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A Non-Bitter Sip

I started to write an angry post. It was a result of my just logging off due to unending arguments. I was tired of absolute statements and people demanding that their way is the only one of reason. There are times when I wonder if people realize how ugly they make their own point. There are moments when it is easy to sink into the bitter, spiteful, vicious language and lose track of anything but pure negativity. Negativity is catching I've found.

Thank god for chat logs, eh?

I have two of them to remind me of sanity today. Things that happen because people decided not to reach down and find the biggest asshole that they could be and share that with the world. Instead they decided that hey, why not treat someone else decently just because they could.

Refreshing stuff.

I was contacted by one of my regular chatroom members about a market mistake. We discussed the market interface some. There are bad things in it there is no doubt. But, he discovered that he had made an error and in the process lost a few hundred million ISK he was not in the mood to lose. He decided to take a risk and reach out to the seller of the item and tell them what happened. And we know you are never, ever supposed to do that in Eve.

The response he received:
Lucky you actually ran into one of the few honest people in the game.  I can't remember exactly what i was asking for except it was somewhere between 1.7M and 1.8M.  So, if I take the midpoint of 1.75Mx17=29.75M + 2.271M in tax that was lost.
And it made me smile. It also made me sad. He isn't the only honest person in Eve. I felt a bit of a pang that such an act can be seen that way. No one has to reimburse someone back for their mistakes. Nor is their anything wrong with setting pitfalls out there for people to fall into. I may just be an idealistic fool to interested in bucking the norm in my actions and interests. But I thanked him for sharing because it is too easy to only look at negative things.

As did Diz's story from this morning. A story about a very inexperienced Vagabond pilot that wound up dying in a bling fit ship. He called for help in local as he say beside his wreck in a pod. You're not supposed to speak in local, Ever.
JM > anyone want some goods? I fucked up
Diziet Thomas > ?
JM > one sec Kill: JM (Vagabond)
JM > 425mm AutoCannon II 425mm AutoCannon II 425mm AutoCannon II Gistii A-Type 1MN Afterburner Gistum C-Type 10MN Afterburner Limited 1MN Afterburner I Gistum C-Type Medium Shield Booster Gistum C-Type Adaptive Invulnerability Field Domination Tracki...
JM > that in a can at my capsule
Diziet Thomas > ok
JM > all the rats are still here fleet?
Diziet Thomas > did you want us to share the loot with you
JM > if you want that would be cool if not thats cool too
Diziet Thomas > i will tell you what you can fleet me i will come over pick up your loot not kill you and split it with you in station
Diziet Thomas > fleet me
JM > ok
Diziet Thomas > and i will sort you out
 Diziet Thomas > coming to station
Diziet Thomas > i dont have all of it but i will go back and get the rest
JM > sweet keep what you want mate
JM > I figured better to not let it disappear
JM > Thanks you are awesome
Diziet Thomas > np brb
Diziet Thomas > got the rest of it
JM > cool
Diziet Thomas > thats everything
JM > wait you didn't keep anything?
Diziet Thomas > all good
Diziet Thomas > come back in something cheaper sometime and fight me
JM > will do been stuck complexing for awhile
JM > let Null Sec and haven't PVPed for a while.
Diziet Thomas > doenst matter cheap rifters are fun any old thing
JM > very true
JM > \o thanks again
It is nights like tonight, when I'm driven from my own chat before the wave of bitter, negativity that I'm reminded of all my favorite things. And I smile a bit, even as I sigh. Because reality doesn't allow anyone to live in pure fantasy. I'll keep taking the good with the bad. Because for every bittervet out there arguing over the intransient nature of their style of gameplay there is someone, somewhere, just playing.

Comments

  1. Now admittedly I don't trawl the forums, but I have noticed a particular change in the way Dinsdale Piranha has been putting his points forward on various blogs.

    Pretty sure most of us have rolled our eyes at one point or another, but for someone known to be quite abrasive (yes, yes, massive understatement) at times, this is pretty huge. Clean posting with little or no personal slights.

    I for one am now taking the time to actually read what is written and must acknowledge that he has some valid points to make. Can't say I agree with everything by any stretch. But still.

    Change is possible. Even for those with the reputation of being among the most belligerent and intransigent. Never thought I would actually type this, but kudos Mr Piranha.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. While it seems as if it should not matter how things are said to people matters. It is exhausting to strip away the nasty, mean, obnoxious things to find the information.

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    2. Absolutely agree. It is not a little ironic that the more nasty, mean and obnoxious a person is the less likely it is that their point will read, much less given any weight.... unless they're congregating with those of like mind....

      Read into that what you will ;)

      Delete
  2. I deeply agree with the foreword: yes, it's sad when people believe that their opinion is the One Truth.

    They should have learned by now that the Only Truth is MY opinion.

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  3. I've never scammed anyone. It feels like kicking a puppy. I may have forgotten a promise or two written on the wind, but that's about it. In the real world, lying is pretty common, but mostly they tend to reflect versions of events that we would prefer to be true.

    When I attack something, I prefer the frontal assault, rather than the surprise feint from the side. It's a pity that CCP puts such high barriers to this activity for sub-bloc entities.

    http://www.radiolab.org/story/91612-deception/

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  4. Exactly. EXACTLY!

    ...and Diziet is a diamond.

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  5. What got me hooked in EVE was a random guy teaching me to mine, fleeted me, hauled my ore and contracted it all to me in a station. He later wished me good luck and wired 30mil ISK to get me started, a huge sum then.
    I have returned the favor to newbs I shot, corpmates who needed help, strangers who were lost in wh space. Unlike other games, eve forces moral choices and I firmly believe that for every asshat, there are 2 trustworthy guys out there. They just don't make the press.

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    Replies
    1. I had one of those random guys. I was already hooked. Said guy hangs out in my chatroom to this day two and a half years later.

      Delete
  6. Memory, tending to be selective, makes it far too easy to lose track of the fact that Eve (like real life) is primarily a cooperative endeavor. Every market hub is a triumph of beneficial clumping together over ruthlessly destructive competition. Every station exit without getting shot in the back by a corpmate is a triumph of long term trust over short term interest. The very fact that you understand these words I type is extraordinary measure that the very basis of our interaction is cooperative from the get go (sharing an entire language is no small thing).

    Sugar,
    I’m saddened to hear that you found yourself driven away from your own chatroom due to toxic negativity. Being one who nearly always wishes to peal yet another layer off the onion I’m led to ask what you may suspect was driving the toxic exchanges. Competitive one-upsmanship? Misguided desire to be heard via increasingly vitriolic language? Genuine malevolence?

    I ask, not to slap down more work on your table, but rather because (in my experience at least) while stepping back for refresher can be helpful and occasionally necessary, coming to understand tends to be deeply helpful and deeply satisfying in comparison.

    As I don’t wish to derail your post, I’ll stop at this point but leave an offer dangling . . . “You go first Dire. It’s terribly easy for you to push me to cogitate harder while presenting no evidence that you are doing anything similar yourself.”

    DireNecessity

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    Replies
    1. Dire, I have a temper. When I am tired, facing my weekend work shift and irritated, my responses are not going to be the best when I'm already pissed becuase I am being ignored so that people can argue their belief in the beuatul, perfect Eve. Leaving is for the best not because I want to.

      I know what starts the exchanges and I probably need to be more agressive about telling people to shut up when they are doing nothing but screaming at each other. I expect a bunch of adults to take a moment to think about their actions. I'm not ashamed of that.

      Do not think l am so easily pushed. i've established a long history of laying my thoughts, opinions, and emotions out here. I'm not perfect. Sometimes I have bad days. Sometimes the people I like most piss me off. That is part of working in any enviorment with people.

      Delete
    2. Sugar,

      I appreciate the personal response even though it wasn’t what I was fishing for. If I’m teasing out the gist of your comment correctly it seems an inane argument developed around restrictive views of the one true Eve. At best it sounds like things got annoyingly small minded.

      For such folk I suppose it must be comforting to settle into one true anything. I suppose, if they are genuinely comfortable in their one true seat, they can even tolerate difference albeit in a slightly scornful way. In my sorry life the nearest I ever get to the Truth Seat is occasionally astonished bafflement that somebody else could be so different from me. Being human that bafflement is all wrapped up in not only frustration and irritation but also fascination. That fascination often leads me to keep picking at the scab. Not out of malevolent desire to reopen the wound but rather because I’m terribly curious about what’s going on under there.

      Shifting to Eve . . .
      I often read that Eve is completely toxic. (Importantly, I’m not implying you’re saying this.) Curiously I rarely experience the game that way. I see refreshing if impolite blunt. I see attempts at social engineering (some much better than others). I see magnificent varieties of subculture. I see dazzling acts of cruelty peppered within a tremendous sea of day to day kindness. I see . . . well again we’ve reached my point of astonished bafflement because I see all kinds of wonderful stuff afoot and yet people still claim Eve is completely toxic.

      DireNecessity

      Delete
  7. Its good people that keep me playing this game, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks that either! Also, <3 Sug <3
    And again, cause I have to- Diz <3

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  8. I admire you so much, Sugar. The way you conduct yourself and your honesty is wonderful. I'm glad you shared these stories. I believe Eve should never not have consequences for mistakes, however innocently they are made. I have done my share of scamming, ganking, and harvesting tears in-game. However, I have also done--more than once--these very same things you describe: refunded market (and ransom) mistakes and given loot back to someone I just killed. It doesn't hurt to be nice sometimes, human to human.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'd not consider myself admirable. I seem to bulldoze through the proper social channels and declare myself. I don't think that everyone has to spend their time petting everyone else. I simply am tired of the positive stuff in Eve being ignored.

      Delete
  9. Suspect the altruism behaviors are underground. Anyone developing a reputation for kindness and assisting others will at some point become a mark for a scam or gank.

    So, I'd actually like to think the kinder aspects of EvE are a bit more widespread than we might suspect. And that, in itself makes me smile.

    Because it exists and even flourishes in spite of the hostile environment and ourselves.

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    Replies
    1. In my opinion, this is why so many good players are quiet and don't participate in the rest of the community. Those that do however can become some of the most famous eve celebrities. Chribba, The Angel Project, Estel Erador, Eve University are good examples of people/organizations trying to do good things.

      - Serinas Setzuni

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    2. It is also bad bragging when you say you helped someone and makes your arrogant. Saying that you screwed someone over is something to be petted about.

      Delete
  10. As a witness to the incident in question, you logged out about 20 minutes too soon. Or maybe logging out caused them to reach a resolution. The world may never know. They were both pretty apologetic sounding afterwards. My position on said debate was that the 'overpowered' ship they discussed is quite boring to fly and has weaknesses they haven't yet discovered. Popular sure, powerful in doctrines as well. Unbeatable though? Probably only for their particular groups/setups/doctrines/ships. Otherwise, there would be a threadnaught about it right? Maybe next time they start claiming that something is overpowered/etc... ask them where the threadnaught over it asking for a fix is? Numerous ships over the history of Eve have had long drawn out threads. Mining barges for instance. Freighters probably need another pass too, it seems more of them are dying in places like Aufay to determined ganking groups.

    Eve is a game of constant balancing and adjustments as they refine the tools we have to play with. As someone who has played since a few weeks before Dominion, I have seen so many changes and been on both ends of the nerf bat. The ocean metaphor you have in your bio right now seems to say it best. The beach is always changing, sand shifts, and castles rise and fall. The creatures are always scuttling about too. Crabs, children, seaweed... and the guys in the black helicopters (metagamers) hovering overhead watching the action :-P

    - Serinas Setzuni

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    Replies
    1. Said talking people are going to get a bat upside the head next time they go into a full fledged catfight like that, so I have decided.

      Delete
  11. Yeah, not a big fan of one-true-way-ism, particularly when it's on a topic like the one you described. Although I'm not averse to being an outright asshole in some situations, I kinda prefer to keep my powder dry for life and death stuff, not the relative merits of ships in a game.

    Heh. I was around enough of those arguments early in my EVE career that to this day I almost never talk about fits and ship balancing. I've seen it descend into personal insults a few too many times to want to deal with it. I'm sure it's a fun topic around people who don't feel like they've got to *win* the exchange, but I'm too burned out on it to even go there.

    It's your channel. I'm sad that you felt like you had to log out of it.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. As I said to Dire, I have a temper. I know when I'm about to move from reasonable to a being of ranting creative curses. It would be non productive. Sometimes we have to take a step back before we can take any forward.

      Delete
  12. You said... He decided to take a risk and reach out to the seller of the item and tell them what happened. And we know you are never, ever supposed to do that in Eve. ... why?

    Why is this an unwritten law? I know where of you speak, I too have held back from contacting 'someone' I didn't already know over 'something' that happened etc. but, why is this a thing in EVE? Or is it a thing in all MMOs?

    On the occasions when we have reached out we have always been surprised and received not the expected death but the hand up of kindness. The few times my bros and I have been lost-in-space (trapped w/o probes in a unknown hole) and reached out in local (and in holes this something that is verboten almost unto Written Law) we have always received assistance not a fleet warp to instadeth. Occasionally it may have cost us ISK, but if memory serves we offered first, it was not demanded. Once I had an alt trapped inna C6 and to get out all it cost me was good safe BM, and I got a Leopard shuttle to get home safely to boot.

    I do wonder at us all, players in such a social game, a game designed for and around the idea of real player interaction, and how positive interaction is looked down on and how negative interaction is seen as so pervasive and held as the norm... when I really don't think it is. I personally have never once felt EVE as a whole is toxic even though I have flown with some players who most definitely are.

    Being human is so weird.

    ReplyDelete

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