Why is everyone so silent in the game?

[Breakbeat]

Imagine being a human who cannot communicate without offending someone else.

I am active in a lot of online communication, and always have been. Forums, video games ... shoot, this "boomer" (in the trendy sense, not the actual sense) still writes e-mail. I've actually been active in online communication since the mid-eighties, when my dad brought home the first modem I ever used (1200 baud? Less? I don't remember.) One of the first things I did is find BBSs and forums and begin to communicate.

That being said, I can count on one hand the number of complaints I've had over the past thirty-five years. Out of some 4,000 posts on the WoW forums, I think I had two removed for masked profanity. Woo-hoo. Out of 900 days /played, never been actioned in-game, never had an account suspended, and I never shut up in-game - I'm a chatterbox, for sure. Never got banned from a BBS, never got banned from an IRC channel, and I certainly haven't been actioned for communication (or anything at all, actually) since I started playing MMOs in the late nineties.

Not communicating out of fear of a ban or sanction or something is ludicrous. If that is truly one's feelings, then one needs to work on their communication skills.

And just as a quick aside: People aren't "more sensitive" now than they used to be.

From the first written communication 30,000 years ago, up until about 2010 or so, we communicated in small circles. Your friends, your siblings, your parents, your co-workers, your team members. Generally discussions were had in small circles unless you wrote a letter to a newspaper or a magazine or something. Maybe your "circle of influence" was 50 people total; you'd tell a joke to your family, then repeat a joke at school or to friends or at work. That's an insignificant pittance compared to how many people you speak to today if you speak online.

It's also worth noting that back in the day, your "circle of influence" would be personally chosen. Anything beyond family would be individuals that got filtered through the normal personal process of making friends. In other words, you didn't hang out and shoot the shit with people you disliked.

Post-2010, though, every idea we float online is instantly exposed to thousands, hundreds of thousands, or millions of people. So yeah, naturally, someone somewhere might be offended, because you aren't speaking exclusively to your brother or sister or close friends that "get your humor". Now you are talking to people so vastly different than yourself that you might need to put a bit more thought into word choice and communication skill, and have a bit more awareness of your audience.

[ICountFrom0]

Imagine being a human who cannot communicate without offending someone else.

You mean people with disabilities?

I've gotten reportbombed (elsewhere) over something as simple as trying to express that I don't like starbucks because they overroast the beans.

So yes, I DO try to be careful what I say in this game, I am rather intimidated by people, specially people like you who don't seem to get it and will assume bad faith automatically.