@Pavel I go back and forth on “it’s a just game,” just because so many times the phrase is used to diminish/ignore real issues, but I think you got it just right here.

If one’s choices are, “Hurt people who trust me,” or “Log off until I cool down,” really only one of those responses is right, and it’s right every time.

Sun thought I was upset at Polk’s bigotry. I had noticed it, but it wasn’t why I tried to talk to her about him. I told her expressly I was not interested in that side of the talk; that I had identified complex patterns of deceit and recklessness; that several other players (9 by the end) had given me proofs, some receipts. The end result was a ban for me and my partner. 8 other folks left the game within a week of that.

That’s why I have the signature I do. That’s why I laughed my ass off when Polk tried to throw in with me. Nah, bake on the pavement, wormie.

Sun, if you see this, even if you replace Polk, Wolfe, Mizha, all the troublemakers, the problem is your myopia, your inflexibility and your inability to believe you’re making a mistake until it’s you, not others, paying the price. Your “only complain about harassment/abuse/etc to me” rule was the greatest shield a serial abuser could hope for. You don’t trust us, and without trust nothing will get better.

"They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

@MisterBoring That dog don’t hunt.

First, I made clear that a person’s capacity to speed-post or be syntax-perfect and typo free isn’t a qualifying factor in whom I choose to give my time. In fact I’d argue that one of the repulsive aspects of LLM in any type of RP is that the idea of wanting other writers to be like me is narcissistic and small-minded. The qualifier I care about is to be chosen as the one someone shares their time with, and hopefully have unique experiences come out of the pairing/grouping.

Second, I cannot believe anyone is “forced” to use ChatGPT (or other LLMs) for RP, only that they may opt to and if they are open about it I might suggest alternatives. So that stance in this hypothetical situation doesn’t hold up for me, either. It may be the tool they choose, and I may or may not be able to tell a LLM is being used, but I won’t tell anyone to get bent unless they are abusive to me or my dear ones.

This idea that our writing in MUSHing is competitive and constantly being qualified or disqualified is for the birds. Such petty, snarky, judgmental behavior is one of the many reasons I don’t bother with MUSH anymore. I RP to have fun with creative people, not pretend I’m King God English Professor Shakespeare or that my writing has more value than someone else’s. This is a hobby. It’s about fun. Anything else is set dressing at best and distraction at worst.

@Pyrephox “You can’t solve an OOC problem with an IC solution.”

From your lips to God’s ears. Perfectly crystallized.

@MisterBoring The integration of “AI” into every single piece of software is personally abhorrent and will be looked back on with regret, mark my words. Further, if the service is free, you are the product. PAYING to be the product stretches that into the absurd.

I think my last point to make here is the simplest; I have NEVER turned down someone for RP when they said something like, “Forgive my English, it’s not my native language,” or “My poses are slow, is that okay?” I show them humanity and care, I feel special they chose me to spend time with. I will never feel compelled morally or socially to treat software with humanity. Especially when it’s so environmentally and socially repugnant.

@Roz If nothing else this dude has seriously boosted the upvote economy for many here. I’m dolin’ out kudos to someone every couple posts.

@Roz And I’ll tack on that when little Jenny Watercolor makes a painting, it doesn’t poison the entire city of Brownsville permanently.

@Pavel Let’s name the phenomenon Dead Telnet Theory.

Until AI stops being tremendously and irreversibly environmentally destructive, and until it stops feeding money, growth and encouragement to the most evil people on the planet I see no need to make excuses for it. Maybe I’m a relative Luddite, but maybe that’s okay.

Speaking from personal experience here, as a helper to staff and a player in a place where I dealt with Wikibara for about a year, Numetal/Retromux staff made the right call. Wiki made the wrong call, and keeps calling back. Having seen the ban post in whole, all I thought was “lol, lmao.” As my grams would put it, “He’s a pill.” But anyone who’s read this far already knows it.

For the record I have never made contact with Numetal/Retromux, so the below is no apologism for a certain game or policy, just my general views.

Community curation is often as vibes-based as it is formal. This means that statistically sometimes a person will be excluded from a game when they could have made it better, but it also means that a good leadership team will be erring on the side of caution so that players who could have brought cultural dissonance to a whole game are less likely to make it through approval.

Imagine or recall if you’ve already seen it, how long it can take to eject a bad-for-the-community-but-not-technically-rule-breaking player from a game after approval and then let out a sigh of relief along with me that in at least this case, nobody had to go through that.

What’s the real takeaway, here, though? Always keep receipts. 🧾

@Tez Trust a private party with my government ID in exchange for the privilege of using their role play space? I don’t even trust the government with my government ID. Hard pass.

@Tez I think that with the collapse of regulation in the US, you can probably cover your ass with a weasely enough “terms of use” mandatory click through if you’re the kind who cares about such things. I agree that especially in this hobby the chances of encountering underage players is slim, but I also wouldn’t neglect to have at least a stated age policy that reflects whatever level of intensity my game’s plot and themes would include.

Players are always going to TS, and that’s not a bad thing, but one who claims responsibility for a game (which not all game runners will do!) should at least make reasonable accomodations to their game’s longevity and success that include dealing with the potential for inter-player abuse. Then again, for many I’m sure the juice ain’t worth the squeeze.

@RightMeow Discord tried to roll out user age verification by ID or facial photo in the US and were met with massive backlash, partially because the company they were using to do the verification had ties to Palantir and partially because the stored data has been hacked with a few guesses and was breached totally. Sadder still, this isn’t the first time they had stored ID info hacked and pushed to the web. Further, it exposed the fact that they’ve been using “AI” to make dossiers on their users and determine their likely age based off behavior and what they engage with, which they are still doing. They said they will push for some kind of age verification again down the road. Totally enshittified.

@hellfrog If they already think the rest of humanity are NPCs then it’s real easy to make the jump to outsourcing their writing to a plagiarism engine.

@Prototart How fucking dare you call me out like this. I mean, what?

Every single time I discovered that a staffer was behind an unmarked player character I felt a sense of violation. I felt like players were automatically presumed to be guilty of something so bad it mandated a system to allow them to be spied upon. Distrust as a default.

I absolutely believe staff deserve to play on the game they help run. I absolutely also believe that they are to be held to a higher standard that should not make them afraid to reveal who they are. If they want to play without that pressure they can go to other games or they can find other outlets or just become a regular player. Nobody forced them to be staff.

Please consider my remarks in light of the notoriously OOC masq-heavy WoD games which make up nearly all of my MUSH experience. And thank you to nearly all staff of the games I’ve been on, because the majority of them were open about these things and their hard work and trust made the fun for me and countless others possible.

@Jennkryst

@catzilla The relationship is that I experienced a wave of traumatic memories at the sameness of behavior from the player of Haruka on Liberation when the behaviors of the above troublemaker in this thread were described, so much as to feel like it’s the same person when it was quite likey not.

The commentary I’m making is that there are far too many people with that behavior pattern in this community.

The follow-on is that for as traumatized as I have been by the experience, I am thankful it was not worse, as it demonstrably could have been.

I’m so glad I never knew who Haruka wanted to fuck, and I’m even more glad it was never my character. IYKYK.

@Superbia That’s a “Y’all are going on The List,” kinda situation. :v