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The problem with being either a moderator or an active member of the community of… well, any game forum, is that dealing with trolls is extremely unhealthy for one’s mental state for longer times, especially if one doesn’t have incredible mental fortitude.

The fact that the forum almost supports trolls with zero control over accounts doesn’t help. (IE; players can create and have multiple accounts with no problem). The fact that accounts are not linked to one’s actual ingame profile is a huge flaw to me, as we don’t who a person commenting on x hero is, and that person could for all intents and purposes be some guy with an account level of 60, with 4 matches played on the hero they’re whining about.

I’ve seen players complain that Qhira+ABA is OP, because with Aba copy, that means 2x Final Strike ultimates!
I’ve seen the same player complain that Time Trap Chromie was OP, because she could do a double-time trap reset-triple combo by picking the upgrade to Temporal Loop and time trapping it twice, which was just completely impossible to do.
I’ve seen players claim that the only viable talent for old Chromie was Bronze Talons, where their hotslogs profile showed them as having a total of 10 matches on Chromie, with 2 being wins and 8 losses. What would he know?
I’ve seen players say that the ingame reporting system is fine because “they play 10+ matches a day in ranked and never been silenced”, but when asked for proof, turned out to be more like 10 matches a week. If not less.

We have people who are just ABSOLUTELY CRAZILY CLUELESS about this game, who probably only play 10 matches A YEAR, tell other people about balance! It’s absolutely preposterous.

I have probably said this before, but my perspective is that most of humanity is very dumb, egoistical and ignorant. This perspective of mine just gets stronger and stronger the more I read these forums.

The fact that asking for proof of rank or for people to share a replay usually results in either of these 3 scenarios:

  • They completely ignore you, even if you repeat yourself, while they focus on trolling others (common)
  • They completely disappear from the thread (common)
  • They provide the replay/other info that proves they were wrong. (EXTREMELY RARE)

Like with the “i’ve never been silenced but play 10 matches+ a day”-- guy.
Or another scenario where a Murky main (100+ level on Murky or so) complained that the Matchmaker shafted him by putting him on Braxis against something hard that resulted in a very quick stomp, but in the replay, he was the one making all the wrong decisions completely throwing the match.

Both I and other forum users could focus more on not letting them troll so easy. A pretty typical scenario that happens, if you imagine that this entire long post you’re reading now is a post on the subject of “Genji is not OP” or something, that they quote just a single line of the entire post and then make a dumb point about that, completely ignoring all the other arguments in the post. I as well as others make the mistake to keep arguing with them and the small snippet of thing they quoted instead of just going “Hey, you ignored 9/10 of my post, respond to that first”

How often do we see people ever admit they were wrong or they were overreacting or whatever? Extremely rare.

Forums will always be inherently negative because it’s where people come to complain when they feel frustrated at the game. The problem is that these ignorant people expect sympathy from their illogical rants, as if they were whining to their friends or family. And when they instead get told to git gud or that they’re just plain wrong, their frustrations at the game is instead turned towards us.

I for one intend to change my ways, if I can stick to it, from henceforth, and just stick to certain points or ask others to not “feed the troll”, where it makes sense.
Although it might get me banned, and that’s when I say goodbye to this forum.
People tend to get pulled in, even when there was a big flaw in an earlier part of the thread. Like when one troll claimed that Ragnaros wave is OP and it alone managed to create a comeback from a 4-level difference, I asked for replay, and the OP vehemently denied sharing the replay, which always means that they’re exaggerating to the extremes… but still, one forum user got into a huge, dumb and pointless argument.

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187

In HOTS forums, anyone who disagrees with the general consensus is a troll. Its a shame really, you all bash free-thinkers or people with out-of-the-box opinions/views.

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Hey I’m still here, forum users. KEK

I only post when necessary.

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189

I appreciate every new input, but the ideas that are mostly presented here, are so obviously flawed, that they don’t stand a closer look. Every decent player sees the problems, that these ideas don’t work at all.
Only the poster is so convinced by his idea that he is the one that isn’t open minded for other perspectives.

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190

Perfect example of a troll right here.

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191

Well put, open mindedness is a two way street. If your idea is bad, prepare to get criticism for it.

I’ve seen good concepts posted, and even blues have commented on them.

Then there are the masses of awful concepts that don’t really merit even a polite reply.

But the second kind of poster gets very mad when those flaws are pointed out.
Instead of asking “how can I improve this concept?”, they go “well, you’re stupid!”.

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192

You are on the side with the verbose guy…it can’t be that bad.

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Trolling the troll…lol gj…perfect example indeed

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That depends. Some people can handle more then others you know even if its just words from a stranger he will never see in his life.

Not everyone are born with a hard physical shell. Just look on all those people who committed suacide because strangers on the web made them do it becasue they took advantage of thier weak mental state.

How would you fell if someone stalked you with sms and facebook message.
Its still the same no matter if its said on a forum, in a game or on facebook or sms. If the person have a weak mental mind, even a few evil words would break them. Unless you are born without any form of emotion words can and will break you in the end if done long enough.

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195

Really hate the phrase “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me”. Just is a straight up lie, and puts the blame of the negative feeling on the victim, rather than the offender.

I prefer “sticks and stones may break my bones, but words leave scars forever.” Yeah it’s really dramatic, but the idea is solid. Words might not look like much, but they can cut deep and become a part of you, until you don’t even realize or remember you are there. It gets internalized.

So basically, be nice to people! You have no idea who the person on the other side of the screen is, or what kind of day they are having.

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196

It is a disgusting form of victim shaming.

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Some empathy-deficient people have difficulties understanding people have different personalities.

I am used to flaming, toxicity, threats etc. and am completely indifferent to them, taking them as part of playing Mobas, but I also know of people who went to therapy over a single negative comment said to them over Twitter.

Still a big fan of “if it doesn’t uplift or cheer up the target, don’t comment anything”. If someone played a horrible game, I will simply say nothing. I don’t know what trouble that person is going through in real life. Your bad comment might be what sets them off to desperation.

There is also a sad trend going on (even some people on my friend list do it), calling sensitive people “snowflakes”. Again rejecting the idea that people are born with different levels of sensitivity. It’s a part of their personality.

You can’t “beat sensitivity out of someone”, that will just make them reclusive and hate people.

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198

Just as the other cliche can be damaging, I think the one you’re a fan of can be just as bad to some people. No one should try to be outright mean, and you should give people the benefit of the doubt, but I also believe that constantly repressing your feelings of frustration isn’t healthy either.

Like you said, everyone is different, and some people don’t enjoy being strung along to being forced to exist in a fantasy world littered with egg shells that they didn’t create that might explode. Your mental health shouldn’t come at the expense of someones’ unreasonable sensitivities.

For me, if you’ve consistently shown lapses in logic, faulty memory, and a pattern of behavior, and for on the forums in particular responsible for disseminating and spreading outright false information and conspiracies, that deserves being called out.

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disseminating and spreading outright false information and conspiracies, that deserves being called out.

There’s calling out people logically and constructively, then there’s flaming

Trolls and people spreading false info should be called out. Flaming people for having a different opinion is just being an awful person.

Usually it’s not a regular doing that though. It’s one of those 0 posts who joins here just to be rude and flame everyone.

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Absoutely, and if that person wants to keep spreading false info and keeps posting things that aren’t true, allowing them to hide under the sensitivity card would be wrong.

I simply meant there is no need to get hostile when discussing things with people (in all of the places in the world, on a forum about concerning an obscure video game) such as going into personal attacks.

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Everyone defines trolling and flaming differently though. It’s too subjective because of individual sensitivities. It’s why the moderation on this forum is wildly inconsistent and out of wack. And facts too easily become opinions that can be argued because somehow their very biased and misinformed opinion takes precedence.

Also, I believe there’s a lot of ignorance on the forums, even from regulars, simply because most players by the very fact that the amount of people who have a genuine understanding of the game isn’t high.

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I’ve looked up most of the regulars and you’re right there’s just a handful of people who are diamond or above. But there’s quite a few.

But your’e also right that many are just writing info they know from their current league, even if that may be gold or lower.

If the forum only allowed diamond and higher to post, there would be like the same 10 posters over and over lul.
Considering the overall rank distribution in hots, I think this place is even over represented by high ranks.

Statistically almost every post here should be made by a bronze to gold but that isn’t the case yet

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It’s not. “Words” don’t have inherent or concrete value, it’s the association that people make from it, and it’s usually from other mechanisms instead. If ‘words’ hurt, there would be a much greater value placed on learning lethal linguistics and licentious literacy rather than the outreach into entirely different disciplines that manifest the effect :confused:
Harassment isn’t from shakespearean wit or engineering new jabberwockies, it’s simple metaphors that a person understands and then elated into internalized superstition.

(I used “jabberwocky” there as a direct reference to Lewis Carroll’s poem of gibberish that still makes “sense”. At the time he wrote it, the words were gibberish, but now many of those things have become ‘words’ that have meaning in fantasy stories or games.)

While one could say it ‘blames the victim’ the reaction made from ‘words’ is what the ‘victim’ is doing; they are creating associations to words and ‘giving them power’. It isn’t the “words” that create the hurt, it’s the feelings they end up associating with it. [Positive] reinforcement, self-image awareness, memory associations and complimentary stimulations adjust the reaction people have to coping with any wordclause or phrase they see or hear (for good or ill.) It’s when other actions come with the words that the trauma/pain set in; a word is just an easy scapegoat, or even a ‘search’ shortcut people make in a limited set of reactions when they’re already vulnerable.

In frog’s examples, it isn’t ‘words’ that stalks people, but actions and intents. (other posts made since I was writing this convey a similar effort) If a person were in another country, surrounded by a bunch of people they don’t know, it doesn’t matter what the group says (the words,) it’s the assumption of tone and action of the group around the person. It is how their own senses accumulate stimulation that overwhelms and scares them.

Being isolated, being different, being misunderstood are what hurt. “Words” are just a shortcut that represent sounds, and sounds become memories and feelings. Our complex chemical triggers are what “hurt us” and while words may be a catalyst, it isn’t the “word” that does it, it is the internalizing it and compounding it with other reactions that create subjective ‘hurt’ from it.

And the reality of that isn’t to ‘shame’ the victim, but to rather understand and reinforce what they can do about it; people can influence their own reaction and preparation, but they can’t ‘make’ someone else do something with words; they are their own worst enemy in that regard.

I think it may be overly neglected, but some of the same mechanisms for ‘words hurt’ applies to enamoration or even humor. The laughter or cringe doesn’t come from the ‘words’ but the delivery. It takes a certain amount of setup for a joke to be funny, and it takes a certain amount of reactions to reinforce a person to be a comic. There’s a lot of similarity and overlap into the mechanisms for comedy and tragedy and I would extrapolate that into how people process their reactions to ‘words’. Words are easier to identify, but we tend to hide other mechanisms behind ‘words’ instead.

If someone offhand is asked to be like Dr. Seuss (such as improv shows or writing challenges,) they’ll usually string together a bunch of rhyming words because the word is easier to identify. However, what makes something Seuss-like is anapestic tetrameter; the rhythm or how the words are conveyed.

If someone doesn’t know to consider the rhythm, then they won’t think about it in their own imitation despite it actually having an effect on what those ‘words’ mean to someone. The same goes for emotionally charged stimulations: if people don’t know how to look for the mechanisms involved, then they just identify the words instead. But, a person doesn’t need to know about a “Stroop effect” to actually have it affect them, or rather, even knowing about it still influences how they read. (The stroop effect is a demonstrable reaction change when people encounter incongruities in what they read. For instance, seeing “red” written in green ink.)

Misunderstanding and misidentifying the association for these reactions is part of why things aren’t just ‘fixed’ with the opposite – compliments don’t fix depression – While [we] are chemically-driven reactions, it’s not a matter of adding a base to an acid to neutralize the pH of “words”. With that same metaphor, the issue is that people tend to think of ‘words’ as being caustic, so they add what they expect to be a ‘neutralization’ but now they’ve made it something caustic because they added the wrong ‘chemical’ to the situation.

If someone were to compare a poem to a song made from that same poem, the introduction of other stimulations creates a different association to the words than just the words alone. (A person has to know the name of the color for the incongruity to affect them; if colors in other languages are used, then it wouldn’t work the same way) What hurts someone is the effectual “song” people make of their experience. But when they hear it again in their head or their heart, they might not know the ‘melody’ or the harmony, they just know a few of the words and strum along with the rest by feeling it out.

And all this length can seem like a very ‘logical’ approach by someone people may associate with being this unfeeling, unempathetic voice instead of considering someone may be a lethargic depressive mess that’s trying to convey some of their own experience.

What ‘power’ we give to words is based on some of our understanding and consideration, rather than an array of squiggles arranged into sets of 2 or more items. What we ‘see’ isn’t the object inherently, but rather a reflection of something after light has illuminated enough of the object for us to ‘process it’ And the same goes for ‘words’; our reaction is the reflection of what illuminates the context around it. That’s part of why I’ve tried to use different senses to indicating the subjective value of a ‘word’.

If harmful intent isn’t inferred from the ‘word’ then the association from it isn’t negative. Without context (preparation) slapstick comedy could seem mortifying; a vast amount of cartoons or stage skits depict terrible things that then become entertaining, humorous or even inspiring! But, those same actions with a change in color and/or music suddenly adjust the meaning of the ‘words’ used. Since we can create our own ‘meaning’, there’s a greater prevalence in people seeing stuff as “toxic” based on the word, rather than any other stimulation around it.

To end this full circle, a “lie” is made with the intent to deceive. Specific combinations of words aren’t a “lie” but the situation around it.

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Perhaps ‘lie’ wasn’t the best choice. ‘misleading’ or ‘untrue’ would have been better.

(But then with untrue you get into the whole truth is relative thing).

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I just don’t have the tolerance for it like I used to. I’m more inclined to report players for abusive chat in-game than I otherwise would have been a few years back.

I haven’t really become more sensitive, I just don’t have the tolerance for it anymore. It wasn’t cool a few years back, and still isn’t cool today.

I’ve got pretty thick skin, always have, but lately I just don’t have the patience for dealing with hostility. I’d rather just ignore it and move on to something better. If there’s one thing I took away from earning a degree, it’s that I really don’t have the time I think I do so I’m going to spend it wisely.

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