Toxic Internet Communities, your worst experiences.
I played DoTA 2 this morning for 45 minutes and it reminded me just how awful and insanely annoying the people in MOBA games can be. I can play fairly well, I'm hardly a revolution but I can kick ass with my Bloodseeker/Lena/Lich/Queen of Pain fairly well.
Being RELENTLESSLY insulted for in fact carrying most of the team as Bloodseeker begins to wear on ones nerves after 35 minutes. Especially because while they were typing idiotic insults they were caught out of lane and ganked several times.
Granted, DoTA 2 is trying pretty hard to clean up the place, which is commendable, but it doesn't seem to slow ANYONE down even slightly. I think MOBA communities probably have the worst interpersonal skills I have ever seen.
What are some of your experiences with online communities in general/games in particular be they good or bad?
Being RELENTLESSLY insulted for in fact carrying most of the team as Bloodseeker begins to wear on ones nerves after 35 minutes. Especially because while they were typing idiotic insults they were caught out of lane and ganked several times.
Granted, DoTA 2 is trying pretty hard to clean up the place, which is commendable, but it doesn't seem to slow ANYONE down even slightly. I think MOBA communities probably have the worst interpersonal skills I have ever seen.
What are some of your experiences with online communities in general/games in particular be they good or bad?
Post edited by CaloNord on
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Minecraft is awful a lot of the time. So is CoD. To many teens who think CoD is ANYTHING like the real thing.
@Dee Funny you should mention that, I believe I've been there a few times when I was in high school.
I also spent a great many hours on MSN!
On a side note, I usually find 4Chan to be insanely annoying, however, one night I was on the technology board discussing what should go in my new laptop I was building and on a whim I decided to see what the /Soc/ board was. . . so over I went, I stayed just long enough to say hello to @JessicaKrystal before being scared off by the sheer amount of weird and disturbing that hangs around there. Turns out she lived in the same country, same state, same city and now we're engaged. . .
So that happened.
And it's particularly toxic for any new player to the game who is just learning how to play properly. They will need to have a really really thick skin to get through it.
There was a little of it in cities, but I never saw as much as was claimed. I spent a long time sitting around in Dalaran and Shattrath waiting for raids to start and only saw maybe half a dozen full on hissy fits or sweary tirades in two or three years. There were slightly weird noob chats in Elwynn Forest and Goldshire where kids didn't know about the caps lock key, and the always bizarre Barrens Chat, but that wasn't generallly bad stuff.
Yet, in other forums i will fail to name/point at (one of them is well known with big community and its members are mostly great, the other two are local only in my country), i have received warnings and bans without going against the rules, and sometimes, other members or mods forcibly plus arbitrarily, put over my writings a totally different meaning and interpretation, from the one i genuinely conjured from the start, and accuse me for wanting to mean things that i never even thought of.
In one of them (from my country), i was even falsely accused for things that not only i never did, but that i never even THOUGHT of myself of EVER doing as a mere POSSIBILITY. And even without evidence, i had things like my ip address banned, filing of accusations and other, beautiful things. There is nothing worse than the sting of treachery, especially if it comes from your own people, and extends outside forum life, as well (because that particular forum had been about common interests, habits, and we even as a whole had arranged happenings and going out for drinks quite a few times, in the distant past). This left me both with a bitter taste on my mouth, and an unfailing tendency to actively avoid like hell close to real life forums/communities/situation thereafter; i mostly go for games/gaming/fantasy/roleplaying, over the last, many years.
Finally, the wow community treated me like a beach, and thank all gods for that, because this way, i was able to never be messed by the MMO doom; which is robbing you of your life, be it biological, or social. They expected me to be a hardcore player and know every aspect of the game, even if it was my first time touching it. Most of them were rude, demanding (had a priest, one late heal, some unneeded aggro, me doing damage to the enemies sometimes, were always met with frustration and bitterness...), snobbish and elitists . Plus i couldn't of course loose my entire night raiding and hunting equipment of drops, or constructing it from professions, which was reason enough for them to kick me out. Even if the majority of them were from same country in that guild, too...
I am happy things turned this way, though, in all matters. Everything going smoothly is boring, noneducational, and somewhat "fake". I like learning a great deal of things out of "fails", even if i was not to blame. This way i can adjust myself successfully to more tricky and demanding situations, and "level up" quicker. And who knows? On the long run, maybe being excommunicated from some places, might turn out to my own profit and gain, in the future. I mean, sometimes, almost always, trash people are exposed, lies and injustice tend to get exposed, and life itself usually brings punishment to those who punished others, especially the undeserving, the victims and the "trash" (by trash here i mean people who no one wants around, with or without, well, usually without good reason, or maybe reason, at all, alone).
> Baldur's Gate/IE Modding.
>LEGO Cuusoo (now called Ideas).
They are kinda the best you can find in the internet.
Those were the days.
I was going to tell a story from my wild days then I remembered it was wildly inappropriate. . .
But yes, Minecraft didn't use to be so toxic, until the game came out for consoles. The toxicity then spread through its general forums into the rest, especially its modding community.
Suffice it to say if you come across a group loosely based around a modding team and their friends who run a fairly cliquey forum with lots of "in jokes" (like continually changing user names and then ridiculing people who actually call them by their current name and not their "real" one) - beware. If this group has an adult role-playing section of the forums start to get very very suspicious. If anyone in that group asks you to join in any sexual shenanigans in a chat room, private messages etc don't turn them down, not even nicely. Don't even reply - just run like hell or you could find yourself the subject of a nasty hate campaign across several forums.
But then, I am a very, very, very boring man.
I'm pretty sure that internet forums mean that in about twenty years literally no-one will be a potential politician, as everyone will have said something damagingly stupid somewhere online. (I know I have)
I tend to stay a fair way away from internet communities, bar this one. This is probably the least toxic community I've seen. It's friendly, open and peaceful. There are an insane number of amazing, intelligent and fun people around here to. Which is just awesome!
But this, this is what I mean. >.<
As several of us have mentioned in other threads, this forum is unique in the fact that we often have disagreements, game-related or otherwise, that don't descend into flame wars and instead produce some very positive dialogue.
(How is that done, btw? Can one mod just appoint anyone or do you guys like... Vote or something?)
There are a few cases we consider an emergency and will result in instant banishment and content deletion without any further discussion, such as posting direct links to piracy or pornography websites, for instance. Fortunately I remember this happening just twice since the forum started.
In the case of closing threads we usually try to save them by splitting. If it does not work or if the thread is completely degenerated or is becoming a flaming festival, it's also closed without any further discussion.
Obvious spambots are banished without any discussion as well. There were actually a few spambots we had to discuss before banishing as we had reasons to have doubt about its status as a bot. Fortunately we have ways to make sure we're dealing with bots and not a human who for some reason posted something similar to a bot post.
Don't like someone, unfriend them. Can't unfriend them due to a real-life obligation? Unfollow them but keep them on your friend list. Seeing stupid crap that annoys you such as the aforementioned "one like = one prayer" ? Click the little button that says "I don't want to see this," Facebook is smart enough it will get the idea if you do this enough times and filter crap out for you.
I realize this opinion is puffin-worthy, but I'm a firm believer that if Facebook annoys you, it's your own fault, because the website gives you tools to deal with said annoyances. And, of course, no one has to use it.
I've been on far too many online communities in my rather short time on this earth. Here are just a few.
Gaia Online: Used to be a lot of fun, now it's just a cash grab by the developers who obviously don't actually care about their website being fun. As for the community itself; mixed. It's mostly anime buffs on there. Some people are very kind and others are 25 year old nerds in their parents' basement who think they are totes badass. It's legitimately sad. You know how people will say "I don't care!" and others will say "I don't care" ? There's that incredibly obvious difference between someone who truly isn't bothered by things and others who are just playing badass. Once again, legitimately sad.
Tumblr: This is the only website I have ever quit. The blatantly offensive hypocrisy found on the website is unavoidable no matter what you do. Double standards, double standards everywhere. People sitting well-fed, clothed and sheltered in front of a computer screen crying about how tough life is, while people with actually tough lives are attempting to do something with theirs'. Tumblr crushed what little hope I had for the human race. OK, slight exaggeration, but you get my drift.
DeviantART: I had a mixed bag here. Like Facebook, it's entirely possible to find your own clique and enjoy yourself. However, one thing that is unavoidable for some artists is the incredibly hypocritical moderators. Nude of a woman? Slap a warning label on it, and you're good! Nude of a man? DELETED! WARNED! I never had any trouble with this, but it legitimately bothered me to watch this happen time and time again. Wow, so deviating of them! They're doing such a good job of straying from the norm and thinking for themselves! Except they're not. Most misleading title for a website ever. What I DID run into trouble with, is I have been known to do sprite art, most of which are highly modified edits of existing sprites. I would give full credit to the original artist, and my stuff would still be taken down. I see people producing and utilizing bases everywhere, but for sprite art apparently it's not OK. Seriously, their moderators were idiots. As far as the community itself goes, like any other community there were massive jerks and then some cool people as well. Totally possible to find your own clique, but there were always the drama llamas who would undermine groups with their baggage.
Twitter: Twitter is bearable, and it's even easier with this website to forge out your own clique and sit there comfortably, enjoying the posts of people you have subscribed to. There's a huge popularity gap in Twitter though, so it makes for a rather crappy dynamic. You're either very popular or not at all, it seems. Which is fine, but the website is basically stalkees and stalkers. As long as you know that going into it, you can't be too disappointed. Due to the 140 character limit in a given post, people try to have debates and fail spectacularly. Forcing people to be so short-winded makes everyone look like an idiot extremist. So stay away from those arguments.
Zap! Forums: Tiny forum for a tiny game that has since evolved and changed greatly. I started 75% of the drama because I was a dumb little pre-teen. I'm sorry!! Thankfully, they've all forgiven and forgotten; nearly anyway, the other day we had a real old player join the game and start talking shit about my past transgressions. Feels crappy, but in the end I've just got to accept that he doesn't know me anymore and stuff. The game is called "Bitfighter" now and we're just recovering from our server being hacked. The community in the game is quite awesome, we're close-knit and we have map contests and cool stuff. It's got an awesome level editor thanks to it being powered by vector graphics (geometry ahoy!). It's also a fun playground for script kids (boy it's been forever since I've heard that term). If anyone's curious, it's at http://www.bitfighter.org/ , some time I will go into more detail in my advertising though. A couple of my maps come installed with the game.
Baldur's Gate Forums: I love y'all but many of you can also annoy the crap out of me from time to time. Usually in the form of a few things:
1. People bashing Vanilla BG1.
2. People getting elitist about their play style.
3. People getting offended far too easily.
4. Somebody doing something really classy (usually @Isandir) and then someone else swooping in and saying "WOW, LOOK AT HOW GREAT AND FRIENDLY WE ALL ARE!" essentially patting themselves on the back for someone else being reasonable and patient. Credit where it's due, folks.
With that all said, again I love you all, and this IS one of the better communities I've been in.
As for Facebook, I don't want to be *too* hipster but I really did join Facebook before it was cool - back in '05 while it was still colleges and universities only. I still remember the e-mail that I got the summer after freshman year from the unofficial class president telling us about this cool new site that we needed to petition right away to get our college onto it - Facebook.
It was a different place in the early days - maybe Zuckerburg had this dystopian end game for it all along, but back then it was so fun and new and different. We were naive about using our real names - too naive. Truly, I regret more sorely all the recruiting and eagerness I had for Facebook than any other mistake I made back in college. I never knew I was creating a monster.
And yes, the BG forums can be a bit self-congratulatory at times, but I'm being sincere when I say it feels much different than pretty much any other forum I've been on - and I have on a lot in my time. We have a standard of civility and decorum I really haven't seen in a very long time.
Theoretically, this could work. For fun, easy, simplistic communication you can take a picture to convey an emotion with a face, thus necessitating less typing. But see, it's the immediate removal of the message that damns it. It is as far as I can see the one advantage it has over texting: sexting.
It's really all to obvious. When I ask my more mainstream acquaintances why they choose it over texting the reply bluntly that sexting is really the only reason it even caught on. And now if you want to be cool you're using it regardless of wether or not your sending blurry snaps of your junk to everyone and her sister. I've had people say "ooh, ooh, come, look at this! Oh, wait. It's gone." More than a few times.
And it usually doesn't even work. You can't use it in front of anyone because you have take a picture, but people try anyway and you usually get this dim, blurry picture of someone's chin. That and it propagates selfies, and the terrible expressions and general bad photography they foster, which is another rant I'm sure I've got in me. And so is the photography buttons. People carry around these awesome cameras with them 24/7, with tons of (free!)software to do lots of cool tricks, and they don't even know how to adjust the exposure!
*sigh* I'll stop now. This can only go downhill.
Oh, and then there is the thing about the "trigger words", the "genderneutral pronouns", caucasians with dreadlocks, NSFW fanworks, inventing new names for already existing things to feel more special, straight up misandry etc. pp.
TLDR: The SJWs are so far up their own ass, that they don't even remember what anything but shit smells like.