It's taken me a few days to write this post due to trying to figure out how to word it correctly so not to create the thing I'm trying to discuss or singling out anyone as bad of the cause.
Over the past two years, I've been feeling that's it has been harder and harder to discuss things calmly in gaming for a manner of reasons and have been feeling this the most in the past few months. This has been for a manner of reasons that I will discuss but I would like ask people first if their is anyway to be well, be more nicer to each other and more respectful of people's opinions.
The first has been a great influx of dog-piling on even the most minor of mistakes or just uneeded and aggression and snark. The thing that inspired me to write was a thread recently on ERA where someone was asking what had to the game Ghost of Tsushima. The resulting thread was full of people rather nasty and mean spirited to the user who didn't really do anything wrong, even if you thought the question was silly, that was something that could have been sorted in like a sentence, not dog-piling on someone in mass and acting like jerks. It legit made me uncomfortable seeing so many regular users drive by posting and being needless arses, but it's not a problem not limited to ResetEra as I see this same thing all over the place, it feels like mob mentality is so easy to happen in the gaming community and it's something as a community we need to learn to control.
Secondly and this is the point I was worried about, honestly I'm sick of any criticism, upset or anger towards any issue being treated as no better than harassment or endorsing abuse and harassment. Too many times have I seen this, too many times have I seen someone upset about something being told to shut up because to them, criticism or "Outrage" = Harassment or if one arsehole thinks death threats is a good idea to do, that means anyone with similar criticism MUST think death threats are good which is nonsense, especially when we're talking about games. The fact that I see this most often when social issues are brought up, most infamously for when trans people had concern about the portrayal of trans issue in Cyberpunk 2077 and they were aggressively being told to shut up using this rhetoric really makes it feel disingenuous to me. Too many times have I seen that argument being used just to shut up criticism they don't like, care about or don't want to here about, it's a tool being used to guilt people rather than actual concern most of the time and it really gets under my skin when I see journalists do the same thing, I decided to take a break from Kotaku when they posted an article doing something similar. I don't like it when people do that, especially when I agree with the point of view because it doesn't solve anything, dilutes to real serious discussion of abuse and threats in the game industry and feels quite frankly in poor taste to use someone else's suffering for your own benefit.
Thirdly, it feels like every discussion becomes less a place to actually discuss stuff, but to win, whether it's to push out anyone who disagrees (because they feel their opinion is the only objective one), to feel smug and gloat about whatever or to just have yelling matches. I hide all Pokemon threads now because I got so sick of it of it being nothing but that plus a lot of point 2 from everyone involved, whether it's about the lack of the national Pokedex, what gen was the best, what encounter mechanics was best, whether you liked Let's Go or not, just EVERYTHING was a point of contention and could get you potentially dog-piled which I feel journalists were not helping as it felt many publications were feeding into it. As someone who suffers from depression and bad anxiety, I've been avoiding anything Pokemon because of how much it was affecting me and to be clear, this is not just ERA I'm talking about, anywhere Pokemon I went to was like this. And to be also be clear, this is not just a Pokemon issue, their was a really good thread a while back about how toxic and aggressive discussions of the Epic Game Store were.
And on a side note and this is about ERA, can people please just not post threads designed to be be "Gotcha" threads, made to be smug take thats to people the OP disagrees with or an excuse to put down others, especially when they seemingly come out of nowhere. These threads do not create good discussion at all and will most obviously get locked down so why bother?
Again, I really hope I haven't caused the same anger and type of discussion with this post.
Over the past two years, I've been feeling that's it has been harder and harder to discuss things calmly in gaming for a manner of reasons and have been feeling this the most in the past few months. This has been for a manner of reasons that I will discuss but I would like ask people first if their is anyway to be well, be more nicer to each other and more respectful of people's opinions.
The first has been a great influx of dog-piling on even the most minor of mistakes or just uneeded and aggression and snark. The thing that inspired me to write was a thread recently on ERA where someone was asking what had to the game Ghost of Tsushima. The resulting thread was full of people rather nasty and mean spirited to the user who didn't really do anything wrong, even if you thought the question was silly, that was something that could have been sorted in like a sentence, not dog-piling on someone in mass and acting like jerks. It legit made me uncomfortable seeing so many regular users drive by posting and being needless arses, but it's not a problem not limited to ResetEra as I see this same thing all over the place, it feels like mob mentality is so easy to happen in the gaming community and it's something as a community we need to learn to control.
Secondly and this is the point I was worried about, honestly I'm sick of any criticism, upset or anger towards any issue being treated as no better than harassment or endorsing abuse and harassment. Too many times have I seen this, too many times have I seen someone upset about something being told to shut up because to them, criticism or "Outrage" = Harassment or if one arsehole thinks death threats is a good idea to do, that means anyone with similar criticism MUST think death threats are good which is nonsense, especially when we're talking about games. The fact that I see this most often when social issues are brought up, most infamously for when trans people had concern about the portrayal of trans issue in Cyberpunk 2077 and they were aggressively being told to shut up using this rhetoric really makes it feel disingenuous to me. Too many times have I seen that argument being used just to shut up criticism they don't like, care about or don't want to here about, it's a tool being used to guilt people rather than actual concern most of the time and it really gets under my skin when I see journalists do the same thing, I decided to take a break from Kotaku when they posted an article doing something similar. I don't like it when people do that, especially when I agree with the point of view because it doesn't solve anything, dilutes to real serious discussion of abuse and threats in the game industry and feels quite frankly in poor taste to use someone else's suffering for your own benefit.
Thirdly, it feels like every discussion becomes less a place to actually discuss stuff, but to win, whether it's to push out anyone who disagrees (because they feel their opinion is the only objective one), to feel smug and gloat about whatever or to just have yelling matches. I hide all Pokemon threads now because I got so sick of it of it being nothing but that plus a lot of point 2 from everyone involved, whether it's about the lack of the national Pokedex, what gen was the best, what encounter mechanics was best, whether you liked Let's Go or not, just EVERYTHING was a point of contention and could get you potentially dog-piled which I feel journalists were not helping as it felt many publications were feeding into it. As someone who suffers from depression and bad anxiety, I've been avoiding anything Pokemon because of how much it was affecting me and to be clear, this is not just ERA I'm talking about, anywhere Pokemon I went to was like this. And to be also be clear, this is not just a Pokemon issue, their was a really good thread a while back about how toxic and aggressive discussions of the Epic Game Store were.
And on a side note and this is about ERA, can people please just not post threads designed to be be "Gotcha" threads, made to be smug take thats to people the OP disagrees with or an excuse to put down others, especially when they seemingly come out of nowhere. These threads do not create good discussion at all and will most obviously get locked down so why bother?
Again, I really hope I haven't caused the same anger and type of discussion with this post.
