Difficulty of normal content.

[jdtuggey]

Although it has been said before, one thing that often surprises me is the disconnect between the Community on the forums/social media and the in-game community.

I mean, I don't see people demanding square enix make my own experience worst for their own sakes in game, so naturally, I'm not inclined to defend my interests concerning that topic in game.
However, I've been stalked and unfairly demonized by a person who told lies about me to my people in limsa and in my fc because she got too close to me and I put a stop to it. She did not handle rejection well. :P
At first, everyone turned on me, it worked so well, it genuinely like, affected my RL, I couldn't sleep anymore, I was constantly anxious about what was going on in game. I was working on an FC with a friend, we had something like 25 members, when this broke out in the FC, half of our members left overnight. I had to leave myself to stop the bleeding. I was getting disparaging IM's from people I didn't even know that I've never met that aren't even near me. Even friends that supported me at first stopped associating with me because they didn't want to make themselves a target.
And like, I'd say it's the effect she was looking for, so much that she got empowered to take it further and further, and at some point she crossed lines both for people and for staff.
She got reprimanded, and people started looking at her sideways, so she changed servers. Whole ordeal lasted about two months. I don't even see this kind of commitment to drama in things like VRChat and Second Life lol.
Since then, I haven't really participated socially beyond helping sprouts and chipping in on some off topic discussions in NN.

Rules are applied more severely in game, so people are a lot more subtle with their drama.
People gossip in IM's and in their CWLS', changing or omitting just liiittle details in events surrounding them to change the narrative in their favor, that sort of stuff. Very mean girls energy. :P
I prefer the forums if we're talking about "community", it's more honest and upfront, but whether it's in game or in the forums, community is not as good as we pretend.
The kind of drama I see on ffxiv, I don't really see elsewhere on the internet, and I think it's cultivated in part by SE being so strict on language and conflict, that it makes it hard to express our grievances in game.
I do want to say however that as humans, we're biased to assign more importance to the negative things we experience. (acknowledging this and factoring this bias in my life everyday made my life soooo much better, btw, highly recommend)
I meet great people that aren't as dramatic in game every day, and whole immense lot more than bad people.
When it does get dramatic though, it goes hard rofl. How that tweet describes ffxiv drama is very on-point, I feel, and not just accurate about social media/forums. It's exactly the experience I recounted up there.