Greedy Goblin

Friday, June 28, 2013

Dirty way to cleanse EVE from dirt

Ali Aras wrote how she rejects porn links in EVE, because it shows people like here objectified. I flew a lot with TEST (being the workaholic I am, I barely missed a stratop) and I can tell she got it easy. In TEST battlecruiser fleet chat was full of pictures with two or more people like me and no people like her. Luckily the Foxcat fleets were leagues better.

Ali Aras also wrote her solution: petition these people (even blues) to CCP who then receive their well-deserved bans. This happened in TEST fleet often, Beffah (military director who is also female) often pinged "please don't report blues".

These gave me an idea. EVE is a dark place, full of spies, convospammers, corp thieves and such. Instead of writing long posts how racist or misogynist speak is wrong, you can be an anti-dirt spy. That's simple: you join an alliance under the guise of an "adorable newbro", fly in fleets, don't sabotate anything except you file petitions against people who violate the EULA. There are hatespeakers, botters, porn-link spammers, ISK sellers and all kind of filthy people out there. With a nice little petition you can suspend or even ban their account.

This can be elevated to the next level: warring empires can activate their spies to deliver a killing blow to the enemy by getting their members banned.

Is it mean? Does it kill the "fun"? Is it unfair? Is it a jerk move?
Welcome to EVE Online!

17 comments:

Anonymous said...

Already happens in the fountain-war. A CFC message went around, that noone should post porn and that petition blues is goonfucking and banable.

Anonymous said...

i've quite often reported blues (and hostiles before), whenever it crossed a line.

however, there is not enough line crossing to make a serious impact, in a fleet of 250 people, its usually the same 3 to 5 people who post crap.

granted when i use my goon or test spy characters, i'm usually able to report more than 3, but it hardly gets over 10 - which does not make that much of an impact to the game.

Gevlon said...

@Anonymous: if you get them banned is equal to removing them from any fleet ever. It's pretty big impact.

Anonymous said...

In TEST the idea of a tool that would create links to other websites that would time out after a few minutes was recently thrown around for that reason.

It would work just like an url shortener but by the time any GM could get around to processing the petition, the shortened link that had previously pointed to a porn site would now point to a harmless site or simply into 404-land.

Anonymous said...

I'm a new player, corps have usually an appliance procedure, as eve in certain ways resemble the real world, one could transfer some accountability to the corps themselves, not so much in 5 strikes and you're out but perhaps like 5 strikes and the tax rate goes to a NPC corp and is changed to 90% for some weeks. There's no real solution for attracting/tackling seriously ill-behaving people but one could contemplate shifting some accountability to corps/alliances as well, isolating these kind of people.

Von Keigai said...

In TEST battlecruiser fleet chat was full of pictures with two or more people like me and no people like her.

Gay porn?

Maybe you could write a bit clearer if you were not trying to push the feminist line so hard. I.e. you could say "men" and "women" when you mean those categories.


Anonymous said...

Is clicking on links mandatory then you in fleets?
I mean someone posting link, says it's porn, or not saying anything, why clicking if you not interested?
Why anyone even go to some random links, posted by some random strangers?
It's like some emo kid goes in some biker bar at night and then crying that he was beaten.

Gevlon said...

@Von Keigai: yes, gay porn. And animal porn. And elderly porn. And other things I couldn't even identify, nor I really want to.

@Anonymous: you know what happens if an emo kid goes to a biker bar and gets beaten? Criminal investigation and the perpetrator looks forward to prison time for assault. Just because it happens, it's not right.

Anonymous said...

@Gevlon: I'm not saying it's right, i'm sayin that humans are different, bikers like one bar, emo kids another. Emo don't come to bikers - no beating, no police, everybody happy.
You don't like porn - you don't click link, goon or test member like porn - he click, everybody happy.
I just don't see why it's so big deal, no one can make you click, only you made that decision, why you and Ali blame other peoples, for your own decisions?

Invictus13307 said...

Funny how the typical solution to people being reported is, apparently, "Don't report people", not "Don't do reportable things".

A better solution would be to encourage people to report EULA violations. People only post those things because they think they can get away with it. If you encourage reporting, you remove the ambiguity, and only complete idiots end up committing bannable offenses. This makes things better for people who are bothered by what gets posted, and it neuters spies who try to use the EULA as a weapon.

Chaos Engineer said...

I just don't see why it's so big deal, no one can make you click, only you made that decision, why you and Ali blame other peoples, for your own decisions?

I think you're misunderstanding your own analogy.

EVE is like the biker bar, and the porn spammers are like the Emo kids. Instead of pestering the other EVE players, the porn spammers should set up their own chatsite where they can pester each other.

Also, outsiders don't get beaten up at any of the biker bars that I go to. The regulars tend to socialize with other regulars, so you might feel a little isolated, but nobody will bother a random stranger who wants to come in out of the rain and have a beer or two. If you start pestering the regulars then usually the bouncer will show you the door before anyone else gets annoyed enough to hit you.

Anonymous said...

That would pretty much be the best meta ever.

It's about making people feel welcome said...

"I mean someone posting link, says it's porn, or not saying anything, why clicking if you not interested?"

They won't click the link, but that's not the issue. The very fact that the links are there can make people feel uncomfortable and out of place.

To use a different analogy, imagine a bar that doesn't admit black people. No black person would want to go into that bar, because who wants to hang around with racists. But the mere fact that that bar exists and is tolerated by the community they live in makes them feel unwelcome in the community as a whole.

Pornography is generally about objectifying women. If your fleet tolerates porn, it sends the message to women in your fleet that they are not really equals but merely objects of desire. At least that's the perception of many women and it's the perception that counts in an environment where peoples true attitudes and beliefs can never be properly conveyed.

TL;DR: Porn links in fleet make some of your pilots feel unwelcome. Don't post porn links in fleet. Don't tolerate porn links in fleet.

Anonymous said...

@It's about making people feel welcome

"Pornography is generally about objectifying women. If your fleet tolerates porn, it sends the message to women in your fleet that they are not really equals but merely objects of desire. At least that's the perception of many women and it's the perception that counts in an environment where peoples true attitudes and beliefs can never be properly conveyed."

First of all, while I agree that porn should not be tolerated, it's not mandatory to make women feel welcome to the detriment of others. It's ultimately a decision about which kind of people you want to make feel welcome, and different organizations have different point of views about it.

Anyway, at the core it's not even a "think of the women!" issue. So gay porn is ok because no women are involved? What about porn which portrais women in a dominant role, with the "objectified" subject a male? I won't even mention weirder kind of pornography which doesn't involve women at all.

Porn is generally about the objectification of whoever is involved, no matter the gender. It should not be a "foster an environment which doesn't objectify women" issue, but a "foster an environment which doesn't objectify people" one. Again, at least if you want an environment with people who value this kind of respect, which i guarantee you is not so obvious.

Anonymous said...

Idiots.
Trying to censor the player base in any online game is like trying to soak up the sea with a roll of tissue paper. It just doesn't work. PEGI ratings, ESRB ratings, they all ain't worth a shit once anything goes online. Who forced you to click on the porn links anyway?

Kana said...

@It's about making people feel welcome
But they realy unwelcome, thats the point, if the fleet main body consists of "dudebros", females and intelegent peoples not welcome there. Just as black person not welcomed in racist community.
Accept the hard fact - HUMANS ARE DIFFERENT, YOU CAN'T PLEASE EVERYONE, YOU CAN'T BE LIKED BY EVERYONE. All you can do is choose the place where you are welcomed and liked, it's not that hard in our wonderful, huge and most of all DIFFERERENT world!

Anonymous said...

Funny how the typical solution to people being reported is, apparently, "Don't report people", not "Don't do reportable things".

In American culture, an equivalent saying is "snitches get stitches." This is an identical approach - don't stop doing illegal things, just stop telling the police about it. While this started as a gang and ghetto subculture thing, with the increasing stasi-ification of America it has spread to just about all subcultures in America.

yes, gay porn. And animal porn. And elderly porn. And other things I couldn't even identify, nor I really want to.

Another aphorism that explains this is "Rule 34" which basically goes, 'if something exists, then there will be porn of it'. And I think a perfectly work-safe image that mocks and illustrates this "rule" is:
http://hellomemes.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/memes34.jpg

The real issue with porn that isn't being addressed is that men are generally visual creatures, so sexually stimulating things for men are images. Women on the other hand are generally emotional creatures, so sexually stimulating things for women are words. In brief: porn for men = pictures; porn for women = romance novels. Both of which lead to unreasonable expectations.

It's about making people feel welcome

That violates the whole point of Eve. This entire game cherishes and values sociopathy. Making the game some touchy-feely emotional carebear festival is something that would destroy this game faster than what James 315 is afraid of. Miners are the n****rs of Eve - everyone loves to beat them up (or at least publicly claim that they do). Everyone gets to be a bully and thug. Look at the articles that extol the virtues of smashing some corporation (this weekend's one has to do with a wormhole corp called TLC) and breaking their toys and making them cry. There is no room in Eve for sissies. And if prudes want to be sissies about stuff in Eve, there isn't going to be room for them here either. We have a phrase for exactly what needs doing: HTFU.