Sexual harassment

[whiskeybravo]

People be thirsty. It's not just in MMOs. I blame Tinder

[BillyKaplan]

part of the way of preventively dealing with abuse is for you to be sure to protect yourself first by not rushing into a relationship without taking a long time to build trust.

But that's exactly what abusers do. That's the text-book method of operation. It's even there in the news article and was part of the guy's modus operandi. The only way to prevent that is never to enter a relationship with anyone ever.

I just really want to entreat people to protect themselves.

Most often, by the time you realize you're in an abusive relationship it's far too late for that. Again, it's part of how those people operate and why it's so hard to break away from those situations.

[Elamys]

You realise people have ulterior motives and it's especially hidden well on the internet.
There are desperate, sad people on the internet and things can go south, fast.
It doesn't usually stop just from looking at someone's cat girl.
Some crazed pervert can get so indulged in you and then become
a stalker and it gets worse. Friends and families are involved, hacking, threats or anything.
Your response is really just...wow.

It's really hilarious to me when people think it's that easy to walk away from it. Like, I had a guy harassing me in WoW, and I finally told him off and ignored him, and whenever I logged in on my alts on another server, he would have his friends harass me too. I ended up having to leave that server. Even if you cut out the harasser/abuser they can still negatively effect your life. And in cases like mine GMs aren't always that helpful. They didn't have chat logs of this guy telling his friends to harass me, because those conversations were outside of the game.

Another situation I ran into was with a guy I was very close friends with and was an integral part of our friend circle. It was just a normal friendship at first until he started getting really creepy and stalkery and abusive. And when I did things like remove him from my friends list and change my name he would just get that information from others. I was scared to speak out against it or anything like that unless I risk losing my other friends. Plus, this guy knew things about my real life, because I had known him for a long time and I really trusted him. So I was also scared that he'd lash out at me IRL because, let's be honest, in the digital age it's not hard at all to find somebody, and he had a rough idea of where I lived and my name which was probably all he would have needed. I was lucky enough that those friends chose to side with me (well, most of them) but not everyone is that lucky. :/

And even when you DO blacklist or ignore people it doesn't stop them from harassing you. Constantly making alts, or even just following you around in character, since blacklisting a person doesn't hide their character from you. And specific to this game, it won't stop people from entering your house.

So, is protecting yourself and taking care of yourself important? Yeah. Maybe don't walk down that alley where five people were murdered alone at night with nothing to defend yourself. But even if you did and something happened, it doesn't make it your fault.

[Enla]

My question is what more could SE do to protect players from this? May sound cold but how is this anyone else's problem beside those it affects. SE has put tools in place use them while sure at times they can only be used after the fact but what more can SE or anyone else beside those that are involved can do?

They could fix this by being more proactive about the reports that do come in. I mentioned the stalking story on the last page and how it was never resolved in spite of /MANY/ people reporting this individual and evidence collected against them. Last I checked that player happily moved servers because the community here had to step in and actually let people know what was going on after many months of using those self same 'tools'. Though that didn't stop them from still going around and telling anyone who would listen how /they/ were the victim and how mean the person they were stalking was for finally breaking and posting the logs after nothing was done. Even I got a message and let me tell you it was a trip to try and be drug into someone's emotional manipulation tactics.

I've seen and had to pass on similar information as an FC leader because there were multiple bad apples running around, hopping from guild to guild and evading any punishment in spite of reports. All to the point that the community itself started to having to compile it's own blacklists and you can bet there were several sexual predators whose names were forwarded to me along with the evidence against them, all of whom were still there and still abusing people months later in spite of being reported. When the community has to do the job of a company, there is an issue.

[Okamimaru]

My question is what more could SE do to protect players from this? May sound cold but how is this anyone else's problem beside those it affects. SE has put tools in place use them while sure at times they can only be used after the fact but what more can SE or anyone else beside those that are involved can do?

At some point it falls on us the community to decide we arnt going to put up with such behavior... we must decide to cut them out of party finders, linkshells, exclude them from statics... we need to let people know that if you're going to act like a scumbag that we the community will not accept them...

[CainCrimson]

At some point it falls on us the community to decide we arnt going to put up with such behavior... we must decide to cut them out of party finders, linkshells, exclude them from statics... we need to let people know that if you're going to act like a scumbag that we the community will not accept them...

I've always wondered how do you police unseen behavior though. Harrasment can be hard to prove if not overly obvious.
Then theres the people who intentionally make false claims to hurt other peoples ability to play, knowing the system is rigid.

[Endeleon]

Read, laughed.

Then you are part of the problem.

[LadyKairi]

It’s not as simple as “it’s just a game. Block and move on.” A lot of the time, the person from the game become a part of their real personal life. Nude photos were shared, one even lived with the harasser. While I personally believe it’s a bad idea to share nude photos to ANYONE, I could understand not leaving in fear of such a personal part of them being shared with god knows who. And trying to getting away from someone you live with or are staying with isn’t easy when you have no way out (money, vehicle), especially when home is far away. This kind of behavior should not be brushed off so easily. People should be punished for it. It. Is. Not. Okay. Good for you if you think you can handle it differently and not have things crash and burn around you. For others, it is not so easy. Not everyone is like you, and expecting people to handle things like you or else you’ll laugh or not take their situation seriously, is ridiculous.

[Ruru_Nayu]

Been hit on multiple times, i didn't care/respond.

[KisaiTenshi]

I've always wondered how do you police unseen behavior though. Harrasment can be hard to prove if not overly obvious.
Then theres the people who intentionally make false claims to hurt other peoples ability to play, knowing the system is rigid.

You don't. Unseen behavior is usually carried out in private with an express goal of driving the target offline, to suicide, etc. Even things like "for fun" twitter accounts sometimes have the nefarious goal of directing hate at people by removing context.