This thread is my own thread, and has nothing to do with the btags on forums thread-directly anyway-this is just me wanting to express my point of view in a place separate from those threads on how I feel about privacy online in general.
You see, there are some people that think that the best way to stop trolls is to expose people and have them named and shamed or whatever. But from my perspective, I actually consider THAT a form of trolling/harassment in itself, it’s silly as it’s stooping down to the trolls level. Think back to the wisdom of Taran Zhu back in MOP that famously said “I can see why you Alliance and Horde don’t stop fighting, each act of aggression causes immediate reprisal, and that reprisal in itself, is an act of aggression.” That’s pretty much the situation as I see it.
So on one hand, one could say to themselves, yes, by exposing people and all their dirty laundry and getting them into trouble, damaging their reputation and whatnot, it might think them twice about what they say online…and sure might censor a few people and stifled debate. But consider what is offensive to one person, might not be offensive to another, we all have different tolerance levels of what we will be willing to put up with.
I’ll also be honest, I’ve been catfished before, had people online misrepresent their gender, and fallen for it (this was outside WoW), and I admit I felt deceived, but I should have seen the warning signs, that unlike other people, they would share current photos, but they would never share new photos of themselves, on one hand I could say that person lied to me/betrayed me…so I ceased my friendship with them as a result. But the other side to it is well clearly that person might not be comfortable with the gender they were born as, and in this day and age, we need to be tolerant that some people aren’t comfortable in their bodies and have different gender identities that kind of thing. So who am I to judge them, even if I didn’t like the fact that they hid who they were from me? If anything it was a lesson, that I can only trust people online are who they say they are 200% if they willing to give phone calls, or share regular posts/photos about what’s going on in their life and so on.
So this is why I get uncomfortable when I see people on this forum name and shame people for their achievements, call them out, that kind of thing, as I don’t feel its my place to judge another person’s journey in life, we are all at different life stages, and all have our own problems and issues,
So exposing people to name and shame them, is something I feel that is not really in anyone’s best interest, obviously in WoW I accept that your toons are not the REAL you, but I’ve seen people use doxxing as a means of revenge via the violation of a person’s privacy, it’s a bad practice I think, as the breach of a person’s anonymity as a means to expose their opponents to potential legal repercussions may be justified in some rare circumstances, but as far as wow is concern I feel that when we call out other people’s alts and so on, all we are doing is exposing someone we disagree with to harassment, if people are breaking rules, report move on.
On this forum if Blizzard decides that the post is a troll post or not constructive, to the point of a silence penalty or whatever, ALL the person’s alts get a vacation from the forum, not just the main alt they are posting on.
I know people don’t like to be catfished and whatnot, but realistically this is an MMORPG, the last three words meaning “role-playing game”, so people are going to pretend to be who they aren’t, on some ways, it might actually work to have a specific forum alt separate from the characters you play in-game,
Of course I can’t stress enough that this thread isn’t specifically about the btag on forums thing (though in some ways I’m falling in favor of that argument, albeit slowly, as some people have made quite a good case it might actually give me MORE privacy)
But one thing I don’t like is that when we dox others, try to get them in trouble, callout their alts and all of that, the problem with that, is that one would have to be very confident and sure of themselves they are a good person, but I’ve seen many times that people that claim to be on the side of righteous justice but their actions don’t always lead to positive results, I’ve seen even the most well-intentional good people inadvertently cause a lot of harm and damage, and believe every human being that’s gotten past the age of 30 has skeletons in their closet, so I don’t think it’s a good thing to be claim to be that you’re right or more morally virtuous then other people.
In particular…I cannot.
