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abadidea

Time for another lesson from my days fighting in the Mod Wars in one of Twitch's more famous and busy channels

A few years ago, the channel began showing the pronouns of presenters and guests on stream. And toxic gamer types complained incessantly, often in very overtly transphobic ways, regardless of whether anyone on-stream was trans. We banned every single last person who complained. I personally banned hundreds, it must have been a few thousand all together. Anyone who DM'd the mods to apologize/explain it was a misunderstanding got unbanned, but that was a tiny fraction of them; there were more than a few bonus-transphobia parting shot DMs, often aimed at me because I was the first mod alphabetically.

And after a few weeks of this slaughter... the chat became a civil paradise. It was a much healthier environment than before we began showing the pronouns and causing all the most toxic people to volunteer their identity at once. People who are really gross on one axis tend to be unpleasant on all of them.

9 October at 8:05 | Open on infosec.exchange
29 comments
ティージェーグレェ

@0xabad1dea "because I was the first mod alphabetically."

Ooph.

9 October at 8:09 | Open on rap.social
D. B. Stuck

@0xabad1dea

Always have loved processes that cause the garden to weed itself.

9 October at 8:23 | Open on toot.community
Mother Bones

@MyWoolyMastadon @0xabad1dea
The weeds may have made themselves visible but she had to grab a whole lot of thorns to yoink them out!

9 October at 12:04 | Open on mstdn.social
Agnieszka R. Turczyńska

@0xabad1dea Thank you for your effort, Ma'am ♥️

9 October at 8:51 | Open on circumstances.run
Richard "RichiH" Hartmann

@0xabad1dea former IRCop and carried (the good old) freenode user support largely alone for a year. Can confirm, ban (after proper determination) is good.

9 October at 8:56 | Open on chaos.social
juliaro
Stephen G. Tallentyre

@0xabad1dea

I actually have a ton experience modding for small streamers, and by that I mean that the biggest streamer I've ever modded for had, at that time, an average of ~40–50 concurrent viewers by my estimate. I can't imagine modding for any of the big streamers.

Anyway, I love this story.

I usually have the pronouns extension installed (the only reason why I don't at the moment is because I've been highly experimental with web browsers recently, lol). I don't add my own pronouns, if only for the entirely petty reason that my name on Twitch is already so long that merely putting "He/Him" behind it is, in a lot of cases, all it takes to push part of it but not all of it onto the next line—which looks ridiculous. I still like being able to see other peoples' pronouns, though. Pronouns in English have always been somewhat awkward because English is very awkward. That's no one's fault, though, and I don't think that's what most if any of the people who outed themselves were complaining about. I can picture exactly the kind of person who would protest something like that.

It really makes me wonder how many people are prejudice to that effect as well, but who are also smart and/or self aware enough to keep that to keep that to themselves in the presence of those who would not agree. Surely—the number of people who actively hide prejudice in plain sight, who actually exist and not only in theory, is non-zero. It has to be.

@0xabad1dea

I actually have a ton experience modding for small streamers, and by that I mean that the biggest streamer I've ever modded for had, at that time, an average of ~40–50 concurrent viewers by my estimate. I can't imagine modding for any of the big streamers.

Anyway, I love this story.

I usually have the pronouns extension installed (the only reason why I don't at the moment is because I've been highly experimental with web browsers recently, lol). I don't add my own pronouns, if only for...

9 October at 9:22 | Open on infosec.exchange
GwenTheKween :verifiedtrans: :neofox_nom_verified:

@StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea
> The number of people who house prejudice in plain sight, who actually exist and not only in their, is non-zero.

I don't know that they have to exist. At least not for long. Prejudice is built on not knowing the people you're prejudiced against, only knowing the Boogeyman stories and the scares. If someone is able to hold their prejudice in long enough to be in the community where those folks are welcome, they will learn that they're bigotry is based on lies and grow out of it.

I say because I was one of these people, grew up in a pretty bad environment and just by being silent around people that I didn't know, I learned enough to start becoming a better person

@StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea
> The number of people who house prejudice in plain sight, who actually exist and not only in their, is non-zero.

I don't know that they have to exist. At least not for long. Prejudice is built on not knowing the people you're prejudiced against, only knowing the Boogeyman stories and the scares. If someone is able to hold their prejudice in long enough to be in the community where those folks are welcome, they will learn that they're bigotry is based on lies and grow out of it.

9 October at 10:04 | Open on tech.lgbt
Stephen G. Tallentyre

@GwenTheKween @0xabad1dea

Full disclosure: I have this problem where I perceive people as concealing their actual intentions in the event that that's not actually the case. I know exactly why that is, FWIW; we're not gonna go there. Anyway: that is a more optimistic way of looking at people, certainly. I also can't think of any reason why you're wrong about that. If I'm reading everything you just said as objectively as I'm able to, you're right. Thank you.

9 October at 10:22 | Open on infosec.exchange
Daniel Taylor

@GwenTheKween @StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea some people follow that path and improve, others not so much.

I don't know how many of the people I've heard of who were "only saying slurs because they were drunk" are people who were genuinely trying to improve and slipped up, and how many were masking most of the time and couldn't maintain the mask when they were drunk/high/otherwise altered.

9 October at 11:14 | Open on infosec.exchange
BenAveling

I used to know someone who was insufferable when drunk because they knew ppl would say, that’s just the drink, and they took full advantage of that permission to be insufferable without consequences. @RandomDamage @GwenTheKween @0xabad1dea @StephenTallentyre

9 October at 11:29 | Open on mastodon.world
Jeff Grigg

@BenAveling @RandomDamage @GwenTheKween @0xabad1dea @StephenTallentyre

My father informed me that what the Navy says is ...

"Everything you do while drunk are things you wanted to do while sober. You will be held responsible for them."

.

Don't "give people a free pass" for "the alcohol made me do it. No, that's the real you -- when you're not hiding it.

9 October at 12:03 | Open on mastodon.social
GwenTheKween :verifiedtrans: :neofox_nom_verified:

@RandomDamage @StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea yes, I'm not saying all people would be better, I just think that if someone is holding in prejudice to be in a welcoming place, they are likely gonna change just through exposure. I'll caveat by saying this is in the specific case where the person is in the environment by their own choice (like a livestream chat, as opposed to work)

About "only saying slurs because I was drunk", it depends on whether that's where the sentence ends or not (for me anyway). if they continue with something like "sorry, I'm trying to get over old habits but I apparently haven't progressed enough" (or something to that end) I'll be more likely to think they are saying the truth. If they end at "I was drunk" then it doesn't feel like they truly understand why that's bad and are just using drunkness as an excuse.

@RandomDamage @StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea yes, I'm not saying all people would be better, I just think that if someone is holding in prejudice to be in a welcoming place, they are likely gonna change just through exposure. I'll caveat by saying this is in the specific case where the person is in the environment by their own choice (like a livestream chat, as opposed to work)

9 October at 11:30 | Open on tech.lgbt
Jeff Grigg

@GwenTheKween @StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea

I think we all have our issues.

I think the big difference is ...
Some of us are working to improve ourselves. ❤️
But, ...
Some of us are not. 😢

...

And a fair number of those *not* working to improve themselves don't want to. And probably won't, even if encouraged. And those are the ones we just need to "weed out."

9 October at 12:07 | Open on mastodon.social
Mother Bones

@GwenTheKween @StephenTallentyre @0xabad1dea Prejudice is always a learned behavior and in a prejudiced society, most of us are unlearning our prejudices in adulthood. So the fact you could keep quiet about it until you learned better is still a big deal! 🎉

9 October at 12:10 | Open on mstdn.social
Barktic Fox :therian:

@0xabad1dea I really wish more people (and companies) took seriously the fact that you get the online community you accept, and you don't have to accept everything.

9 October at 9:22 | Open on woof.tech
Graceless Hippo

@0xabad1dea

It's a thankless task being a moderator in a space like that. I've been there (different media). And I just want to say I'm very grateful when I see moderating in action in any space. We need people >not algorithms< to moderate our spaces. And we need people like you.

Thank you for doing what you did.

9 October at 9:22 | Open on mastodon.ie
Natalie

@0xabad1dea this is a non-negligible part of why we always keep a political banner on sass-lang.com

9 October at 9:56 | Open on mastodon.social
Eric the Cerise
gudenau

@0xabad1dea This kinda reminds me of a huge split a Minecraft project had. The community for it was getting pretty darn toxic because of a specific group of people and every day it was getting worse. Then they forked the project to make their own echo chamber and they all left, leaving the project with fewer problematic people. They have this huge story about how awful we are (it's all a big lie) and occasionally send people over to try to start stuff, but it's mostly chill now.

9 October at 10:36 | Open on fosstodon.org
sunflowerinrain

@0xabad1dea Kudos to you and colleagues.

Almost off-topic: I don't show pronouns, but that's my choice. I wish we could avoid needing to (unless for dating and mating purposes). Not all languages have gendered pronouns, and I like this. There's no defaulting to he/him and it changes the power balance. I'd love a society where everyone makes their place without reference to gender, colour, or other physical characteristics. Yes, I know: dream on.

9 October at 10:52 | Open on mastodon.online
Steven Bodzin bike & subscribe

@0xabad1dea the broken windows theory but for human decency

9 October at 10:57 | Open on thepit.social
Daniel Taylor

@stevenbodzin @0xabad1dea except this works.

I followed this philosophy for maintaining my personal block list back when Twitter still existed, and it made things usable there

9 October at 11:17 | Open on infosec.exchange
Roadskater, Ph.D.

@0xabad1dea Doesn't matter what the topic is, your final sentence applies.

9 October at 10:59 | Open on mastodon.social
Smol Catto

@0xabad1dea if it's the one I think, thanks so much. It makes it so much more watchable without those people

9 October at 11:01 | Open on tech.lgbt
abadidea

@an_smol_catto I don't use their name in these anecdotes because I'm not officially representing them but it is, shall we say, a place where things get accomplished in a speedy fashion

9 October at 11:20 | Open on infosec.exchange
Smol Catto

@0xabad1dea yes, infinitely more watchable :blobcatmeltlove:

9 October at 11:22 | Open on tech.lgbt
Wanja

@0xabad1dea Yes, I've noticed this in a bunch of twitch streams - if you put in the work to cultivate a healthy and safe environment you can have it, even if you're at thousands of regular viewers. Toxicity is not simply a function of community size.

9 October at 11:23 | Open on hachyderm.io
Regis - HTTP 1.1/418 Teapot

@0xabad1dea Ooof. I mean, there is an advantage to people who wave a big red flag conspicuously enough to make it obvious who they are.
Also: Not my community but as a general internet person thank you for that service.

9 October at 12:15 | Open on infosec.exchange
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