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How dangerous is VASpider?
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When someone shows you who they are, believe them.
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@Pavel Because it is always a good idea to tell someone to be cautious and create real fucking boundaries with someone who has a history of not respecting them…
Spiders online shit affected real life relationships of people who trusted them. Spiders RL shit affected online relationships of people who trusted them.
People like this need to come with a warning label. Period.
If people wish to proceed either way let them do so with eyes wide open.
ETA Note: I know it feels weird for people to be lingering on this sometimes years later. In most cases normal healthy adults who’ve matured and even some who have gone through therapy.
My rebuttal is this: How deep does someone have to scar another person for them to remember it let alone have it color how they interact with others years later?
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Is VA short for Virtual Adept? Is this a Mage: the Ascension – wait sorry nevermind.
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@Pavel said in How dangerous is VASpider?:
Who cares what we have to say? Let the normal person doing real-world things form their own opinion.
Nah. This isn’t it. If there is a predator known for hurting people in the real-world, and you know someone that predator is invested into as a potential next target… You don’t just stand back and possibly wait for someone just to be abused about it. They absolutely deserve to know the histories and the risks that are associated as fore-warned. We break toxic cycles any time and every time we can.
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I think it’s accurate though to say that the MU community and the members of it don’t have the most up to date examples of bad behavior from him, though. and so for any warnings to be realistic and not… intensely overblown to an outside observer, it needs to be qualified.
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I’m still gonna respectfully disagree. I don’t know Spider. I don’t think I’ve ever encountered Spider. But if that was ever to change… I would hope like hell anyone who has would warn me about it.
That doesn’t mean that Spider may not have changed. People can change, and a lot of them do so drastically. If Spider has changed, though, it’s probably only after a lot of work to self-improve and course correct. If it’s a change that actually is drastic enough to really count, part of that will include trying to atone and make amends. A change at that level usually comes with an understanding that a bad reputation and a lot of hurt and pain caused to others is still and always will be attached. A changed person knows that only time and actions will prove that change at all, and will be understanding that until then, wariness is a safety concern, and would be willing to put that kind of effort in.
If there isn’t a change… It only makes those warnings MORE important. If there is someone who once was an abuser talking to anyone at all, friends, enemies, strangers… I don’t care what kind of relationship. They still deserve the warnings to pay attention and to make good choices for themselves. We don’t owe abusers the chance to prove themselves changed or still-abusive ahead of time. It’s never a good idea to let them go running around sans warnings.
They don’t have to be pre-judged. People can give them as many new chances as they do or don’t wish to provide. But they shouldn’t have to give those chances unknowingly just to be blind-sided down the road with nothing better to be done about it after than regret not having said something earlier when there was the chance.
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Qualifying warnings (with things like “this was the case X number of years ago”) isn’t the same as not warning.
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Yeah, what roz said. Effective warnings talk about specific incidents and dangers, or if they aren’t first hand, are specific about how well you know the people in question and the details of the incident. “I’ve heard a number of stories from the MU community about this person violating boundaries and pulling manipulative tactics including x y z, but I haven’t closely followed the person since then” is a pretty decent summary of this thread, and a decent enough warning without ascribing their actions to the present.
Obviously there are plenty of people who think he can’t or hasn’t changed, or who were impacted enough by his behavior that they don’t intend to extend the benefit of the doubt. The personal feelings of someone you trust are often a pretty good warning - personally I’ve trusted friends on their vibe checks plenty. But they’re clear what info their warnings are based on, and that I think is important.
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I’m sorry I wasn’t clear, and was thus misunderstood.
Warn them, obviously. With the caveat of context and the fact the information could be as much as decades out of date. We can’t speak as if we know this person at all anymore, just their history. Treat it as that, then let them make up their own damn mind instead of telling them to stay away.
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@spiriferida If Spider has become self aware and has changed then they will understand why people have this reaction.
Recognizing trauma that one caused, accepting it and not redirecting blame a big step for former abusers.
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spider is a gross, vicious, manipulative weirdo who “changed” and “improved” and “learned” like a dozen times and yet somehow always ended up a gross, vicious, manipulative weirdo the second there was some perceived social advantage to it, a trend dating back to when i was a literal actual child and anybody who falls for it at this point deserves zero sympathy
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Are you trying to victim-blame or was that just an accidental target of your vitriol there?
Like, I know I’m on the mild side here for critique of vaspider. If you’re trying to say “if you read all our discussion of vaspider and still think they’re not a shitty person that’s on you”, that’s one thing, but “anyone who falls for it” can be a bigger pool than just people who read a gossip forum for a niche hobby. To someone who is manipulative and seeking to take advantage of others in a consistent fashion, their strategy by nature is usually to seek out people who don’t know them or their reputation, once they’ve burned their bridges elsewhere.
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@spiriferida It does feel a very victim blame targeted statement. Spider is very charismatic and I’ve fallen for their BS multiple times.
️I guess that makes me deserve no sympathy.
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@Prototart said in How dangerous is VASpider?:
anybody who falls for it at this point deserves zero sympathy
You know, you’re absolutely right. It’s impossible for people to have never heard about this one individual in this one niche hobby, especially when we’re specifically talking about a person who isn’t part of this hobby and is encountering them elsewhere. Clearly they should know better through some kind of osmosis, or something.
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IMO this is an especially bad take. These warnings are helpful for anyone still wading through the swamp that is this hobby, but there are always going to be people who are just trusting enough, or perhaps vulnerable enough, to fall victim to expert manipulators and abusers. So long as someone continues to behave in the ways that have been described above there will ALWAYS be a next victim. How and why the victimization happened will always be different. And when the victimized person ends up injured in some way, whether or not an “I told you so” is in order, I hope they receive some kind of sympathy as they try to pick up the pieces.
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@Prototart said in How dangerous is VASpider?:
spider is a gross, vicious, manipulative weirdo who “changed” and “improved” and “learned” like a dozen times and yet somehow always ended up a gross, vicious, manipulative weirdo the second there was some perceived social advantage to it, a trend dating back to when i was a literal actual child and anybody who falls for it at this point deserves zero sympathy
I don’t tend to jump on bandwagons, but yeah, what the fuck, man?
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@Xenon said in How dangerous is VASpider?:
These warnings are helpful for anyone still wading through the swamp that is this hobby, but there are always going to be people who are just trusting enough, or perhaps vulnerable enough, to fall victim to expert manipulators and abusers.
There’s also the fact that there’s a history of assholes associated with precursors of this site (some of which were even run by VASpider himself!) targeting people they don’t like for smear campaigns, for reasons as simple as (insert bigoted excuse here), so lots of people simply don’t trust this sort of thing because of past experience.
TLDR: people remember what WORA was like and view any heir to it or place where more than a few of the old faces from there congregate with suspicion because WORA was a rancid cesspit and if they aren’t here to see that this is nothing like that, why would they trust us?
The rest of this is behind a spoiler tag because I’m rambling and feel it’s important enough to save but my main point has already been made.
I remember the bad old days where being a racial minority or LGBTQ could get you targeted by an angry mob on a MUSH and get you run off, which would then carry over to WORA/SWORA/whatever other stupid acronym they felt like at the moment, and it might get you an Encyclopedia Dramatica style wiki page that could accuse real world minors of harming children for playing characters that matched their real age on a supposedly teen friendly game, all because their 16/17 year old male characters held hands in a public scene. (Meanwhile the two 45+ year old straight men playing 14 year old lesbians [one of them Jubilee with triple D cup breasts who’s obsessed with Transformers, the other a vampire Jean Grey who’s also Dark Phoenix somehow, also with triple D cup breasts] making out on the pool table were fine, of course. MUs were for the male gaze, not the male gays!)Were I someone who was a minority and being “targeted by a hate thread” like this (I hope the sarcasm is dripping here, but if it’s not, it should be so pretend I said something more clever), I’d be doing my best to spin it that it was because you all were transphobic assholes who only hated me because of trans misandry, and use any example of someone misgendering even by accident as proof of it, and I’d have instant doubt for anyone who I want to manipulate into taking my side.
And there’s people who’d believe it, because we know how fucking cruel the world can be to LGTBQ people. We need look no further than all the anti LGBTQ laws popping up like the world’s worst game of whackamole.
Of course, we know this isn’t true, VASpider really did all this shit and more, but if the only place I’d seen it was somewhere like here (or I didn’t even know this site existed, for example) and I gave VASpider a chance and he abused me, it’s still his fault for abusing me. I could go back to him every day for fresh abuse, but he’d still be the one choosing to hurt me.
(I also remember VASpider allowing this behavior in places where he wielded power, and even engaging in on it occasionally, or at least having a good laugh at the target’s expense.)
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@Adora said in How dangerous is VASpider?:
I remember the bad old days where being a racial minority or LGBTQ could get you targeted by an angry mob on a MUSH and get you run off, which would then carry over to WORA/SWORA/whatever other stupid acronym they felt like at the moment, and it might get you an Encyclopedia Dramatica style wiki page that could accuse real world minors of harming children for playing characters that matched their real age on a supposedly teen friendly game, all because their 16/17 year old male characters held hands in a public scene. (Meanwhile the two 45+ year old straight men playing 14 year old lesbians [one of them Jubilee with triple D cup breasts who’s obsessed with Transformers, the other a vampire Jean Grey who’s also Dark Phoenix somehow, also with triple D cup breasts] making out on the pool table were fine, of course. MUs were for the male gaze, not the male gays!)Reluctant to derail this thread, because I want to be clear that what I’m about to say is not about Spider, whom to the best of my knowledge I have never encountered in the hobby.
However I feel the need to stress that what you describe here as “the bad old days” still goes on today, or that I’ve at least seen extensive, verifiable screenshots of it occurring as recently at least as 10 months ago. Not in the MUSH community, that I know of, but very much a thing on MUDs and especially RPIs. There was an explicitly neo-Nazi Discord server with members spanning multiple MUDs, who made it their active mission to do as you’re describing.
This is just to say, be aware and be wise. Our hobby isn’t that big and it does still happen, under the table in certain corners of it. I believe MUSH are generally not their preferred targets these days, because games which discourage PvP and encourage OOC collaboration provide little incentive for this kind of behaviour, and make anonymity untenable.
In general I think the safety advice concerning Spider applies here also: just be careful what kind of information you share about yourself online with people you don’t know.
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Spoiled for gallows humor about the LGBT experience:
The good news is that being trans where I live means that I’m already so much of a freak of nature that if my roleplay is ever exposed, it will only confirm preconceived notions about me!(This is somewhat liberatory if you embrace it, but it’s still rather bleak)
bird's still the word
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It’s not fun to be stalked/harassed by a mob of racist/queerphobic weirdos online, even if you feel no shame in your identity. Also the kinds of people who would do this needn’t actually say anything about you that’s remotely true in order for it to be potentially damaging, or at the very least upsetting.
