#MeToo... Completely Overhaul the Social Feature AND Dismantle the Reddit Discord...

I hate that I feel like I have to type this story all over again.
Picking at a scab… hurts a little.

A few days ago the majority of us learned about an experience that one of your sister exiles had to endure whist amongst us in Wraeclast… or actually… fuck that. I think the Wraeclast meme is honestly part of the problem so fuck colorful pretty words because this shit is ugly.

PressStartToPaws got brutally sexually harassed by us. There is no other way to put it, there is no excuse for it, no ifs, no ands, no buts. Reading her story, the other night at first made me very sad and that very quickly turned into a still smoldering anger. Fuck what you think about her, fuck what you think about her story, sit down, shut up, and read.

I’ve been in and out of this game for a decade, for the most part I focus on the game… not the people… not the drama… well I used to be that way.

Hey guys… My name is Lauren… some of you might actually know me better as SaltPrincess… some might know me as ItThatBricked… some of you might know me as HeraldOfAss. I’m a gamer, born and raised. I was blasting high scores on Duck Hunt and Joust with my Dad in 1988 before I could even walk (weird flex I know). And uh… well I’m also transgender… you know… like deer girl (I’ll make my point about her in a bit).

I started gaming when gaming started, think about that for a bit. When I was a teen, Pokemon Red and Blue Brought me and all my friends together over the summer to make sure every kid in the neighborhood “Caught them all” even we really just trade duped them all. When I got a little older, World of Warcraft connected me to my first handful of friends from other countries. I made good friends from my desk in sunny California all the way out to Australia, Germany, France, and especially Russia. I started playing a lot of FPS games in college, we even formed a CS:Source clan in my dormitory AND TO THIS DAY at Humboldt State University my dorms are STILL called, “The Indoor Adventure Club”. Yeah Dude… I’m literally a legend there 4 consecutive back to back to back to back undefeated Super Smash Bros Melee GOD! 1v1 me kid, final d, fox/falco, no items, you won’t… pffft pathetic.

All memes aside, I tell this story because for literally my entire life, Video Games have been my social outlet… or well… they were… until I came to Wraeclast. Let me back it up to the, “I’m Transgender” part. I am. I Started my Transition only a few weeks before Kripparian Purged Diablo from the Pinnacle of Heaven for the very first time on hardcore, I was only about 18 hours behind him. This is just a temporal reference point that most of us probably can remember, it was a long time ago… It was around this same time that I had to make a choice. Be open and honest about who I am and risk losing my ability to continue playing video games in a social way… or lie about my transition. You see, I was also, and if I tried probably still could be a spectacular raid healer in WoW. My Credentials and my WoW history aren’t what I am trying to convey.

What I am trying to convey is this. Over the years that have passed since the felling of Diablo 3, my body, my world view, and my relationship to the gaming communities that I love have changed enormously… but my voice never got them memo. I look like a (pretty average) 30ish y/o cutie but I’m gonna be brutally honest I sound like that cowboy who narrates The Big Lebowski… look it up… don’t ever throw that in my face either I know already just be nice… would it kill you? Really? So, now the discrepancy starts to become clear.

“Yo Salt Princess! Why you sound like a ********* though”?

“Bro this dude is pretending to be a fucking girl to scam loot from the raids BAN HIM”
And then there is the one that will honestly haunt me for the rest of my life…
“dude… bet we cant bully this ****** so hard he fucking kills himself”… that one is you guys.
yeah… that last quote is literally from a user from the path of exile “official discord” and the most fucked up part about that quote is… I got permanently banned from that discord when I asked the moderators there to enforce their own code of conduct.

Y E P
I guess it really was my fault though. Like how could I have been so audacious, so brazen, so foolish to think that I, Saltprincess, a selfish… boosted ape of a gamer should ever feel as though I belong in the Path of Exile “O F F I C I A L” discord. Official btw, but also let it be known that GGG officially has no association with the “OMEGALUL F F I C I A L” discord. It’s funny to me that they have no official association from a legal standpoint but GGG management team literally gets down on their hands and knees and fellates daily every single one of those players.

So what even happened? To make a long story somewhat shorter we can say these things. I lost my Healing Officer position in my guild because the #3 healer started sleeping with my guild leader… totally fair in retrospect. A fellow raid member introduced me… well reintroduced me to Path of Exile. I had played in the beta a little but life got in the way. then he EZ scammed me for an entire league, then I realized he wasn’t a friend at all and was literally just stealing my Ex drops to fund his own league projects… oh well. At this point the social aspect of gaming for me was moaning its death rattle. Completely swamped with senior papers and starting off my master’s thesis I really needed some kind of social stimulus… I joined the PoE discord. Only about 2 weeks later it became clear that I wasn’t welcome there. A few days after that realization I got hit with that quote, “dude… bet we can’t bully this ****** so hard he fucking kills himself” and only a few days later I got permanently banned for asking for a moderator to sit in the chat channel I was in because people all day long would come into my channel just to call me a shitty name or say something horrible or just simply spam ear rape. I Learned a very valuable lesson from this experience that I will keep with me for the rest of my life.

When people want you gone… they will get what they want no matter what.

I also learned this. It doesn’t matter what is wrong or what is right when the only road anyone ever travels is the path of least resistance. What I mean to say is this. To “perma-ban” someone, typically you need a good reason and producible proof of a policy violation. Here is the added caveat and the most important part imo. Even if I actually wasn’t in violation of any rules, even if I did nothing wrong at all, even if I was the discords punching bag for a few weeks and didn’t deserve any of it, it is always going to be less work to perma-ban 1 person… even if you do so wrongfully, than to seek out and collect evidence against upwards of 20 other discord users , ESPECIALLY in a server with thousands of daily users (there totally aren’t it’s a ghost town). I got banned wrongfully because it was less work for the moderators… after the fact I got pissed off and gave one of them a piece of my mind and fucking earned that ban and given the opportunity I’d say it all again and own every single one of my words but that’s not the point, that’s just a consequence of their abuse.

So, they got what they wanted, the “*******”, was gone. End of story right...? Should have been, but it absolutely was not. In fact, for me it was only the beginning. Now keep in mind. I got banned all the way back in Betrayal… so why then is it that to this day every time I start an uber elder, every time I go into a deep delve encounter, every single time I go into an uberlab I get spammed with one chaos trade requests? Even if the item doesn’t actually exist in my stash at all. People literally look me up on PoE. Trade and edit trade requests just to troll me. Its literally reddit. How do I know? Well how is it possible that 99.5% of the time when something like this happens , the character name requesting the trade is something like “FATCOCKWOMAN”, or “THICCFEMININEPENIS” or some transphobic shit like that? Well it couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Path of Exiles completely stupid “Social” system. So I already knew that when you remove a friend from your list… you aren’t removed from theirs, what I didn’t realize though it that YOU DON’T EVER HAVE TO ACCEPT THE REQUEST AND YOU STILL WIND UP ON THEIR LIST AND THEY CAN SEE EVERYTHING YOU DO AND WHERE YOU ARE IN GAME AT ALL TIMES…
Holy shit how the fuck did no one ever think that wouldn’t be a problem like WOW dude! To be completely honest though, its beautiful in a way that no one at GGG thinks that way. it lowkey takes a psychopath to think of using the social feature in this way… so I guess that’s nice to know that the founding members of GGG most likely do not think like psychopaths… phew thank god.

So, here the deal.
Where I come from you cannot posit an argument without also providing a solution…

So I posit.

The PoE Reddit community is abusing their control of the path of exile discord and are using in in ways that violate the terms of service within path of exile. I know with 100% certainty that if I whispered any of the tings that have been said to me by people from that server, I would get chat banned for 24 hours (Hey Ruby, Natalie, Bex! Love you!). at least within the context of the “official” Path of Exile Discord, GGG needs to either usurp the server, or serve them a cease and desist or whatever is the proper term, you get my point. Then take over that discord and appoint objective and impartial moderators (these people objectively cannot be community members due to the way PoE’s economy works) and realistically should be paid employees of GGG.

Ill Posit a second point that should reinforce my assertation.
By GGG acknowledging that these kinds of abuses and TOS violations are happening (Natalie and Ruby and Bex have all read my original post detailing the specifics of the bullying I endured in the “official” PoE discord and even advised me on how to edit the original draft to be in compliance with their forum post rules… I never edited it though… and within that post were numerous linked to screenshots both in game and in the discord… I digress) By GGG Acknowledging that these types of TOS violations are happening in a server that advertises itself as though it is a part of GGG officially, and then choosing to take no action against those players who have been proven to be in violation of the TOS, they are not only encouraging these players to continue acting in this way, but also supporting this form of targeted harassment through their chosen inaction. They’re inaction is most assuredly not through ignorance of the issue; they have chosen a policy of inaction and it is precisely that fact that has allowed it to get as bad as it is.

GGG should seize this opportunity to dismantle the “OMEGALUL F F I C I A L” discord server and create a truly Official Path of Exile Discord that fairly enforces their policies and ToS equally and impartially. No more megaharsh punishments for people that we don’t like and not even a warning for people we do lik. The consequences should be the same every time for the same infraction… every time.

Furthermore, FIX THE FUCKING SOCIAL SYSTEM GUYS WTF!?! I shouldn’t have to clarify this one.

Harsh words in this one I know
I’m am sorry that my language is so harsh… I am who I am… this is how I speak.
I love you guys… We are ALL better than this. We all need to step it the fuck up and treat one another a little better.

I used to say this all the time…

I love you guys, Take care of yourselves, and… if you get the opportunity to, try to do something nice for somebody. Life can be pretty rough sometimes and well… we all need a little help once in a while.

<3

Its really rude to classify everyone as the people your referring to. We dont do it yet being yelled at to stop it??

Its also rude to force your problems on to others, some have bigger issues in life than words said somewhere we freely choose to go.

You insult people then demand they step it up LOL. Who exactly do you think you are??

I am but a drop in a sea of fed up women.

As much as I empathize with you...

Please do not:

● Make hateful or needlessly negative comments

● Discuss inflammatory topics, such as Politics or Religion X

● Personally attack or cause harm to the reputation of others

● Antagonise others in an obnoxious manner

● Disrupt forum or chat use for others

● Reference explicit or illegal material

● Impersonate Grinding Gear Games staff

GGG should be deleting this thread. I'll watch it since I got chat banned earlier for 20 minutes for the same form of censorship.

What is this "we" shit? I am not a part of your army

[Removed by Support]

I don't need to do anything , so pls don't include me in this we of yours thx.

I couldn't care less.
[Removed by Support]

Keep politics out of gaming.

Why post this wall of text in ggg forum tho? Reddit isn't ggg, neither is discord. The communities mentioned supposed to have moderators of sort, no?

The relatively recent trend of being "offended" by slightest fart in the internetz is quite funny too; those being too easily "offended" should really take a trip to one of these nice third world countries where human life ain't mean shit and get a taste of what being offended actually mean.

"

Orbaal wrote:

Keep politics out of gaming.

To be fair, "wanting to not be harassed" is hardly an unreasonable request.

I've heard some of my friends talking about the Paws situation, I know absolutely zero about it because I don't watch streamers, but it's certainly fair to say that there are darker aspects of this community which do not live up to what anyone could reasonably agree is a decent standard of behavior.

I don't know if making GGG responsible for policing any specific discord server is the solution, though. Probably better to just stop calling it "official" altogether