Well wtf", because I think it inspires a lack of trust.

While I believe that a MU should be a community that people feel a sense of investment in, I also don't necessarily believe that a MU can be pure democracy and also have a cohesive and focused vision.

This is a part of why I plan to go by the title of "director", because I believe that directing things like a production is artistically important, so that things aren't a total mess and there's a sense of focus and quality.

@Catsmeow I generally believe strongly that transparency is important.

@Thenomain But for a long time CNN has given a voice to absolute nonsense, like taking climate change deniers seriously enough to give them a platform to talk about that nonsense.

They're also dicks with the way they conduct themselves, but that's just my personal experience from when one of those assholes interviewed me (I didn't really have any interest in telling the guy exactly what he was telling me I should say, no thanks).

Actually creating my game feels pretty doable, due to having laid out every single step that needs to be taken, so that it's not so overwhelming. But the day to day of how to keep a game from going up in flames definitely feels like something that isn't easily observed, even if I've played as many MUs as I have.

I'm also considering various things about building staff teams. Like, building a team always felt like a can of worms, and it's something I haven't even really been thinking about until now.

@Thenomain said in RL Anger:

While I personally believe it's logical and acceptable to hate hatred, I'm more concerned that people are concerned for people at large and neither do too little for it, nor too much by trying to protect all views and ideologies as having the same moral weight.

So what you're saying is that you hate CNN.

I wanted to make a separate post for this, outside of my MU thread. I want to create a general discussion for headwiz knowledge and wisdom.

What do you wish you knew before you opened your first game? What do you think are the main challenges for being a headwiz?

For people who have never run a game but want to participate, what do you think are important traits for a headwiz? What do you think makes someone a bad headwiz?

You're free to add any advice and thoughts beyond those.

Hell it's not like men's groups don't exist. Freaking men's only groups have existed since the dawn of freaking society, and still do, for various reasons. Not all of those reasons are even bad. I have seen men's groups that exist for perfectly justifiable reasons that have nothing to do with discrimination against women. It's actually possible to make an exclusive group for reasons that aren't "I hate all the people who aren't in this group".

For example, I know that the Community College of Philadelphia has this group, I forget what it's called, but it's like a group for black males. It exists because black men have statistically insanely high dropout rates, moreso than pretty much any demographic, even black women (black women actually have super fucking high graduation rates).

So the entire purpose of the group is so that these black male students can support each other against the statistical odds that say they won't graduate, even if it's stuff like home life, personal problems, or lack of money for bus fare and things like that. Basically the group is there to counter anything that would commonly cause black males to drop out of school. (This school has many groups, fyi, this is just one of them)

A friend of mine noted that the Peeing Pug only emphasizes the symbolism of the Fearless Girl.

@Thenomain

Being like "I don't give a shit about other people's kids" is half the reason that anti-vaxxer shit is a thing, so it's hard to sympathize with it. I'm not saying it isn't on some level the nature of our society (particularly American society) to default to "ignorant and selfish as hell" a lot of the time, but just because I can empathize with it doesn't mean I sympathize with it.

To me there's an order of magnitude of difference between "Fuck your kid's life because I can't get my kid to eat a different kind of sandwich", and "I won't give your kid food because I don't have the resources to take care of your kid too". I can sympathize with the latter, but the former is just, like, fuck these people, to me.

As far as my "human race" statement, I don't disagree that this is scientifically correct, I'm in particular mocking the way that certain people express the sentiment in certain contexts. I've seen enough of you in discussions to know that you wouldn't express it in the way that I'm mocking, at least that's my general optimistic assessment because you seem like someone who thinks very critically.

@Jim-Nanban said in RL Anger:

@HelloProject I refuse to accept what's communicated in your post: That you cannot figure out why someone might be opposed to all forms of discrimination.

And I refuse to accept that you sincerely don't understand the context of the situation and that you're actually making a sincere argument about discrimination. So I guess we're even!

You sound like someone who also doesn't see color and believes that "we're all one race, the human race".

I could quote shitty Facebook memes all night, but I have to go eat.

@mietze said in RL Anger:

Having been witness to the peanut butter in elementary school lunches "debate" now for like 10 years...actually, yeah, there are plenty of people who say quite literally "Fuck you and your fatally allergic child, my kid will only eat peanut butter sandwiches, and YOU want him to STARVE!" I have seen it in email, as well as seen it screamed in person.

Oh yeah, that's my point though. It's willful dickishness. No one's going to buy it if they sit there trying to pretend to have literally never heard of peanut allergies while arguing against banning peanut butter.

Talking like someone literally dying from peanuts and someone who thinks jelly sandwiches are icky are somehow equal things are dickish as hell arguments, pretending to have no idea what peanut allergies are is just ridiculous, which is why I (presume) no one does that.

Ignoring literally all context for why women would want a women only event is equivalent to going "Well, fuck you, I've never even heard of a peanut allergy. #allsandwichesmatter."