Toxicity and Community

[Iscah]

I guess the reality is, that unless you have met or interacted with a MAJORITY of people in a game, you cannot reasonably label anything toxic or not.

This is a key point – though I think you mean "the community" rather than "anything". If you have come across that behaviour, you can label the specific behaviour from that person. But you can't say it represents the entire in-game community.

If people say "everyone in the game is nice", that's wishful thinking. But they can truly say "everyone I've met in the game is nice" if that's their experience.

And if someone else comes back and says "people have been awful to me so your 'nice people' must be fake", you can't confirm that unless you can somehow research who each person has interacted and confirm that they are dealing with the same people acting in very different ways.

Even then, it's inevitable that there are some people like that who are nice to their friends and awful to others. That, unfortunately, is humanity and you'll find some degree of it anywhere a community forms. But it doesn't mean that's the majority or the "true face of the community", just an unquantifiable portion of it.

The best you can do is say that if statistically most people have a positive experience, the community is probably generally "nice".

Also, if a portion of the community does want to act "toxicly", there's nothing anyone else can do to stop them besides attempt to summon a GM. They can't physically prevent the person from acting in a way they disapprove of.