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The Community Problem (Long but very important)

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Feb 22nd, 2018
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  1. Hey, everyone (anyone? Hello???). Before going forward, I would like to just say a few things before getting into the meat of this:
  2. 1. I don't regret what I did, but I absolutely regret how I did it. Due to the environment I grew up in coupled with the town in which I lived, I was ostracized a lot as a child. This has unfortunately caused me to develop the bad habit of jumping to people's defense immediately without really pausing to be rational. I don't regret the initial defense, but I regret going the direction I did thereafter.
  3. 2. I do not, nor do I ever condone or defend any variety of discrimination. I said this many times, but for the record, no I was not defending the comments made, nor the accused; I was defending the possibility of foul play. I mentioned at one point that I knew of cases where evidence was falsified to ruin someone's image. I won't give names or too many specifics because I was not involved, but in a different gaming community that I have been a part of, a semi-relevant community member was doing his normal thing, when he was accused of doing something incredibly controversial. There is video evidence that that proved that he was not the one who engaged in said activity, but he has been essentially kicked out of the community entirely because people refuse to admit they were wrong in accusing him. This was my concern. I've seen it happen. However, after consideration, there is no doubt that those comments made were real, so I apologize for starting a fuss. I didn't intend to start a huge mess, but I apologize for that, and to LightCore specifically because I got incredibly flustered at one point and said some really mean things that I did not mean.
  4. 3. I understand how my actions were perceived. Things got out of control quickly, and I was relatively busy irl at the time, and due to not having time to really sit down and contemplate what I was doing, I got flustered by the flood in my notifications and just kind of went "alright, now I'm pissed" and fired back a lot of things that I regret and didn't intend. If you think I was defending racism/the right to be racist, or Waveless/his actions, then I don't know what to tell you. I've made it clear I was not defending it, and I still do not, but if you still choose to make that judgment, that's your decision. Anyone who actually knows me well will tell you that those assumptions are false, but I can understand how people who /don't/ know me well could see that through how I handled this situation.
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  6. Now that those things are out of the way, I want to say something that I've noticed in the community recently that has been incredibly bothersome. Anyone who follows me knows that generally I'm not very confrontational; I usually tend to stick to myself and my friends and only jump in when I know definitively there is foul play involved. The past few weeks, I have apparently been the center of three separate "dramas," which is weird because up until a few weeks ago, I was almost entirely apolitical online. I'm going to say some things that might rub a few people the wrong way in a minute, but I ask you to bear with me and truly consider the things I am about to present.
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  8. There is a problem in the community, but it isn't a problem of racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, etc... Those things do exist, and they are all terrible things committed by a very loud minority of people. I've been a member of the VGC community since the 2013, and the community was very welcoming. The VGC community has championed itself as a diverse community where everyone is welcome, but I have noticed a problem that has become incredibly troubling to me, which may be why I've started uncharacteristically speaking out so often: the VGC community values all varieties of diversity except for intellectual diversity. Allow me to elaborate.
  9.  
  10. The past few weeks, I've had three "controversies," for lack of a better word, and the same thing happened all three times.
  11.  
  12. 1. NPA
  13. Long story short, I mentioned that the NPA was not spectator friendly for a few reasons on PS and was talked down to by several NPA players (some notable community figures as well), which basically boiled down to "you're not part of the NPA, so stop talking," and one was even more dismissive in calling everything I said "nonsense." I was annoyed, so I took to Twitter and voiced my concerns. Within a half hour, I had around ten people in my mentions, only two of which actually discussed my grievances (Thank you Saxlad and Jason for listening to me during that public discussion) and talked about solutions. Most of the other things boiled down to "you're just mad you're not in the NPA," or some other dismissive comment. I was mobbed to the point that I had to stop responding because I couldn't keep up with the conversation any longer.
  14. 2. Gun Control
  15. This is an issue I am genuinely passionate about, but don't discuss frequently because it is an incredibly polarizing topic. I tweeted out a few facts about gun control and explicitly said "DM me" if you wanted to discuss. Nobody, not a single person, sent me a message, but either didn't overlooked or dismissed the request to be privately messaged about it. As with the NPA, my unpopular opinion was flooded with disagreement until, again, I had to stop replying. I had good discussions with only three people about this topic, and one was not a even member of the Pokemon scene. This was more civil than the NPA discussion, as nobody got particularly angry, but a lot of my points were being ignored because some people would send 5 tweets at a time after I sent one.
  16. 3. N Word Controversy
  17. I've admitted that I handled this poorly, but the trend continued into this. At its peak, I was probably getting 10+ tweets in a minute about it (this may not seem like a whole lot, but remember that except for some tweets towards Calvin, almost all were specifically targeted at me, and that's a lot to handle as one person). I had no less than 10 people sending me tweets, a few were incredibly constructive and many were incredibly condescending, to the point that once again I had to just stop discussing because I could no longer keep up and had to stop.
  18.  
  19. There's no defending my poor handling in the third situation, but the theme is common throughout all three: VGC has a mob mentality. Whenever there is opposition or controversy, the people who have different views are, whether intentionally or not, completely silenced by an onslaught of messages from dozens of people. I have been a part of this community for a long time, and I love Pokemon (even though it's a dumb game), and I've made so many friends through this community, but the VGC community has a serious problem. It isn't a racist/sexist/whatever problem, it's a community problem. Like I said, those hateful people will always exist, but it is so easy to rile up feathers in this community. To heavily paraphrase Arthur C. Clarke, "Two possibilities exist: either the VGC community is deliberately overwhelming opposing ideas, or they do it out of instinct. Both are equally alarming."
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  21. This is a problem that nobody is addressing, but everybody is contributing to, including myself in some situations. There is a real mob mentality in the community, and it completely shuts out intellectual diversity. I no longer desire to have discussions because when I want to discuss privately, it becomes an issue that suddenly 10 people are publicly tweeting me about. I've talked to at least 15 other community members who feel the exact same way that I do. A lot of people don't feel like they can go "hey, I don't like this thing--" or "I take this political stance--." To put it simply, the VGC community is an ideological echochamber, where if you don't repeat the same thing as everyone else, people will start trying to shut you out. I cannot thank people like Jason Krell, Saxlad, Dane Zieman, Zach Droegkamp, and a few select others for having thoughtful discussions with the "opposition," instead of overwhelming them until they stop replying.
  22.  
  23. I'm not trying to make myself seem like a victim, because I'm not a victim. I'm trying to bring to light something that myself and many others have noticed. The VGC Community is, for the most part, very inclusive; we have so many minorities that are actively welcome and successful in the community. The only minority missing is the intellectual minority; that isn't to say that it does not exist, but it is mostly unwelcome in the scene. Anyone that actively denies this is not looking at this objectively, because having talked many individuals belonging to the intellectual/ideological minority, it is obvious that there is a problem. This is a serious problem, and I firmly believe that this is exactly where just about every community issue stems from. Call-out culture working in tandem with mob mentality discourages passive onlookers to join future discussions.
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  25. So, what is the solution? The solution is simple in theory, but likely strenuous in application: Allow unique voices to have a platform. This does NOT mean allowing racism or sexism or bigotry or discrimination to have a voice, but to allow people with other perspectives to >>respectfully<< voice their unpopular opinions without fear of being mobbed about why they're wrong. Never assume the side you're on is infallible. If you think that the other side is always inherently wrong, YOU are the reason the problem exists. It's ridiculous that people are treated like trash when they don't involve themselves in polarizing situations, but then also treated like trash when they speak out because they have a different perspective. If you do this, YOU are part of the problem. We're (almost) all adults here. I admit that how I behaved the other day was pretty immature, and I take full responsibility for letting the stress and anger get to me. Don't give hate a platform, but give other ideas a platform, because if you think that every respectful opinion or perspective is welcomed in the community, you are wrong.
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  27. So, with that said, if you want to talk with me about this, >>SEND ME A DIRECT MESSAGE<< because any questions you have that are publicly directed towards me will be ignored unless it's something that obviously needs to be clarified. I wrote this whilst half asleep and hyped up on too much caffeine, so I imagine I said something unintelligible somewhere. I'm always open to discussion, but until the community itself is open for discussion, I'd rather handle things with people 1-on-1.
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