@Ganymede said in Stranger Danger?:

I thought I had made friends over my past 25+ years of doing this, but I misjudged how firm many of those friendships were.

That's been a rollercoaster I've ridden too of late. Some friendships were indeed firm, but others were far less than I hoped.

Personally I just RP about the things I want to wrote stories about, and don't RP the things I'm not that into. 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.

@Ghost That makes a lot of sense, and yeah, I wandered away a log time ago from WORA because I felt it was just (by that point) a place for nastiness and never ending drama. So, I can understand things going down the way you describe.

Sad to hear about the hobby in general though. I took about 10 years off and recently came back to an old game I knew, only to find it dead, and my attempts to revive it have meant waking up some of its own PHBs (lol I had to think about that for a sec to get the reference).

Is there any hope at all that the level-headed peeps could come back to the hobby, if they found places to play which don't carry the ugliness of the past with them?

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

@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.

That's... a large part of where I'm coming from, yes. It's extraordinarily easy to dismiss arguments and people under this guise, and typically such crowds don't tolerate any criticism in the other (gendered) direction. So for me, I draw a large correlation between the two, and hence me asking right from the get-go.

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.

I'm good. If, as you say, that's where the crazy went to live, I'm okay with leaving them to it. I did find a thread or two about active games there, so it wasn't a total loss checking it out.

@Macha I mean, the multiple references to whatever culling or banning of people/boards took place are littered throughout the threads I perused.

Look, I get that Something Happened. I honestly don't care about whatever it was, and yes, if the Hog Pit or whatever was anything like old WORA, then it probably is better to have closed down a sinkhole of unpleasantness.

I really just came looking to find where all the people are these days. That's as far as this rabbit hole goes.

@Ghost That's very disheartening to hear. I was hoping time would have had the opposite effect, and that the hobby at large would have just finally stopped tolerating the PHB behavior. Sounds like the wrong team lost.

@Tapewyrm Well, all I can say is if anyone here enjoys Tolkien and wants to try to RP again, let me know. Thankfully the game I played on is relatively unknown to these boards (or at least back in the day), so there's a high chance that none of the traditional PHBs will find it.

At least, I hope!

Hello. Not sure if this is the right place for this, but, if anyone used to play on Elendor, then please drop me a line.

I'm thinking this includes @BetterJudgment, @Tinuviel and @Arkandel ?

@Ganymede said in Stranger Danger?:

I thought I had made friends over my past 25+ years of doing this, but I misjudged how firm many of those friendships were.

That's been a rollercoaster I've ridden too of late. Some friendships were indeed firm, but others were far less than I hoped.

Personally I just RP about the things I want to wrote stories about, and don't RP the things I'm not that into. 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.

@Tapewyrm Well, all I can say is if anyone here enjoys Tolkien and wants to try to RP again, let me know. Thankfully the game I played on is relatively unknown to these boards (or at least back in the day), so there's a high chance that none of the traditional PHBs will find it.

At least, I hope!

@Ghost That's very disheartening to hear. I was hoping time would have had the opposite effect, and that the hobby at large would have just finally stopped tolerating the PHB behavior. Sounds like the wrong team lost.

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

@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.

That's... a large part of where I'm coming from, yes. It's extraordinarily easy to dismiss arguments and people under this guise, and typically such crowds don't tolerate any criticism in the other (gendered) direction. So for me, I draw a large correlation between the two, and hence me asking right from the get-go.

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.

I'm good. If, as you say, that's where the crazy went to live, I'm okay with leaving them to it. I did find a thread or two about active games there, so it wasn't a total loss checking it out.

@Ghost That makes a lot of sense, and yeah, I wandered away a log time ago from WORA because I felt it was just (by that point) a place for nastiness and never ending drama. So, I can understand things going down the way you describe.

Sad to hear about the hobby in general though. I took about 10 years off and recently came back to an old game I knew, only to find it dead, and my attempts to revive it have meant waking up some of its own PHBs (lol I had to think about that for a sec to get the reference).

Is there any hope at all that the level-headed peeps could come back to the hobby, if they found places to play which don't carry the ugliness of the past with them?

@Misadventure Thank you

@Macha I mean, the multiple references to whatever culling or banning of people/boards took place are littered throughout the threads I perused.

Look, I get that Something Happened. I honestly don't care about whatever it was, and yes, if the Hog Pit or whatever was anything like old WORA, then it probably is better to have closed down a sinkhole of unpleasantness.

I really just came looking to find where all the people are these days. That's as far as this rabbit hole goes.

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

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

Exactamundo. That's why I'm essentially asking you if you are sexist against men, as part of my assessment of this environment.

Alright, let's be constructive, here.

You're (allegedly) an old personality from WORA, having just made an account, and have all of these very specific questions regarding conduct and sexism of all things being asked in the air of "do you follow your own rules?".

No, I asked a very specific question about whether or not the reference to toxic femininity was pounced upon with such vigor because of sexism. In fact, scrolling back, it is remarkably clear how specific my question was.

Now, it's possible that you're simply some long-lost 3rd party WORA-ite suddenly (out of nowhere) walking in for a "spot assessment of the environment", but I'm assuming it's far more likely that this is related to some kind of pre-loaded Q&A routine.

LOL what? No, I just browsed Thenoman's profile, saw something posted in some thread, read the thread a little bit, and asked my question.

So why don't you stop asking these questions and start asking the ones you plan to ask 3 or 4 questions down the line,

I already did. Are you guys sexist against men around here? Because I find a lot of internet spaces these days are sadly dominated by problematic ideology, and I'd rather know now before I find out later. Thus far, the answer to this question has been evaded.

or stop assessing the environment and explain why after all of these years the sudden interest in MSB and their policies requires this thorough an analysis?

Because I literally just walked through the door like 2 days ago.

I don't want to come across as unfriendly, but I've been in this hobby way too long to believe this is some kind of random, completely organic interest in the forum's policies on sexism. And if this IS somehow some sudden random person's desire to assess the policies of this forum, why this forum?

Because I came looking to see what had become of WORA, and/or the hobby. Reddit pointed me to this forum.

You folks are way too paranoid. I'm literally just asking if you're anti-male douchebags.

If you're not then the inquiry ends here. That's literally all, folks.

@Derp I hope that's genuinely the case. It's a little concerning to me that the answer couldn't simply have been: "Yes".

Ah well. I have a total of, like 4 hours invested in this, so far!