Sexual harassment

[Rubiss]

Again, and I can't stress this enough, you are not only not an adult at 18, you're not even close.
Your judgement is definitively unsound. You're brain has yet to fully mature and with that immature state comes compromised judgment, logic, and impulse faculties.

You are especially vulnerable to manipulation at that stage of life, as not only are you immature neurologically speaking, your brain is also under hormonal assault, making things even more tempestuous.

You can't know how you'd have reacted, you can't hypothesize about this. That girl went through it. You did not.

Have some goddamn compassion.

You are an adult by 18. That's just the definition in many countries.

[WaffleFaerie]

You aren't groomed from an online game, and 18 is an adult. You know better at 18.

You are an adult by 18. That's just the definition in many countries.

This isn't really @Rubiss, I just pulled your post for context. Legal definitions are what they are, but we don't have to like them, and it's possible you agree on that point. Some "adult" things, in some places, you can't do until you're 21. (booze, weed, running for election)

Also, (and this is @Zsolen, double underlined) when I was 18, I would've made a terrible adult, because I didn't know half of what normal 18-year-olds are "supposed" to know about the world, I just happened to grow up very sheltered. Like, the whole OldBear situation would have gone completely over my head at that age. I didn't speak the language. (I still don't, but now it's by choice.)

Double also, Anatha's right; the rational part of the human brain isn't fully developed until our mid-twenties. If I was Queen of the World, I'd raise the legal age of everything to 25. And then I would perish by regicide.

[Reinha]

Double also, Anatha's right; the rational part of the human brain isn't fully developed until our mid-twenties. If I was Queen of the World, I'd raise the legal age of everything to 25. And then I would perish by regicide.

I don't think being an adult is only about being fully developed, but being developed enough that your parents shouldn't have to take responsibility for your actions anymore. A child behaving badly, committing crime or doing stupid things is the parents' fault. When it's adults doing those things it's their own fault. That does not mean young adults can't make any mistakes. It just means their parents aren't the ones responsible for allowing those mistakes to happen.

In a hypothetical world where 18-year-olds are still considered children, if their parents are going to be held responsible for the well being of their children then they should be given the right to monitor their kid's internet activities to keep them safe from predators. I don't know any 18 to 24-year-olds who would be willing to submit to that. It's hard enough to monitor younger teenagers who already at that age seek individuality, privacy and independence.

[WaffleFaerie]

I don't think being an adult is only about being fully developed, but being developed enough that your parents shouldn't have to take responsibility for your actions anymore. A child behaving badly, committing crime or doing stupid things is the parents' fault. When it's adults doing those things it's their own fault.

I'm sorry, I was being a little light-hearted and silly with that comment. It's a delicate job, bringing levity into such a gloomy thread about such a grave topic, and perhaps that was a mistake on my part. I wasn't really trying to address the legitimacy of legal age of majority or criminal responsibility, I just wanted to refute the idea presented by Zsolen that an 18-year-old should just "know better" than to be a victim of an online abuser simply by virtue of being 18. I can't say I would have known better at that age, that's all.

You still know better by 18 and you were an adult at 18. You would know something is wrong. Growing up sheltered doesn't remove basic instinct.

I really don't feel like Googling missing and murdered girls over 18 to use as evidence against this, so I'm just going to exit the thread.

[Miyha]

First thing's first: as someone who has been in the exact same place as the woman mentioned in the story from the beginning of the thread, it is sickening that people find that to be "funny" and "just FC drama". For someone in an extremely vulnerable state, something like that can consume your life. I was in a relationship like that when I was playing another game and seriously struggling with my mental health. It took me two years to recover from that. Your "LOL FC DRAMA" sentiment is one reason the #MeToo movement took off in the first place: plenty of people just flat out dismiss women (and men even more so, imo) who claim sexual harassment and/or abuse. If you find that article "funny", you are the scum of the earth and don't deserve to reproduce. Fight me.

Anyway...

As a female in the MMO world, aside from that one intensely negative experience (which was ultimately something I got myself into and I just pray to the gods that sick bastard doesn't prey on another similarly vulnerable woman, online OR irl), I really haven't encountered anything that can't be solved by simply blacklisting someone. Honestly, I haven't had many issues with harassment at all in any of the games I've played. :/ It could be because a lot of people assume I'm a dude until they hear my voice because of the way I type; even after finding out I'm female, nothing really changes. I can only think of one instance in which someone began treating me differently after finding out that I was female, but there again, I distanced myself from that individual and problem solved.

Maybe I'm just lucky, or maybe I naturally exude an air of "don't mess with me" now. Or, maybe the way women are treated in the gaming community is beginning to change. Sure, you have things like GamerGate several years ago, and there's definitely still progress that needs to be made. (That's the case everywhere though; not just in the gaming community.) In general, however, I would say that sexual harassment in-game is no more prominent than it may be irl; and irl, you don't have a blacklist. :P (Unless a restraining order counts? Prison? Lol...)

TL;DR: People who find a woman's account of abuse to be "funny" or "just drama" are part of the problem. With regards to harassment in general, keep calm and block on.

[Zsolen]

I really don't feel like Googling missing and murdered girls over 18 to use as evidence against this, so I'm just going to exit the thread.

They should have been more cautious. There are a lot of terrible people out there. They also aren't girls at that point.

[Elamys]

They should have been more cautious. There are a lot of terrible people out there. They also aren't girls at that point.

Dude, you can do everything right and still be attacked or whatever. How often do you see it? Someone commits some kind of horrible crime, they interview the people who knew them, and everyone says that they seemed so nice, very normal, etc. You could lock all your doors and someone picks the lock. You could drill someone on their past and keep yourself really distant from them before becoming friends only to have them lash out at you in some way. You could be sitting at a bar, not known for its violence, minding your own business, celebrating your birthday with your friends, when a fight breaks out and a stray bullet kills you (this happened in my city). I don't like this assumption that everyone who is a victim made some colossally stupid mistake because honestly, it's not true, and it's definitely not that simple.

Or, you could be in what you believed to be a truly loving relationship with another person and send them nudes, something that two consenting adults are allowed to do, only to have them threaten to spread them around because you did something they didn't like.

[Zsolen]

I don't like this assumption that everyone who is a victim made some colossally stupid mistake because honestly, it's not true, and it's definitely not that simple.

I never made that statement. What you think is victim blaming is not that at all. All you care about is forcing people to feel sorry for themselves for the rest of their lives, rather than actually helping them. Then you pretend to be the hero, even though you want to do nothing to actually help them get past it or help prevent future occurrences. If you give someone nudes, you are allowing yourself to be blackmailed.

Which leads me to what the other person said. Believing you can trust someone enough at some point to send them nudes is never a good idea. Ever. Do not even send your spouse nudes of yourself. That is not a smart thing to do.

You can't prevent everything, but blackmail is one of those things you can control to a very large degree.

[MoroMurasaki]

@MoroMurasaki: Yes that is still at least fine but I would still look out for each case and see if that person can take it right now or not. Sometimes its maybe better to only support them and maybe talk with them about this later, when they are less emotional impacted by this. People just need to remember that not everyone will take everything the same way and for some this might be too much.

I think this is the core of our disagreement - I don't believe in sugarcoating the truth when it comes to something this important. Facts don't care about your feelings and the fact of the matter is if you engage in behavior like what has come out of the TMP story (specifically sending nude photos or video to someone else, much less someome you've never even met) you have made a huge mistake even if nothing bad comes of it.

If we suspend disbelief and only listen to their evidence it paints a picture of these women allowing themselves to be bullied and extorted over a spot in a Free Company or at a glorified fansite/blog. No matter how despicable one finds the actions of (the bad guy whos name we can't say) if you can step back and look at things objectively you will see he would have been completely neutered if the women he targeted stood up for themselves at the first signs of abuse.

For what feels like the hundredth time I find myself reiterating that if (hes sorta like Voldemort in that way) did everything he was accused of he is a disgusting person and I never want anything to do with him; none of that changes the fact that he is still out there though and is likely not the only of his kind. Hell, he got caught! He probably isn't even the cleverest person in the game doing these things. We can sit here and focus on comforting a few people who made some poor choices or we can learn from this experience and hopefully make it harder for him or predators like him to prey on players in the future. I think the choice is obvious.

Personal accountability. I don't know why that is such a taboo concept and I feel like it can never be stressed enough. No one is ever "unable to handle" being told they screwed up and coddling them only sets them up to face the same things again in the future. That isn't what I wanted after my sexual assault and I doubt it's what the TMP victims want either.

Careful, this stuff is too politically incorrect for this forum to handle. But before that, can you pass me the great commune tea, by the whey?

Everything is too politically incorrect for these forums it seems...

[Alleo]

I think this is the core of our disagreement - I don't believe in sugarcoating the truth when it comes to something this important. Facts don't care about your feelings and the fact of the matter is if you engage in behavior like what has come out of the TMP story (specifically sending nude photos or video to someone else, much less someome you've never even met) you have made a huge mistake even if nothing bad comes of it.

Because often those vicitms are already at a bad place in their life before this happens, trust a person for months, do one mistake (like you only really need to sent one picture) and then are confronted with other people they trusted that said that this is just drama and they should just take it, have the abuser say to them that he/she might kill himself if they go and thanks to all the actions over time they might not have many people left that they can confine into. All of this while already suffering from depression and other attacks. IMO it is not good to go to them and start to blame them for it too. You dont need to sugarcoat anything, you simply just need to be there for them and if that all is over, you can still talk about the mistakes. But imo not when the person is already at their worst place.

Also again its always easy from the outside and as a hindsight to point out the bad stuff. But those people often dont even notice these things because they trust the person and because the person tries everything to have their trust.

We should not try to and say they are 100% to blame, but is the message we want to send to people is that there was nothing they could have done that could have prevented the situation?

We can go around and try to teach those that did not have anything happen to them, how to avoid it. Give them the signs that could help them identify it and we could also reach out our hand and say that people can come to us if they need advise and not react like its just drama and funny. That would help beforehand but will never 100% be secure. But what does it help the person that already went through this? They have already learned the hard way how it happened and its like someone touching fire. Once you did that, you will probably never do that again and also know much better than any other person why it happened. (Because there is no one true way to solve this, since people are so different.) So that person imo already knows quite good what happened, what they did do wrong and will not want to go through that again. Thus the talk about "how you should not get into that situation" is first already too late and probably just talking about stuff that they know already. Thus imo its better to just give them a helping hand, because the time afterwards is probably one of the hardest. And if that is all done and they are at a better health, you could still talk to them if they want to.