I seem to remember one of Blizzard's GM's outting himself to prove how there was no risk involved in exposing yourself (heh) to the internet.
The next day, of course, a determined effort by some dedicated (and nefarious?) netizens outted a half-dozen more—including Bobby Kotick—on a non-blizzard controlled web site.
Surely everyone so eager to trade away their privacy protections should step up to the plate first, as publicly as possible, yes?
No, I encourage you not to do anything quite so stupid and dangerous. Nor lobby for the rest of the world to.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
The problem seems to be: too high expectations and the inevitable disappointment in oneself and other human beings resulting in lowering ones standards. Accountablity can help in this respect, but it is not how things should be.
Originally posted by Astraeis The problem seems to be: too high expectations and the inevitable disappointment in oneself and other human beings resulting in lowering ones standards. Accountablity can help in this respect, but it is not how things should be.
A.k.a. "Get off my lawn."
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Originally posted by Astraeis The problem seems to be: too high expectations and the inevitable disappointment in oneself and other human beings resulting in lowering ones standards. Accountablity can help in this respect, but it is not how things should be.
A.k.a. "Get off my lawn."
No. Is that how it reads? That was not what I intended to say.
The biggest reason the internet is a massive cess pool is very, very simple.
Age.
Most of the internet are teenager and young adults. Teenagers are by very nature insensitive, extremely self-centered creatures. Now what's the problem with Young Adults in our culture? They're still teenagers.
It's a mix of the "Shock & Awe" factor that youth think is exciting, psychology (angry teenagers, angsty teenagers who have every right to feel as they do), and their total lack of perspective, understanding, or care for other viewpoints outside of their perspective.
It is not that adulthood somehow makes EVERYONE a better, more mature, intelligent person. The difference is that it makes SOME people better, more mature, intelligent people. There are still repulsive human beings, but even those become far less vocal, more articulate in their statements, wiser to reality due to life experience, etc.
Don't believe me? Get online, somewhere like WoW. Group a lot, and play with tons of PuG's in the dungeon finder.
1) If someone is extremely talkative and friendly... they are most likely a teenager. Although not universally true, the more friendly and talkative people are typically younger. As gamers get older, they seem to be more reserved. Just something I've noticed.
2) A repulsive teenager is quite different than a repulsive adult. Teenagers can flip very easily when repulsive or hateful. One moment they are trolling you- the next they're your friend. Adults that are nasty people do not flip at all. They typically treat you like crap, and even if befriended still hold on to that nasty aspect of their personality.
My theory is that adults who are nasty, are so because that is part of who they currently are. Children who are nasty, are more often than not trolling around for kicks and giggles and don't actually have a serious dark side to their inner self.
I am not saying this is universally true. I have however been around long enough to identify the general age of someone based on the way they communicate online. Children, young adults, and older adults all respond differently even when projecting the same nasty personality traits.
The age issue is one I bring up when talking about how MMO's have changed since they began. But studies keep showing the average player is in their 20's if not 30's. MMO's having an average demographic of in your 20's is reasonable, but 30's?
I think a lot of younger gamers are lying about their age. Also when these studies are done I bet they assume that no one under the age rating for the game is playing.
Even an ephemeral 'feeling' of anonymity can markedly change behaviour.
There was a recent Derren Brown show where people wore masks in the audience and would vote for what happened in real time to a guy who didn't know he was on camera surrounded by actors.
In the end they voted to have him arrested for nothing - and only then did the show fake his actions with a stand-in actor - as he ran from the police and got run over by a car.
Powerful stuff - and everyone took off their masks when it happened - suddenly appalled by what they had done.
Of course he revealed the truth to them afterwards, but every one of them looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them up...
There is a proven psychological effect from anonymity - and it 'allows' out of character behaviour.
There are none of the checks and balances of normal social interraction. People do and say things that would get them kicked half to death in an alleyway if they did it to a strangers face.
Amazing...
To counter this, there is only one effective solution.
CONSEQUENCES have to be introduced for bad behaviour. 3 day bans after months of abuse to fellow players is truly pathetic as a deterent - and it is the norm in MMOs. The fact is, the games companies don't really give a damn about online behaviour as long as it is not crassly racist, anti-religion, anti-semitic or something else that could get them sued for not being policed.
Oh of course they don't like it in principle, and they say so. But they rarely if ever do anything about it.
Banned players don't make them any money!
The plain truth is, there are algorithms which can scan every single posted comment within a server and flag suspect ones. These could then be rapidly reviewed by a real person and warning given out within minutes. So many warnings - penalty; so many penalties - ban.
But this doesn't happen.
If it did - the ironic likelihood is that the community would start policing themselves - and very few players would be banned.
For the very same reasons that you rarely see such behaviour at social gatherings, the same would happen in a well policed game.
But no-one has the guts to introduce is - the received 'wisdom' amongst myopic game designers is that it 'wouldn't work'.
Which is of course - complete crapola...
Footnote: As I expect comments about the consequences of loudly complaining banned players on forums - let me say this. The way round this is to have a robust policing policy and the post the comments (as written) next to each thread on which the banned player complains. If they were banned for good reason, then people would rapidly get the message about what a waste of oxygen the poster was...
The plain truth is, there are algorithms which can scan every single posted comment within a server and flag suspect ones. These could then be rapidly reviewed by a real person and warning given out within minutes. So many warnings - penalty; so many penalties - ban.
But this doesn't happen.
It used to.
Again, we're seeing short-term thinking, of the kind that corporations are so good at. The cost of Little Johnny's account being banned is easy to evaluate. The cost of his cancerous influence on other players that encounter him, less so.
Games really did care about their integrity more than this, once upon a time. Truly they did.
But that was before Massive.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
Comments
I seem to remember one of Blizzard's GM's outting himself to prove how there was no risk involved in exposing yourself (heh) to the internet.
The next day, of course, a determined effort by some dedicated (and nefarious?) netizens outted a half-dozen more—including Bobby Kotick—on a non-blizzard controlled web site.
Surely everyone so eager to trade away their privacy protections should step up to the plate first, as publicly as possible, yes?
No, I encourage you not to do anything quite so stupid and dangerous. Nor lobby for the rest of the world to.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
It takes one to know one.
A.k.a. "Get off my lawn."
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.
No. Is that how it reads? That was not what I intended to say.
It takes one to know one.
The biggest reason the internet is a massive cess pool is very, very simple.
Age.
Most of the internet are teenager and young adults. Teenagers are by very nature insensitive, extremely self-centered creatures. Now what's the problem with Young Adults in our culture? They're still teenagers.
It's a mix of the "Shock & Awe" factor that youth think is exciting, psychology (angry teenagers, angsty teenagers who have every right to feel as they do), and their total lack of perspective, understanding, or care for other viewpoints outside of their perspective.
It is not that adulthood somehow makes EVERYONE a better, more mature, intelligent person. The difference is that it makes SOME people better, more mature, intelligent people. There are still repulsive human beings, but even those become far less vocal, more articulate in their statements, wiser to reality due to life experience, etc.
Don't believe me? Get online, somewhere like WoW. Group a lot, and play with tons of PuG's in the dungeon finder.
1) If someone is extremely talkative and friendly... they are most likely a teenager. Although not universally true, the more friendly and talkative people are typically younger. As gamers get older, they seem to be more reserved. Just something I've noticed.
2) A repulsive teenager is quite different than a repulsive adult. Teenagers can flip very easily when repulsive or hateful. One moment they are trolling you- the next they're your friend. Adults that are nasty people do not flip at all. They typically treat you like crap, and even if befriended still hold on to that nasty aspect of their personality.
My theory is that adults who are nasty, are so because that is part of who they currently are. Children who are nasty, are more often than not trolling around for kicks and giggles and don't actually have a serious dark side to their inner self.
I am not saying this is universally true. I have however been around long enough to identify the general age of someone based on the way they communicate online. Children, young adults, and older adults all respond differently even when projecting the same nasty personality traits.
The age issue is one I bring up when talking about how MMO's have changed since they began. But studies keep showing the average player is in their 20's if not 30's. MMO's having an average demographic of in your 20's is reasonable, but 30's?
I think a lot of younger gamers are lying about their age. Also when these studies are done I bet they assume that no one under the age rating for the game is playing.
A lot of this is schoolyard chat taken online.
Even an ephemeral 'feeling' of anonymity can markedly change behaviour.
There was a recent Derren Brown show where people wore masks in the audience and would vote for what happened in real time to a guy who didn't know he was on camera surrounded by actors.
In the end they voted to have him arrested for nothing - and only then did the show fake his actions with a stand-in actor - as he ran from the police and got run over by a car.
Powerful stuff - and everyone took off their masks when it happened - suddenly appalled by what they had done.
Of course he revealed the truth to them afterwards, but every one of them looked like they wanted the ground to swallow them up...
There is a proven psychological effect from anonymity - and it 'allows' out of character behaviour.
There are none of the checks and balances of normal social interraction. People do and say things that would get them kicked half to death in an alleyway if they did it to a strangers face.
Amazing...
To counter this, there is only one effective solution.
CONSEQUENCES have to be introduced for bad behaviour. 3 day bans after months of abuse to fellow players is truly pathetic as a deterent - and it is the norm in MMOs. The fact is, the games companies don't really give a damn about online behaviour as long as it is not crassly racist, anti-religion, anti-semitic or something else that could get them sued for not being policed.
Oh of course they don't like it in principle, and they say so. But they rarely if ever do anything about it.
Banned players don't make them any money!
The plain truth is, there are algorithms which can scan every single posted comment within a server and flag suspect ones. These could then be rapidly reviewed by a real person and warning given out within minutes. So many warnings - penalty; so many penalties - ban.
But this doesn't happen.
If it did - the ironic likelihood is that the community would start policing themselves - and very few players would be banned.
For the very same reasons that you rarely see such behaviour at social gatherings, the same would happen in a well policed game.
But no-one has the guts to introduce is - the received 'wisdom' amongst myopic game designers is that it 'wouldn't work'.
Which is of course - complete crapola...
Footnote: As I expect comments about the consequences of loudly complaining banned players on forums - let me say this. The way round this is to have a robust policing policy and the post the comments (as written) next to each thread on which the banned player complains. If they were banned for good reason, then people would rapidly get the message about what a waste of oxygen the poster was...
It used to.
Again, we're seeing short-term thinking, of the kind that corporations are so good at. The cost of Little Johnny's account being banned is easy to evaluate. The cost of his cancerous influence on other players that encounter him, less so.
Games really did care about their integrity more than this, once upon a time. Truly they did.
But that was before Massive.
Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow.