The point I was trying to make with that murder example is that it doesn’t matter if the silent majority is against a given change. If they don’t speak up or act against it, they are essentially no different to the people pushing for it, because they do not put up any kind of opposition.
To demonstrate it with a famous quote
First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.
I’m not sure if the point is as easily extractable for you as it is for me. I’m thinking largely in an abstract manner.
You are not responsible for the acts of others.
Only your own. Legality may sometimes complicate this, but this is the real objective truth underlying all action, nonetheless.
When I spoke of a silent majority, I meant that even though you cannot detect their participation, it sill matters, defacto, if by nothing else than exemption.
Just as when you observe a piece of art, it is not just the art itself, but the space which it does not fill, that defines it.
Do not mistake the vocal, for the plurality.
This is rarely the case.
It is not necessary to express an opinion or view, inorder to have one.
Not, it isn’t. But what good is your opinion if you don’t defend it when required?
What good is it when someone wants for privacy, but doesn’t defend it?
Or when someone sees mass propaganda for what it is, but doesn’t point it out as such for the more-easily-influenced to notice it as well?
Having an opinion on something is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is what you do with that opinion. How you use it.
To do nothing is to be nothing.
― Nathaniel Hawthorne
Toxic was around 2010-2011, when the spy game was at its height, and where you were nobody scrub until you made a killboard worth something or had a vouch.
Now everyone is buddy buddy, anyone’s grandma can login and join one of these meaningless walmart corps, and players literally offer each other psychological counselling. What toxic? WoW endgame is unironically more hardcore now.
Eve is just a game.
Imagine if people had these same sort of reactions when playing chess?
If someone captures your pawn, you don’t assume they are a horrible person irl. Someone takes your rook or your bishop, you don’t scream obscenities at them. Someone takes your queen, you don’t rage and threaten to kill their families. If you did any of the above, people would assume you are psycho.
Eve is the same way, only you have ships instead of chess pieces. And unlike a game like chess where once a piece is gone it’s gone forever. In eve you can always build or buy more ships. Also unlike chess, the only person who can checkmate you is yourself when you quit.
Even if every one of your ships is gone and every isk spent. You can always get yourself a rookie ship and rebuild.
The only toxic people are the ones who freak out over loosing a ship. And the only people who can ever beat you in the game is yourself.
Believe me, todays Eve is rainbows and lollipops compared to 8 yrs ago when I started. CCP went way soft on harassment… selectively of course. But what is encouraging suicide compared to a vague, non-direct reference to hands?
That’s if you believe the people that believe I am, which you should or shouldn’t, because they may or may not be toxic themselves, which they can’t really see due to the toxic clouds that may or may not be emanating from their brain cells, cells which could or couldn’t be fried due to something they might or might not be consuming.
So, tl;dr, I might or might not be toxic…
But please make sure you made it past the book’s cover before assuming that
Having watched and participated in a few B4R I have to dispute your claim as nonsense. If a player is seriously butthurt because he was imprudent and foolish…that is, IMO, on him. EVE is a harsh and unforgiving game and if you are imprudent or foolish, there is no end of players who will take advantage of it.
But to say that the entire community are toxic jerks waiting to rub salt in real life wounds…nope, not gonna buy it.
I think this has to do with most toxic MMO players considering ingame stuff like ganking or ‘PK’ as toxic and then feel completely justified to overreact in a very abusive way.
So when they say the community is ‘toxic’, they actually mean they have a problem with the open PvP nature of the game, as well as with elements like scams and betrail.
I think this is one of the best succinct explanations to this situation.
If you think ‘PKing’ is a toxic thing to do, then of course you are going to find Eve a “toxic” place as the game was literally built from the ground up:
“Eve is very dark,” confirms creative director Torfi Frans Ólafsson. “It’s harsh. It is supposed to be unforgiving. The original designers played a lot of Ultima Online, which was a fantastic sandbox game, and it allowed you to be very devious and very immoral in the way that you played. What they loved about it is that player killers, the griefers – people who just went around and killed other people – became so unpopular that other people banded together. Good started fighting evil, and without true evil you can’t have true good. So you had these bands of righteous people chasing player killers, and those player killers were the original Eve designers; they created a game about that mechanic.”
If you are incapable of separating your own persona from the space demigod you control and bring yourself into New Eden, of course you are going to find it ‘toxic’ that the other players are hurting your imaginary character or spaceship. Yet, that is the core concept of the game, so sooner or later, no matter how much pandering CCP does to entice new players, the core plank of the game is going to slap a player in the face a virtual loss is going to happen to them eventually. Many didn’t expect that, or fully understand what type of game Eve is and start to shout “toxic” and other silly things when they can’t understand why they didn’t just win or get to try again like most other games.
Is the community actually more toxic than other games though? I don’t have enough information, but it seems the harsh nature of the game has led to the community and the developers being especially careful and inclusive to avoid any hint of toxicity and things swing the other way. There are many, many initiatives to help, council, train and assimilate new players, and keep veteran players healthy and engaged in the game. Aside from a few rare edge cases where players take the imaginary conflict in New Eden outside into the real-world with harassment or doxxing or whatever, the only real toxicity I regularly see is poor sportsmanship from players either beaten or tricked in-game who resort to ugly threats or vile personal insults (See: GigX or almost any minerbumping.com post). Whether these outbursts are out of emotion or a misalignment of expectations of the game with reality, they have no place in our game and I think are outright rejected, or at least acknowledged as wrong by the vast majority of the community.
I don’t think it inappropriate to tell someone who can’t handle or won’t accept that shooting (and tricking) other players is expected and intended game play that they are playing the wrong game. Whether they lack the mental ability to engage with such a harsh game without bringing themselves into it, or just can’t for whatever moral or other reasons accept the premise of such a game, they would be better off spending their leisure time doing something else.
We’re running in circles here. the problem is already known and understood. it’s time to figure out how to appropriately deal with it, at best with something that’s in place before the next expansion hits.
Yeah, let’s solve toxic internet trolls and entitlement before the next expansion hits. Let me check the the calender… ok… we have exactly two weeks left, let’s do this.
@yellow_parasol , I suggest you create a new new thread and start with the brainstorming, we have a tight schedule on our hands here.
