peach eating vagus nerve cultist of the house of tool ape


Kayin
@Kayin

Alright I'm gonna say some stuff about Wizard Game or well, the response people are having to wizard game that I probably wouldn't be willing to have anywhere else, but by golly co-host seems to handle nuance so lets see how this goes.

Before I go off saying the obvous. Rowling sucks. Shit that gives her money sucks. Even if you were to separate Rowling's shitty politics and look at the game by itself, it's still a game about weirdly antisemitic caricature goblins, invoking blood libel and shit. It sucks, people should yell about it, people should guilt their friends who bought it or want to play it, don't support the nasty, nasty ass woman. I think we're probably all on the same page here?

The problem for me came when I saw someone post a little applet to check if a streamer has streamed the game or if anyone on someone's friends list had and my first response was 'oh no this sucks'.

That might seem weird, given the rest of what I wrote above but there are two aspects to this that play into each other

First is "Kay's theory on why leftist kids are awful to each other". Rowling is an unfeeling, rotten piece of dead wood. You can't hurt her feelings, as she sprawls out on her bed of riches. She is insolated from actions and benefits despite herself and BOY do we all, rightfully hate this. But the response a lot of people have frustrating issues like this is

"Well if I can't hurt this person who is hurting me, who can I hurt?"

And many of us lash out, disproportionally, against people who... are honestly doing something wrong, but not in ways aligned with their misstep. The urge is to shred them like we wish we could shred those who are truly responsible. This leads to very bad mob justice where targets are chosen not by the extent of their crimes, but by their ability to suffer. Cause yeah, you can argue that finding which big streamers are playing the game and maybe giving them hell, because they have an audience, is good, because they have influence. But when that doesn't work, when the chat goes into followers only mode and they all get banned, IF EVEN THAT, then what? Big Time Streamer doesn't seem to feel either. Guess we'll go scream at the person with 20 followers who played the game once until someone told them they shouldn't. Lets go yell at them. They might actually cry on stream.

If they don't cry, how do I know I'm helping?

We lash out at those who are vulnerable because those with power who can hurt us make us feel powerless. It's a desperate attempt to validate that we can leave an effect on the world, that our efforts aren't futile. So even if someone deserves a talking to, or even if they're being shitty about it, as a group, we can't be trusted like that. We can only be trusted with those who are beyond redemption, and those who we have at least some compassion for.

... Which goes into the second part of this. Because it's not just about "Shitty person playing the shitty wizard game might have their feelings disproportionally hurt". It's bad for YOU. It's unhealthy. It's bad to feel so powerless that you run a bot just to find people to get mad at. The people you're mad at are no more or less guilty based on how you find out, but homie, it's bad for YOU. It's unhealthy for YOU and your mental health. It's bad for you to seek out enemies to battle with your soul cast aside.

A lot of us will all gladly and proudly type ACAB, and it's true. Even a good person, with the right intentions, who even mostly does the right thing... the position, the pressure, the entitlement, the power... that will turn them into a bastard. Just a group of violent thugs who claim they're helping.

The problem is, this doesn't just apply to cops with badges. This behavior of policing other peoples media has the same effect. People justify it to themselves the same way cops do. That type of power over other people brings nasty things out of people... and granted, most of us, on this website, are older. We're probably not the ones directly doing this stuff anymore. But how we talk about these things is important, because if you look at how afraid say, teens on tiktok are about screwing up and getting chanced over anything, and the amount of policing they're trying to do to signal that they're good? The responsibility for that is on many of us who are older, who through our desire to "see change" often attacked people cruelly and set the stage for an even more paranoid and vindictive generation. Policing those who have too little influence to effect anything does nothing but erode the soul and a lot of us grew up LOVING to do that shit.

So yeah idk people should be screaming about how shitty the wizard game is and talking to their more oblivious homies about shit but please don't let shit like this slide. Don't act like this is normal or good. If you see kids posting about tools that can be used for mass harassment, tell them that's not cool. Not just for the people who may or may not deserve to get owned on the internet, but for the souls of the kids getting their hands dirty. It's like sending kids to war and expecting them not to come back with PTSD.

So yeah fuck shitty wizard game, but don't become a monster trying to fight monsters.

Edit: Let me put this here because bless me I can.

This isn't about defending people who want to play the shitty wizard game. I'm really sus of anyone who wants to play the stupid thing despite... literally everything. This isn't about protecting big streamers or w/e. The only reason this is even about Shitty Wizard Game is because it's the current thing going on right now.

This is about the self destructive cycle of paranoia that does, in fact, come back around and hurt queer people too. Like god the amount of queer kids or even adults afraid to just publicly like or post anything? Even in the replies to this post? That is a problem. This shitass game doesn't need defending. But we can't destroy each other in the process of trying to tear something down.

That shit floats down stream. It poisons the drinking water to hurt those who may not even notice.

And if you think I'm full of shit and it's worth it here? You know what, fine. I sincerely, SINCERELY get it. If there was a time to go a little overboard, maybe it's now. But remember all this when the situation ain't as clear cut. because this behavior ends up getting turned inward all the time.


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in reply to @Kayin's post:

I think I agree with your overall thesis, but there's just this one bit here

"Well if I can't hurt this person who is hurting me, who can I hurt?"

Maybe this is naïve of me, but I always assume the line of reasoning that motivates this kind of behavior is "Well if I can't directly influence this person who is hurting me, who can I directly influence?" IE: If I can't stop Rowling from being harmful, what is the most productive thing I can do to prevent the spread of her harmful ideology?

Then factor in for a failure to account for other people doing the same thing, and a generalized sense of individual powerlessness leading to an underestimation of the possibility of the target(s) suffering harm.

Obviously, the end result is pretty similar, and even the difference in motivation is kind of subtle, but I think it's maybe a tiny bit significant whether the motivation is truly "how can I best redistribute the pain I have received?" or "how can I best prevent more harm to the world from the source that harmed me?"

I don't think people directly think what I wrote. I think they think what you wrote and they really mean it but it migrates into a way to vent frustration, if that makes sense.

edit: I think the thing that makes the unfortunately toxic is hurting people is the easiest way to see you had had an influence. So even when people try, often a lot of folks give in to the thing that actually gives feedback.

The other problem, something I was kinda gesturing at, that's directly relevant here is that "influence" turns into "violence" at scale. Like there's nothing wrong with saying "hey this sucks" but when there's 100k people doing it and you can't get away from it, the exact same behavior has turned from "trying to reasonably influence" to "really aggressive harassment"

Oh absolutely. Though another part of the problem is it's very rarely 100k people saying 'this sucks'. You get sorta an escalation. Like people on tumblr getting rolled over cause they had some minor fuck up, and eventually people just get nastier and nastier. Cause some people wanna say their piece, but some people want to be heard and will do whatever they can to be heard.

And granted the nastiest of those people are just complete vultures that no one would tolerate under normal circumstances, but adding to the mob sadly enables them -__-

but yeah basically this all sucks. Mob justice is the only tool we have and it's one of the most unwieldy weapons in existence.

Like god the amount of queer kids or even adults afraid to just publicly like or post anything? Even in the replies to this post? That is a problem.

Sadly, I feel so seen here.
I'm only comfortable commenting here because this is cohost