Today, after witnessing yet another act of bigotry and denialism, I've decided to leave the forums.
The last straw, as you might know, was one poster claiming that the genocide of slavic peoples by Hitler during WW2 was not racist and has just defined it (and I quote) as "two different ethnicities of the same "race" going at it."
It is not the first instance of bigotry and denialism in ResetERA and it won't be the last.
The first time I realized the undercurrent of hate in the forums was when a poster claimed that Asian-Americans were "invaders", who were "infesting" their neighbourhoods and who "should be driven out of their homes" with violence. Several well-known posters agreed with these claims. I reported it, thinking the mods would deal with it promptly. But they didn't. Looking back at it now, the poster making these claims got a very late 24 hour ban. That's it. 24 hours.
This surprised me. After all, ResetERA prided itself in being an inclusive community and while it had its flaws, I did not expect such open racism to take place. And then I started to notice the ugly undercurrent of anti-Asian sentiment of the board. It's not generally open, it's kind of hidden, kind of jokey, often wrapped in terms of social justice. But it's undeniable. You see people jumping in, categorizing asian-americans as outsiders or as racist collaborators. And I see what I presume are Asian posters see these kind of posts, realize that moderators won't do anything and leave.
ResetERA also has a serious problem with Soviet Denialism. I've never, ever, in my whole life seen people deny Stalin crimes or call them "Western propaganda" until I came to this forum. Yet, when that guy, Torres, did so, he didn't get a ban. He kept making posts about it, downplaying victim numbers, denying the Holodomor and all with a few posters agreeing.
After several pages, Torres finally was banned But it was a temporal ban, and Torres was back with his denialist garbage after a couple weeks.
It's actually fairly common to deny the Holodomor or otherwise downplay the long history of racism and brutalization towards Eastern European in this forum. Every thread on Brexit will see people talk about how it's xenophobia, not racism and that Poles aren't actually treated poorly in Britain. Like the bigotry towards Asians, it's not generally open, but coached in this fake social justice rethoric to justify their place.
This co-opting of the language of social justice to justify hate and harrassment is incredibly common in these forums. We have had threads with people advocating doxxing, the outing of gay people, for online harrassment and public shamings because, hey, this time the target deserves it. I remember that thread in which people piled on a poor kid, no less than 10 years old, IIRC, who had been bullied in school. People kept posting weird articles and explaining how much he deserved to be bullied and hated and have his name plastered everywhere because, you see, his parents might have been Trump supporters.
You can actually see this in many threads. This forum, as a whole, condones and promotes online harrassment, hate and doxxing as long as people feel the victim "deserves" it. If you want to abuse people, this forum will support you, as long as you can explain why the victim deserves to be abused.
In other words, this forum has the exact same issue NeoGAF had: You can be abusive, rude, insulting and promote all sorts of awful behaviour as long as you can find a way to justify them.
To add to that, there's a the old issues with sexism that still permeate the forum. The thread on why it is acceptable to call women "bitches" and other misogynistic slurs is the clearest example. Seriously, why would women want to be part of a forum that has a 26-page thread full of people arguing that "bitch isn't a gendered slur" or other nonsense. And it pops up over and over again, in a myriad of ways.
And you know what, I shouldn't be surprised. This is a forum in which mods had to clamp down on child rape threads, because everytime a teacher had sex with a small boy, the thread filled up with comments about how lucky he was, and posting gifs about how "nice" the teacher was and how they would have loved to have sex with her as kids.
--
Ultimately, I have realized one thing. I don't want to be part of forum where this stuff is commonplace. I don't want to belong to a forum in which mods don't think anyone denying a genocide should be banned on the spot. I don't tolerate the racism of RPG Codex, why should I tolerate the racism of ResetERA? Because it's less in the open?
So yeah, I'm sorry, but this is it for me.
The last straw, as you might know, was one poster claiming that the genocide of slavic peoples by Hitler during WW2 was not racist and has just defined it (and I quote) as "two different ethnicities of the same "race" going at it."
It is not the first instance of bigotry and denialism in ResetERA and it won't be the last.
The first time I realized the undercurrent of hate in the forums was when a poster claimed that Asian-Americans were "invaders", who were "infesting" their neighbourhoods and who "should be driven out of their homes" with violence. Several well-known posters agreed with these claims. I reported it, thinking the mods would deal with it promptly. But they didn't. Looking back at it now, the poster making these claims got a very late 24 hour ban. That's it. 24 hours.
This surprised me. After all, ResetERA prided itself in being an inclusive community and while it had its flaws, I did not expect such open racism to take place. And then I started to notice the ugly undercurrent of anti-Asian sentiment of the board. It's not generally open, it's kind of hidden, kind of jokey, often wrapped in terms of social justice. But it's undeniable. You see people jumping in, categorizing asian-americans as outsiders or as racist collaborators. And I see what I presume are Asian posters see these kind of posts, realize that moderators won't do anything and leave.
ResetERA also has a serious problem with Soviet Denialism. I've never, ever, in my whole life seen people deny Stalin crimes or call them "Western propaganda" until I came to this forum. Yet, when that guy, Torres, did so, he didn't get a ban. He kept making posts about it, downplaying victim numbers, denying the Holodomor and all with a few posters agreeing.
After several pages, Torres finally was banned But it was a temporal ban, and Torres was back with his denialist garbage after a couple weeks.
It's actually fairly common to deny the Holodomor or otherwise downplay the long history of racism and brutalization towards Eastern European in this forum. Every thread on Brexit will see people talk about how it's xenophobia, not racism and that Poles aren't actually treated poorly in Britain. Like the bigotry towards Asians, it's not generally open, but coached in this fake social justice rethoric to justify their place.
This co-opting of the language of social justice to justify hate and harrassment is incredibly common in these forums. We have had threads with people advocating doxxing, the outing of gay people, for online harrassment and public shamings because, hey, this time the target deserves it. I remember that thread in which people piled on a poor kid, no less than 10 years old, IIRC, who had been bullied in school. People kept posting weird articles and explaining how much he deserved to be bullied and hated and have his name plastered everywhere because, you see, his parents might have been Trump supporters.
You can actually see this in many threads. This forum, as a whole, condones and promotes online harrassment, hate and doxxing as long as people feel the victim "deserves" it. If you want to abuse people, this forum will support you, as long as you can explain why the victim deserves to be abused.
In other words, this forum has the exact same issue NeoGAF had: You can be abusive, rude, insulting and promote all sorts of awful behaviour as long as you can find a way to justify them.
To add to that, there's a the old issues with sexism that still permeate the forum. The thread on why it is acceptable to call women "bitches" and other misogynistic slurs is the clearest example. Seriously, why would women want to be part of a forum that has a 26-page thread full of people arguing that "bitch isn't a gendered slur" or other nonsense. And it pops up over and over again, in a myriad of ways.
And you know what, I shouldn't be surprised. This is a forum in which mods had to clamp down on child rape threads, because everytime a teacher had sex with a small boy, the thread filled up with comments about how lucky he was, and posting gifs about how "nice" the teacher was and how they would have loved to have sex with her as kids.
--
Ultimately, I have realized one thing. I don't want to be part of forum where this stuff is commonplace. I don't want to belong to a forum in which mods don't think anyone denying a genocide should be banned on the spot. I don't tolerate the racism of RPG Codex, why should I tolerate the racism of ResetERA? Because it's less in the open?
So yeah, I'm sorry, but this is it for me.
