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[Scherezad]

tl;dr : We need to choose more neutral words when referring to what we see as "bad behaviour" if we're interested in building a healthy RP Community.

I wanted to post a little bit about the language that we use when roleplaying and when talking to one another. This is wholly out of context and has nothing to do with how our characters talk to one another, just how we as players talk to one another.

The words we choose are important for two reasons. Firstly, because words themselves have many meanings, and if we aren't careful we can make a situation difficult by choosing them poorly. Secondly, because it's pretty much the only medium we all share here, so there's nothing else to go on. Our words comprise our body language and tone, so we've got to be really careful about which ones we decide to use.

It's a heavy subject, so I'm just going to pick one right now. "Circlejerk". I've been through a few RP communities before, but this is my first one from an MMO, and it's also my first time encountering the term. We use it as a derogatory term to describe little insular circles of people egging one another on, reinforcing negative things, and generally bad people behaving badly.

It's a very crass word - intentional, no doubt, meant to shock. I also think it's a destructive and derogatory word that only makes the situation worse, as it's a negative word used to describe perfectly normal and natural social processes. I'll explain what I mean by that.

In a large group of people such as our Community, there will no doubt be people who don't get along for some reason or another - people are going to get offended or hurt. This is normal and to be expected. People react to this in different ways depending on their nature. Some people don't tend to take offenses and slights personally, they just shrug it off and keep going. +1 to them.

Other people, however, are more empathic, and tend to take it more personally. This can be a great thing - these people tend to try to help others more readily, show more understanding and concern, and try to take criticism positively by incorporating the outside opinions into their worldview. +1 to them also.

When these people are hurt or offended, however, they have a harder time just ignoring it - that's not how they socialize. It has to come out. Ideally this would be returned to the offender somehow, but social situations and personal affectations can make this difficult or ill-advised. So, what do these people do? They turn to their friends for support and comfort. The "circle jerk" is nothing more than friends trying to help one another out. This is, as they say, what friends are for.

By calling it this derogatory term, we assign guilt to these people, who are just trying to cope with stress by talking to their friends. This makes them less apt to reach out from their group, making them feel more isolated and only exacerbating the problem. In this manner, the Community gets a little bit more fragmented, people become a little less inclined to want to talk outside of their circles, and we lose a little more sunshine.

I think we need to stop using so many negative terms to describe natural socialization. We need to describe things neutrally, *especially* when we're talking about behaviours we think are bad. This Community won't get any better until we start trying to strengthen the bridges between our little islands, and choosing our words more carefully seems a very reasonable first step.


And as an addendum, yes. I'm one of the latter types of people who tends to reach out to friends when under stress.

Opinions?

[Jikk]

From a rose by any other name, to newspeak - this is all semantic and a not an issue.

[Scherezad]

From a rose by any other name, to newspeak - this is all semantic and a not an issue.

Uhh...

Newspeak is a reference to the reduction of meaning in language, the boiling-down of terms to their most basic elements, and ignorance of nuance. My post was all about paying respect to the nuance in language and choosing words more carefully, in order to facilitate community-building.

Maybe my thinking is just doubleplus ungood, I don't know. Thank you for your opinion.

[Seriphyn]

Does calling it "natural socialization" instead of "circlejerk" make any functional difference? I agree with Jikk in that this is all semantic. Calling it "natural" does not excuse some of the things that social groups get away with. Many things are "natural", but it doesn't make it right. Whatever it is called, the issues remain the same.

[Lithium Flower]

I just heard this word for the first time 

[Saede Riordan]

I'm completely in agreement with Schere on this.

Yes, it is semantic, but at the end of the day, semantics, and the words we use to describe complex events, matter. Chosing to use a certain word over another attaches all sorts of judgements and connotations that are associated with that word. Circlejerk is not objective language, its mocking, looking down the nose, and derisive, and its just one example. There's tons of this language in the Community. Like, Space Lesbian, or Dramalama, or Derp, etc etc. I use these terms too sometimes, so I know I can be just as guilty as the rest. The point is that using certain words either impedes communication and throws up barriers, or it aids in communication and helps bring about understanding. The current way people communicate within the Community is often fractous, divisive, and does a much better job of making someone just feel unwelcome then to actually help them solve problems others might have with them.

[Aria Jenneth]

Here's the problem I'm seeing, Scherezad. What you're really objecting to is a judgmental streak that exists in a large percentage of humanity and reliably appears in pretty much any group, especially well-established ones with their own customs and mores. It's objectionable, I agree, but it's hard to control. Usually the most you can do is establish rules of civility for a given forum.

That's what this forum, Backstage OOC, is for. Outside of it, people will bristle at being told to tone down their language-- "circlejerk" has the unfortunate merit of describing the speaker's opinion of the subject with much better accuracy than, say, "clique." Preventing people from expressing themselves thus vividly is sort of a non-starter in internet culture. More to the point, preventing the use of the vulgarity, "circlejerk," will not change the speaker's opinion, which will continue to find expression through other means, since the speaker continues to think of the "circle" as a "mutual masturbation society" or "joint manual pleasuring group." Less vivid expression may lead to better clarity as to exactly what the issue is ("an incestuous clique that exists for no reason but to aid and abet its members' vapid RP"), but won't make the judgment any less harsh or unfair.

At an individual level, the two approaches I can see are (1) engagement, which means arguing against the opinion rather than the language, and (2) avoidance, which means just staying away from the whole nasty mess.

I'll apply (1) if I actually give a damn. Introduce nuance, suggest other perspectives, maybe very gently hint that the speaker's judgment is at least a bit unfair. If you're gentle, you can usually get them to back off at least a bit, but don't go for the vulgar language; go for the vulgar opinion behind it.

However, having been involved in internet RP for the last decade or so, I've long-since given up trying to fix communities as a whole. With immense effort, you can become a beacon of wisdom, a respected figure within the community, and still people will be horrible to one another. The only way to really avoid it is to engage in (2): to avoid it.

I like you guys, all of you, about as well as I've liked any group of roleplayers, but I don't play this game for the OOC social interaction. I don't care all that much whether you think X is a good roleplayer or Y is a drama whore. I can make those decisions for myself, and I grew sick years ago of trying to convince specific people that other specific people aren't wastes of air. Backstage OOC is substantive enough and low-drama enough to hold my interest and make me willing to actually engage, but otherwise?

For the most part, all I want is to play my role. Getting involved in the OOC drama on any real level gets in the way of that, and I always end up getting my fingers singed when I get involved. I'll mentor new players and offer the odd bit of advice, but as far as the OOC social conflicts go, I prefer to be Switzerland.

[Lyn Farel]

Are we sure semantics matter as much as actions? Particularly in the following example...

I witnessed something in an OOC channel where a player talked about their roleplayed interactions with another player, particularly in a negative light. The response of other participants in the conversation was to use the IC details to reinforce a negative image of the OOC player who was being discussed, who was incidentally absent from the channel in question. Because the character was being portrayed as misogynist and abusive, comments were made about the player, who was by extension also deemed misogynist and abusive. Scathing insults were made, making very potent remarks about the IRL personality of the player, down to forever single masturbation remarks and invoking tumblr social justice nonsense about male privilege.

In light of that outlined behaviour, discussion of terminology usage as outlined in the OP is secondary. I really don't see how defending that sort of behaviour as "natural socialization" fixes anything; by every right can that be called a "circlejerk" of the worst kind. If we want to see the term "circlejerk" stricken off the records, then these social circles should not be behaving as such in the first place.

Uhm yes, that is also something that I have witnessed, either myself about someone else's character (or someone else), and that I have been reported when it was about myself. It is not very sane. It gives the impression that players smile to the individual in question when he is here, and start to badmouth him/her at every other occasion.

However, it is not because circlejerks echo-chambers cause that kind of things that we have to use offensive terms as well, it only helps the situation to get worse, as Schere pointed out.

[Scherezad]

Hi Lyn;

At work right now so unable to reply deeply. However, thought you deserved a quick reply.

My post was actually prompted by a private mail, not by your post. Even so, I don't really like naming names when I write something like this - it isnt supposed to be an accusative post, and if it comes across as so, I apologize.

[Horatius Caul]

I'm not sure what prompted the creation of this thread, but I really don't recognize the word covering what you're talking about. Members of a community helping each other is not a circlejerk. Abusive, self-referential, self-reverential, judgmental, mocking, and exclusionary habits in a clique is what I consider to be a circlejerk.

The circlejerk is the dark side of the echo chamber, the isolated community endlessly reinforcing its own ideas. The circlejerk is the echo chamber's resistance to discordant ideas and opinions, and its treatment of people who express those discordant ideas and opinions.

The inherent nature of roleplaying communities makes them very prone to echo chamberism, because they are operating on principles of improv theatre where something doesn't exist if no-one reacts to it, and where consensus between the actors is both the foundation of a building and the building itself - standing on nothing but a cloud of fallible memory and emotion.

Roleplay communities not only exclude based on knowledge of 'lore' or 'prime fiction' ("you should read more, you're doing it wrong."), but also the knowledge of the history of the same (retcons, what's outdated, what conflicting PF trumps what), knowledge of fanon, and knowledge of in-community canon and history. And that is in addition to IC/OOC drama, factionalization, fractionalization, and an inability to integrate new actors well.

Because of all this, roleplay communities are extremely prone to descending into the darkest depths of circlejerkery.

What you're saying is basically that we shouldn't call it circlejerking because the people targeted would feel offended and thus maybe less inclined to changing their ways? It's a fair point, but trying to legislate about what terms can and cannot be used when talking about the community is just more echo chamberism.

[mod]Moderator's note for clarity : posts using the derogatory term 'circle-jerk' to refer to other players are in breach of Rule 3. This post speaks of RP communities in general and tendencies rather than actualities, which in this mod's opinion keeps it within the rules of the board. [/mod]

[Makkal]

I think 'circle jerk' can be a useful word. Very accurate and on the nose. It's intentionally vulgar; it implies that a group of people are acting in a way with little thought or merit, and who merely desire to get themselves off by agreeing with one another.

However, along with 'sheeple,' I mostly find the term used by those who can't understand why so many other people disagree with their words or actions, and so decide it's because everyone is against them. Then you get the associated persecution complex and the implication that The Group is just a bunch of big meanies, which nicely sidesteps the matter of why so many people objected to your words or actions in the first place.

Does calling it "natural socialization" instead of "circlejerk" make any functional difference?

Yes.

Language is a method of communicating complex, abstract ideas. Association and nuance are part of a words meaning.

Edit: Let me try to rephrase that.

The function of language is to communicate meaning. The function of a sentence is to communicate a specific meaning. If different words alter the meaning of a sentence, then the sentence is functionally different.

As a simple example…
Tobin is intellectual disabled.
Tobin is retarded.

The first is a neutral statement about a disorder. The second is an insult that might have nothing to do with his mental capabilities – maybe I’m saying Tobin is retarded because he thinks Batman Begins wasn’t the greatest superhero movie ever.

Of course, there’s also tone, body language, and facial expression to take into account. Those also add meaning and can change the function of a sentence. 

[Vincent Pryce]

Does calling it "natural socialization" instead of "circlejerk" make any functional difference?

Yes.

Language is a method of communicating complex, abstract ideas. Association and nuance are part of a words meaning.

Makkal is very right here.

It makes a world of difference how you word things. If I say "ya'll a bunch pretentious cunts and I hate the majority of you motherfuckers." instead of "An interesting collection of individuals I have sometimes differing opinions with." Message is the same, but how I put it into words has a very different effect on the whole, the latter far less antagonizing.

[Seriphyn]

I'm not sure what prompted the creation of this thread, but I really don't recognize the word covering what you're talking about. Members of a community helping each other is not a circlejerk. Abusive, self-referential, self-reverential, judgmental, mocking, and exclusionary habits in a clique is what I consider to be a circlejerk.

Definitely how I would define it.

The circlejerk is the dark side of the echo chamber, the isolated community endlessly reinforcing its own ideas. The circlejerk is the echo chamber's resistance to discordant ideas and opinions, and its treatment of people who express those discordant ideas and opinions.

This is so common to witness. I'm often at the other end of this, when I try to propose something against the most dominant opinion...it gets really venomous, even if I try to be as diplomatic as possible!

What you're saying is basically that we shouldn't call it circlejerking because the people targeted would feel offended and thus maybe less inclined to changing their ways? It's a fair point, but trying to legislate about what terms can and cannot be used when talking about the community is just more echo chamberism.

I think there has been a mistake made in the original post that assumes that all closed and/or compartmentalized social groups are inherently defined as or criticized to be circlejerks/echochambers. Closed and/or compartmentalized social groups that exhibit the behaviour I outlined in post #7 is, to me, a circlejerk/echochamber.

It is not very sane. It gives the impression that players smile to the individual in question when he is here, and start to badmouth him/her at every other occasion.

This was perhaps the most painful bit of what I read of the example in post #7.

[Ché Biko]

I agree that language is important, and I would sometimes like to see more signs that other people agree with that.

[..]discussion of terminology usage as outlined in the OP is secondary.

So? Eating is secondary to breathing, and I can do both.

[..] I don't play this game for the OOC social interaction. I don't care all that much whether you think X is a good roleplayer or Y is a drama whore. I can make those decisions for myself [..]Backstage OOC is substantive enough and low-drama enough to hold my interest and make me willing to actually engage, but otherwise?

For the most part, all I want is to play my role. Getting involved in the OOC drama on any real level gets in the way of that, and I always end up getting my fingers singed when I get involved. [..] as far as the OOC social conflicts go, I prefer to be Switzerland.

This. I wouldn't have joined Backstage if it didn't have the rules and moderation that it has.
I also prefer to be neutral, and I fear I might get my fingers singed when/if I write about certain matters. Ideally, I prefer my RP to be as OOC-free as possible, including opinions others might have about me, the player.
Yeah, these days make me feel a bit... uncomfortable. Uhm...what was this about again? Oh yeah...

[..]I chose to use the circle jerk term this precise, particular time instead of echo-chamber, which is a lot less derogatory. Usually, I use the latter, but it seems usually not to make my point across. Actually, I have noticed that on the internet, everything tends to be magnified to an extreme degree and prejudice where only very strong and offensive words have a real impact. Thus, most of the rest, especially polite wordings when trying to make a point, lose their meaning quite rapidly and become bland, which is a shame.

I actually feel that offensive words are pretty bad at stimulating responses from my side, I roll my eyes mentally when I see them, usually. When I see polarized comments and offensive words, I actually sometimes consider the opinion of the person not as much as I would have if it was written in a more civilized way (I guess this is not entirely objective of me, heheh), to the point of merely glossing over the post or outright ignoring it.

[Makkal]

I think most people are like that.

If your intent is to insult or upset, those are good words and terms to use. If your intent is to have a productive discussion, they aren't useful.

The problem is that many want to have a productive discussion while aiming verbal jabs at people who disagree with them. What helps one goal hurts the other.

And I am hardly immune to doing this myself.