Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo

[Meg]

How many occasions do you have to be told you are toeing a line, is my question?

People really be like-- ‘no it’s fine to do this multiple times because i apologized to that person and just tried again differently’ as their defense and it blows my mind.

[hellfrog]

“I don’t want to cross the line, I just want to get as close as I can get away with, as often as possible.”

[Pyrephox]

Generally, for me, the corroboration I need on these kinds of things is how people react when it comes out in the open.

If you get a lot of unrelated people not under the power of the accused saying, “That doesn’t match my experience at all with this person, and I just don’t see it,” then I’m skeptical.

If, on the other hand, a lot of unrelated people not under the power of the accused come out and say, “Oh thank god, someone finally said something. This is absolutely what I’ve seen/experienced,” then I’ve rarely ever seen that be wrong.

Abusers rarely target just one person, and over years, they build up quite a trail of destruction. You don’t really need receipts; generally you just need people to feel comfortable saying, “Me too.”

[tsar]

@kopecup said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

(:Public:) Hadrix Kora (Had) says, “I do know on a couple of occasions, when I worded something wrongly and was told I was toeing a line

It’s really not hard to avoid that line.

You’re choosing to toe it.

Clarity: replying to this person on the game and not actually at @kopecup who brought us this news

[GF]

@tsar I can’t be the only one who read that line and had flashbacks to Bill Cosby talking about how he likes to play in the gray area between permission and rejection.

[Drowsy]

This ain’t Soapbox, but I’m about to get on one.

I don’t think I’ve ever been told that I was even toeing a line. It’s remarkable how EASY it is to not harass people, it is astounding how EASY it is not to pepper your interactions with unwanted, sexual content, so the fact that he has had to (allegedly) apologize even “a couple of times” for (allegedly) cutting it “close” is incredibly telling.

The response from Hadrix, and those so quick to jump to his defense, is incredibly telling because it is so familiar. There is a reason people do not come forward to accuse their abusers - it almost always makes it worse for the victim while the abuser slides. You see it over and over again with cases like this. I saw it when I reported my assault.

Charisma does not equal innocence. “Well I haven’t seen it” does not equal innocence. If action was going to be taken when these accusations were made and proof was compiled, Cujo would have done so. He didn’t. He continues to not. He clearly doesn’t give a shit.

I am not one of the players mentioned in the original post. What I am is a survivor of sexual assault and I am not sitting around to see nothing done to act on claims made. Not again. I am leaving a game that I have loved and enjoyed for years because I cannot be apart of a community that perpetuates and protects people like this.

It is clear that Cujo and AoA do not care, and it is clear that Hadrix and those close to him do not intend to atone or change. That’s all I need to know. Bye. Do better.

[GF]

@hellfrog said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

It only takes one false accusation to be acted on to break down the trust of an entire community in all directions and destroy the environment

So how many instances would you say it takes to ruin community trust when the event is someone being harassed and made to feel unsafe and unwelcome?

Judging by the OP, more than eight. One sexual predator is worth at least eight victims, and probably a lot more depending on what kopecup means by “several.”

Putting it in numbers like that may have convinced me to leave this hobby forever. Of all the ways pretending to be elves and vampires and space samurai should be, this shouldn’t be it. This shouldn’t fucking be it.

Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart, fuck you, Age of Alliances. I know I shouldn’t say that because anger just makes them defensive and entrenched and blah blah blah, but no one in a position to change that culture is capable of seeing me as a full human being anyway so I don’t know why they would care about my opinion to get mad about in the first place.

I’m going for a walk or maybe just to play in traffic, I don’t know.

(Don’t worry about me. That last part was a joke intended to indicate how fucked up all this is and how exhausting I find it to have to navigate r*pe culture even when pretending to be a goddamn Jedi. I am going to leave the computer and do a good hard think about my life, but I’m not going to do anything sillier than possibly break the terms of service for this website by telling a game to get bent. Moderators, do with that what you gotta. I understand and accept my punishment.)

[GoodInnit]

@Pyrephox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

Abusers rarely target just one person, and over years, they build up quite a trail of destruction. You don’t really need receipts; generally you just need people to feel comfortable saying, “Me too.”

I had no plans to post here, but in an effort to stand in solidarity with others who have spoken out:

Me too.

Not only was I harassed by Hadrix, but complaints made about other sexual harassment on the game were also ignored by Cujo. It pains me to see Hadrix, a person who has driven off countless players through harassment and intimidation, not only elevated to a staff position but protected by a staff that knows he is guilty.

Cujo will not change, he will not rectify this, he will not do anything to stop people like Hadrix. Cujo is complicit in this because he would rather side with abusers than risk upsetting their friends.

Play this game at your own risk.

[Jennkryst]

Age of Alliances uses Penn, last I checked. There is a simple flag that can be switched to now log every command sent by a player object. Putting someone on a watch list for bad behavior is easy mode on Penn.

So they said do not rp with the dude. OBVIOUSLY. But you also follow up and investigate. Which, as mentioned, is easy mode on Penn. Looks like they aren’t doing the easiest of steps.

Now… it is possible to accidentally trip over the line, even if you put in a lot of work to avoid doing it. I’ve done it. Mentioning that you regularly toe the line means you’re not putting in any effort.

I don’t know if this is going to be what finally gets me to use the Chontio code as-is, instead of learning how to fix it, but the temptation sure has been going up because of all this.

[CuriousGamer]

It all kind of brings back a feeling of Claremont / Heroes United stuff sort of vibe. Maybe worse. Everyone knows about the creepin’ and stuff. It’s really disappointing.

[sao]

People who behave like this should be banned from every game and have no place to play. The community should reject them individually and en masse. And yeah i agree that it’s disappointing to see this same fucking shit playing out again with the same idiotic “but how do we know bitches ain’t lying” that happens every single fucking time.

[Sammich]

@sao “But how do we know bitches ain’t lying” and then in x amount of years once it’s no longer cool or socially acceptable to support that person? “Damn them, if only we had known what they were really like!”

Seems to be how this shit goes, yeah. It’s fucking exhausting.

ETA: I realized I wanted to say something positive.

This, right here, all of us coming together defending victims, refuting insistence that receipts be necessary and explaining why in cases like this they are absolutely not necessary? It gives me hope that, if nothing else, victims will feel confident to speak up and know they can find support here, if even if they can’t on the MU they play.

And that’s not nothing!

[CuriousGamer]

I can raise my hand and say in the time I played on AOA, the sex problems were real.

Cujo seemed enthusiastic as an admin, but I was disappointed as there’s a family that runs some kind of merc faction there (or did when I played there) Greystorm I think, something like that? One of the players that was a lead there had some real manipulative things going. I’m surprised she wasn’t kicked, but she also was deeply involved in running rp stuff. So I think she’s still there today.

The whole thing where the admin just says this stuff on the channel couldn’t be more blatant though.

Honestly - this reminds me of when Shangrila melted down. The admin Sloth had been accused of breaking the rules, getting involved with his staff alt, etc. People were coming forward, and it was found to be valid and they booted him. Before they did he was posting things that sounded just like him. Wouldn’t be surprised if it’s the same person.

[Adora]

@Pyrephox said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

If you get a lot of unrelated people not under the power of the accused saying, “That doesn’t match my experience at all with this person, and I just don’t see it,” then I’m skeptical.

Please be very careful with that thinking. MU*ing is a small community. And there are abusers who are very good at hiding, very good at insinuating themselves in with other people in power, very good at picking victims, and good at making sure you become abundantly aware that there will be consequences if you speak up. Whether those consequences are real or not, the fear of them often makes victims stay silent.

Those abusers are also typically really good at making sure they only show their bad side to their victims and do everything they can to discredit those victims so that their friends will speak up in their defense.

To use an IRL example that could be triggering to some but I cannot find a spoiler tag so please feel free to skip to the next post:

I have an ex that is as good as gold to everyone around him. He’s kind, he’s generous to a fault. He speaks respectfully to his elders, holds open doors for women whether he’s interested in them or not, everyone gets ‘yessir’ or ‘yessum’. He’s the guy other guys, and plenty of girls who haven’t dated him, point at and say ‘see, nice guys really exist!’.

When you’re first dating him, you’re his princess. And he picks girls who aren’t used to that treatment, who don’t have a lot of friends, and does everything he can to get them used to it, to make it clear how no one else will ever do as much for them, will ever make them feel so special.

And then once he thinks you’re well and truly hooked, and you’re in a situation where you’re financially and emotionally dependent on him? Well. I’m pleased to say I saw where it was going before it got too bad.

But even still, none of his exes have spoken up in any sort of public way. Because to the people he doesn’t want to date, he’s as good as gold, and they defend him rabidly. And they’re everywhere within the small community he lives in, so even if you’re not under his power, you’re under his power and it’s better to either fall silent or get the hell out of town than to deal with people treating you like shit because you spoke out about their golden boy.

[Pavel]

@sao said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

same idiotic “but how do we know bitches ain’t lying” that happens every single fucking time.

It’s especially galling when the answer is “@set them suspect for a few days, then read your logs.” Which is essentially “do your damned job.”

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

[Wuff]

This was the game that put me off MUing entirely in 2021. Feels like it was earlier than that. But that there is active creeping and abuse doesn’t suprise me along with the near homicidal Mandalorian fetish they have there. Cliquish to the point that they’d try and kill your character if you didn’t put a bucket on your head and join the clan.

I did quit Star Wars Republic when a known creeper had me under radar. The same one that got/kept getting banned from NOLA2 made a joke during a Jedi Training session about taking my character’s stunned unconscious body to his room. Used variations of Kaydin, Caden.

After all that I feel like I dodged a bullet.

[Warma Sheen]

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

Yep.

Sometimes people lie.

If everyone could just trust everyone else to be good, upstanding citizens of the community, this wouldn’t be a discussion in the first place. The medium used in this hobby makes it overwhelmingly, exceptionally, infinitely easy to verify your experiences. To ignore that in favor of blind trust of everyone at all times is unnecessarily short-sighted.

It is bad enough to have to experience a sex pest on a game. How much worse would it be to have to experience harassment and also be swiftly booted from the game because the harasser false reported you first and was believed without question so that you got banned and couldn’t report him? No thanks.

And at the end of the day, if you’re reporting said behavior you’re already sharing your experience. Verifying it is a valid part of that, especially on a text medium.

Is it ideal to have to go through that? No, but none of this situation is ideal.

ETA: But also, if you’re on a good game with a good community and good staffers, do those staffers a solid. Don’t put them in a position of having to trust one anonymous name on a screen over another anonymous name on a screen. You don’t really know them. They don’t really know you. There’s really no reason to blindly trust anyone. Make it as easy as possible for them to do the right thing.

If the staffer is bad, your report, verified or not, probably won’t do anything anyway (see this thread). If the staffer is good, then have their back so they can have yours.

[KarmaBum]

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

Yep.

Sometimes people lie.

Please show me the receipts where people have lied about being harassed. If this is such a prevalent problem, you should have no trouble producing them.

[Drowsy]

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

@Pavel said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

I understand the ‘must have proof’ mindset, though. Sometimes (rarely, but still) bitches do lie. After all, this board was founded after people were falsely accused of something and punished without any sort of transparent investigation.

Yep.

Sometimes people lie.

Yes. Sometimes people lie, and sex pests are almost always the ones benefiting from it. But go off about false claims, boo. This reeks of people saying that “women are just so hard to work with because everything is sexual harassment these days” like it’s, again, so SO difficult to NOT harass people when you don’t view them as objects.

And at the end of the day, if you’re reporting said behavior you’re already sharing your experience. Verifying it is a valid part of that, especially on a text medium.

Yes. This would have/should have happened when the behavior was reported. Obviously, we are past that. Do try to keep up.

ETA: But also, if you’re on a good game with a good community and good staffers, do those staffers a solid. Don’t put them in a position of having to trust one anonymous name on a screen over another anonymous name on a screen. You don’t really know them. They don’t really know you. There’s really no reason to blindly trust anyone. Make it as easy as possible for them to do the right thing.

This is the point of this whole thread. Staff knows, staff (I assume) was offered the logs and screenshots. Staff, which - again - INCLUDES this slime ball, couldn’t be bothered with the inconvenience of it. That is why this thread is here.

YOU are not obligated to see those logs and screenshots which identify the victims. No one on this forum is. If Cujo swept up in here with the mindset of “I cannot believe that people have been made to feel this way on my game, under my leadership. Let me see this evidence so that we can rectify this and put an action plan in place so that this doesn’t continue to happen. I am taking steps to educate myself on this clearly systemic and pervasive issue on the game I run.”

That is the opposite of what is happening. You have Hadrix and some desperate boot lockers doing everything to discredit this forum and those on it. And cujo is doing - oh, snap, what a surprise - absolutely nothing. Reminds me of - what again? Oh, right, reporting sexual assault in the real world. I hate to keep playing that card, but you know what sucks worse than hearing someone bring up their assault? Being assaulted, not being believed, and being actively punished for “ruining someone’s reputation” when you have text proof. Funny how that culture and mindset bleeds over.

People do not come here to air shit like this because they have a vendetta or love drama. They come here because they DID bring this to staff and staff made their priorities clear. Now it’s just whistleblowing so that people A) go into this game with a fair warning of what to expect, or B) avoid this game because this crosses, as it did mine, a moral boundary, or C) so that the public outrage can actually stir SOME sort of action from the spineless sycophants that are perpetuating and enabling this culture.

Option C isn’t going to happen. Clearly.

So, unless YOU are Cujo and you are coming to OP and victims with your hat in your hand, stop demanding “proof” and instead listen to what people - MULTIPLE PEOPLE - are saying. There is proof. You are not obligated to it. Sit down and listen, unless you are able to do something about this.

[Wizz]

@Warma-Sheen said in Star Wars Age of Alliances: Hadrix and Cujo:

How much worse would it be to have to experience harassment and also be swiftly booted from the game because the harasser false reported you first and was believed without question so that you got banned and couldn’t report him? No thanks.

oh my god, what a horrible hypothetical situation to imagine, surely it must happen all the time since we hear about it so often

Like. Dude. Even in just the ten years I’ve been on the various incarnations of this board, I could only count on one fucking hand the number of times we saw someone report a false report that wasn’t almost immediately dismissed with ridiculous ease because it was just the dumbass abuser themselves trying to cover their tracks.

This is such a non-problem versus the enormous issue of harassment in the community that it makes me actually angry people push so hard like this to make reporting and being believed so difficult. This is not a court of law and collecting this irrefutable body of evidence y’all always seem to want is literally the last thing on the mind of someone being stalked, abused, harassed, etc. It’s an enormously stressful and honestly embarrassing experience that can leave you too scattered, not to mention staffers like Cujo and the flying monkeys the abusers surround themselves with magically always seem to decide that it’s never enough anyway.