"Toxic" Community?.. My thoughts, feel free to add your own!

[FoulVileTerror]

I do not intend to defend any actions which are blatantly harassment or misconduct, though I will say that I at least feel a certain level of sympathy when someone feels ostracised or isolated.

 

The range of skills and innate abilities which we each may have when it comes to socialization are dramatically different and change over time.  Learning social skills, particularly when you're at a disadvantage due to lived experiences or brain chemistry, can be an arduous and painful task.   . . . which can be further complicated by interacting with people who do not understand your perspective and take their own social skills for granted.

I don't think those socially adroit people -owe- it to anyone to educate or go out of their way to help those who aren't there yet.

But I do think it's usually in their best interest to try . . . up to a point.  And that point is usually when their efforts to welcome someone new/awkward become detrimental to the existing social health of either the individual or the group.

 

Being on the other side of it, though . . . it sucks.  Being on the outside and looking in; seeing what others have and wanting it for yourself, but being met with barrier after barrier . . . it's easily a deeply demoralizing experience.

It's important to realize that it's not the responsibility of the group to change to allow you a space to enter.  And yes; carving out your own space and trying to populate it is . . . challenging.  Extremely challenging.

It's also important to address gatekeeping, though.  When a group -actively- destroys or undermines the attempts or spaces made by others who they do not want in or near their own social circles . . . that's not acceptable either, as far as I'm concerned.  There's an unlimited amount of space for different appreciations and sub-communities within the greater whole.  Even when two groups have diametrically opposed views (ie:  "this is a comic book" vs "this isn't a comic book"), they don't need to attack one another for each of those groups to survive.  They just need to reach out to those who agree . . . or those who just don't care to pick a side.  

. . . and please:  Don't play games of tug-of-war with those people who don't pick sides.  Just let those people interact with whichever "side" they want to interact with in a given moment.

 

I also like the sounds of @Andreah's sentiment there.  Kudos.

[Coyotedancer]

Virtue was indeed... something.... back in the day. If you weren't part of one of the established groups, it could be less than a friendly experience. It was enough to convince me that roleplaying in the City wasn't worth bothering with.

 

Everlasting is a very different animal. Granted, it's also convinced me that I'm absolutely not suited to City roleplaying, but for completely different reasons. 🤣 (It's just a "not my style" situation here. 'Very much an example case of what I was saying about not every player being suited to every group. )

 

 

 

Edited October 4, 2020 by Coyotedancer

[Haijinx]

14 minutes ago, Shadeknight said:

If you wanted toxic, you need look no further than Virtue on Live. That place was the height of MMO community toxicity for me. Take myself as an example: I made the simple mistake of getting caught ERPing in the Arena 
 

Hollon, wait a minute.  Its going to take me a second to get past this scenario here.  

[Haijinx]

Not that that's any reason to shun anyone though.  

[Bill Z Bubba]

Yall make me so glad I only played on Pinnacle. Yea, we had a few bad seeds but overall we were all just too damn drunk to give a shit.

 

Edit: Hmmm, I'm still pretty too damn drunk. The more things change....

Edited October 4, 2020 by Bill Z Bubba

[Ruin Mage]

19 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Hollon, wait a minute.  Its going to take me a second to get past this scenario here.  

Take your time.
I was pretty dumb back then.

[Nerio72]

16 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Yall make me so glad I only played on Pinnacle. Yea, we had a few bad seeds but overall we were all just too damn drunk to give a shit.

 

Edit: Hmmm, I'm still pretty too damn drunk. The more things change....

I drank a lot on Live and didn't give a shit... Now I rarely drink and still don't give a shit. I do remember everything now tho...😉

[Troo]

"be the change you wish to see"

[fitzsimmons]

A TLDR thread but one time I accidentally used the c word.  Another time I called someone a hashtagging millenial and told her to take it to Twitter to air her grievances.  Was booted for that one and certainly booted for less.  Toxic?  No.  Just middle-aged and triggered from time to time.  It's very rare though.  Maybe I should be the one to take it to Twitter.  BRB.

 

Regards,
Dave

[Andreah]

45 minutes ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Being on the other side of it, though . . . it sucks.  Being on the outside and looking in; seeing what others have and wanting it for yourself, but being met with barrier after barrier . . . it's easily a deeply demoralizing experience.

It's important to realize that it's not the responsibility of the group to change to allow you a space to enter.  And yes; carving out your own space and trying to populate it is . . . challenging.  Extremely challenging.

I've been in this place, in more than one game community, and suffered for it. Time and reflection lead me to believe the barriers were not so high, artificial or intentional as I thought at the time. Most of those barriers are inside me. They're part of my personality, and they do make it difficult at times. Some are ones I can work on, or even solve; some no, they are too deep, possibly even wired into my brain or neurochemistry.

 

Community is more than just the formal groups we're in, too. It's also how we handle ourselves in public in every other way. In the things we say in chats, our sense of humor or lack, whether we give good advice in help, how we name our characters, what we put in our bios, even if we say nothing at all. Everything. It all has an impact, or sets a tone, and is part of the totality of the community.

 

Some have leadership skills and can adroitly gather up many supporting persons in beautiful organization as a matter of course. For some of us, this is possible, but also strenuous work. For some, like myself, it's the best to hope for to lead a pick-up team for a few missions. I think i'm blessed to be a member of the TF's group, roleplayers, my super-group community, and my circle of various friends. I can never take those for granted, and showing reasonable appreciation and respect for what they offer me is not too much to ask. Could I replace those if I had to? No, not on my own. I haven't the personality traits or inclination to be happy in that role. I would find a lesser place, and even if I was settled and happy in that, I would know what I lost.

 

In self-reflection and self-understanding, we can find the roles we -can- fill well, and do those -- they also build the community who are steady followers, friendly listeners, calm voices, and wise advisors. 

 

I have good days and bad. Sometimes I regret things I say or do.  Sometimes I even -know- I'm about to say or do something I will later regret, and do it anyway. But I try to be aware of them, and always have my sights on tomorrow aimed up a little bit higher than yesterday.

[Bill Z Bubba]

39 minutes ago, Andreah said:

Sometimes I even -know- I'm about to say or do something I will later regret, and do it anyway.

Sometimes it needs to be said. Damn the consequences.

[Fire Chief]

The wind do blow.

[Solarverse]

On 5/29/2019 at 3:30 PM, Vanden said:

There's a small portion of the community that seems bound and determined to see Leandro and the Homecoming team as the bad guys no matter what. I see their posts on the discord and reddit on occasion. Naturally they don't show up much on these forums or any Homecoming servers.

There is a good reason for that too.  😉  We've got Homecoming's backs.

[Coyotedancer]

12 minutes ago, Bill Z Bubba said:

Sometimes it needs to be said. Damn the consequences.

There's truth in that.

[Solarverse]

The worst I have seen is some guy in the LFG chat telling everyone how much this game sucked. Anyone who disagreed with him or asked him why was he playing the game if that was the way he felt, he IN ALL CAPS AT ALL TIMES would berate them for questioning his authority on what constituted a good game. Needless to say, it wasn't long after that he suddenly vanished even though he was on a role with his soap box. One can only assume he got the ban hammer. That was almost a year ago. I might have ran in to 3 or 4 players in the past year who I consider toxic. However, once they show themselves to be toxic, they almost always end up on my ignore list. I start and run TF's very often, daily. If somebody ends up on my ignore list it is usually because they were acting like a jerk and starting arguments with other players. I consider it their loss for making my ignore list because that is just one less player willing to form TF teams that they will not be getting in to...ever again.

About the same can be said about these forums. They were a bit rough before, but a lot of us forum posters have grown to know and respect each other...so these forums are nowhere near as rough as they were when the game was first re-released. People have learned to respect one another, forgive one another and the ones that can't respect or forgive, most likely moved on to other games or other servers.

Like I said though, 3 or 4 players in the past year. That is an extremely small number for an MMO IMO. Toxic community? Riiiight. I call hogwash on anyone who makes that claim. The stuff they wrote about this server...not in my experience.

[ZeeHero]

6 hours ago, Lunchmoney said:

How does one get in charge of the LFG channel?

It's not an official channel or the LFG channel, people dont form itrials there often. doesn't take a genius to realize I'm talking about Everlasting TFs.

 

One thing that's fun to note is I, as opposed to the guy referred to by Solarverse, have never claimed COH to suck, despite having firsthand experience with very prominent portions of the Everlasting community sucking.

 

COH is overall a great game unrivaled in character freedom to THIS DAY. I have sometimes pointed out how poor the combat system is, or how it's the last game to try and make challenging content in or to look for a challenge but cmon, if someone wanted challenging content they have WAY better places to go, COH is about the freedom, the create the characters you imagine, however you want, the RP potential, the superheroes with wacky powers origins and stories! 

 

COH was never about challenge or amazing gameplay never could be and never will be, COH is an entirely different kind of fun and that is OK.

 

Sadly most people reviled me for daring point out where COH fails even though I also point out why it's amazing in the same discussion.

Edited October 4, 2020 by ZeeHero

[FoulVileTerror]

Statements like "doesn't take a genius" aren't generally endearing due to their inherent antagonist quality.  I'd hazard that their use is rather counter-productive to joining a community of otherwise typically friendly people.

[ZeeHero]

1 minute ago, FoulVileTerror said:

Statements like "doesn't take a genius" aren't generally endearing due to their inherent antagonist quality.  I'd hazard that their use is rather counter-productive to joining a community of otherwise typically friendly people.

I didn't mean it as offensive. It's honestly kind of hard not to be on a short trigger with people here after what I've been through though. I'm sorry I used those particular words.

[ZeeHero]

4 hours ago, fitzsimmons said:

A TLDR thread but one time I accidentally used the c word.  Another time I called someone a hashtagging millenial and told her to take it to Twitter to air her grievances.  Was booted for that one and certainly booted for less.  Toxic?  No.  Just middle-aged and triggered from time to time.  It's very rare though.  Maybe I should be the one to take it to Twitter.  BRB.

 

Regards,
Dave

We all have those moments when we say or act in a way that is NOT us. sadly, all people want to see is the bad. one slip up is all it takes to forever be seen as the opposite of what you really are, or would be if people weren't so very attatched to the idea that you are someone to be attacked and abused whenever possible (verbally in chats)

[Dreamboat]

At what point does it become necessary to deny someone access to a community for their own wellbeing? There are some people whose approach...it's simply not healthy.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Dreamboat

[EmmySky]

Of someone is abusive or harrassing...gignore and move on.  Now, there may be a limit on how many people you can put on that list, someone recently told me there is a limit to how many global friends you can have, so it stands to reason.  Anyway, if you bump up against that limit and need more, perhaps it is time for some self reflection to see if you can determine why everyone else is an <enter bad person word choice here>, and if perhaps, just by sheer chance, you may be a contributing factor.

Edited October 5, 2020 by EmmySky

[DoctorDitko]

Least toxic community I have ever enjoyed.

(Citation needed)

 

[Tsuko]

Best Community ever, i can kick people when the last boss of a TF is agro, chain kill lvl 49- noobs in RV coming for "easy" badges and trolling people for bad AT with bad builds.

 

I missed this game so much, Thank you Homecoming ! 🙂

 

PS : I hate you all and i will eat your souls.

Edited October 5, 2020 by Tsuko

[Blood Speaker]

Frankly, the only people I currently have on /ignore on Homecoming are people I had on /ignore on live. They were remarkably easy to recognize...

Edited October 5, 2020 by Blood Speaker

[Rathulfr]

8 hours ago, Haijinx said:

I was not even aware there was some sort of established community clique in Everlasting to alienate for example. 

 

And that's the server I inhabit. 

 

Same here.  My "main" is on Everlasting, and I also have others I play on Excelsior.  I don't subscribe to any custom chat channels, except the one started by my SG on Indom last year (and is now never used).  I guess that's why I don't get the drama caused by custom chat channels.  Or maybe I'm just unloved and lonely...