@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.)
