Sometimes you've just got to accept that we're all still primates and that conspiring with each other through collective bitching with your own clique is how you ensure other monkeys get pushed out of the tree and you can eat all their stuff.
See this goes to the heart of the questions I'm asking you and others who hold this opinion. Why have I just got to accept it? Why do you expect that others will blandly oblige that excuse?
I can't speak authoritatively for anyone else but it's been a fair while since anyone in my family spent all day in trees picking the fleas off each other's backs, avoiding the dangers of larger predators and flinging our excrement at each other for shits and giggles (pun entirely intended). I realise I'm perhaps taking your attempt at pithy metaphor a shade too literally but as I said before I think it's a cop out, an easy way to either shirk responsibility for our own behaviour or ignore it in others with whom we have some form of loyalty to or outright friendship with.
With reference to RP communities in particular what do we get by accepting a system where cliques try to push others "out of the tree"? To me all that seems to accomplish is a smaller group to RP with and subsequent lack of diversity in our RP options. If our only goal is to "eat all (the) stuff" it should be realised that RP is a difficult dish to consume alone.
Add: Yes, I assume most people bitch and hate about myself and my characters in their own cliques, because it just make things so much simpler when being an antagonist.
That's the attitude I adopt in most situations also and not just online.
But here's the thing - have you ever been in the situation Seriphyn alluded to with the quotes in the first post of his first thread where a new player whom he'd never interacted with (on any level) essentially told him they didn't like him and thought he should quit? What was the basis for that? The "lots" they'd heard from "others".
If that was an isolated thing well ... meh. But it's apparently not something that's occurred as a singular incident for Seriphyn. One of the possibilities that suggests is a systematic campaign to poison the opinions of players against Seriphyn independent of any interactions they've had with him as a player or as his character.
And let's face it - it's not like Seriphyn's alone in this type of situation either. Most of us have seen others treated in a similar fashion through the years.
What Seriphyn's player is asking is simple: are we comfortable as a community with that kind of behaviour going on against anyone who wants to involve themselves in RP in this game? The follow-on to that question (which Seriphyn doesn't ask) is that if we're uncomfortable with a random anyone being treated like that what makes it acceptable to use against specific individuals?
Speaking personally, if it exists I'm not comfortable with it. I don't accept it as a facet of human nature that - if we're genuine about supporting a healthy RP community - we can't try to excise from our OOC interactions with others. At the very least it would be easy enough to remember a simple childhood lesson that if we can't say anything good about someone when we're asked maybe it's best to say nothing.
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Topic: Second attempt - Players and community. (Read 19415 times)