Sexual harassment

[Okamimaru]

What is this view based off? What is are people that still believe in innocent until proven guilty.

Based on people thinking this type of thing is funny or immediately blaming the victims... or even using the words victims and abuser in quotes to sort of dismiss the legitimacy... guilty until proven innocent is fine, its how it should be... but my issue is with how people are willing to dismiss the victims story all together or to blame the victims... why is it ok to give the benefit of the doubt to one and not the other?

[Zsolen]

Guilty until proven innocent is not fine. It's not even remotely fine.

[Okamimaru]

Let me be clear this thread isn't just about this one case in the article... I wanted to see if maybe other people had a similar experience. Maybe this was an isolated incident maybe it's far more rampant... the idea was to see if this is a common occurrence or not... and to give people a place to tell their stories of need be...

[Okamimaru]

Guilty until proven innocent is not fine. It's not even remotely fine.

Yeah i meant innocent until proven guilty....

[Rogatum]

Based on people thinking this type of thing is funny or immediately blaming the victims... or even using the words victims and abuser in quotes to sort of dismiss the legitimacy... guilty until proven innocent is fine, its how it should be... but my issue is with how people are willing to dismiss the victims story all together or to blame the victims... why is it ok to give the benefit of the doubt to one and not the other?

If you feel innocent until proven guilty, being leery of both sides is a reasonable response. May not be a popular opinion I personally feel the only person that can actively prevent or mitigate abuse is the person it is happening to. No system in place would have prevented this or any form of abuse really from happening. We can try to educate people on the signs, agencies to content but if the person themselves are blind to the abuse nothing anyone can do.

Let me be clear this thread isn't just about this one case in the article... I wanted to see if maybe other people had a similar experience. Maybe this was an isolated incident maybe it's far more rampant... the idea was to see if this is a common occurrence or not... and to give people a place to tell their stories of need be...

Having a place share is fine, but I think some (could be wrong, lol 23 page thread) people in this thread advocated for the community to blacklist and shame others when abuse / harassment has not yet been proven. People need to be careful as to how those stories are used / stored. Let us say even if that was not their intent, when people write blogs about their abuse before going to the proper authorities it will foster an emotional response to those that read the story which often leads the issue being thrown into the court of public opinion. Which I never been a fan of.

[Elamys]

Let me be clear this thread isn't just about this one case in the article... I wanted to see if maybe other people had a similar experience. Maybe this was an isolated incident maybe it's far more rampant... the idea was to see if this is a common occurrence or not... and to give people a place to tell their stories of need be...

It is unfortunately a very common occurrence, particularly as MMOs seem to commonly be a refuge for emotionally damaged people online, where they can be either victim or abuser.

This thread hurts to read, because it's very clear that people do not understand. And while I'm glad, because it means that they've never experienced it, it's never fun reading about how you were the weak idiot that allowed someone you were friends with to hurt you, and how the pain you experienced is all your fault.

I just don't get it myself. How was I supposed to just "walk away" from someone who I had been good friends with for a long time, who knew my name, where I lived, because we had plans to meet up someday (as online friends often do these days!), who knew the names of my other accounts separate from the game (not only my Facebook, but also my Tumblr as we both liked to use the website and my Skype)? How was I supposed to just "walk away" from someone who I deeply cared about and wanted to see happy, who threatened suicide if I stopped talking to him? (This is illegal in many places, by the way, and is a hallmark of emotional abuse, because the average person is going to have a hard time letting someone they care about just do that to themselves if they walk away.)

I never understand why people assume the victim just didn't do anything because I can tell you I did. I removed him from my friends list and put him on ignore, removed him from Facebook, blocked him on Tumblr and Skype. He made new characters, new accounts, to get to me, I blocked those too. I made an entirely new tumblr blog and he found it too, through a mutual friend of ours that was sympathetic to him. He told friends of his that I had met before the "truth" about me being this horrible, awful person (he was careful to limit this to people who only vaguely knew me because if you even hang out with me for like 30 minutes you'll quickly realize that what he was saying was not true at all). I had to cut out those mutual friends of ours too because the risk of them revealing information was too high. I felt like I was being stalked across the internet by this guy. I found myself checking my messages and notes, checking every unfamiliar name that popped up, because I was so paranoid.

Since he knew where I lived and I was alone all day and he was a former military guy with a (as I had found out too late) violent personality I was scared whenever there was an unexpected knock at the door. He got my phone number and would call me at odd hours, I had to block those, and switch my number, to get that to stop. Because of all of this I stopped participating in the activities I loved, stopped associating with people I had been good friends with, to try and put distance between us, and it was never. Enough. Finally, FINALLY, he got some sort of mental counseling and stopped bothering me. But the damage was done and that's a year and a half of my life that I spent in fear and pain that a formerly friendly relationship I had online that was very important to me had devolved into something so horrible that extended into my online life. Because I didn't want to be his girlfriend, because I didn't want to engage in sexual activities with him, all of this happened.

I wasn't afraid of getting a rude letter or some completely random person I had never met online not liking me. I was afraid of losing even more friends than I already had. I was afraid of him showing up to my door and shooting either me or himself, because that's what he had insinuated he would do. So like, thanks for making this out like I was just overreacting over some guy pestering me about my character looking "sexy." It's really enjoyable to hear that I'm just a shrieking harpy trying to ruin some guy's life with false accusations.

Oh yeah, and if you think people just give up eventually, or the police will help, here's someone who called the police 125 times over her stalker who eventually tried to murder her. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.b4347e939f4c And yes, someone online is just as capable of getting the information they need to do this.

[Zsolen]

It has nothing to do with not understanding and everything to do with patience and letting information come out. I've lived on this planet too long to simply jump to conclusions or become a vigilante of sorts.

[Elamys]

It has nothing to do with not understanding and everything to do with patience and letting information come out. I've lived on this planet too long to simply jump to conclusions or become a vigilante of sorts.

That's good for you, but I'm talking about the people who say it's the fault of a victim for being online or for "not blocking" the abuser in these kinds of situations. I'm not saying you should jump to assuming the guy's guilty, I'm talking about the people who say this stuff doesn't happen or isn't serious.

[Sebazy]

The worst part about this whole mess is that it's detracting from just how severe domestic and sexual abuse can really be whilst also distracting people from the lesson that really needs to be learned from all of this.

Chasing, hassling, threatening with lawyers etc. At the end of the day, that achieves absolutely nothing in the grand scheme of things. There's always going to be another smooth talking creep to pop up next. SE can't protect you from this, Discord can't protect you from this, there's always going to be another platform or avenue to be approached on.

The harsh reality of this is that you need to look after yourself. Your privacy is your responsibility above all others. If you struggle to say no then you need to have a heart to heart with some close friends or family and have them look out for you as no one else is going to do it if they aren't even aware of what's going on. I'm not suggesting that you wall yourself off in your inn room, but you need to be at least a little bit guarded. Don't allow anyone to rush you into things. It's easy enough to feign an AFK to get a second opinion and regroup if you're unsure about something.

Your life will be an order of magnitude easier and more serene if you can learn to pop conversations with these sort of people in the bud before it goes anywhere. Don't rise to the bait, don't go along with it, don't give them details for your social media or messenger apps and it has to be said that passing nudes and other sensitive personal stuff to random people on the internet is practically meme worthy in 2018. Don't be that guy/gal. It's just not worth it.

[Enla]

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This has been my main issue with this thread as well. The Moogle Post situation is something I won't pass final judgement on until it's actually litigated, though the evidence against Old Bear is such that I wouldn't want to deal with him. Especially after seeing how he and his few remaining, loyal staff handled the retaking of the magazine not that long ago which left a bad taste in my mouth. My biggest issue is the people laughing at the victims and assuming they're lying out of the gate or that situations like they describe either cannot happen, or are their fault to begin with. It's a worrisome trend. You don't /have/ to believe everything wholesale and frankly I agree that skepticism is the right course of action when you have no personal stakes in a conflict. It's the broad strokes 'anyone who /allowed/ themselves to be in this situation /deserves/ it' generalizations that I see most people discussing and being disgusted by.