{closed} A discussion on "jokes" and abusive behaviour

This post is a consequence of something I witnessed in chat earlier today. As it is not the first time I saw something similar, I would like to address it.

What I saw: a new player started asking about Marlix and difficulty levels. Someone "joked" suggesting to crank the difficulty up and attack Marlix.

Let me be clear: this is not a joke, this is abusive behaviour.



(full thread here)

If the new player is not "in" the supposed joke, they are out, and you are the one excluding them, at their expense. And for what? For being new.

Today a mod intervened and asked the perpetrator not to do it again. I'd like to see more people nipping this in the bud every time they see it (I'm not so naive to think that this will be the last time someone will pull this).

I've been on the receiving end of these "just jokes" for years, and I'm still dealing with the consequences. Seeing such behaviour and seeing that it is not immediately drowned by people calling out the abuser has me fuming.

Peace.

If it was made obvious and clarified that this was just a joke I really don't see the issue though? If someone asked 'What's the best way to get my first boss kill as a new player?' and someone responded with 'Turn the difficulty up to the max and charge Marlix with nothing but a stick'... it's common sense not to do that, therefore the joker can safely assume they can joke about that with the person. As Jason P. Steed points out, the joker would be saying something positively dripping in irony to include the new player in their social group. The clarification of 'it's just a joke' is in the on-the-nose irony of "Crank the difficulty up and attack Marlix".

With all that said I don't have enough context to understand why this warranted staff intervention or why it was even said lol

Laughing because Mr. Academia over here would not survive his first day in a trade job and would probably identify an initiation ritual as some kind of personal slight lmao

Apparently 'I Have a PHD In Over-analysing Humour' doesn't even interact with people

I'm not 100% sure what any of this has to do with EMC or Minecraft.

Seems pretty obvious to me

I mean I saw it...the guy asked "what's a marlix" and cinna said to do /diff 8 and try it out...but then 10 seconds later followed up by saying he was joking.

Idk, I don't think it was abusive as such. Maybe would feel differently if a person permanently lost their stuff, for example, by being tricked into falling into the End. But this just seems more of a practical joke.

clarified after the newcome got retaliated by the Marlix is not soon enough. it went on and on and on until they got called out.

I see, you're one of those people, I'll take that into account.

see above. the mod intervened after I called out the user.
I'll refrain from calling it abusive, but they were definitely trying to have fun at the expenses of a new player.

fair enough.
but let's discuss what constitute a pattern, please? (maybe in your mod room if need be)
different players at different times doing the same is pattern? for me yes, but I am not a mod.

also, should this happen when no mods are online, am I allowed to report?

I don't recall them admitting being a joke 10 seconds later, quite the contrary.
But mods have access to chat records I think, so they can prove me wrong (and I'll be happy to be corrected)

I've noticed that we've got quite a number of people who have this sort of... "way" about them in recent years. While the older EMC community had this particular way about them, it wasn't as "frequent" or "common" as it is now. It was more sarcastic, and it was obvious since people knew each other better than we do now.

I will not bring up drama, but I've noticed a few players online that I've grown a distaste to. It's to the point that I've tried to "time" my gameplay whenever they are offline, so I do not have to see their words.

I'm willing to admit that it's probably because I'm more of a logical/rational thinker than a "jokester" or whatever, but that's just a small bit of my take on the situation.

An abuser? No lol

I like poking fun at people, especially at myself and out-of-touch academics, yes. My sense of humour is very dry and centres especially on irony and sarcasm, yes. Does it get lost in translation over text/to people from other cultures? Sometimes yeah and I've definitely developed the ability to cater to a more slapstick audience and a willingness to apologise when I hit the limit of where someone will go over the last few years. But I've never joked with malicious intent against anyone (I'm much more likely to call you something to your face than make snarky jabs lol), nor have I ever been labelled an 'abuser' so that's definitely a first.

This definitely sounds like a joke right off the bat and the clarification is enough IMO, it might have been helped with an emoticon. Definitely doesn't sound 'abusive' or like it was made with malicious intent, the issue I see with it is the gap between the joke and the clarification... the person might never have seen it and interpreted it as an actual instruction, and it's definitely a possibility when you're not on friendly terms with the person already. Should’ve said “do /diff 8 and find out jk”, thoughts on that, Fred_TWK?

Suggestion: instead of calling out people about being unhelpful, try to be helpful yourself.
But yeah, maybe no response to a question is better than an unhelpful response.

no, someone that disparages based on nothing.

if that would have been the message, this thread would not exists

I disparaged on the basis that he is 1) a member of the academia, people who are known for being so out of touch with the average person that they'll call them names for liking their country or something (thus making his analysis of social interaction likely pretty flawed), 2) reaching with his definition of how jokes function - "it's just a joke" applies to workplace initiation rituals, such as getting someone to go down the Asda for 'a long wait', or anything you've joked about that someone has taken personal offense to when it's unwarranted. To then accuse seemingly anyone who makes jokes with 'you're abusing them' and grouping them in with racists and assigning them a political alignment... really weird thread but I'd expect nothing less from the Twitterati.

Tl;dr: I made a joke about how he's out of touch (never seen the real world - 'would not survive his first day in a trade job') and jokingly suggested he probably over-analyses every social interaction he's ever had because of his PHD dissertation. Not based on nothing

I think new players deserve sincere and clarifying answers to their questions, not exclusionary joking. For the most part I think EMC players are very good at welcoming and orienting new players. If someone is being unhelpful you can always give the correct and helpful information, as others said.

While I'm extremely quick to judge and "write off" people who look like they are being sarcastic or are "joking", I will definitely agree to what was just said. If I were online when the incident (the one Fred_TWK was mentioning) was unfolding, I would have spoken up and said what the correct thing(s) would be.

While I do not like seeing people act this way in chat, I especially hate it when it's towards a new player. It makes the rest of EMC look like this when no one speaks up... :\

harmless joke if it was simply them saying do /diff 8

lol

No memes please. This is off topic and my uncle was murdered by one of these animals so as I’m sure you can imagine this isn’t very nice for me to see. Thank you for your understanding.