Why people are annoyed by very strong opinions in online forums.

Db02 Comments

Recently I’ve been getting more and more active in the BoardGameGeek.com community for Android:Netrunner, since I’m so active in the development of the OCTGN game definition for it, as well as liking the game itself quite a lot. And yesterday a usual event occured that gave me an insight into forum culture.

As is common with geek culture in online communities, some people tend to form strong opinions about various aspects of their hobby and want to share those opinions with others. But sometimes we get to see things heat up a little too much. Apparently randomly, one person will reply rudely to someone known for strong opinions suddenly there’s an outpouring of negativity against the opinionated player coming from all directions.

Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion
Someone reacts badly to a strong opinion

The opinionated person is usually taken aback from such hostility as they don’t understand where it’s coming from.

Reaction to negativity

I’ve seen this reaction occur quite frequently, but it usually happens in hobbyist discussions, such as the ones revolving around games. This is because those tend to have a low-impact consequence to a change within them being bad, which makes most moderate people not bother as much with online discussions about them, unless those people are opinionated or bored.

This however means that someone who does react strongly about changes that they perceive to be important, tends to stick out like a sore thumb. Why does someone gets constantly flustered about something as insignificant (in the large scale of things) as a game? And why do people get annoyed at such common reactions?

This hadn’t actually click for me until today, as I was reading the above exchange and I was also considering that I also felt annoyed every time I saw such strong opinions being posted by the same people. But I couldn’t put a finger as to why. Why was I irritated about someone taking a card game too seriously?

And then it dawned on me, that I wasn’t getting annoyed by the opinion itself. I wasn’t even annoyed by the opinion being put forth as a fact. It was rather the situation that the same people would post the same kind of “the sky is falling” commentary every time and then, predictably, others would reply aggressively in to point out why they are completely wrong, which would trigger a discussion that took over most of the thread from that point on.

In short, those posting strong opinions ended up almost always focusing the whole topic on their ideas, “heating up” the thread and making the whole discussion revolve around them. It’s an attention grab! And it’s this constant attention-seeking that is annoying the people around them, possibly without them realizing the true reason. And thus ending up with random lash-outs like the above screenshot.

I suspect that the people behaving this way do not realize why they are doing it. For them, this is a hobby that they really love and they have strong opinions because they’d hate to see it ruined by bad decisions. So it’s understandable that they post those opinions on every relevant discussion and make threads about them, isn’t it?

It just so happens that this behaviour makes them the superstar of every discussion. Sometimes negatively, sometimes positively, depending on how much they reflect the popular sentiment, but almost always there will be one or more people with an equally strong opinion on the other side who’ll be annoyed enough at the arrogance or stubbornness to reply likewise, and thus a heated discussion will begin, centering around their comments. And given that humans are social creatures, this is addictive.

It’s addictive to always be the center of attention, as long as that attention is not overly hostile. So any behaviour that brings about this state of affairs is going to be repeated as long as the reward is reinforced. And given that most people, on both sides, don’t realize what is going on, is is going to be reinforced every time.

And then people in the community are going to start getting annoyed, because it turns out that any thread where particular people comment on (in their usual style), immediately takes a few steps towards flamewar status, and it just so happens that everyone will be discussing those comments for the next few pages, and every other interesting comment will be ignored as those most inflamed by the arguments are going to focus on just that.

So you see this kind of comments, and you grind your teeth, mutter “Oh it’s this person again? What horribly wrong opinion do they have to present now?”. And after months of the same procedure, someone else tells them to “STFU because nobody cares” or something, and you think “Fuck yeah” and pile on at the opportunity to put them in their place, until the whole thing escalates and feelings are hurt.

I think this whole thing can be quickly de-escalated if people realize the true reason why such comments create a negative attitude. The attention seekers need to stop trying to make the kind of inflammatory comment that will make them the center of discussion, and I believe the way to achieve that is not in random hostility, which is likely not to achieve anything as it’s vague and misdirected, but to call those people out explicitly for their attention seeking and how that negatively affects the community around them.

Android:Netrunner – Full Tutorial

Db01 Comment

Fantasy Flight has released a great video explaining the basics of Android:Netrunner and taking you through the first three turns of an average game. The production values here are really top notch and it’s very enjoyable to watch, even for someone who already knows the game.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VAslVfZ9p-Y

If you’re interested in seeing what the big fuss is about and how can this game remain a cult classic after dying in the late 90s and then topping the BGG charts mere months after being revived a decade later, check this video, and see why the gameplay is so amazingly good.

And once you’ve done this, log onto OCTGN and try out a few games for yourself.

Believe the hype!

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren't yet ready for it?

Db01 Comment

This is a question posted in the /r/anarchism101 subreddit which is a common misconception about what anarchists suggest

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren’t yet ready for it? If so, then what the fuck use is an ideology that can’t be applied to humans?

I want to think of anarchism as a description for what is wrong and what needs to be plucked out, but once I think of its implementation I can’t help but to think it doesn’t fit humans as a whole. We need to rise intellectually before it can be applied. Right?

So here’s a chance to address this quickly

Is the reason why anarchism is still not the norm because humans aren’t yet ready for it?

No. Anarchism is the most compatible with what anthropology and psychology tells us about humans social relations. The problem is that the environment you live in (i.e. society) shapes what things you accept and humans have been either too conditioned by hundreds of years of coercion and violence to accept capitalist values, such as wage slavery, or actively prevented from seeking the alternative even now.

Most humans would gladly shake off capitalist concepts of work and wage and exploitation given half the chance, but those who have the most benefit in doing so (the poor in other countries) are actively repressed by violence funded by their exploiters (the rich and middle class of rich countries). In turn, the middle class and the poor of the richer counties are palliated by the crumbs from the theft which occurs wholescale in the rest of the world, so that they don’t rise up. And when the palliatives fail, actual violence is again employed.

Star Wars: The Card Game LCG on OCTGN

Db02 Comments

SW:LCG BoxFor the last month or so, I’ve been feverishly working on a OCTGN Plugin for Star Wars: The Card Game, by Fantasy Flight Games and I’ve finally released a polished version that I’m comfortable sharing with the world. So it’s now time to share the news and help people get started in the usual way.

So, Star Wars: The Card Game, is a “Living Card Game” release, much like Android:Netrunner or Warhamer:Invasion and it’s obvious on which theme it’s based on. The game has only gone out to stores this week if I am not mistaken so it’s brand new.

As a game, it is a somewhat asymmetric game, where each side (Light or Dark) has slightly different victory conditions, albeit their core gameplay does not differ all that much. Most of the differentiation happens in the kind of effects each Affiliation focuses on, much like the colours of Magic:The Gathering. I won’t go into much detail here as I’m sure you can find a lot of reviews online if you happen to need them.

I’ve played a dozen games or so by now, and I’m quite liking it. It may not be as deep or thematic as Android:Netrunner, but it has a lot of tough decisions to make and it’s the kind of game that you canot not see its depth of strategy from reading the rulebook and the spoilers, but rather you need to actually get down to the table and get your hands dirty. Even though I seem to completely suck at it (I’ve won 2 games only), it does show a lot of promise.

Game at v1.0.0

So for anyone interested in trying it out, you can now use my polished OCTGN plugin to do so.

EDIT @ 02/07/2013 : I’ve moved the installation instructions on to the dedicated page for this game definition. Please follow the step-by-step installation instructions for Star Wars: The Card Game there.

Once everything is set up, you need to find someone to play with. You can go to the Host/Join tab to see if anyone has a game waiting. If nobody does, host your own and put in the title that you’re a new player.

Once you find someone, one of you hosts and game and the other joins. Leave the two-sided checkbox checked and once the game is started, load your starter decks. Things should be fairly intuitive but keep in mind these basic things in relation to the OCTGN engine plugin.

  • First thing you do after you load a deck is Setup (Ctrl+Shift+S). This will check if your version is up to date, show you the Message of the Day, and also give you some Tips on playing the game.
  • The setup will put 4 objectives in your hand. You need to select one to put to the bottom of your deck. Once you’ve decided which one, simply mouse over it and press “Del”. Now that you have just three objectives in your hand, press Ctrl+Shift+S once more to place them on the table
  • Wait until your opponent has placed their objectives on the table as well and communicate if any of you wants to take a Mulligan. If not, then double-click on your objectives to reveal them and start the game.
  • To move from Phase to Phase and to start/end your turn, simply press Ctrl+Enter. This will automatically trigger any card effects that happen after that phase.
  • To attack an objective, target it and press Ctrl+A (or use the context menu on the table). Now you can assign attackers/defenders.
  • Most actions that you want to do, you can do by double-clicking on a card. The game will intuitively understand what you most likely want to achieve and do it. If you’re in an engagement, double-clicking on a non-participating unit will make it participate (turn it 90 degrees sideways). If a unit is participating, double clicking with it will perform a strike. If you’re trying to pay for a card, double clicking on a resource generating card will focus it to generate resources and so on. Double-Click is your friend.
  • If a card needs a target for its ability, simply use shift+click to target another card before you use it. Shift+Click again to clear a target.

I’ve made a video on how to play. It’s a bit outdated now that the new version is out, but I’ll update it in the near future

Enjoy!

What keeps me going

Db08 Comments

Sometimes I find little  nuggets of happy when I check online to see what people are saying about my OCTGN plugins. I found the following in a french forum about A:NR

by Skychapon “December 13, 2012 4:58 p.m.

7Tigers wrote: ANR module is solely to Konstantinos Thoukydidis (db0).
NB: also he made a plugin for Star Wars LCG …

This guy is good! And it does not get much sleep also saw how quickly he pulled the plug SW LCG!
Thank you to him in any case, I never played as much Netrunner without OCTGN.

For db0, hip hip hip
Hooray!

Put a smile on my face.

Ahaha, oh I'm almost a bingo card >_

Db02 Comments

h/t to the Shevilempire

I don’t know if I should be glad or not that I don’t hit a bingo here. I hit 8 of the above including the center, but no 5 in a row.

I should probably be ashamed that I’m in the same bingo card with MRAs and Randroids, but to my defense, I don’t wear it all that often and I bought it to fit more into the gothic scene at the time 🙂

Oh Yeah!

I will take solace in the fact that the ones I’m hitting make me just typical, and not a shitlord >_<

Fresh installation

Db02 Comments

So, here’s a new version of the site. Still in a very basic form, with only the most barest of plugins. I’m checking to see what the stability is before proceeding but the positive is that I already see that php calls do not automatically take 10 percent of my available ram each. More like 3-5% each which I hope will be manageable once the caching plugin picks up.

This is the second time I’ve had to do a complete wipe of the blog and restart. The first time was after a being hacked and finding it impossible to wipe all traces of the code which meant that they kept getting back in. This time I went even more radical and completely nuked my existing database as well, because it’s the one I’ve been using since 2007, which means its full of crud from all the plugins I’ve installed and uninstalled since then. I sincerely hope this was a big part for the memory leaking because if that doesn’t work either, I’m at my wits end, and I’ll probably have to start seriously considering moving away from Dreamhost.

So now I wait and see if the site will avoid imploding from those DOS-like requests I’ve been getting lately.

3 economic myths most people still believe in.

Db0

Unlearning Economics has a brief but succint list of estabilished economic myths and why they are wrong.

  • Rich countries did not get rich through free trade, but through the use of protectionism and other state interventions such as capital controls and subsidies.[…]
  • Money did not arise as a solution to the ‘double coincidence of wants[…]
  • Peasants did not freely move from their land into 12+ hour days in factories because it was ‘better than the alternative.[…]

Worth a read.

Ding Dong! The evil creeper is dead!

Db01 Comment

So it seems that the notorious reddit troll/creeper/scum-of-the-earth Violentacrez has deleted their account in the last few days. This is a person who started lovely subreddits like /r/jailbait, /r/picsofdeadjailbait and /r/rape. All pretty much what you’d expect them to be, in the very worst scenario.

Even though widely hated by many, and loved by others, he was maintaining a big presence and influence on reddit culture, constantly promoting the kind of vile shit that would get him beaten up or locked up  in real life. None of the hate against him would  phase him, and he even made subreddits to post all the hate mail he was getting.

And a lot of redditors loved him for it ((“it” being his stalwart defense of “free speech”, by which we mean everything that is absolutely vile about humanity)) so much, that he has his own fanclub and a host of people willing to sing his praises and defend his character. Because apparently he’s a nice guy IRL. But, as someone else aptly put it:

I love how redditors defend VA. He says that stuff but he doesn’t mean it! He’s not like that off the internet! Of course he isn’t. Because he knows he’d be an instant pariah if he said any of that vile crap to someone’s face. VA isn’t nice in person because he’s a good guy. VA is nice in person because he’s a COWARD.

There are only two options here: either he constantly says offensive shit online because he thinks it’s funny which makes him a troll and an asshole OR he really means it but doesn’t have the guts to say it IRL which makes him a hypocrite and an asshole. Either way he comes out smelling like shit.

So what happened? Well, the manchild got annoyed that someone who wasn’t a waste of oxygen started having more influence to reddit culture than him. Namely SRS, or ShitRedditSays. A subreddit that started to catalogue all the vile things people in reddit actually believe in or support. And because recently SRS has started having more of an effect on reddit’s culture, via online campaigns to close down pedophilic content on reddit for example, VA has decided to take his ball and go home. Reddit is starting to become toxic to him.

A joyous occasion to be sure. What wasn’t even thought possible a mere year ago, has happened just because some people stood up and said “enough is enough”.

To give an idea on why exactly this is such a big deal, and why redditors like VA are so unbelievably upset about the presence of SRS, that they’re willing to delete accounts they’ve invested thousands of hours is, I’ll quote an SRS regular succintly explaining the situation:

Someone asked:

Would someone be so kind as to tell me whether or not I’m understanding the gist of what’s going on here? I’ve been on Reddit for over 6 months now and, up until just a few hours ago, I had no idea that the site contained the kinds of things mentioned here.

I’ve seen SRS brought up numerous times in comments but never bothered to look it up until today. It seems to me that this subreddit (in particular) exists to expose the hypocrisy, misogyny and general lack of moral fiber that some users exhibit.

I apologize if this is not the appropriate place to post something like this but I’m not sure where else to put it. I read about Project PANDA and I’d like to help if I can. I’m horribly bothered by the fact that those in charge of Reddit as a whole refuse to take a stance on this issue. I wasn’t aware the exploitation of children was something one could even be neutral about. Ugh.

Reddit needs to be cleaned up if they’re seriously letting perverts run amok like this. Where can I start?

To which an SRS regular replied:

You’ve got the right idea 🙂 I’ll give you a rundown:

Redditors believe the internet is theirs and that they can dictate what is good and bad. When majority of redditors are 20 something white males, the hivemind becomes this misogynistic, racist, ableist, everything-ist ball of rage, intent on attacking everyone who isn’t the same as them, and having pissing contests over who can be the most vile human being because it’s (apparently) funny.

To them, we’re the authority figures these privileged white boys most likely never had, the ones who slap them on the wrist and tell them “NO! That’s not OK!” and drag them kicking and screaming to the naughty step. Only difference is they don’t actually learn anything and keep crying and crying about their rights while literally abusing everyone elses. Since we’re dealing with adults, they’ve managed to build up a facade of this website being all about cute, relevant memes and cats so that they can get their creep on behind the scenes. They’re so good at this, the President himself has unfortunately associated himself with reddit, probably on the advice of some clueless PR. (Really, all they had to do was search Obama and see some of the horrific shit that’s been said about him and his wife on here since 2008)

The admins are the clueless, afraid parents who have to get Super Nanny in to control their adorable little demons and won’t tell them no even though their kids are literally biting them and locking them out of their own house. The admins only listen when the creeping gets so bad that the media starts picking up on it and they risk losing their sponsors. This has happened twice now.

First time was because of the subreddit called jailbait which did as the description suggests. Redditors traded pictures of underage girls, some as young as 12. Anderson Cooper called reddit out on his show then the subreddit was shut down and redditors screamed and cried all night long.

In the last few months reddit’s new sick obsession had become Creepshots, where pictures of unaware women usually in shorts or cleavage bearing tops are posted, and well you can imagine. One creep was a teacher at a high school taking photos of his female students (one with her underwear showing). He/the school was recognised by some other redditors and he was subsequently fired and is being questioned/charged. I’m not entirely sure what went down yesterday but the Creepshots subreddit has officially been banned and the creep tears are flowing freely (and the media shitstorm builds every week). When we began to attack the subreddit, they legitimately asked why creepshots wasn’t OK but People of Walmart was. Most of the redditors who posted creepshots blame the women for, and I quote, “wandering around the planet in short skirts”. One woman’s boyfriend grabbed the arm of a redditor creep taking a creepshot and the redditor cried to Creepshots about it and was comforted and told his rights were being threatened.

Reddit routinely comforts and listens to pedophiles (I saw a thread congratulating a man for not molesting a 4 year old). They do not believe dating a 16 year old is illegal and also justify raping female children because “their bodies are ready for breeding”. A few months ago, they started a thread asking for rapists to tell about their attacks. The ones who almost raped were comforted for not raping and some who DID rape were told it was justified. A psychologist actually joined reddit just to tell them how dangerous the thread was. The general response was that he was threatening their free speech. The admins made no effort to delete the thread or moderate it. They offered no safe space for the TONS of victims triggered by the thread, some only just realising upon reading the accounts that they were, in fact raped, and many MANY people left or were made very distressed because of the thread. Redditors general consensus was that it was an important, insightful topic and what’s all the fuss about?

So that’s a short, depressing history of this not so wonderful website so far.

So there you have it. The driving away of VA was a success greater than what I ever expected from SRS. They managed to drive away a troll who was desperate for intrernet popularity and infamy, and seemingly impervious to criticism, by merely bringing to light exactly the culture it was promoting in reddit. By figuratively merely shining light upon its domain. VA probably panicked when people discovered who he was and started asking him to interviews, which is why I saw him leaving misleading comments about his account being a shared one (i.e. used by many people) shortly before it was deleted.

I don’t believe for a second that VA deleted his account because of some noble protest. He deleted his account because he is, as he always was, a coward.

Related articles