Rise of the E-Peen!

So, this is a continuation of my “The relationship between developer and player“, I’ve just noticed a lot more epeenery from the EQ2 community as of late and think I need to expand on what I started to talk about earlier.

It seems that there are two types of people that participate on the forums of most MMOs and other fan sites, the ones who are rational and behave in a civilized manner, and the ones who are total asses. The ones that are intelligent and not screaming children usually will get a response from a developer. The asses start off attacking developers than start crying when they don’t get a response even louder than when they were being asses. I’m going to mostly complain about the latter, and MAYBE make a few comparisons with the former. So in keeping with the E-Peen theme, I’m going to write this in a rather aggressive tone.

It seems the internet has the propensity of letting people be complete and utter jerks more so than they would in real life. I think a lot of it comes from the fact that they aren’t going to get popped in the mouth for half the crap they go on about, so it’s a little more comfortable. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen plenty of rational, well thought out commentary from some of the more infamous flaming sites, but it’s hard to find sometimes in the overly homophobic and asshatery comments that usually fill threads. Seriously, if most of the people that post on some of these sites were face to face with half the people they insult, I guarantee a lot of them would be missing some teeth right about now. It just boggles my mind that people think the fact that there’s not a fist sitting right there gives them license to just be as big of an ass as they possibly can be. What purpose does it serve to sit there and belittle people, make homophobic comments and generally act like they’re back in Junior High? What’s even worse is they think they’re going to get their questions or concerns answered by any developer when they sit there and make comments like “so-and-so should be taken out back and shot.” It doesn’t just happen on the unofficial forums, it happens on the official ones of many MMOs, if not all of them. What purpose does it serve to be a total jerk to someone you never have met, or probably never will meet other than to inflate your epeen to compensate for your shortcomings at being a normal human being? I’ve heard the excuse, “but it’s fun” or “it’s funny to watch people get pissed off”. That’s exactly what happened to you when you were a child, except it was being picked on by some kid who had the same inferiority complex that you now display in your adulthood. It’s quite pathetic actually. Perhaps some of these people should take a moment and look at why they’re such pitiful excuses for human beings and fix it, rather than making it their mission to make other people miserable without any REAL consequences to themselves. They can hide comfortably behind their little screen and push people’s buttons with no impact on their real lives.

What really gets me though is the fact that people start off blatantly attacking the developers of these games and then expect them to respond to them. I mean do you think if you walked up to someone and started throwing a temper tantrum in their face that you would get what it is you seek? I think not. Most of the time you will either completely destroy any chance at achieving what it is you want and be met with complete silence and a turned back, or you get popped in the mouth, either physically or verbally. It seems to be a trend with men more than women, but I think that’s because most women can at least think somewhat rationally about how to go about getting results that are satisfactory to them when there’s a perceived problem. Men generally think that if they beat it hard enough they will get their problem solved or it will just go away. Don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of women that act like the asses you see running around the internet inflating their E-Peens, but not nearly the same number as men.

Personally, I would have a real hard time dealing with the abuse the developers of these games have to endure. I would either lose it and snap off on one of these E-Peeners, or just ignore the entire player base as a whole and just keep on truckin with my job how I’m told to do it. Well, with the lack of response from developers as of late in many places, I wouldn’t be surprised if they’re just sitting back ignoring all the hundreds and thousands of threads on various forums because some E-Peen decided to prove how much of a “man” he is by belittling someone. I don’t blame them for shying away from interacting with the players when all they are met by is constant attacks and no real substance to the interaction. Then you have the ones that scream and act like complete asses, screaming even louder when their nonsense gets moderated by whatever person is charged with taking the brunt of the E-Peenery attacks. I don’t know how many times I’ve seen someone say something completely stupid and obnoxious then find out that their completely worthless rant was moderated by someone then start crying like a baby about free speech and the like. In what world do you live in where you think it’s acceptable to go somewhere and be a complete ass, get thrown out on your rear, and some magic governmental agency is going to walk in and tell them they can’t do that? Some people just don’t have a brain what so ever if they think that whatever set of laws that protects their “free speech” applies to private forums. Those laws were enacted so the GOVERNMENT couldn’t stop you from being an ass, it doesn’t give you free reign to be an ass wherever and whenever you want without consequence. It’s like walking into someone’s house and taking a crap on the rug. Don’t you think you’re going to get tossed out on your ass?

Frankly, the people that get the so coveted developer responses are the ones that can rationally and reasonably say “this is what I think is wrong, and this is an idea of how you might fix it so that some of us would be happy with it”. Simple. There’s no “you have to fire so-and-so now!!!” there’s no “It’s a conspiracy! We should organize against THE MAN and bring them down!!!” Being a reasonable, level headed person will get you much better results than being an ass. Just try it some time in real life. Walk your pathetic ass into some biker bar somewhere and order a beer. Order the worst beer you could possibly order. Then turn to the giant bear of a bartender and start screaming at him about how much he sucks. Tell him “n00b! Serve me a BEER, not this crap!” I bet you won’t be leaving with as many teeth or working limbs as you came in with.

If only the internet came with bouncers

~ by g0thicicecream on March 4, 2008.