Meta Discussions - OOC Nonsense

Nipsy

Hello Community,

Recently I experienced what I thought was an interesting, I suppose "rumor mill" conversation which took place, involving my character and some of my affiliations. Overall this conversation left a terribly bad taste in my mouth, but it also was the sort of conversation which could bring harm to others and their reputation, which I found even more foul.

By no means am I a stellar example of innocence, I have said things in the past that were harmful OOC, and I certainly regret many of them, but in returning to Aetolia, I also learned that making people feel bad in a game we are all trying to enjoy is not only counter-productive, but harmful to the community as a whole. Can we take things back we have said, no. Can we work hard to try and be better people and be supportive and kind in the community, absolutely.

When it comes to attacking someone for things on an OOC level, the metagaming and nonsense that this perpetuates is sometimes the most harmful, because it damages trust in the community and also drives a wedge between what is already a small community by creating a feedback loop of this person has said and did X thing, without the grounds of proof to substantiate this.

In this most recent interaction it deeply effected the roleplay of my character but also those around me, and when asking for proof of this information, I was not provided any, so I chalked it up to numerous things, be it rumors, emotions or otherwise in a dislike for a character or their history. This kind of meta-aggressive behavior should not happen. Full Stop.

I thankfully have people in the community I can confide in to receive an unbiased and fair consideration when these sorts of thing come to fruition, and while I might not be close to the subject of this aggression, being a small community as we are, I am able to discuss fairly with mature people who are and get to the bottom of things. I was pleased to know that the things said were not true, no proof was able to provided, and overall it was contributed to someone being petty or harmful. However, that does not take away the wounds of the accusations, and that is an important part of this.

The only thing I want this post to do by making it, is to be honest about this experience, and do something I have been doing since returning to the game. Think about how things you say OOC can be construed and be harmful to not only the roleplay of the character but to the players it effects. I know there are many I have said harmful things to in the past, but apologizing or anything of that sort will never change that those things were done, and I have worked on letting these people see things as they are now and base their feelings on those interactions. I hope that we can all do that and take that perspective with us, be mature, and try to be better today than we were yesterday.

Keep IC, IC and keep OOC, OOC.

Let's just have fun and be kind to our community, there is no sense allowing the bad to fester and harm things. Nipsy=Monster, me the player Middle aged man trying to not have a headache after work. Etc. I appreciate you all and have had a wonderful time interacting with new and old faces in a new capacity, I want to continue this and hope you do the same.

Lets not be butts.

Thanks.

Nipsy

Also as a note to add to this, since @Elene has experienced this recently too.

Whoever you are, making trash discord accounts to try and cause petty bullshit in game, you're a unicornsing coward and I hope someone finds out who you are.
(There's an alley out back with a mob waiting for you)

For what it is worth since I like to name and shame, and would love to do so.
The Discord Avatar was a little chibi female character with dark hair, tan skin.
They claimed to be in a discord with this person, owned by a member of the Spirit tether (Which I have confirmed with people in that discord, that these conversations didn't take place)
They knew a lot about Bloodloch, Bloodloch Politics, Players in Bloodloch.

So do your magic nerds if you know someone who might be shady like this. (Or you know, tell them not to be a turd)

Tetchta

My personal advice for you, Nipsy, the person, is to ignore this sorta thing. Sounds like the run-of-the-mill "don't let them live in your head rent free" stuff, but I don't really mean it that way. Instead, I mean that our community is decently-large. It's smaller than my High School was, sure, and maybe smaller than my graduating class, but there's still enough of us to fill a decently-sized room. In a group of this number, there's going to be people, no matter what you do, at any time, no matter what, who will do things that are terrible. They'll read situations uncharitably, they'll metagame, they'll maybe even just straight-up make things up. Only really takes a couple of bad apples, honestly, and even rolling at 1/100 chances, you're bound to wind up with a few in a community our size.

There's plenty of people who shouldn't be playing this type of game who are. Who don't really accept the main concession of the game world: that this is a living roleplay environment. I could go on and on and on, but I think you get the gist. The day I stopped trying to walk on eggshells around this sort of thing, when it generally stopped letting it impact me, when I stopped thinking about it at all, was the day when I just genuinely started having nothing but a good time in the game. I mean, yeah, I get steamed sometimes over x, y, z, but I just log out and come back later.

These people will continue to exist, in some form or another, no matter what, so I def think a measure of "well they're there, I guess, whatever" can go a long way.

I don't think this diminishes our collective responsibility as a community to both police bad meta behavior, mind you. We should keep striving to keep our community standards high, and speak up when we see stuff like this. 'cause it's not okay, and it shouldn't ever be glossed over for the sake of keeping the temporary facade of cohesion and peace.

Nipsy

Thanks @Tetchta - and like others I have talked to, I have taken this advice as well, I appreciate the players who have good heads and are always willing to talk out these sorts of things.

Ehtias

As I have told people, if you're getting alt account harassment on discord report them to discord themselves. Chances are the main account might get nuked as well.

Nipsy

Yeah, literally did that after talking to a couple people, so ...in the words of Ice Cube, "Bye Felicia."

Lin

Nipsy said:

For what it is worth since I like to name and shame, and would love to do so.
The Discord Avatar was a little chibi female character with dark hair, tan skin.
They claimed to be in a discord with this person, owned by a member of the Spirit tether (Which I have confirmed with people in that discord, that these conversations didn't take place)

tell me i'm not the only one who quickly reviewed all the avatars in their server

Nipsy

Yeah this is like a shitty episode of Where in the world, is Carmen Sandiego.

I unfortunately only have this now:


I did receive a confirmation from Discord support that my inquiry was received though, so fingers crossed.


But that being said, a few people I have talked to might have narrowed down this a bit. I love you guys.

Tetchta

I said this before, but let me say it again: if you're making burner discord accounts to harass people over a niche text-based game with zero stakes, it's time to log off and get some help. Go touch some grass, talk to another human being (who doesn't play Aetolia), do literally any thing else with your life. To say "this is the behavior of losers" really does an injustice to how cringe and pathetic this is.

Xenia

Imagine a future where IRE hires a psychologist to talk to their players suffering from their RP PTSD. Charge 500 credits for 30 minutes of time.

Tetchta

We found our bound credit sink, boys, girls, and thems.

Iazamat

Xenia said:

Imagine a future where IRE hires a psychologist to talk to their players suffering from their RP PTSD. Charge 500 credits for 30 minutes of time.

...Does IRE have the money to retain a psychologist that would be willing and able to sift through IRE players' baggage instead of taking one look and running the opposite direction? Honest question.

Toz

^The entire community

Ayastia

Iazamat said:

Imagine a future where IRE hires a psychologist to talk to their players suffering from their RP PTSD. Charge 500 credits for 30 minutes of time.

...Does IRE have the money to retain a psychologist that would be willing and able to sift through IRE players' baggage instead of taking one look and running the opposite direction? Honest question.

I don't think Bezos has that kind of money...