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On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof
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@Hobbie Quite agree.
And from my perspective, being a middle-aged(ish) man, some interactions won’t register to me as sexually harassing when it’s aimed at anyone who isn’t a middle-aged man. Not because I can’t tell good from bad or that I don’t understand harassment, but because I don’t have the relevant life experience to understand that X thing is harassing from this person’s perspective.
So when one is actively investigating, logs are less important than understanding what the person did, and you can get that just by asking the reporter.
And all of this is only appropriate for a “do I get this person off my game” investigation, not part of any attempt to mediate the problem or downplay things.
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The place that didn’t ask for logs dealt with the issue immediately; I submitted my complaint, and things were handled all behind closed doors and then the guy was gone. This place has established for me that I am allowed to require safety of a game that I play on, so I no longer play on games that I’m not safe on.
Historically, I have submitted complaints relating to sexual harassment (of varying degrees), been asked for receipts, provided them, and was then raked across the coals in some fashion as a result. This is the default reaction. Usually I was just “too sensitive” and since the text COULD be interpreted another way…but at least one time I was a “known TS hound” so it wasn’t a problem that somebody was pestering me for TS.
I have had false (non-sexual) complaints made about me in very public fashion, and they were done alongside false sexually-related complaints made about someone else. This person was not believed in either set of complaints, due to their own behavior.
I have also had false (non-sexual) complaints made about me that stuck for a long time. It sucked. It sucked a whole lot. I would still rather see the community err on the side of believing victims, even knowing that the Spiders of the world (and their disciples) are out there. As much as it sucked, I was not harmed by exclusion.
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I have not had another player/character come on to me uncomfortable in a long, long time, if ever (I’m a male player who mostly but not exclusively plays male characters). I have reported people for things they’ve said to others in public or in scenes that I’ve been present for. I have been asked for receipts and if I have them or can easily get them, I have provided them (assuming they don’t bring anyone else into the situation who doesn’t want to be in it). Lately, I have gotten positive responses in each situation, but that’s mostly because lately I only play on games where I trust one or more of the staffers very strongly.
As a staffer, I ask for receipts to be shared if the player is comfortable sharing them. I do this because seeing the incident for myself is helpful for me to get a handle on the situation and how to approach the other player, and because being able to say “I’ve seen what you did” has more weight that “someone told me you did this.” There’s a whole lot less room for the person to argue with the former than the latter.
But if the reporting player doesn’t have receipts or doesn’t feel comfortable sharing them, I will absolutely take action with a generalized description of the situation. That action may be asking around to other people who interact with the prospective asshole, or it may be going directly to the source to see their response (it’s usually telling). It may just be watching the person super-closely. Depends on the reported action and what I’ve seen myself of the person. But it will at the very least be watching the person closely and re-evaluating my prior views on them (usually it involves giving them a single warning or kicking them the hell off my game though – the comfort of players is more important to me than the continued presence of very active players).
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Am a man who plays men and the kind of bad play I got sent my way did not surface as sexual harassment but more getting dragged OOCly for crossing the wrong established person. I generally didn’t think I’d get a fair hearing or what even going to staff could have accomplished. But I can definitely attest that the idea of having logs pored over by other parties made me feel incredibly exposed. For someone who has been victimized, especially with mindfuckery and gaslighting, it can be very hard to even be completely sure that the logs are going to reflect well on you. It can be really awful to think that you might not be believed.
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Decided to not report. Then the harasser reported me for being hostile and I got what was essentially a choice between TS this person or leave the game. I left the game.
So, yeah. I do understand why people hesitate and sometimes just figure they’ll just keep their head down.
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As someone who is super insecure and lacks confidence, I’m always thinking “But… what if it was my fault?” in the back of my head without anyone else even needing to make the accusation, no matter how much I try convince myself otherwise. Even about mundane stuff about who left the light on in the bathroom. Even if I know it wasn’t me, the moment someone else says “Well it wasn’t me” the implied ‘so it must have been you’ immediately makes me question my own memory of the event.
That is already a huge hurdle to overcome if I were to think of reporting someone for, well, anything. The fact I could be asked for receipts, and that those receipts might be somehow interpreted differently than I had and used as ‘proof’ that I really had been asking for it kind of just nixes the entire idea of me ever wanting to report in the first place.
But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything. They’re the people who need to be able to report. So making that process as… gentle, I guess, as possible is important.
That’s my personal take on it anyway.
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@Sammich said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything.
That is because abusers can sense it. I’m not sure exactly what it is they’re picking up on, but it’s like catnip to them. That’s not to say it’s our fault. When others target you for abuse, whatever their justification, the reason is that they wanted someone to abuse.
You deserve to be able to believe your own memory and have confidence in it, and I’m sorry something has made that so difficult for you.
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@Adora said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
That is because abusers can sense it. I’m not sure exactly what it is they’re picking up on, but it’s like catnip to them.
It’s the same way that scam emails work. They present themselves in a specific way that only a specific kind of person reacts to.
In my experience, an abusive person will start fine, and weasel their way in sociably, perhaps even affably. They’ll then start to drop hints at their abusiveness occasionally. A less targetable person will rebuff those hints, and the abuser will adjust and act like an average person around them. Someone who regularly fights land wars in their own brain will react differently, and that’s what the abuser picks up on.
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@Pavel … So I’ve been in therapy on and off for the better part of a decade. I’ve seen four different therapists in my life. And not a fucking one of them ever put it as succinct and easy to understand as that. Thank you.
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@Adora said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
@Pavel … So I’ve been in therapy on and off for the better part of a decade. I’ve seen four different therapists in my life. And not a fucking one of them ever put it as succinct and easy to understand as that. Thank you.
I’ll put that on my business card when I finally qualify as a therapist!
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Utility of logs has a big IT DEPENDS label on it for me.
I had someone tell me a player was somewhat uncomfortable and they just wanted to let us know, in case anything else came up. I asked if they could show me an example, if they were comfortable. If not, no big deal. I’d make a note and keep an eye out.
They showed me a log. And this person was super bad do not pass go do not collect $200 kind of player.
And out he went in the cold night.
But then sometimes logs are used against reporters, or not believed, brushed off, etc… So I don’t know that there will ever be a full proof system. But I do trend toward believing people when they tell me there’s smoke.
Historically, in my experience, the people reporting are more vulnerable and have more to lose.
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@tsar said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
But I do trend toward believing people when they tell me there’s smoke.
Believe it or not, depending on how one reads my input into The Other Thread, I also believe in people when they tell me there’s smoke.
I think a log’s only purpose, in those instances, is to determine what kind of fire is happening and whether anyone else is likely to be burnt by it. Context, rather than proof.
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@Warma-Sheen said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
What do you mean by “positive results”?
Whatever the respondent means by “positive results.”
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@Pavel Indeed. Abusers are like criminals in this regard, zeroing in on a specific type of victim… because they ARE criminals, as often as not. They are certainly predators, even if their abuses only occur in text (though it is not impossible that some of them are predators IRL as well). Patterns of abuse of others always seem to carry over into other areas of their lives, whether that manifests as habitual mild mistreatment of family or friends, or becoming a serial rapist/murderer, and everything in between.
And I’m saying this as one of those people who regularly fights land wars in my head.
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@Warlander While I appreciate and understand the sentiment, I’m a recovering toxic person - though not to my knowledge having ever done anything this kind of predatory; I sincerely believe that many, if not most, abusive or toxic people need help more than anything else.
Obviously, it’s nobody’s responsibility to help them (outside of certain clinical settings), and it’s absolutely understandable to be angry at those who have been abusive.
And I don’t mean this as an excuse either, nor am I demanding everyone give abusers the benefit of the doubt, just offering up the idea that being abusive is something one can recover from. Until they provably are, obviously, wide berth.
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I’ve reported at least 5 sex pests, and the results have ranged from staff actually banning the person, to outright ignoring it, to telling me to leave the game. I’ve even seen a sex pest be a sex pest towards a sex pest who’s in power to gain favoritism. I’ve seen one boast about the mirror he has over his bed IRL.
There’s no reason to keep a sex pest around. If they’re causing even one person to leave the game, you could’ve thrown out the sex pest instead. And you know that’s not the only person they’re going to cause to leave the game.
Ultimately it comes down to staff’s ability and desire to act on reports, and the community’s trust that staff will be on their side. Even if a game logs everything and restricts access to logs, systems can only go so far. The person at the top of the chain also needs to be trusted to act in favor of victims, which takes time and engagement.
On that note, I’d like to thank BMD for having such a large community of trusted regulars who have stellar reputations for identifying and ousting sex pests.
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Rambling some more, my experience is players will downplay how bad a thing is when they’re reporting too. I remember years ago someone expressing their concerns about another player, full of self-doubt. And when I saw the exchange, they were like a breath’s exhale away from being fully stalked.
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@tsar That’s generally been my experience. People report things through the lens of “I don’t want to make a big deal out of this / just letting you know.”
Which is fine. People only need to disclose what they feel comfortable disclosing.
But it is also okay to make a big deal out of things sometimes, and I wish more people would do so. Staffers make mistakes (hi, I allowed Ruiz to stay on GH even tho my co-admin thought he was creepy), but I like to think if more people had come forward, I’d have responded differently.
To answer the straw poll: I have only once ever reported anyone to staff. I guess she was a sex pest. I quit the game right after, but staff did nothing to my knowledge. I think they made her a staffer, but it’s hazy now. I now just have her tagged like a shark so I can keep track of where she goes and avoid her. Which sounds stalkery, but all her RP is about condoms and abortions and how good she is at giving BJs, so she’s easy to ID.
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@Sammich said in On the utility of Logs, Receipts, and Proof:
As someone who is super insecure and lacks confidence, I’m always thinking “But… what if it was my fault?” in the back of my head without anyone else even needing to make the accusation, no matter how much I try convince myself otherwise. Even about mundane stuff about who left the light on in the bathroom. Even if I know it wasn’t me, the moment someone else says “Well it wasn’t me” the implied ‘so it must have been you’ immediately makes me question my own memory of the event.
That is already a huge hurdle to overcome if I were to think of reporting someone for, well, anything. The fact I could be asked for receipts, and that those receipts might be somehow interpreted differently than I had and used as ‘proof’ that I really had been asking for it kind of just nixes the entire idea of me ever wanting to report in the first place.
But I kinda feel like the people most likely to be victimized are the ones that have that voice in the back of their head already whispering that they’re the one at fault for everything. They’re the people who need to be able to report. So making that process as… gentle, I guess, as possible is important.
That’s my personal take on it anyway.
I am someone who trends towards confidence and generally being pretty prone to direct confrontation about issues, and even I have had stress around the very few times I’ve needed to report things. I don’t tend to attract creepers, possibly because I have enough of an Online Resting Bitch Face that maybe they see me as a bad target, but I have absolutely had the stress spoken of earlier this thread of “is my TS gonna get splashed in front of staff, are they going to drag out a list of kinks featured in consensual TS before they got weird, is staff going to be weirded out by ME, etc.”
In my instance – I have one I can notably recall for sex pesty type behavior that happened directly to me – nothing of the sort happened. In my instance, it was basically someone my PC got involved with, the player made a borderline comment or two, I put up boundaries, and then they basically disappeared on me. I shrugged and moved on, but then later on they hit me up on another alt. When I realized it was the same player, I felt kind of weird about it. It hadn’t been an instance where I actually told them to leave me alone or anything, so they weren’t getting around an actual request not to contact me. Just felt weird! I felt weird reporting, despite all my alleged confidence and aggressive boundaries! I even did a thing which I always tell people NOT to do, which was to DM someone instead of submit a request, because I was asking “is this even worth reporting?” But my messages were fortunately taken seriously, and the player given a strong warning and a note to leave me alone. (I am pretty confident that if they had actually been sneaking around a request not to contact me, they would have been banned. It was just because I had been like “Hey I don’t really like those jokes” and then they just ghosted me that they got off with a warning.)
All of this to say that I always sit on this mountain of OMG PLS REPORT, I find it actively stressful sometimes to repeatedly hear about issues that aren’t get reported, and yet, when it came time for me to report something, I still felt stressed, anxious, and almost a bit ashamed. I imagine it’s a billion times worse for people who are more prone to feeling anxious and insecure in general.
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I have a much quicker trigger finger for reporting than I used to for a lot of reasons and it’s not always for sexual stuff, just weird behavior I’d like staff to have a record of For the File in case something happens. For the latter in particular I tend to provide logs proactively, I can’t recall ever being asked for one but that’s just part and parcel of usually sending them first. I also log everything, though, so it’s not an unusual thing for me to have a text file to copy from.
One thing I feel like gets missed often is…reports don’t happen in a vacuum. Staff is on the game, they are in theory observing the behaviors of the players both making the report and being reported on, on a daily basis. Shit just don’t seem right with some people and a lot of times a report just confirms it. End of the day staff is making a judgment call every time, though, and ideal world good staffers deal with this stuff seriously and do their best. Human beings will still inevitably make the wrong call because this shit is hard and unpleasant to deal with, I just ask that they try.
