-The online RPG community (including probably you) is made up of game masters
-The online RPG community is quite capable of cancelling people
-Luke Crane (of Burning Wheel) is head of Kickstarter for games, teaches tabletop RPG design at NYU Game Center, and has high-level connections all over the RPG industry
-Luke Crane has quite provably said all of you are abusers:
All of the games talk about fun and fairness, enjoyment and entertainment, but then they break that cycle by granting one member of the group power over all of the other members of the group. It's classic power dynamics. Once you have roles of power and powerless, even the most reasonable and compassionate people slide into abuse. [source]
Why haven't you either:
A) Cancelled yourselves for being abusers.
or
B) Tried to cancel Luke Crane for spreading misinformation about you
?
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For some of you, engaging in the comments will be its own reward.
If you're sick of this shit and want game content: for every serious and engaged answer, I will give you one content post.
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203 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 203 of 203I've continued to think about this question for a month and despite my exhaustion with the hobby and the people in it I still want things to be fixed.
What I'd need is to understand what actually makes people act this way. When people act out they're almost always motivated by something other than what they say they're upset by.
I remember seeing in a kiwifarms thread a long time ago, some lunatic making passionate, concerning declaration that he will devote all of his time to "destroying" some random girl who nobody had ever heard of.
To fight this guy on the surface level terms of his crusade, I'd have to be the other side of the coin, and sacrifice my life to battling him as he changes targets.
But I can't address his social and existential angst. Even if I had a magic word that made the conversation about that, I'd have to be a social worker - I'd be giving up my time meant for the people and things I love to help some asshole who wouldn't have helped himself.
Excluding the realities of my commitments and energy, what equipment would you suggest? How would you change a cowardly heart? How can you convince a man to focus on healing his own hurt instead of trying to force it onto others? How can you tear down the pathetic pillow fort larp of "me and my cohorts all believe we are very smart because none of us could figure out how to get along with people" when these problems are what drive so many people to the hobby in the first place? To change any bad actor you're struggling against a lot of complex but stupid motivations - their existential relationship with authority and who authority figures in the scene might be, whether their lack of aptitude for sports made them think their parents didn't love them, things like that.
I'll posit that I believe that "you're wrong, here's why" is less effective than "you look stupid for believing that" in changing people's minds, especially when confronting them as a stranger in public spaces but I'd genuinely appreciate your input if you thought it worked as a strong go-to tool for change and how and when to best apply it.
Might be a bit out of order or unclear, it's impossible to see what you've written on mobile without jeopardizing the whole post, sorry.
Oh I didn't see you'd replied to me, it got buried in replies to pubby. I'm just back here on my own thinking.
What are those dozens of things? I think there's a rot in a lot of RPG people's brains so I'm thinking in terms of changing the space to be less terrible, which is probably aiming too high. Going shot for shot with online abusers in the name of justice is also not viable for me - I'm not quite as tireless as you when it comes to righting wrongs online, and as you've said elsewhere this is their entertainment. I won't be able to win that one, and I figure this would be aiming too low.
Not to preemptively dismiss your suggestions or anything - I just hope the courses of action you know about but I don't or haven't thought of have strong value in terms of impact vs time/emotional energy. RPGs aren't the only place turned into a toxic pit by bad actors
@McCabre
Re: addressing bad people
Your comment seems to suggest the primary goal is to change the mind of the bad actor. It is not.
The person talking to the bad actor is no more addressing them as the audience as a pair of presidential candidates are hoping to change each others' minds in a debate. They speak to each others' arguments but the real audience is those watching
The main goal is to -counteract- the stupid, evil people who did this by activating better people, not change the bad peoples' minds.
Re: dozens of things:
-Go to ALL the online spaces where the bad actors have put forth this story, go to all the influential people and institutions that they've written to, and fact-check them. Tell the truth. There are lots of places where they've told their false story, simply tell the other one.
-Support their victims and their victims' work.
If you can't immediately think of lots of spaces to do the first or ways to do the second, email me for a list zakzsmith at hawtmayle dawt calm
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