Trolling With The Boys
Remember how I was going to only have the obligatory sexism post? Well! I lied. So a few days after the first incident on Old School Gamers, I dared to click the little icon on my Facebook page just to, you know, see if there were any interesting posts (like about teaching your kids to game, or systems used for Aztec settings, or the gods as tangible), which there were (obviously), but there was also a picture.
Of a naked woman.
Wearing a chain.
Just a chain.
It naturally got messy pretty quickly. I'm happy to report I didn't really get much involved because, well, there's a dead horse, and I had a big stick, and decided I'd save my muscle strength for another horse on another day. But that didn't stop the multitudes from crying out sexism! and the multitudes from crying out "tastefully placed chain art!" and the mods from shaking their heads. Of course, this meant my name was brought up. And I was sent messages, both of support and of "you're a bitch" types that made me roll my eyes.
There was a long discussion on inclusivity in gaming communities, that actually went pretty well after the three hours of trolling was over. Let me show you some of the most amazing comments ever:
" Thats a women for you -now I see why men try to exclude them..."
While commenting on drow and people wanting to play them, I said I've never had this problem in game, another says: "Wait a second Kate. Go look at 90% of the female drow pics on the web before commenting more. You might want to get this column shutdown too with your feminist complaints."
"My two favorite characters I played were women because I wanted to play the underdog. They grew quite powerful."
" Shelley -why am I rude? Because I am trying to stand up for the rights of people in this group to post a pic that only offended 2 people out of 40 -and they were women complaining about women being portrait badly? I think that most do that to themselves..."
"All this over 2 fat feminists who got butthurt over a hot piece of tail"
"Take any page. Let 100 Amish join and watch the complaints of feeling 'uncomfortable' fly. Does that make it right to change the page or remove posts because they simply cant just scroll past this? If a pic that obviously isnt nudity or posted to offend does so - why cant they scroll past it? These threads all started spammy when 2 females decided pics that arent nude even somehow were offensive "attempts at getting women out of gaming"? OMG"
There are more. But these were some of the less swear filled ones I thought were worth saving. It's been several months since this happened and I still get pissed when I remember how all of it went down. The type of stuff I posted above didn't land people in trouble, much. What happened was a long conversation with one of the mods about how I shouldn't be posting things on my Facebook that are going on in OSG. Yes. I got in trouble. When I asked why the people who were being sexist weren't being removed from the group, I got a "they're being dealt with." The mod, in his infinite wisdom, told me I was in trouble for adding fuel to the fire. I was in trouble for directly quoting people who were being abusive. The mod agreed with the man who had female characters as under dogs. That the mods couldn't respond to the actions being done because they were busy. And all this mod could do was talk to the mod who should have been handling it.
This all happened at the conclusion of the girl in lingerie with the giant d20. The chain girl came up, and went down pretty quickly, and a day of yelling and anger went on. I called out a few gaming community friends on being part of the group, including the infamous Malcolm Sheppard, who saw what I was saying and left the group after calling on them on their shit. It was a small victory, to say the least.
Given this was the third time this was happening in a short period of time (as shortly after the chain girl got taken down, some hand drawn succubus porn went up), I put in a complaint to FB after reporting it to the mods and reported the group for hate speech, given the kinda nonsense that was going on. Hours of trolling with no moderator interference when there are 12 mods is a little ridiculous. One great discussion came out of the whole mess. And feeling a little better about the world, because of the one great discussion, and from all the private messages from people who were supporting me, I went to sleep.
I awoke to find myself banned from the group and the group made private. I wasn't sent any messages other than 'Why did you report us?' by the mod I had spoken to earlier who then blocked me so I couldn't reply to his question. So I posted this on my Facebook. Awhile later, a female mod from the group posted about six huge paragraphs of an update on what was happening in OSG, not why I was banned, or any response other than doing basic PR work to make the group look better than it had been.
The End.
I still haven't figured out the moral of this story.
Of a naked woman.
Wearing a chain.
Just a chain.
It naturally got messy pretty quickly. I'm happy to report I didn't really get much involved because, well, there's a dead horse, and I had a big stick, and decided I'd save my muscle strength for another horse on another day. But that didn't stop the multitudes from crying out sexism! and the multitudes from crying out "tastefully placed chain art!" and the mods from shaking their heads. Of course, this meant my name was brought up. And I was sent messages, both of support and of "you're a bitch" types that made me roll my eyes.
There was a long discussion on inclusivity in gaming communities, that actually went pretty well after the three hours of trolling was over. Let me show you some of the most amazing comments ever:
" Thats a women for you -now I see why men try to exclude them..."
While commenting on drow and people wanting to play them, I said I've never had this problem in game, another says: "Wait a second Kate. Go look at 90% of the female drow pics on the web before commenting more. You might want to get this column shutdown too with your feminist complaints."
"My two favorite characters I played were women because I wanted to play the underdog. They grew quite powerful."
" Shelley -why am I rude? Because I am trying to stand up for the rights of people in this group to post a pic that only offended 2 people out of 40 -and they were women complaining about women being portrait badly? I think that most do that to themselves..."
"All this over 2 fat feminists who got butthurt over a hot piece of tail"
"Take any page. Let 100 Amish join and watch the complaints of feeling 'uncomfortable' fly. Does that make it right to change the page or remove posts because they simply cant just scroll past this? If a pic that obviously isnt nudity or posted to offend does so - why cant they scroll past it? These threads all started spammy when 2 females decided pics that arent nude even somehow were offensive "attempts at getting women out of gaming"? OMG"
There are more. But these were some of the less swear filled ones I thought were worth saving. It's been several months since this happened and I still get pissed when I remember how all of it went down. The type of stuff I posted above didn't land people in trouble, much. What happened was a long conversation with one of the mods about how I shouldn't be posting things on my Facebook that are going on in OSG. Yes. I got in trouble. When I asked why the people who were being sexist weren't being removed from the group, I got a "they're being dealt with." The mod, in his infinite wisdom, told me I was in trouble for adding fuel to the fire. I was in trouble for directly quoting people who were being abusive. The mod agreed with the man who had female characters as under dogs. That the mods couldn't respond to the actions being done because they were busy. And all this mod could do was talk to the mod who should have been handling it.
This all happened at the conclusion of the girl in lingerie with the giant d20. The chain girl came up, and went down pretty quickly, and a day of yelling and anger went on. I called out a few gaming community friends on being part of the group, including the infamous Malcolm Sheppard, who saw what I was saying and left the group after calling on them on their shit. It was a small victory, to say the least.
Given this was the third time this was happening in a short period of time (as shortly after the chain girl got taken down, some hand drawn succubus porn went up), I put in a complaint to FB after reporting it to the mods and reported the group for hate speech, given the kinda nonsense that was going on. Hours of trolling with no moderator interference when there are 12 mods is a little ridiculous. One great discussion came out of the whole mess. And feeling a little better about the world, because of the one great discussion, and from all the private messages from people who were supporting me, I went to sleep.
I awoke to find myself banned from the group and the group made private. I wasn't sent any messages other than 'Why did you report us?' by the mod I had spoken to earlier who then blocked me so I couldn't reply to his question. So I posted this on my Facebook. Awhile later, a female mod from the group posted about six huge paragraphs of an update on what was happening in OSG, not why I was banned, or any response other than doing basic PR work to make the group look better than it had been.
The End.
I still haven't figured out the moral of this story.