I got insane amount of troll comments to my post where I listed the guild rules for the ganking guild. It's very surprising since I was simply lazy to use the empty Saturday blog space to post the rules instead of setting up a closed forum. I did not expect any response from non-members. Why on Earth does anyone care about a guild he's not in and not planning to join?
Most of the trolls said (in terrible manner or grammar) that my rules kill the "fun" and the guild must be very boring, therefore people will leave it quickly. Since a picture tells more than thousand words, I post something from Sunday evening: 
So the questions are: why do the trolls think it's not fun, and why do they care if some stranger guild is not fun?
The answer for the first question can be found on EJ forums. This post explains it perfectly, why strong rules are needed to defend the atmosphere (the "fun") of the forum/gchat. It says that the overall culture is wrong, it's a "culture of entitlement" where the useless M&S think they can get everything they want. Allowing their bad jokes, primitive IRL comments, childish writing style and leeching would encourage them to feel welcomed here and they are not.
Keeping the rules is not fun itself. But it's necessary to keep the sea of M&S outside. If they would get in, the forum/gchat would be much-much less fun, actually it would be unbearably annoying, like /general or /trade. Anyone participates these for fun? While we could have more fun if we would have some random good jokes, allowing them would also allow sea of bad jokes and "meg fox is so hot lol" class conversations about IRL topics. It's not fun to build walls. But it's even less fun to try to live without walls in a world full of zombies.
The second answer is more interesting. I would never go troll Ensidia forums with "you have serious problems if you raid in 10 hours long marathons just for killing some pixels first". They live their lives the way they want, they don't hurt me, why should I care?
The socials need the belief that they and their group is superior. Since it is not superior in any measurable ways (PvE progression, arena rating in WoW, money or health in RL), they invent the "fun ppl" criteria. They claim that their group have "more fun" than any other groups, the others "have no life", "cannot live", therefore they are better. They must believe that the other groups have no fun, or they would have to face the obvious truth: their group sucks (mostly because they are in it).
They troll not to tell anything to anyone. They troll to help themselves believe that the other group (that would not have them) is unworthy. So having a group that is considered "not fun" by the "fun ppl" is a criteria to actually have fun.
So the questions are: why do the trolls think it's not fun, and why do they care if some stranger guild is not fun?
The answer for the first question can be found on EJ forums. This post explains it perfectly, why strong rules are needed to defend the atmosphere (the "fun") of the forum/gchat. It says that the overall culture is wrong, it's a "culture of entitlement" where the useless M&S think they can get everything they want. Allowing their bad jokes, primitive IRL comments, childish writing style and leeching would encourage them to feel welcomed here and they are not.
Keeping the rules is not fun itself. But it's necessary to keep the sea of M&S outside. If they would get in, the forum/gchat would be much-much less fun, actually it would be unbearably annoying, like /general or /trade. Anyone participates these for fun? While we could have more fun if we would have some random good jokes, allowing them would also allow sea of bad jokes and "meg fox is so hot lol" class conversations about IRL topics. It's not fun to build walls. But it's even less fun to try to live without walls in a world full of zombies.
The second answer is more interesting. I would never go troll Ensidia forums with "you have serious problems if you raid in 10 hours long marathons just for killing some pixels first". They live their lives the way they want, they don't hurt me, why should I care?
The socials need the belief that they and their group is superior. Since it is not superior in any measurable ways (PvE progression, arena rating in WoW, money or health in RL), they invent the "fun ppl" criteria. They claim that their group have "more fun" than any other groups, the others "have no life", "cannot live", therefore they are better. They must believe that the other groups have no fun, or they would have to face the obvious truth: their group sucks (mostly because they are in it).
They troll not to tell anything to anyone. They troll to help themselves believe that the other group (that would not have them) is unworthy. So having a group that is considered "not fun" by the "fun ppl" is a criteria to actually have fun.
36 comments:
I believe this is another aspect of the social. Socials feel an overwhelming, compelling need to tell others how they should do things. Not only other individuals, but other groups besides their own. I believe it originates from the socials' typical egocentricity that their thoughts, and ways of doing things, are "special". Also I think you are seeing the equivalent of Ensidia fanboys who are wanting to be Inglorious Ganker fanboys, saying your guild is "nice" or whatever and wanting to join. Your guild actually does look fun because you keep those people out.
What I find the most interesting is that it doesn't really seem to matter WHAT the specific rules are, so that they generally have a good purpose and are fairly well enforced. In other words, rules don't need to be overly harsh or difficult to follow...the fact that they exist at all keeps out the people who really shouldn't be playing a group game in the first place.
Which makes the troll comments even funnier, and more obvious in their purpose. The rules the trolls complain about sucking the fun out of the game often are things everyone should be doing without being told...they aren't hard to follow at all. But to them, the fact that there are rules at all offends their sense of entitlement in the game. Any rule, no matter how easy to follow, is "too hardcore" because that sounds better than "I want to do what I feel like doing at all times".
What's remarkable to me is that this attitude exists at all in an MMO. If you don't want to follow group conventions or think of the others in your group, there are tons of single player games out there to play. Why spend so much time playing a game focused on group interaction when the "M&S" seem to want to have nothing to do with actually being a member of a group?
Finally someone gets it!!! i know a lot of people that quit guilds at the start of Wrath for this reason. you only need 1 or 2 good friends to powerlevel you if you want it. So what use is there for a leveling guild now? none really except hopefully we can herd all the m&s (sorry to coin your term) into that guild and relieve the trade chat from their chuck norris "humor". Guilds need a purpose, you want fun get a girl/boyfriend you want to raid join a raiding guild, you want pvp join a pvp guild. you want everything, suck it up and try harder. I have yet to re-guild for the reason i was on a PvE server and the closest thing to a PvP guild i could find thought running premade BG's was all there is to PvP... so onto Jubei'Thos to start again and work my way into it. No rules spoils it for everyone!!!
"but often get carried away and stay for half an hour, practically doing nothing productive, just participate in the gchat."
Wow looks like the Goblin is on his way to being a social person. Who said people cant change.
I may actually start an alliance character now, been avoiding it like the plague with al those "LOLZ Megan Fox's so hawt" kiddies on alliance side (maybe I stink at picking servers, or maybe I should just never enter any location that has trade-chat)
I've had people apply to my one-person guild with that 'heard it was fun', I think those are players that either plan to suck the resources out of the guildmembers ("can't afford epeens, some goldz plox") or plunder the guildbank at the first occasion they get (which would be never, since your gankerguild has no guildbank)
Without rules, there can be no freedom.
Why is 'haha' acceptable while 'lol' is merely spamming?
Am I the only one here noticed the "Hello all" from Gevlon at the very first line of the chat ? ;)
Gevlon
I'm rather puzzled by your criticism of socials for wanting to feel that they are in a superior "in" group. Half your posts seems to be about how the goblin way is better than these loser "fun ppl". Aren't you just doing the same thing, but with different definitions of "in" & "out"?
"meg fox is so hot lol"
Technically, this has been a topic on /offtopic. (Though we were appraising why one might state this randomly in the middle of an LFD)
@Anonymous: being happy and expressing it is not forbidden. "lol" is a stupid thing that is mostly NOT used to express actual laughing "cud u boost me in RFC lol".
@Jeanie: guilty your honor!
@Sven: I seek superior METHODS that anyone can use. The method users don't have to be a group, don't have to be similar or friends of each other. The socials believe that the group is superior just because it is (actually because they are in it).
I so want to start a Nelf now and go join your guild sounds like fun :P
@Jeanie,
Actually Gevlon is quite polite and entertaining in guild chat. The difference is that he doesn't do it to get attention.
"can i join your guild plase" is a true M&S question, which says a lot about the sender. First of all there is no capital letter, the "i" is small, and he didn't even put a question mark at the end. Even the best can spell one word wrong now and then and he did correct it himself, but the use of the word "please" makes him a M&S in the first place. "Please" implies that he does not have anything to offer you and want you to give things to him, really appealing..
I have always wondered why new guilds advertise themselves as being "friendly and social. We have a tabard (and bank tabs)". It must be exactly because they have no measurable qualities they make them superior to any other guild. But just because all new guilds only have the tabard to appeal to new members, they are all doomed from the start.
It's interesting you use "troll" here interchangeably with "social", which just is not accurate. Whilst the aim of trolling is indeed to mock some oher social group you despise, it is not solely the preserve of the M&S. Trolling is the art of making deliberately provocative statements that give your interlocutor enough rope to hang himself. While they wait for ICC to run, or the scans to complete, trolls can and do entice M&S to advertise that fact on trade. Petty? Yes. Trying to support the "nice", motivated by jealousy? No.
@Strupetak
Using "please" does not imply begging or having nothing to offer.
It's just a normal way how to be polite. And being polite is not a characteristics that makes someone M&S.
If he would have clearly stated a valid reason to join the guild in the next responses, instead of 'i wonna join coz ur fun ppl', he'd most likely get in.
However, normally one should state the reason for joining already in the first /w. And wait for an answer before spamming "can i?" again.
Also we can see that this kind of application filtering is way more effective than having everyone fill a form with 100 questions, where "What is your cat's favourite food?" is included.
The irony of this incident is amazing. The idea of people spreading fake rumors about a guild, possibly to sabotage them, is funny when you realize that said fake rumors are that they are nice friendly people. Even more amusing is the fact that becoming a "nice" guild is not only against the guild's tenets, but could completely destroy the guild's very purpose! Only with this experiment could we ever see such a bizarre backwards scenario. Very interesting, to say the least.
I'm in a 1-man guild to avoid "wanna join my guild? will start raiding when we have enuf", but this way I'm getting these same whispers asking if they can join.
So I just tell them "you have to ask our recruitment officer ".
@Gusztav
It is even worse than that.
These days getting a /w "Wanna join my guild?" is a luxury. More often than not they just spam guild invite without any communication.
Also, in my opinion, guild bank tabs are only really useful for personal storage, since in "frndly ppl" guilds they just get filled with utter crap. Or maybe for uber-hardcore guilds to stock up high end raid drops until they get close to worthless in next expansion. I've been in hardcore raiding guild just a short period in late TBC, and this is exactly what happened with the riches :)
@Jana
It is correct that "please" is a way to be polite, however it does contain the underlying meaning that cannot offer anything in return for the favour you are asking. Switching your "can" with a "may" has been shown to have much better results than adding a "please". I have yet to see a M&S use a word like "may" or "kindly"...
Of course I am just talking about in-game WoW here, real life is something slightly different.
There are two separate questions: "is this a guild/culture that I would enjoy?" and "are these coherent rules to achieve whatever the guild goals are."
Guilds for PVE-only or for 14 year-old boys to talk about xBox and 13 year old girls are not objectively better or worse than your guild. Subjectively, each person would prefer one over the other.
What would be less efficient would be a guild that allowed a confusing mix of the 14YO leetspeak, Ensidia, and your gankers to be in the same guild. The quality of guild rules are not whether 0.01% or 50% of the readers would join. It is how well it defines and pushes the organizational culture you desire.
The EJ analogy is not quite the same; quality writing is desirable in chat or forums. But it is significantly more important for archived thoughts that could be read by thousands for many months as opposed to the ephemeral guild chat read by a few dozen.
Technically, your social responders are not trolls. You voluntarily posted your rules in a public blog with comments turned on; you explicitly asked them to comment on them. The fact that they don't agree with you is why the coherent guild rules protect you from being in a guild with them and vice versa.
I still remember my application to the guild as if it was last week. I started a character, added Gevlon to my friendslist and started levelling.
As soon as Gevlon logged on, I whispered him one sentence of less than 15 words in correct English with the right punctuation.
And waited.
Assuming he was probably spammed with whispers, I did not repeat my whisper, nor did I spam 'can i?', 'please?'.
And a few minutes later, lo and behold, an invite to the guild popped up. No questions asked, my single sentence was sufficient for Gevlon to determine that I did not belong to the M&S they were trying to avoid.
But hey, that was back in the 'early days' of the guild ... a little less than one week ago.
M&S certainly want to have the best of both worlds-- They want to enjoy the benefits of being in a group (and doing minimal work to get or achieve things) but they don't want to have to abide by any of the rules and codes that make the group successful in the first place. Leaches in every sense of the word.
I'm in the guild. It's not as bad as many people here would like it to be or trying to make it to be. If people that l33tspeak or says LOL in every sentence would be allowed into the guild, we would be just like the people we (at least me) want to gank: the fanboys.
I'm having loads of fun in the guild and with guildies. We are "fun ppl", but in a good way.
"They troll not to tell anything to anyone. They troll to help themselves believe that the other group (that would not have them) is unworthy."
Wouldn't those be considered 'flamers' rather than 'trolls'? I always thought that an internet troll posted stuff just to get a reaction (or overreaction) like that Gevion guy does to this blog. Trolls don't actually have to believe what they say but simply thrive on the conflict they generate.
I'm part of an online roleplaying community that has fairly strict rules about following the basic rules of English grammar, punctuation, and spelling. This angers some potential players, who tell us that we're elitist and foolish. /We/, of course, prefer our game the way it is.
The Internet is full of busybodies.
I saw your rules the other day and would have commented on them if I had time. I also didn't bother to read the trolls.
I believe that a solid set of rules that are enforced makes things easier. If you have a rule for something it helps deflect the drama when an issue does show up. To be honest though, its going to the M&S causing drama anyway. I used rules to deal with those people indirectly.
But back to your rules. I see a lot of good in them and they fit exactly what you want your guild to be.
One rule I have struggled with in another guild was the alt rule. We had it in place for the same reason and while I personally did not agree with it I never voided that publicly (I was a high ranking officer and know its best to not complain down).
The issue we ran into was the disconnect people had when on an alt. The connection to guild chat is important. Yes, we knew who was on an alt. But when plans went down and groups formed in guild chat the alts got left out. Officers on alts out of guild could not police the chat and just felt MIA.
It looks like you are connecting with guild chat for the first time. Building your own social environment. People on alts want to feel that connection too.
At the same time, I loved having a slim and trim roster. By demand of the members we eventually changed the rule to one active non raiding alt.
Food for thought.
Noticle sounds like an Hordy trying to get an alt in to spy.
I am not sure I get all the hate for the guy who wanted to join the guild. He was a little beggy, but he was not asking for something for nothing or anything really, except to join.
Not everyone knows about this website and the goal of the guild. It's basically a leveling guild at this point, and the guy wanted to join it. He committed the crime of thinking the people in the guild were nice.
I agree with you completely, Gevlon, and until this post I could not put my finger on why. In the past, when I have started guilds, they have been built upon a strong core of rules. I believe that people should know what to expect and what is acceptable. The ban on childish/crude/primitive conversations in gchat has always been one of the rules to my groups and I have had to defend it several times. However, the defense has always been lackluster because this is something I feel more than I know. Your explanation concerning keeping the seas of M&S at bay by building walls and making them feel unwelcome is dead on. Kudos.
'I seek superior METHODS that anyone can use.'
The thing is, not EVERYONE can. If you were to apply all of your methods to the world, it simply would not be able to function any better than it does now.
For example, let's assume that everyone decided to gank everyone all the time. Nothing would ever, ever get done, because people would be constantly being ganked.
Another situation is to remove all benefits governments give to M&S, or to even kill these (which I think is actually what you would like). What would happen then? All of the petty jobs such as cleaning would have nobody doing them, therefore none of the actual quite important tasks would be completed.
The point is, you cannot claim that the Goblin way is THE way. In fact, if you were to apply your morals to everyone, it would most certainly be the wrong way.
What? That's ridiculous.
If NO ONE would do the petty jobs, the demands for people to fill the jobs would increase.
When demand increases, pay increases. At some point, when pay rises high enough, there will be people WILL do them.
If being a nuclear physicist pays less than being a street sweeper, what right-minded nuclear-pysicist qualified goblin would choose to NOT sweep streets?
After all, it pays more, and there will be no one to laugh at his 'petty, unworthy' job because there are no more morons left!
Economy does not know 'pettyness' and 'worth'. Economy knows 'supply' and 'demand'.
@Anonymous right below shieldbreakr:
It looks like you've missed the whole purpose of THIS blog: Gevlon has, is and will be trying to prove that the goblinish/anti social way if apply to everyone, will make the world beter than it is now (even though from the individual POV, everyone who is a goblin will get less personal benefit). You can search the blog for "utopia" or such to find those entry about the idea.
"Everyone is good" means "everyone is not good", which also means "everyone is a moron". If everyone is as good as everyone else, someone will have to clean the street, and there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with that (in that ideal world, everyone will take turn clean the street).
Kaaterina: "Economy does not know 'pettyness' and 'worth'. Economy knows 'supply' and 'demand'."
Sure it does. There are always immigrants who are considered to have less 'worth' and thus get paid with 'pettiness'. Increased demand does not always equate to increased pay. ;-)
@Cyrell: your example is actually irrelevant and have nothing to do with the economy itself, it's just another example of how bad the society's status quo is ....
In your example, if the demand for work force increased , those immigrants' petty salary will increased ;)
I think it is because many M&S view the actions or words of others as a value judgment on their own actions or attitudes. They often do not differentiate between an actual judgment ("people who listen to polka are stupid") and a simple statement of opinion ("I think polka music is stupid").
And they go to great lengths to take something personally. Your guild post is an example. You stated your rules and your reasons for it, including that you did not want guild chat polluted with stuff like "lol" and topics that others may not enjoy, for the reason that this may cause people to ignore gchat. This makes the M&S feel as if you are judging them, because they like to say "lol" "gratz" and talk about baseball in gchat. When you say that you feel it is detrimental, they feel that you are insulting them.
In a Politically Correct culture, people seek out reasons to be offended, so it's no surprise that people stepped up to complain about your rules. Because they feel as if your rules are a way to put them down, even though it had nothing at all to do with them. For some people, everything is about them, I guess.
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