It's rather horrible, this whole thing, isn't it?

[Nox]

I haven't been part of a forum for a a long time. Nearly a decade, I think. I think I stopped because most people sort of moved on to Facebook, at the time. And what was left behind was a very tight clique that, due to them being members for a very long time, enjoyed certain privileges. Basically, mods would turn a blind eye to everything they did as long as it wasn't an openly hostile interaction, and even those would often resulted in a cheeky "warning." I didn't enjoy that atmosphere, so I left.

Fast forward to now. I still enjoy many things I did back than and enjoy talking to people about them. Games, anime, tv shows, books, you name it. I'm a bit of an entertainment hedonist, you could say. I also found myself enjoying a lot of Escapist content, which is how I stumbled upon this place. So I thought, what the hell, based on the types of videos Escapist produces I assumed I wouldn't be met with "gamers." But things haven't changed much from how these forums used to be. There's still a clique, they still get away with things, they still gaslight, argue in bad faith, and insult every opinion that disagrees with them or challenges them. And I do know what this sounds like, but feel free to check my post history and see for yourself. I have tried being as nice and cordial as I possibly could. But was mostly met with bad faith arguments, gaslighting, and insults to my character. Which, admittedly, isn't the best. But I did try.

I've been here three days, I think, and in that time one creepy "legacy" member has decided I was so horrible he started following me to every single thread I posted in and liked the posts of everyone that even slightly disagreed with anything I said. Three days.

Anyway, I don't want to see what would happen after a week so I'll be off. I just wanted to share my experience, brief as it was, and maybe offer an insight about why new members don't seem to stick around. I haven't made many posts, but feel free to peruse and see if what I'm saying has any merit.

All the best and best of luck!

P.S. "Peruse" actually means; read (something), typically in a thorough or careful way. examine carefully or at length. Only learned this recently. Always thought it was "cast a casual glace." Huh. Language, amirite?

 

[BrawlMan]

Basically, mods would turn a blind eye to everything they did as long as it wasn't an openly hostile interaction, and even those would often resulted in a cheeky "warning." I didn't enjoy that atmosphere, so I left.

It was still a problem on the old forum after you left. No one will blame you.

I've been here three days, I think, and in that time one creepy "legacy" member has decided I was so horrible he started following me to every single thread I posted in and liked the posts of everyone that even slightly disagreed with anything I said. Three days.

I've dealt with my share of assholes on V1 and V2 thread. I never had anyone try to follow me constantly for disagreeing with them, but I did tell some random ass hat on V1 to fuck off or else. He wisely backed off and left me alone. The mods on this side tend to be better here, but I do know some of them are not around anymore.

And I do know what this sounds like, but feel free to check my post history and see for yourself. I have tried being as nice and cordial as I possibly could. But was mostly met with bad faith arguments, gaslighting, and insults to my character. Which, admittedly, isn't the best. But I did try.

You didn't exactly help yourself, assumed in bad faith, or ignored obvious evidence of people backing up their arguments.

You do what you wanna do. Don't see why you needed to make a big announcements, but okay. Where ever you go, stay safe, and take care (sincerity mode).

 

[Elvis Starburst]

You didn't exactly help yourself, assumed in bad faith, or ignored obvious evidence of people backing up their arguments.

Since I was curious and semi-bored I took a look through all of Nox's post history just to see what the heck they were on about. And... Yeah, no, I don't think they argued in the best way possible. Granted, I saw a lot of back and forth between you two, and I would say you also had a liiiittle bit to play in that, engaging in some (potentially) hyperbole and coming in a bit hot in general.
I wonder if you're the one Nox meant about someone following them into every thread... Then again, you are kinda everywhere here in general. Besides the most obviously dead forum sections (like forum games) I don't think there's a thread or post I haven't seen you in. Now, I'm sure I would find examples of the opposite if I bothered to look. Buuut... I don't have that much energy to spare. Point is... you definitely have something to say about a lot of stuff, which isn't a bad thing. You're probably one of our busiest users.

Overall though, dunno why Nox felt that they needed to make some grand exit like this. Best I can say about that is...

 

[BrawlMan]

Since I was curious and semi-bored I took a look through all of Nox's post history just to see what the heck they were on about. And... Yeah, no, I don't think they argued in the best way possible. Granted, I saw a lot of back and forth between you two, and I would say you also had a liiiittle bit to play in that, engaging in some (potentially) hyperbole and coming in a bit hot in general.

I honestly moved on from this already. All I did was comment about how a majority of Ubisoft's titles are shit or barely above mediocre, and they flipped out being wishy washy about it and projecting. They had a fit because I said the Spider-Man PS4 games, Norse GoW, and GoT are better than whatever Ubisoft/AC can pull off. And as I said before for the last time: Spider-Man and Norse GoW play nothing like any of the AssCreed games. Nox's problem is that they assume and project too much. He did this with at least one other user. If you noticed, all my other interactions with were chill or just pointing out something. That's it. Otherwise, they got hot and bothered over minor shit.

Done here with this and moving on.

I wonder if you're the one Nox meant about someone following them into every thread...

No. I don't harass nor follow people to mess with them. Not my style and I would not waste precious time doing so.

Overall though, dunno why Nox felt that they needed to make some grand exit like this. Best I can say about that is...

More or less the same.

 

[Elvis Starburst]

I honestly moved on from this already. All I did was comment about how a majority of Ubisoft's titles are shit or barely above mediocre, and they flipped out being wishy washy about it and projecting. They had a fit because I said the Spider-Man PS4 games, Norse GoW, and GoT are better than whatever Ubisoft/AC can pull off. And as I said before for the last time: Spider-Man and Norse GoW play nothing like any of the AssCreed games. Nox's problem is that they assume and project too much. He did this with at least one other user. If you noticed, all my other interactions with were chill or just pointing out something. That's it. Otherwise, they got hot and bothered over minor shit.

Done here with this and moving on.

Which you were absolutely correct on in respect to the games bit. Maybe 'coming in hot' wasn't the right wording.

No. I don't harass nor follow people to mess with them. Not my style and I would not waste precious time doing so.

I knew you wouldn't be the type. I just wonder if that's how they interpreted it along with my above observations.

I honestly expected them to have posted in current events given how they were talking about the forum. Imagine my surprise when they didn't

 

[Drathnoxis]

What? Don't you think you might be overreacting? I scrolled through your conversation in the Hot Takes thread and I didn't see a person liking every post but yours. Who are you even talking about? Is it actually Brawlman? Because if so, you should know that Brawlman probably 'likes' more posts than anybody else on the site, possibly everybody else combined. It has nothing to do with you and it's weird you took it so personally. I'm sure nobody meant any offense. Seems silly to leave the forums because one person didn't like your posts. You still got 21 likes out of 51 posts, which isn't terrible by our standards.

I thought you seemed a decent enough sort and am sorry to see you go. Feel free to come back when you learn to relax a little.

 

[Zykon TheLich]

It's been a long time since I've had the chance to post a golden flounce award gif... so long in fact that I don't have one. Just imagine it posted below.

 

[Thaluikhain]

AI fails at yet another task.

Have a group of shiny Dr Who aliens instead, the Axons.

 

[Bedinsis]

I've been here three days, I think, and in that time one creepy "legacy" member has decided I was so horrible he started following me to every single thread I posted in and liked the posts of everyone that even slightly disagreed with anything I said. Three days.

I prefer to give people the benefit of a doubt. There are only so many active threads on this forum; is it not possible that your activity in those threads caused them to reach the top of the latest activity list and therefore alert the attention of that member, where they happened to disagree with your takes?

Anyway: if you do not think this forum is for you I bid you farewell and wish you the best of luck wherever you go. Life is too short to spend it arguing on the Internet, frankly.

 

[Absent]

Ubisoft's titles

...

That's what people get all riled about ?

 

[Baffle]

Are there enough of us to have cliques?!

 

[Elvis Starburst]

Are there enough of us to have cliques?!

Apparently!

 

[Drathnoxis]

Are there enough of us to have cliques?!

I haven't noticed any cliques, but I don't go into Current Events, maybe they are in there. Honestly, I have no idea what Nox is talking about. He seems to be implying mod favoritism or something, but (and maybe it's because the moderation is less transparent than the old site) I feel like the mods are barely even present on the forums other than to crush the endless waves of spambots and it's fine that way. Everybody here is pretty much civil, and if you really can't stand arguing with someone there's always the ignore function.

 

[Bedinsis]

Are there enough of us to have cliques?!

Well the amount of active users is of a comparable number to the social network giant Facebook's Metaverse. Make of that what you will.

 

[Specter Von Baren]

I haven't been part of a forum for a a long time. Nearly a decade, I think. I think I stopped because most people sort of moved on to Facebook, at the time. And what was left behind was a very tight clique that, due to them being members for a very long time, enjoyed certain privileges. Basically, mods would turn a blind eye to everything they did as long as it wasn't an openly hostile interaction, and even those would often resulted in a cheeky "warning." I didn't enjoy that atmosphere, so I left.

Fast forward to now. I still enjoy many things I did back than and enjoy talking to people about them. Games, anime, tv shows, books, you name it. I'm a bit of an entertainment hedonist, you could say. I also found myself enjoying a lot of Escapist content, which is how I stumbled upon this place. So I thought, what the hell, based on the types of videos Escapist produces I assumed I wouldn't be met with "gamers." But things haven't changed much from how these forums used to be. There's still a clique, they still get away with things, they still gaslight, argue in bad faith, and insult every opinion that disagrees with them or challenges them. And I do know what this sounds like, but feel free to check my post history and see for yourself. I have tried being as nice and cordial as I possibly could. But was mostly met with bad faith arguments, gaslighting, and insults to my character. Which, admittedly, isn't the best. But I did try.

I've been here three days, I think, and in that time one creepy "legacy" member has decided I was so horrible he started following me to every single thread I posted in and liked the posts of everyone that even slightly disagreed with anything I said. Three days.

Anyway, I don't want to see what would happen after a week so I'll be off. I just wanted to share my experience, brief as it was, and maybe offer an insight about why new members don't seem to stick around. I haven't made many posts, but feel free to peruse and see if what I'm saying has any merit.

All the best and best of luck!

P.S. "Peruse" actually means; read (something), typically in a thorough or careful way. examine carefully or at length. Only learned this recently. Always thought it was "cast a casual glace." Huh. Language, amirite?

Clique?



Have you SEEN what happens when politics come up?

 

[Xprimentyl]

Are there enough of us to have cliques?!

Mathematically, you need at least 3 to make a clique with another 4 to make up the excluded majority. Carry the one, divide by pi, factor in earth's rotation... no, there's not enough of us to make any cliques. We're just a collection of sacks with strong opinions, random thoughts, nothing better to do, and some of us like each other more than the others.

 

[Absent]

Haven't seen cliques here. I've seen more differences than opposition, and one disgusting propagandist troll who drags the whole forum down, conversation by conversation, like a petulant self-absorbed kid in an auditorium, lowering the level of discussion to eternal arguments with his manipulative, bad faith, partisan takes - all the more blatant as he only ever participates for political propaganda and never in the basic pop culture stuff that we mostly chat about.

And the main collective differences are about how users deal with that. People who feed the troll by engaging with him as is these wre arguments to discuss (as if his hypocrisy, bad faith and double standards hadn't repeatedly made this illusion blatant), and people who ignore him (or just point out the hypocrisy without validating it by asuming good faith). It's the two categories of people I see here.

But again, these two approaches don't openly clash with each other, they don't create collective self-identifications. So it doesn't make a cliquey antagonism. And I don't see other faultlines. There are disagreements of some medias and products, some are more forgiving to ubisoft products or to old james bond movies than others. Some take the notion of fictional "canon" more seriously than others. I haven't seen the forum get polarized around that, or these oppositions determine stances on unrelated matters. These subjects aren't meaningful enough.

Generally, this forum seems too mature for that (except for the naivety with which it lets itself asphyxiated by the braindead bad faith politcal spam it encourages). People keep agreeing/disagreeing with each others randomly on these futile matters, and share a common decency about more important things (pollution is bad, racism is bad, trans/homophobia is bad, sexism is bad, rape is bad, being good is good, etc - I don't see a whole clique opposing that). So I don't see this place shatter in any near future. What I see happening, beyond being used as a platform for toxic propaganda platform for one through the abuse of naive goodwill, is the forum being discontinued by the owners. This wouldn't surprise me a lot. An internal flamewar frontline would surprise me much more.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Ah man, passive aggressive complaining by someone who feels their words aren't appreciated enough... How nostalgic.

 

[Xprimentyl]

For what it's worth, I'll give Nox this: as of my typing this, they were last seen the moment this thread was posted; so far they're true to their word on their departure. I thought with that dramatic exit, they'd at least check back in quietly to witness our collective wailing and gnashing of teeth over our loss.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

Ah man, passive aggressive complaining by someone who feels their words aren't appreciated enough... How nostalgic.

It does kinda smack of "I came in here expecting my every word to be worshipped and I got pushback instead; what's up with that?".

For what it's worth, I'll give Nox this: as of my typing this, they were last seen the moment this thread was posted; so far they're true to their word on their departure. I thought with that dramatic exit, they'd at least check back in quietly to witness our collective wailing and gnashing of teeth over our loss.

I mean, you can logoff and still view the forums. Just sayin'.