Why are so many people here angry?

Barbas

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Dirty Cop James funs said:
(By way, if you're reading this, make more. I want to see how deep the rabbit hole goes.)
I thought we agreed no yiffing? :<
 

maninahat

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Fieldy409 said:
The site used to be super lefty with plenty of feminists(remember Rebecca Mayes or the group of ladies who played DND vids?). Then Gamergate happened and we were one of the few sites that allowed them to actually have their discussions. So we got a whole bunch of Gamergaters and people who were on the opposite side to feminists and rightys love Gamergate. So we actually have a pretty broad spectrum here that leades to.... Vigorous debate!

I think its good to have a wide variety of opinions though, even if some hackles get raised now and then.
I'm not sure about the lefty part. Years before GG was a thing, "fake girl geeks" debates were doing the rounds. I specifically remember once being on the wrong side of that. What GG did was become so heated that it drowned out all the other debates. For months, the popular and new forums were invariably GG related, to the point that people just got sick of discussing it. It actually drove people away to the sites that simply matched their stance on GG, just so they could cease having to get into an argument about it.
 

cleric of the order

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I know why I am angry.


Mister K said:
Some say that it's anonymity that is causing this, the lack of identification of a person. However, there is Facebook, where majority of people have their faces as avatars and are using their actual names, yet there are many posts which are ridiculously impolite. And then there is Reddit, where people use nicknames and don't have any visual connection to their person via avatar, yet so far, after few months of being a member of Reddit, I am yet to read something purposfully hurtful even on biggest subreddits.
That assumption always sort of annoyed me, people will post on facebook details of crimes they committed, anonymity isn't a factor in people's stupidity and well, more violent urges.
People will get mad, people will get piss, people will be rude, it's natural.
A forum doesn't prevent or even alter that state, it just gets people to either get good at being subtly rude, powerful or banned if they are prone to getting mad or in some cases it just makes things worse depending on the forum
Take Plebbit for example (excuse the colloquialism) some places within it see the decent into moderated circle jerks, the people there become emotional retarded if they stay within a hug box long enough and become violently inspired by disagreement. Alternatively people being pushed out of a hugbox can get pretty pissed, they leave with a bit of a chip on their shoulder, next time they see that topic they might get madder because they have that unresolved tension.
Of course these people end banned after awhile, make a proxy account and just want to ruin another persons day now because of autism(go to Encyploedia dramtica if you want to see this first hand)/emotional instability/inability to let things go/ what have you. They burn out after awhile but it inspires other people to get mad and of course the cycle begins anew.

Or there are just dicks out there you know.
Massive fucking dicks that love to fuck with people
 

MysticSlayer

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Mister K said:
And then there is Reddit, where people use nicknames and don't have any visual connection to their person via avatar, yet so far, after few months of being a member of Reddit, I am yet to read something purposfully hurtful even on biggest subreddits.
Reddit also has the Upvote/Downvote system, which often pushes those kinds of comments so far down few people read that far. Yes, the system gets abused a lot into an "I Agree"/"I Disagree" button, which can create an echo chamber in some subreddits. But deliberately malicious comments (unless it fits nicely into an echo chamber) and obvious troll comments normally get pushed down before too long. But even then, coming into some threads even on very tame subreddits can occasionally lead to viewing nasty exchanges.

But as for The Escapist, things seem a little more tame now than they have been, especially compared to this time last year. Even when I was lurking (which was 3+ years ago), subjects like Mass Effect 3 and Anita Sarkeesian could easily send the whole community into an uproar. And don't even get me started on what the GamerGate debate did to this place...
 

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
I'm not really an active Reddit user, but I decided to go to the FP of Reddit to check how purposely hurtful it is. The highest rated thing right now is a guy wearing the Occulus Rift who is moving his hands around dramatically, and a woman filming him with a sort of fed up look on her face.

The highest rated comment is "You can make anything look shitty with a resting ***** face next to it". So huh. I mean I expected to look around a bit to find something, not just complete the seach on the highest rated thing with the highest rated comment. You might be seeing what you want to see on Reddit, OP.

But anyway, the forum took a definite downturn when the mods bent over backwards to accommodate Gamergate. That was a very costly mistake which caused a lot of people to leave and be replaced by those that, well, support Gamergate. A lot of those people didn't last, so effectively the forums just ended up with people who weren't chased off by those events.

But part of it might also be rose-tinted glasses. For as long as I can remember the Escapist has had this reputation, just to different extents.
Maybe I'm just weird but in comparison to the passive-aggressive implications that get thrown around these forums constantly I personally find being called actual expletives to genuinely be much better. I'm not claiming directly insulting someone is somehow a good thing but honestly, I think there's a whole lot of threads here on the Escapist that would've been so much better ( and ended so much sooner ) if people had been calling each other shitfaces and much, much worse instead of the endless pages of bickering that are there now.

Maybe I'm just terribly naive of the internet, but I've never actually seen a swearing match that kept on going for very long. Very soon it's obviously clear to literally everyone that there's no substance whatsoever and the thing dies.

I personally feel the rules are in exactly such a spot where they're lenient enough that threads can get extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and hostile but too strict to cause them to self destruct in their own vitriol.
 

Rad Party God

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Feb 23, 2010
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Used to be a regular here and definitely 'been there when lots and lots of "hot button topics" happened, like the ones Zhukov described.

After a certain cataclysmic event and some staff changes made by Defy Media, a lot of good people left or simply learned to avoid certain topics, so the only ones left are the most obnoxious, loudest, angriest lot.

I've since then moved on to other site, but I still kinda lurk around here from time to time, but I definitely haven't posted as much as I used to back then and I don't feel like changing that anytime soon.
 

Phasmal

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Jun 10, 2011
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Eh, it can feel a bit stifling here sometimes.

As others have mentioned, people here often get to know one another's general viewpoints and often topics will just come up over and over and it seems like nothing is learned and everything just resets except people get madder.

To be honest, I kinda fell into this myself, that's why I recently took a break from coming here and focused on other stuff. Mostly actually playing video games. When you come here a lot it's easy to feel like the stuff that's discussed on here is hard to get away from, but really, it's not.
 

pilouuuu

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Aug 18, 2009
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Because the world is not an idyllic place. Nobody is perfect and we feel frustrated by the idea that some people may disagree with us.

Just relax, guys!
 

Drops a Sweet Katana

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May 27, 2009
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Xsjadoblayde said:
Ya'll people just need some kittens all up in your shit...









Sorry, i would put them in spoilers, but that risks more people not seeing these adorable cuties. How could anyone stay angry beyond these??
You can take your kittens and... er... apply them to some orifice of your general person (eat them? put them in armpits?), you absolute entity, you. I'm miffed to shit, me. Grrrr.

thaluikhain said:
Well, there's a lot of serious issues which directly affect people's lives being discussed, which leads to passionate debates, often with people who've no idea what they are talking about, but really want to stick their oar in.
I'll stick my oar in you, you other person. Wait! Not in that way! Shit! Ummmmmm... Put that in your pipe and smoke it(?). Yeah, that. Grrrrr.

OT: I feel you, OP (like literally feeling your face). A lot of what people have said so far is true. The user base was never not-mad to some extent, but there was enough levity to balance it out. Unfortunately, there's been a bit of a feedback loop that has lead to most of the more chill people retreating from the more general discussion forums to the user groups or forum games, leaving a larger chunk of people with a more aggro or cynical bent. I find topics these days tend to be a little too serious by-and-large, which usually just ends up dampening the mood. It's not to say that those topics are bad and should be discouraged, but their prevalence compared to the more light-hearted topics can mean that forum browsing can turn into a real slog of negativity.
 

KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime

Lolita Style, The Best Style!
Jan 12, 2010
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thaluikhain said:
Well, there's a lot of serious issues which directly affect people's lives being discussed, which leads to passionate debates, often with people who've no idea what they are talking about, but really want to stick their oar in.
Oh god, this, so much this. It's not even funny the way people sometimes get dismissed on these forums, by people who lack even a basic understanding of the position of person whose experiences are being dismissed. It's especially annoying when people bring up long debunked myths and then reject all evidence against the myths.

Honestly I don't think that people here are particularly angry, but we do tend to bicker a lot. Everyone has their own personal pet peeves and there is a tendency for that to come out here. If people here are angry, we're not nearly as angry as people are in other places. Just look at the bile you tend to see on Twitter, Reddit, Tumblr, and the chan boards. We're pretty tame by comparison, no matter how much we argue.
 

Hagi

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Pluvia said:
Hagi said:
Maybe I'm just weird but in comparison to the passive-aggressive implications that get thrown around these forums constantly I personally find being called actual expletives to genuinely be much better. I'm not claiming directly insulting someone is somehow a good thing but honestly, I think there's a whole lot of threads here on the Escapist that would've been so much better ( and ended so much sooner ) if people had been calling each other shitfaces and much, much worse instead of the endless pages of bickering that are there now.

Maybe I'm just terribly naive of the internet, but I've never actually seen a swearing match that kept on going for very long. Very soon it's obviously clear to literally everyone that there's no substance whatsoever and the thing dies.

I personally feel the rules are in exactly such a spot where they're lenient enough that threads can get extremely unpleasant, unwelcoming and hostile but too strict to cause them to self destruct in their own vitriol.
I don't really see how you example would change anything. For example, under it there could be:

A: "I'm against Gamergate because I'm not obsessed with who a woman sleeps with"

B: "Oh here comes another white knight ******. Piss off back to your hole."

*Subject B is banned*.

So it would just be a situation where the person who uses insults is banned, which is.. exactly what we have.

The alternative would be insults are allowed, so people would get chased away for the crime of being black, or a female, or gay, or trans. Not exactly a nice atmosphere.
Except under current rules B wouldn't say that. Exactly because he'd get banned.

Instead B would post a long diatribe accusing A of overly generalising Gamergate, of which he's personally certainly not a part but nonetheless feels some sympathy with considering the extremely common behaviour of individuals such as A who seem to feel women are special frail little creatures that need protection and could thus potentially be said to be sexist themselves, without even starting about the potential consequences towards free speech and a slippery slope towards censorship.

To which A will reply again once more strongly insinuating B is just obsessed about women daring to have sex with bonus points for implying B's just doing that cause he's not getting any himself without actually outright stating so and continue on in a longer rant continually implying and insinuating B of being an altogether very unsympathetic being with no small number of issues when it comes to women and other minorities.

To which B of course launch into another long post with god knows what rhetorical devices contained within with the pure and only purpose of making A look bad.

And A will gladly join in with his own barrage of passive-aggressive rhetoric to make B look in turn even worse.

And then the thread's just as horribly unfriendly pile of this as it'd be with actual insults. Just as horribly unwelcoming to everyone. Except that shit's several pages long by now instead of a single post.

EDIT: To be clear. I'm not saying there shouldn't be any limits on language. I'm merely saying there's plenty of threads that would've been a whole lot better off with a single "Fuck you" rather than page upon page of verbal diarrhoea.
 

Elvis Starburst

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IceForce said:
Elvis Starburst said:
I keep seeing the whole skirting the rules thing as a common theme in these posts, and it clearly is a bit of an issue. I've seen it myself. So, that's one thing that could be fixed. I'm sure the mods are aware of it... Is making changes to the rules to fix that issue just too blanket of a thing to be deemed reasonable?
How would one outlaw 'passive-aggressiveness' via the rules, though?

Tone is difficult to interpret over plain text at the best of times, so how do you differentiate between people who are deliberately baiting from the people who are just naturally argumentative, passionate, or simply having a bad day? Unless you give the moderators mind-reading capabilities, I'm not seeing how it could be feasibly done.
Which is why I mentioned that it would probably be a bit of a crazy blanket adjustment... It probably wouldn't work. Though, I had hoped maybe there'd be some method of working it out
 

Trunkage

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DudeistBelieve said:
trunkage said:
DudeistBelieve said:
Many people on this website has changed my arguments and I've seen people say the agree with me, usually through finding a common ground (at least on non controversial topics)
Then you are a rarity, and you should be happy about that.

It's part of the human condition to resist change. A lot of people also tie their ego, even their own personal identities to their view points. Even my ownself, I admit, I have a tendency to have a desire to not change unless I feel in the mood to do so. I just have that rebellious nature.

But I've always found it to be much the waste of my time at least, and exhausting. Fuck it.
You just admitted that it could be a possible to change peoples minds. You cant change them unless your willing to change. Most of the changes I had was trying to meet an accommodation in the middle. Your willing to discuss this issue with me (as in you're not trying to find the best mic drop to finalise a result), so you have that ability to change me as well.

Also, not having your sense of worth tied to your ideology works as well. For example, during the ME3 ending 'conversations' I kept going at people trying to make them see that the ME3 ending could have been predicted from the other to endings. You are walking on a planet trying to fight monsters in space. Fighting Saren and the human reaper as an ending were just as bad star child. You defeat Reapers via ships not running around on the ground. They had to plug that plot hole in the story in each game somehow. Did anyone listen? Not really but my worth is not tied to people agreeing with me, unlike some people who have to keep arguing like the ending destroy that fabric of space time.
 

Lightspeaker

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Pluvia said:
We have very different definitions of "horribly unfriendly" then. For example if "Fuck off you Trans fuck" was allowed by the rules (the worst word there being "fuck") it'd be far more horribly unfriendly.

The only people that would benefit would be people who say things like that.

Except he's quite right insofar as I've experienced in online communities over the years, and I've been in quite a few. Open insults tend to resolve themselves far better than an underlying hatred. Things where the venom doesn't get left to build up tend to be more friendly. I pointed this out on page 1 in fact; I've been in a rather diverse community for a particular game where that kind of insult would, in fact, have been incredibly tame. On the surface you're quite right. It appeared to be "horribly unfriendly". Spend a little more time there, however, and it was pretty much one of the most welcoming and friendly communities I've seen on the internet. Minor spats just blew over. Actual major 'real' issues would cause the community to pull together to deal with it.

I'm not exactly advocating that the rules should be merely "done away with", but the passive-aggressiveness is far more unpleasant and unwelcoming and, frankly, disturbing than anything I've seen where direct insults were the norm. Put it this way: even with all of the unpleasantness associated with that game (as a senior player I'd been insulted, threatened and called everything under the sun) I'd probably happily go out for a pint with the majority of people in that community. Here? I'm bothered enough by the viciousness and hate to not even want to provide details of other online personas I go by; and there's certainly a number of people around here I'm honestly unsure I'd want to meet with in real life from sheer fear that they'd pull a knife on me.

Anyway I've...really not got anything else to say here now. The passive-aggressive nonsense is total poison for this community. It really is. But I don't really have any way to resolve it easily. I think its a result of the rules being neither draconian enough nor laissez-faire enough and with plenty of loopholes. So we have this weird in-between state where people make a game of insulting people and being totally unpleasant whilst trying to avoid getting in trouble for it.
 

voidraz

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This may have already been said, but I've always felt the denizens of the Internet release their rage here so often because the consequences of your actions here are much less extreme online than in reality. You shout at your boss/ coworkers, you get fired. You yell at your family, that's sure as hell going to carry over to your future interactions with people you generally keep contact with.

...but then you log online, and you had a hell of a day, and you may not even realize you need an outlet, but damn that person posting on my forum board is stupid as hell, and what's going to happen when you make an irredeemable ass of yourself? The community may be big enough that you're hardly noticed. You may get banned, but why not just make a new account, or move to one of every other forum that talks about video games? What's anyone on Escapist Magazine going to do to you that carries over to your real life and you can't get rid of? Maybe hack your computer or something, but that's kind of an extreme and less likely case.

So you treat a perfectly nice human being like trash and what does he do? He logs off to go play Street Fighter and t-bags every single person he gets a victory over because now he's in a bad mood, dammit. And so the cycle continues.