Yes, your eyes have not deceived you. I wrote a blogpost last night, and then deleted it this morning, after the person who was the target of a truly disgusting, sustained campaign of bullying, both on the Sansar Discord and in Sansar, asked me not to be quoted. As I result, I have deleted that blogpost this morning.
Let me tell you something about myself.
If you attack me, I will get angry, even lose my temper (exhibit A, exhibit B).
But if you attack someone I consider a friend, I WILL RAIN DOWN HOLY HELL UPON YOU. And that’s exactly how I felt when I wrote that blogpost last night. I was furious.
Bullying and harassment are COMPLETELY UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOURS in any social VR platform or virtual world. I now know details of both sides of the drama (the bully and several people he has harassed, on his own and using alt accounts), and I was quite prepared to leave up an account (with anonymized transcripts) to show exactly what happened, and why I helped start a flamewar on the Sansar Discord last night.
Yes, I attacked the bully, mere hours after I wrote a lengthy, eloquent blogpost about interjecting “manners, civility, and etiquette” into the Sansar community. I am a vigilante and a hypocrite, and I am a part of the very problem I called out in that blogpost.
I’m sorry.
Wow, even in a such minute community like Sansar. The anger and arrogance online seems worsening more and more. Friends and acquaintances in Second Life too are noticing that, as well as receiving aggressive messages all at sudden from complete strangers who don’t hesitate to attack, harass, bully you for whatever you wear, do, think, are.
The problem you say isn’t new on the Net, but it’s worse and worse and not just on the Net…
People are growing angrier and angrier, ready to point fingers and to bite, listening less and less, often polarized as team A vs team B, and deaf to any logic and science too.
Politicians fueling and riding the anger don’t help (not just in the US) and the social networks are exacerbating the situation.
I’m not sure what we can do, but the trend is worrisome. At least we should be aware of that. And yes, we are humans and we fail and then we fail again in any another way. But at least we can be aware and try to do our best, in a way or another.
I don’t mean that anything one does is ok and justifiable. On the contrary there are mistakes and one should be aware of them in order to fix them, rather to deny the reality or to ignore the feedbacks. I don’t mean either that then one is free to go full arrogant and assault who does a mistake (or what you believe it’s a mistake). If you (not you Ryan) approach someone aggressively, then don’t be surprised of the reactions.
After all, many of us come to virtual worlds also to relax and to find something positive 🙂