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Predators and Roleplaying Communities
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I’ve thought about making a post like this for a while. I usually decide not to because these are things I haven’t told anyone outside of therapy. I’m not sure if I’ll actually hit submit on this even when I’m done.
The tl;dr is that-- I’m really proud of how far this particular community has come when sexual predators poke their heads out. And I wish that the community we have now was the community we had when I first started mushing. And below the spoiler are the specific reasons of why I wish that.
Content Warning: Grooming, sexual assault, slut shaming, and various unpleasantries.
I’ve had questionable online/cyber sexual encounters since I was thirteen when I first started out in the MU* genre. Very briefly when I was in middle school I played on the original “Vampire Wars” mud. Long enough to exchange emails with a 20-something-year-old from the Netherlands. Who I would consider my boyfriend and who would email me sexually graphic things.Flash forward 2-ish years and I had moved to live with my dad in California, and was home schooled with no real social life. So I got back into the MU* world. The first game I really played long term was Vampire Wars Classic. It was a mud, and not super on roleplay. But it was better than trying to RP on forums or through email RP.
VW was nebulously based on VtM. The leader of my in-game clan was a 30-something-year-old-man, who knowing I was a minor initiated “roleplay” with me. It was, of course, only sexual. At that age I really didn’t know any better and hormones were starting to finally kicked in. And considering I was home schooled, I didn’t really have age appropriate relationships available to me.
This roleplay ended up with me being labeled a slut and a whore. Where someone who I thought was a friend of mine showed me a chat between him and one of my other supposed friends about how much of a slut I was. I was given so much grief and was honestly really harassed because of it that I would eventually just leave the game.
Sometime later, off game, via AIM or MSN or something. There was a man probably in his forties (from the game) who I had talked to occasionally. He wasn’t anyone who had shown any interest in me, and was just someone I just chatted with occasionally. Until, one day-- the very same day I had been complaining to him about being so poor living with my disabled father I didn’t have anything to eat --he suddenly initiated a very graphic sexual conversation.
He stopped talking to me almost immediately after. Maybe he felt guilty. Maybe he just got what he wanted and didn’t care to talk to me anymore. Doesn’t really matter. There were various other men who happily acted like my friend until they were horny and wanted me to write out smut with them. Every single one was aware of how old I was. I never hid my age. One of which told me was a youth pastor RL and it was “wrong” but he was happy for me to write out a scene blowing him.
There were various adult men who were happy to treat me like garbage in “public” but were just as happy to write out graphic sexual scenes with me in private. It has taken me a very long time to understand just how fucked up that was.
Anyway, I left VWC for LAmush at the behest of two friends (people who had never done anything inappropriate toward me). And for a year or so I was able to RP with my hearts content without the pressures of writing out sexual contents.
Until… The game had a resurgence in popularity. I constantly can’t remember the order in which I had encounters with these three men.
Back before skype was much of a thing, before discord, etc. I would talk to people with my own phone! (Ugh, adult me shudders at how stupid that was). And there was one guy from LAmush who I would talk to on the phone while he was at work as an over night security guard. And this is, again, not someone who I had any expectation of a sexual encounter with. I’m pretty sure I was 17 when this happened. But one night we were talking and suddenly his breathing changes and his voice gets all weird.
And my brain sends out a red flag. And I go, “What are you doing?”
Out of no where he goes, “Stroking myself?”
I think he’s joking and laugh about it and go, “No really what are you doing?”
Well, really, he was jacking off. And now I’d love to say that 17-year-old Cobalt was strong and brave and hung up. But 17-year-old Cobalt froze and listened to this creep jack off. We didn’t talk again after that.
Then, one late night one of the three headwiz of LAmush, has had a little too much to drink. And we are sitting and talking. And he’s telling me this story about how he married his wife because he loved her but he finds her completely unattractive. And he’s expecting to be praised and told what a good man he is because he married for the right reasons. But, also, he has a major crush on one of the other players, and oh he touched her inappropriately at a large gathering of players for the game they held. But if I ever tell anyone that he’ll ruin me.
Then suddenly, it goes from him talking about his crush on this other player and how his wife is unattractive to what he would do to me if I was there with him.
Like everyone before him, he disappeared into the aether.
The only person who ever made sure I was an “adult” (e.g. 18) before initiating IC or OOC sexual conversations with me was this last dude. Who introduced me to Shangrila, rather than RPing out sex on LAmush. Who, compared to the others, at least made sure I was 18 before having me roleplay out his BDSM fantasies with him. Still pretty fucked, considering it was pretty well known I was 16-17 when I started playing on LA, and he was a long term player.
Then, there is my ex-husband. Who I will keep short and sweet because I don’t want to deal with any of his friends who might still be in the community:
I was just 18yrs old when I joined his game. He was 35. He initiated private conversations with me. Learned I had just graduated high school, wanted to go to art school but didn’t know how to pay for it, and was worried about spending the rest of my life living with my disabled father watching him slowly die. He casually offered me a “couch” to crash on if I wanted to move to Florida and go to art school there! Then it became flirty conversations. Then it became we were a couple. I’d move out there to be with him, he’d help me get into art school, teach me to drive, and etc. Then I moved out there.
Flash forward 9-years and I can’t drive because he won’t let me. And refuses to teach me. This condo is his. The car is his. I can’t take any job that doesn’t fit his work schedule. I haven’t gone to art school because we “couldn’t afford it”. I haven’t seen my family in years. I have no RL social life, only mushes, and etc. When I put my foot down and say I’m going to go to college finally, he accuses me of trying to kill him because the stress of me being in school while he works will give him a heart attack.
Also during that 9-year-time span I was physically sexually assaulted at a two-day Camarilla LARP, and my chapter chain did nothing about it. So I quit the only RL social life I had.
Thanks to a real life friend of mine from my childhood and @Tributary I managed to get out.
There are so many predators that lurk not only in the MUSH community but in other roleplay communities. And I am just so fucking thankful, that we’ve decided as a community to not allow this shit to fly anymore.
Cobalt@Under the Stars
cob.alt@Discord
Cobalt#[email protected] -
@Cobalt we’ve come a long way. still have lots more to do. I am so glad that you got out.
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@Cobalt I’m so sorry this happened, I have my own history as a victim and I know the power of speaking. You have always seemed kind and amazing, the few times we have interacted. I do hope each of these fuckers burns in a special place. I hope you are doing better, and have an amazing day! Glad you are free, glad you seem to have found healing and therapy.
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This is awful. And how did I know the Cam was gonna come up?
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Sometimes I wonder if the predators I attracted when I still played are at least partially my fault. I’ve never overcome the idea that my worth to online RPers is tied to my sexual availability, so I signaled that I was sexually available and I indulged people in their inappropriate conversations when I should have told them to please leave me alone. I can’t tell if my attempt to take responsibility for being preyed upon is victim-blaming, an accurate assessment, or some combination of the two.
EDIT: This isn’t intended to make the subject about me. I was in a hurry and a little uncomfortable writing this post, so I didn’t add the context that I’m wondering this as I consider how many of you seem to have had much-improved experiences over the years but mine only got better when I stopped playing these games. Sorry about any confusion.
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@GF Abusers often have practiced ways of discovering who will be vulnerable to their form of manipulation and control. That doesn’t mean it’s your responsibility or your fault; they practice their approach on quite a few people, usually, and refine their technique over time. It’s calculated and deliberate.
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I do not know if this will help. But my experience with predatory people is that most of the time they don’t hone in on one/their group of targets right away, but cast a wide net. They actually don’t always go after the easiest targets but the most rewarding personally for them–which for a lot of the worst means breaking down people who say no or express discomfort. I think a lot of people like to believe that the only people who get targeted are those who have signaled something, but I don’t think that’s true, especially in what happens in our community.
Are there some that seek certain markers (like age, people who don’t shut off inappropriate communication the first time, ect)? Yes. But there are so many for whom that’s actually not a barrier and just adds to the excitement of breaking down someone who isn’t the stereotype and especially if they can get that person to fear that other people are going to see them as that stereotype and that they ‘deserved’ this sort of transgression. Those are the sick fucks and they rarely are manipulating and hurting just one person at a time, or the same type of person at a time either.
I think this is why destroying slutshaming and ‘well you shouldn’t have given that contact info’ type of shit is so important. It makes the collective us feel better to be able to feel “well, that wouldn’t be me, because I’m not 16/I don’t do discord/I draw the line with others all the time” but the truth is I think a lot of people are vulnerable to the the right manipulator. You see it all the time even outside of our community.
Editing to add: this is especially damaging because getting off on breaking down people and seeing what they’ll do for you while a lot of the time in our hobby the ones that are caught DO go into sexually transgressive behavior, it doesn’t need to be at all. There have been horrible situations where sexual attraction or gender was totally not a factor at all. Very very damaging situations. I do think sometimes this is the one area where there has not been as much improvement.
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@mietze said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:
I do not know if this will help. But my experience with predatory people is that most of the time they don’t hone in on one/their group of targets right away, but cast a wide net. They actually don’t always go after the easiest targets but the most rewarding personally for them–which for a lot of the worst means breaking down people who say no or express discomfort. I think a lot of people like to believe that the only people who get targeted are those who have signaled something, but I don’t think that’s true, especially in what happens in our community.
Are there some that seek certain markers (like age, people who don’t shut off inappropriate communication the first time, ect)? Yes. But there are so many for whom that’s actually not a barrier and just adds to the excitement of breaking down someone who isn’t the stereotype and especially if they can get that person to fear that other people are going to see them as that stereotype and that they ‘deserved’ this sort of transgression. Those are the sick fucks and they rarely are manipulating and hurting just one person at a time, or the same type of person at a time either.
I think this is why destroying slutshaming and ‘well you shouldn’t have given that contact info’ type of shit is so important. It makes the collective us feel better to be able to feel “well, that wouldn’t be me, because I’m not 16/I don’t do discord/I draw the line with others all the time” but the truth is I think a lot of people are vulnerable to the the right manipulator. You see it all the time even outside of our community.
I think it’s also important to remember that just because they’re vile human beings doesn’t mean they’re stupid or unskilled, a lot of them are very socially apt and very smart; being a victim of them doesn’t make you stupid or easily manipulated, and believing yourself “too smart” or “too savvy” to ever be victimized by those people is a great way to find yourself a victim when they take advantage of that overconfidence.
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@Coin i also think that’s why a lot of people get caught in the predatory behaviors of people who aren’t doing it (to that particular target) with any kind of sexual connotation. And those can be some of the worst predatory people out there.
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@GF First, you’re not making it about you by sharing this. You’re recognizing that you were also a victim of abusers and manipulators, and there is strength in numbers for victims. It’s harder for an abuser to gaslight you if you have other people telling you that, no, the lights aren’t dimmer when you come in the room.
Second, you are not to blame for being a victim. You are not the reason you were abused.
If you look at @Cobalt’s tale, and I do factor into it at the end there, you can see a pattern wherein each abuser made it easier for her to be abused by the next one. That is why people who are victims of abuse tend to stay victims of abuse. Their abusers teach them how to be abused and they don’t realize that there’s any other way. That is why you cannot overcome the idea that your worth in online RP is tied to your sexual availability.
Your abusers taught you to signal your sexual availability, and other abusers know these signals and take advantage of them. It is not your fault that you have been preyed upon, though. You are never at fault for abuse you have suffered. You should work to break the cycle though, so that you do not suffer more in the future because of this vulnerability.
In any case, realizing you can break the cycle is a very important first step in actually breaking it. It took 9 years to extricate @Cobalt from her ex-husband, after all.
(An aside: the ex-husband is the one who made me realize that some men will mansplain to absolutely anyone they find threatening in an effort to puff themselves up.)
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@cobalt I really appreciate you making this post and that you were able to get out of your relationship. I’ve been thinking about this post all day as we share a fairly similar experience. Hiding behind a spoiler for similar CWs.
I was about 13 years old and started playing on RPI MUDs (cyberpunk, not vampires) after doing the combat-heavy MUDs for about a year and getting bored with them. I was living with my single father who was unemployed, we were super poor, I was homeschooled from age 13-14 after moving to Maui, so no social life, and was subsequently groomed for about six-ish months before the abuser in question bought a plane ticket for me. Every adult in my life (including the game admins who knew how old I was) failed to notice the obvious issue of someone in their early 20s roleplaying sexually explicit material with an early adolescent and then having a “meet-up.” I’m pretty certain there were some sociocultural things going on there, and for a long time I blamed myself instead of the adults who either chose not to notice or didn’t think there was any issue. Weirdly I bounced into WoD games thinking there’d be more safety there since at around 15-ish after getting back into in-person school I associated Vampire and Mage with my RL friend group.Anyway, also don’t want to make this about me, so I’ll skip the remainder of the details. Like @tributary said I was able to notice the cycle at one point and shored up the vulnerability as best I could. I’m glad that the MU* community seems to have made a firm stance against this sort of behavior.
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I’m not willing to share anything that happened to me, but I will add my name to the list of people who got targeted by predators in roleplaying communities in my early years.
Today I stand in solidarity to prevent the next generation from experiencing what we went through.
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@somasatori That is the thing that still makes me a little angry. There were so many older adults in my life who knew I was moving out to Florida to live with a man almost two decades older than me and only one of them cautioned me against it. One of them told me: Becareful, abuser will isolate you from your family and support network, if that happens get out.
(Tributary at that time didn’t know. I met Tributary after I had already moved out, otherwise I’m fairly certain she would have advised against it).
Thank you for sharing, as well as you @GF thank you for sharing. I think there is a lot of predation in these sorts of roleplay and online communities that is just swept under the rug or just not spoken about.
And @Jumpscare 100% support not sharing your personal details, but thanking you for standing with us.
Cobalt@Under the Stars
cob.alt@Discord
Cobalt#[email protected] -
@Cobalt said in Predators and Roleplaying Communities:
There were so many older adults in my life who knew I was moving out to Florida to live with a man almost two decades older than me and only one of them cautioned me against it.
I didn’t go through that, just… similar. I don’t think I blame anyone for it, but I do wonder how much it contributes to my trust issues.
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@GF Very much. These days I rarely TS with anyone who I don’t have an established OOC relationship with already. And even then sometimes I shy away from it. Which is not a reflection of anyone I RP with, but is just some stuff I am still working through myself.
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Unfortunately, there’s a lot of us. Thank you all for sharing your stories. They’re hard to read, but important.
With that in mind, here’s mine.
For me, I was already abused IRL long before my online drama started. I won’t go into details, but it was bad enough that I still have difficulty with being touched unexpectedly.When I was 15, I met a game runner. He convinced me he was super cool, a genuinely good guy, and that he would never hurt me. I was incredibly lonely and just wanted friends.
He was 29, but he was so awesome and liked me because of “how mature” I was for my age, totally, and not because I was an ignorant, fresh faced little 15 year old who was already primed for abusers with a bunch of online friends around the same age.
By 16, he was my “boyfriend” and regularly talked about me coming to live with him. He was emotionally and verbally abusive and stole half the summer before my 11th grade year with ranting and screaming at me on the phone if I dared roleplay with anyone else, while he regularly roleplayed with a half dozen other people and had an entire harem.
But, of course, because he was my boyfriend… I wanted my friends to know him. I’m pretty sure that was an idea he fed me, looking back.
He dumped me a few weeks after meeting my 15 year old best friend whom he abused for years… Years later I found out he then “cheated on” them with a 13 or 14 year old he was trying to get to do a webcam show for him. Luckily, this kid was smart enough not to do that.
We maintained a ‘friendship’ this whole time, which I realize now was really him using my youth and proximity to other teens as a way to lure in new potential targets. (Edit: It was also him maintaining a degree of control over me because with him being my ‘friend’ I didn’t want to do anything to hurt him or cause him suffering. He was handling me.)
Years later I reconnected with some old friends online who convinced me to give the game he was running a go, since it was a theme I really liked and he was ‘rarely around’. He was still around often enough to be up to his old shit, though he was no longer targeting high school students and had matured enough to be going after college freshmen.
Eventually his abusive bullying behavior got him removed from the game and the friend group he was in, and I finally felt comfortable actually interacting and socializing with them.
But I forgot how fucking charming this asshole can be and a few years after we all cut contact, he wiggled his way back in. I started being more vocal about what he’d done and the negative impacts it’d had on me and others, and so he set about getting me ostracized from the group by forcing more interaction between us to paint me as a crazy bitch for not tolerating his presence.
One person in the friend group literally told me ‘it was almost 20 years ago, why don’t you just let it go already?’
And maybe if it’d just been me he’d been abusive to, if he’d been the only person I’d been hurt by like that, if he hadn’t tried to convince me to make a goddamn sex tape when I was 17 with the 15 year old I was too traumatized to do more than hold hands with? Maybe I could have let it go.
But he was just one of a long line of abusers that started way too young and didn’t end until I was in my fucking 30s. I blew up the friend group, let everyone even tangentially involved that they were upset because I refused to spend time with a pedophile who groomed me and countless other kids online, and cut contact.
It sucks, but I don’t wanna be around people who can overlook that sort of behavior, especially when he was literally soliciting minors for illegal materials.
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Being a teenager in the hobby was absolutely a strange time, and occasionally traumatic. Looking back, when I was much younger I was willing to wave away a lot of things I saw happening to friends or experienced myself as misunderstandings that today would probably have my jaw dropping, but I was very lucky that it never lead to in-person encounters. It makes me really sad to think so many of us were so young and trusting in the company of real monsters.
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@Cobalt I was aware you existed, but we were not yet really friends at that point. I’d gone through a horrific breakup right before joined LA MUSH, and I think we solidified our friendship about a year or two later.
I remember the mild horror I felt when I found out your ex was 9 years older than me and I was 9 years older than you. I’m pretty sure he tried flirting with me in a subtle sort of way, but I didn’t even notice. He just wanted attention, and he kept yours by putting you in a box with no real ways out.
You are not the first person who ended up at my house when they left an ex. My mom was surprisingly copacetic about me having a “college friend going through a bad breakup spend the night” while I lived with her post Hurricane Katrina, maybe because she realized that all the girls who needed a place for the night were escaping from bad situations and needed that super safe energy. (My poor spouse sighs when I need to take in a stray in need, but never tells me no.)
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@Adora I am so sorry this happened to you. Thank you for sharing, honestly, I have to wonder if that was my ex. Except for some details that were not really his IMO.
I struggle with this because I feel guilt about not speaking up sooner, but also fighting the idea that I owe my ex-husband any loyalty anymore.While he never pressured me for things like pictures of sex tapes…
Sometime early in our relationship, I found on his computer logs of him having sexual roleplay with one of his ex’s that was really nasty stuff. Shit about her raising a daughter for him that he could fuck. I was 19 at that point and didn’t have any support network and didn’t think I had anywhere to go. So I “believed” him when he told me he was just playing a role for her, and that he didn’t really like or want those things. But now that I’m an actual adult and free of him, I can see that no other sane adult would play along with those sorts of fantasies.
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@Tributary Facebook keeps advertising age gap romances to me and I am generally just sickened by it every time. Like, why would you push this? The current love of age gap romances just turns my stomach.
And, yeah, we didn’t really solidify a friendship until after I had already moved in with him, and I’m not surprised he tried to flirt with you. He loved intelligent women-- but not too intelligent. Just smart enough to hold a conversation with, but not so savvy they could see through his bullshit.
He trapped me with him in so many ways. Things like how I was ‘it’ for him. Not because I was the love of his life, but because he was too old to start another relationship. Things like after ranting at and verbally abusing me for hours how he still loved me and wanted to comfort me even though I was hurting him by demanding a divorce and leaving.
The first time you told me to leave him, he openly cried in front of me and manipulating me into “giving him a year”. That was always his request whenever I wanted to leave. Give him another year. Give him time to “woo me” and “win me”.
