@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 The Administrator’s Thinly Veiled Fetish! That means every time you interact here…🫣

I say this in the way of an American Southerner; bless your heart.

@Mushling-0 The only thing crazier than Polk paying to be tolerated is that he’s done it twice in the 2 years I’ve known about him. The only thing crazier than that is that it worked twice.

@MisterBoring
“I know it’s crooked but it’s the only game in town.”

Some folks are legit institutionalized. Speaking of my personal journey, internalizing the reality that I don’t have to MUSH or RP changed my life for the better. I don’t have to pick the least painful version of always-painful options, I can just do other things for a while, maybe for good; things that bring joy without compromise.

@helvetica They can’t say thank you with words, but I will. Thank you for helping those furry babies.

Imagine being so bored you spend an entire weekend self-tattling in front of the same community you feel owes you a good time.

If everyone else is the problem…ah, y’all know the rest.

@Warma-Sheen My favorite part of the lead up to this was when Sun allegedly investigated all the rps of 8 characters with Polk/Ned/Nash going back 15 months…in an hour. “We have investigated ourselves and found no wrongdoing.”

And yet the thing I warned her about happened. It’s almost like shielding abusers might be biting her in the ass.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everett_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thibodaux_massacre

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludlow_Massacre

People died for those rights and still do. It’s privileged and insulting to talk about worker’s rights as a given and simply unintelligent to think rights happen naturally at the benevolence of wealthy leadership.

@Evilgrayson Role players are bonkers. RPG players are bonkers. WoD fans are bonkers. Add the anonymity of nick names and you wind up with an abusers paradise.

Staff are simply blind to too much (the nature of MU*), and can only react, because nobody wants them proactively violating privacy. When there’s a proper shadow society being maintained OOC, more organized and longstanding than a game, good luck.

It took me about 15 years to figure out this mix is bad for me. I’m sorry for your experience, truly. I was gutted my last time MUSHing, and called it quits. The circumstances bore comical similarities to your tale. Hugs for y’all.

@Juniper Here lies one of the major differences between community management (porous, vulnerable, compromised, lowest common denominator rule, familiar enough to bad actors to be easily abused) and community curation (protecting the spirit of the game, choosing staff who “get it,” erring on the side of caution, trusting your gut, being willing to reprimand or eject parties who aren’t acting in good faith, cultivating the players you have instead of obsessing over the players you don’t have, saying “no” now so you don’t end up with a Pandora’s box later).

Curated communities are inevitably smaller but because staff and players have relationships instead of businesslike interactions, they’re more like a friend group than a job. Because there isn’t a rush of newcomers or a draining backlog of jobs, there is room for intuition to lead to inspiration and the development of an accord between the the various people in the game regardless of their status.

This very watershed (and the post-mortem examination of my past MUSHing experiences) is what led me to join this forum.