It depends what you mean by geeky and obsessive, but it seems unfair to tar everyone under those umbrellas with the same brush.
Might be bias talking—I’m a fair bit geeky and obsessive myself. And I’m no asshole, right guys?
…Guys?
Hello?
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Agreed. One of the things I fear is that because of the enormous (fan generated) hype, the game will sell millions of copies and there will be an outcry from a large number of people asking for more life on the planets. Many game companies pay too much attention to whiners to keep their playerbase. I have seen this wreck quite a few games. It is especially a problem if the game has outside financial backers. I believe Hello Games is self-funded and that they made the game that they wanted to play. I think there’s a good chance Hello Games will stay the course. At least I hope so!
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This is why having version control in the hands of the user is such a good design concept, such as in Minecraft. They can develop all the new features they want, but I can still play an earlier version that works with the mods I enjoy or that don’t have new features that I don’t care for.
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yeah sorry, i tried to say it better in a later comment.
basically, i think those folks who don’t get why they should have to take down their flags, who rail about having their rights infringed upon ( that recent post about the militia folks complaining about second amendment rights in jail http://boingboing.net/2016/05/31/oregon-militia-leaders-complai.html ), share traits with these death threat game folks.
i don’t necessarily think they are the same groups of people, instead it’s like whatever powers them and enables them is the same.
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can’t count the number of harry potter, minecraft, comic book, and fantasy renactment fans i know. most are truly lovely people, often making and doing really interesting things.
the jerks are usually the folks you hear from when you aren’t part of some particular subcommunity because outrage… sells?
what part are all we responsible in giving these fires air?
The more I’ve been on the internet, the more I come to believe that “trolls” (actually, internet bullies) provide their own oxygen, like thermite.
Ignore them, and they will burn you to the ground.
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It’s like ignoring a toddler having a tantrum. Yeah, it’ll probably work eventually, but you better know it’s going to get worse before it gets better.
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Well, you could say that about any interaction with the world - that we’re actually basing our action on our mental model - and you’d be right. So the distinction is between a mental model based on one’s interactions with the thing, and one that isn’t (a delusion, in other words, I suppose).
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Not covering the outbursts and their targets doesn’t mean that they aren’t giving death threats to their targets.
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Except these aren’t toddlers. These are more fully formed humans who know that every hit chips away at their target whether or not they get ignored.
If you ban them they win, because they got a response.
If you leave their comments alone they win, because their filth lives on to pollute others.
Winning the long game against a dedicated bully requires winning culturally, which is difficult when our meat-space culture still can’t process that bullies are often not found on the fringes.
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But we win more.
Shadowbanning is useful, but other users are stupid (see Reddit) and let the person know that they’re shadowbanned, defeating the purpose.
I think you nailed it. Have you ever heard the saying, “The worst of us discuss other people, most of us discuss things, and the best of us discuss ideas”?
The game itself is just a ‘thing’, but the idea behind it is what people are excited about. A universe generated from mathematical procedures? Not unlike our own in some ways? The simulation theory is arguably better at explaining some of the quirks in our universe than any other at this point.
I think NMS will be great, but even if it isn’t, this idea will live on. I think that’s what has people really excited. HG are pioneers.
Edit: It feels like we’re taking something good, like genuine public interest in space, math, procedural generation, and we’re making it out to be a bad thing because a few assholes on twitter also happen to be interested in it. It feels this kind of logic: “Hitler was a vegetarian, therefor vegetarianism is bad”. Completely irrational.
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Yes and no. So when I refer to these trollies as cowards, I don’t exactly mean that as an epithet (it is anyway, but only because that’s never a good character trait); I mean it as a descriptor. I suspect that if most of these trollies were face-to-face with their victims, they wouldn’t spend their time threatening people. And not just because they’d be more likely to face consequences (though that’s certainly part of it), but because it would be harder to disengage empathy. I think many trollies don’t understand on an emotional level that people on the internet are real human beings they can actually hurt the same way they would if they did these things to people’s faces in meatspace. In fact, I choose the term meatspace because the more common term, real life, implies that very lack of real people that many trollies see when they trolley.
Yes, there are some who would still bully people in meatspace. But there has to be a reason that online bullying is so much more rampant that offline. I strongly suspect it’s because it’s easier to disengage empathy online.
What concerns me even more is that the ease with which people, who would in some way identify with their victims in actual physical space, are able to avoid doing so through the internet, trains people who grow up with the internet to dehumanize people. On the one hand, one could argue that as interaction through the internet gets more realistic, people who grow up with it and use it will have a harder time discounting the humanity of other people on it. But the internet isn’t getting more realistic; it’s getting surrealistic, easier to bend the reality. Imagine if we do go ahead and create the augmented reality recently so much in vogue among futurists and technologists. I can see generations of trollies dehumanizing their neighbors, coworkers, friends, even family as technology enables them to hide behind a gamified facade cast over their perception of their meatspace lives, to see physical people as non-player characters the way they see other human beings online now. The future may be a coward stamping in his sister’s anime-overlaid face, forever.
there’s some sort of line.
i’m thinking of the similarities with how it’s irresponsible to plaster the name and face of a school shooter everywhere because it invites copycats. similar too, the endless front page controversies about the presumptive republican nominee has made his campaign possible.
i think moderators, ban hammers, maybe even human or ai screeners as a service for targeted folks - these things might help. i do think consequences like GuillverFoyle was saying help.
i definitely don’t think the victims can or should ignore things, and they need to know they have support. it seems tricky.
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I was pretty sure that someone would comment in this vein. I wasn’t tarring everyone with the same brush. There is a world of difference between saying ‘poverty is the strongest indicator of poor academic performance’ and ‘all poor people are thick’.
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But it’s not? Nobody is saying this. They are pointing out that fandom encourages this rabidity.
Gargamelgate is a good example of this bizarre entitlement and sense of ownership over media felt by a SUBSET of gamers.
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You should have tried waiting for the last episode of @Donald_Petersen’s Badass Dragons of the Wasteland.
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You think that’s finished?
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Aren’t you on Mars yet? Does Blazer still owe you some license plates?
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