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Player behavoir in contex

Troxic·1/12/2018, 9:37:48 PM·2 votes·751 views

I guess I need to thoroughly explain my position since most you respond with knee jerk reactions.

What is appropriate, or what is considered not appropriate, rude or bad manners is entirely based on the situation you are in. If you are an infantry grunt, its entirely appropriate and acceptable to make very off color jokes with your buddies. But you wouldn't make those same jokes at the family dinner table. If you did, you would be guilty only of bad manners and being thoughtless, but trying to equate it to breaking a moral law would be ridiculous.

So when it comes to online behavoir, its not a question of right or wrong, its a question of the situation. The fact that Riot had to implement something to change how people talk and behave online means that a lot of people feel its okay to talk differently online than in real life. In fact, I would argue that the natural inclination of most people is to type what they want to in the words they want to.

I think its logically wrong to try to declare that just because you wouldn't talk to this or that person in real life in such in such situation you shouldn't do it online is absurd, and completely ignores what drives how people behave--the situation.

This why I think is absurd to try to change how people feel they should be able to act online. It would be like a company commander trying to tell the grunts that they shouldn't make vile sexist racist jokes while in the field doing some shit training. That just won't work.

Because of the situation I described, telling someone fuck you, eat a dick or a sergeant telling you to pull your head out of your ass, doesn't carry the same weight, or offensiveness as it would if, say, your boss told you the same thing. And neither does it carry the same weight online, and therefore, its ludicrous to try to apply the same social standard as (which? Which real life situation are you drawing the standard from?) online.

This is why I find this hardline approach to whats acceptable to type in chat outrageous and ineffective. Never mind that it completely ignores the root cause of why this game brings out "toxic" behavoir in so many people.

All of you always jump on me for declaring that people should be able type what they want in the chat. And you are so conditioned to believe I am wrong, I would urge you to re-read this post, take a step back, and try to understand what I am saying.

32 Comments

Chermorg1/12/2018, 9:41:07 PM9 votes

Because of the situation I described, telling someone fuck you, eat a dick or a sergeant telling you to pull your head out of your ass, doesn't carry the same weight, or offensiveness as it would if, say, your boss told you the same thing.

I think most people disagree with you here. Simply hiding behind the veil of anonymity on the internet does not change the effect and meaning of words. While it may not have the same effect (as players can instantly mute you on League, while they can't so easily do so in real life), it has the same meaning, and offensiveness.

You assume that people downvote and comment because they are having a knee-jerk reaction that you're wrong. Instead, I'd like you to consider the fact that maybe this many people disagree with your opinions - it's not a knee-jerk reaction it's just that however you word it your opinions are generally the same and the reaction is the same because people still disagree with your opinions, no matter what way you try to word them.

TrulyBland1/13/2018, 10:48:31 PM3 votes

I like how you start out explaining why in certain contexts others might not agree with the way you say things, and then elegantly switch to explain how online people themselves want to use whichever words they like.

Let's also not forget that the argument here is essentially "as long as enough people do it, it's obviously okay". Everything you say could, some time ago, have been used to defend beating one's wife.

Here's the bottom line: You keep saying how saying these things online is different somehow... but you never explain why that's supposedly the case. Just because you say it doesn't make it so.

Hell, it doesn't even make sense to talk about context here. "Online behaviour" isn't a context. It's a medium of communication. Whether you insult your boss in person, via e-mail, letter or telegram probably won't matter much to your boss. And whether you insult a complete stranger in person, via LoL's chat or via smoke Signals, that still makes you a dick.

Jo0o1/12/2018, 10:23:22 PM2 votes

What's missing from your argument is that online communication is anonymous. This skews the conversation towards toxicity and general douchebaggery. In practice, League is governed by comparable rules of conduct to a professional office or a school classroom, except with a higher frequency of offenders due to that anonymity.

I don't think your military comparison has any merit. This isn't war, this is a video game. It's very reasonable to expect you to treat your fellow players with respect.

HalcyonDweller1/12/2018, 9:54:56 PM1 votes

I see what you mean, that there are certain standards of behavior normally when interacting with other people in other contexts. Certainly in some places where it is part of the culture, using such demeaning language is considered acceptable. But I think that it comes down to how anonymity and the briefness of interactivity in league affects peoples' perspectives on one another.

It is dehumanizing to solely view others as players in your game. And that by itself isn't bad, but it contributes to a problem. The less you view other people as an equal (the less you see them as actual people), the easier it is to take what they do personally, and the easier it is to justify blaming and insulting them for it. People do this in real life too, but because we can see their face or because we have to work with them for the rest of our foreseeable future, it is dampened somewhat.

With anonymity on the internet there is no dampener. People view one another in such short snippets that our habit of snap-judging others leads to worse dehumanization; "they are just a feeder," or, "they must be just a troll." When we justify our reactions to them with this, we enable ourselves to say anything bad we want to them and it's justified in our own view.

And we could be completely right in thinking those things, but right or wrong it does not matter. Because expressing such opinions to teammates almost always leads to teamwork breaking down and creates a negative experience for everyone, including the person expressing those opinions. Riot wants people to have fun playing the game, and most people who play the game do so because they also want to have fun. As such, it is policy to punish people who exhibit harassing behavior, not just because they don't like it or because it is wrong, but actually because it hinders the fun of the game and getting rid of it or preventing it makes the game more fun.