Why is Global Chat so toxic? Psychology question.

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DamageIncorporated wrote:

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ArtCrusade wrote:

HC community is more mature because well the peeps there ARE in fact older. Younger generation / young gamers & newcomers in PoE mostly play in SC trade leagues. In that sense, HC is a lot more chill

What a load of crap.

Have fun starting over btw.

^With the few exceptions, see above. :D

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lupasvasile wrote:

Anonymity and immaturity are a match made in hell.

Why do people only ever apply this logic to the ordinary public? Ever been on a discussion group or page managed by anonymous admins and/or mods? It isn't just the plebs who get worse when freed from accountability, the management does too. And while the GGG mods do come with names (if those are even their real names and not pseudonyms, like Chris going by the handle GGG_Nerf), we still have no say over them. You can't argue that a lack of accountability is bad when the plebs get to enjoy it while leaving out the abuse that typically arises when the people in power get to benefit from it. In fact I'd say the results of the latter usually tend to be a lot worse.

Anyway, to repeat myself, Global chat is NOT toxic if you know where to go. And if at any given time a channel is getting on your nerves, just switch to another -

Global 1 - 15 or so (the activity levels in the later channels will dwindle as the league goes on, but at peak periods you'll find people in all of them - they get less trolly the higher the number)

Global 100 (this one seems especially tuned to advising players - note that NO ONE ever likes doing price checks, including here)

Global 159 (used to be the Atlas map sharing channel, not as active nowadays but still some people on it)

Global 420 (cos 420, obviously - not very active nowadays tho)

Global 773 (the dedicated SSF channel - typically calm)

Global 820 (this one's a spamfest, no conversation at all - it's the lab trials, challenges, rotas, etc. sharing channel)

Global 1801 (used to be very active once as the hideout sharing channel, not so much now but there's still people on it)

Global 5055 (the Reddit channel - I know most people here hate Reddit, but this channel isn't trolly either, rather it's more for the rich and crafting crowds in my experience)

And there you have it - the VAST majority of those channels aren't troublesome at all. You're just logging into Global 1-3 too often. Leave them be. If you don't like them, there's PLENTY of other channels you can check in to.

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cjimaras wrote:

It is because GGG don't give a shit about this problem. All you can see in chat is "jokes" about mothers, fathers, gays etc. As long GGG won't ban this ppl the community will be worse. I know that GGCent cares only for MTX but is it possible for some chat moderators???

Yes there are a lot of community moderators that could help out. All they have to do is ask.

I don't watch global chat habitually, but whenever I turn it on I have never seen anything negative there. Maybe Global 1 is worse, think I usually get bumped to a higher less full channel if I turn it on, but maybe it also depends on server. I play on California server btw.

So to make this generalization about how bad global chat is, requires more specifics imo, what global chat are you talking about? Thanks to #009 for posting some clarity and education about the different global chats.

btw just so you know how much of this game is opaque to noobs: for like three months I thought global 820 was a discord channel somewhere (lul)

Anonymity !

Pretty much every human has same base blue print of psychology just various degree to it . Domination - selfishness - self centeredness exists in everyone. Why else would we even bother to survive if not driven by genetic impulses . That movie happening really portrays this point.

What keeps us in check on daily basis is fear of repercussion from other able humans if we do / get caught doing toxic stuff .

Probably the reason why humanity as whole butchers other living beings . Whats that chicken or cow gonna do ? We can't even prove we have real empathy it's all just conditional and learned behaviour .

Because the game is free without moderation. It attracts lowest of society. They are playing this shit game for hours, unbalancing their brains even more and then flush their shit ideas into global chat.

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mina97 wrote:

Vulgarities, racism, looking down, anger, scam, spam donate, poe sucks.
Are these what humans are really are?
When you do not have moderators like other mmorpgs, humans starts to reveal their true self?
But, what is the point, what do they get out of this?

Before you discuss about this, I am going to transfer some key words for you in order to formulate your own answer.

(Looted from Psychology Today.)

Machiavellianism in psychology refers to a personality trait which sees a person so focused on their own interests they will manipulate, deceive, and exploit others to achieve their goals.

Psychopathy is characterized by the absence of empathy and the blunting of other affective states. Callousness, detachment and a lack of empathy enable psychopaths to be highly manipulative.

Narcissism encompasses a hunger for appreciation or admiration, a sense of specialness and a desire to be the center of attention, and an expectation of special treatment reflecting perceived higher status.

the answer is simple. Its in the psyche of the one finding such things.
It would literally be impossible to attribute such descriptions to people randomly chatting there. There's too much variables missing. Sure, there are better and worse people (I'd definitely leave scammers in the worse category, dunno if I would call them psychopaths though they certainly lack a bit of conscience) but If one thinks about it for a second, the OP fits those words better.

Basically without seeing those in question, Im convinced that they are already far more stable individuals than those who readily screech about them because they are just interacting between each other, not trying to police the whole, projecting or selling a grave idea that may not have any basis. Probably just having fun acting stupid and whatnot. You know, fun, what you are supposed to have in a game. What the internet was for a long time before anal retentive individuals with extremely limited world-views started trying to police everybody for themselves, while pretending its for some greater good.

To put it simply, some people need to grow some skin. I just find it hilarious when people ask for fierce no-fun allowed moderation while virtue signaling and thinking themselves mature.
There's no virtue or maturity there.
True virtue is selfless, maturity is understanding.

It's not though. It's just a whole bunch of humans talking, there is nothing surprising or abnormal. Just like any game chat, it's not meant to accommodate your version of how everyone should speak.

Ignore spammers, ignore people spamming paragraphs of unoriginal political perspectives or whatever your preference for ignoring is and move on.

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Boem wrote:

If they offended you, they win.

The only reason this stuff persists is because people have low context sensibility's.

Anybody with half a brain knows that a racist in global chat is in fact not racist but playing a meta game to see when people respond offended to get their dopamine rush.

As far as your "psychology" angle goes, its bunk.

Role-playing as a racist is exactly what somebody does who doesn't want to end up a racist, he's mastering the character-type so he can switch to it and away from it when desired.
It's called being a developed human being, just think of all the jank and stupid role-play you did when you were young.

There is the calm you, the focused you, the stressed you, the racist you, the passionate you etc etc.

The only people who lack compasion or empathy are the people who don't comprehend whats actually going on and want to stiffle the role-playing in a gaming context because they are oblivious to how they attained their own development.

People who take games and chats inside of them seriously beyond entertainment are the problem, not the edge lords and angsty teens, they are behaving perfectly normal in line with their age and development.

tl;dr they are being perfectly normal children pushing boundary's and making stupid mistakes like they should.

Peace,

-Boem-

eh...a undeveloped human being more like. because psychologically speaking if you are developed you don't do stuff that makes others upset, it's not about having thicker skin, rather it's about being a decent person. something that was lost to the collective human race some 20 odd years ago.