Bannings

mietze

@Selira on WORA people openly celebrated doxxing people, posting their RL pictures to the board to mock them, talked about people’s rl kids and family life situations, cheered on as some folks defaced the social media at the time (LiveJournal) of people determined to be harmful or bad with autopsy photos in the comments, ect.

Of course this was the 90/00s when if you got harassed on a game maybe you shouldn’t have been such a TS slut and if you got into offline conversation and all that you deserved what you got.

The community has changed in some ways to be less misogynistic and we understand more about how damaging doxxing is and stuff like that.

But I think humans are mean without making efforts not to be, there’s just as much whisoer campaigns but the content is different, ect. And some of the folks that did all the shit mentioned above, some are still present and active in the community, but I hope/expect their maturity at being in their 30s is different than when it was when they were teens/college age.

Editing to add: not EVERYONE celebrated that shit and people expressed disgust too. But it was tolerated and no one got banned for it. But thankfully the culture widely changed in general.

Narson

Yeah, if people thought MSB was nasty, WORA would cause them to go all Indiana Jones melty face.

Though I am proud that in that rather horrid Firan thread, the worst said about me was that I was ‘lovely, but a bit ineffective’.

Testament

And people forget there was always SWOFA before that. Which is an even deeper level of toxicity.

It’s like Dante’s Inferno, only for text nerdery.

Selira

Yeah that’s about what I thought, I grew up on 90’s/2000’s internet and this all sounds like familiar behavior to me – and that’s when MU’s thrived.

~~Clearly the logical conclusion is that we need to be more toxic, not less.~~

I’ll continue being skeptical about any claims that the toxicity of the Hog Pit was a cause in the waning of the hobby.

mietze

@Selira i think the decline is probably more due to there being so many more options for entertainment. Even more so now. Like if you miss tt gaming there are actually sources where you CAN do that online you don’t have to mush and try to fit into that subset of rp. You can rp on mmos or via them. Its super easy to publish serial erotica based in your fantasy world or fandom online and a whole community thats happy to enjoy it. People can set up private rping stuff on discord or docs or whatever.

Mushing will always have my heart. I’ll be in the hobby until I die. I like mmos okay and enjoy online tt but this is the format I prefer. And I’ve only taken a couple years break right after I got knocked up with my twins (they just turned 19) though I’ve had many slow periods. I still on every place I play meet many new to me people. (Genuinely new to me, not just forgetting).

I dont know that the community was ever humongous (rpgs were not as cool or semi-mainstream back then as they are now) but I don’t think its in its death throes yet.

bear_necessities

I can’t believe I was kicked out of the clique again, I just got in

KarmaBum

@mietze said in Bannings:

there’s just as much whisoer campaigns but the content is different, ect.

^ Precisely. WORA/SWOFA were just more openly toxic. Instead of peeving with a vague-post where we all know who it is but no one says who it is, you posted their RL name and pictures of their house while you called them a PHB because they type out the word pose instead of use :

Solstice

Yikes. I’m glad I was just kinda, uh, doing MU* things and not part of any community boards during that time.

mietze

@KarmaBum sometimes there was real hurt behind that behavior too. Someone felt very wronged and wanted to strike back. Still overkill to call CPS/deface rl social media/ect. But I don’t think everyone was always angry about trite things at least not to them.

I do think that is why the reputation around gossip boards has stuck though. There can be a lot of anger and vitriol when people are invested. I think a lot of bad behavior on games in general is because of investment/need or because the person just doesn’t put the same controls on themselves as they would in a face to face friendship or acquaintance/club meeting activity. Or they could be having a straight up breakdown or mental health spiral.

But I think what’s behind it is very rarely truly petty.

I’m just glad that for the most part we as a community in general have lines that most folks agree should not be crossed and those that do (even if they claim to not know/understand why) are given less passes than they were before.