I think arguably the largest problem is that not only do many players not see toxicity as a problem in the community, but refuse to acknowledge when it happens. Even going so far as to champion the worst offenders.
The bigger problem is essentially not making pariahs of individuals. "We're against harassment," people will say, but when harassers do their thing, those same people will hem and haw and wring their hands because they aren't prepared to call out the offender. Often this is because calling out specific offenders is met with the label of "witch hunt" (even when it's not a witch hunt at all), and in the case of larger sites may be a liability thing, but the community itself ultimately shapes what's acceptable by what it allows to happen, not by what it says. Actions speak louder than words, and all that. Claiming to be against harassment while being utterly unwilling to do anything about harassment is, at best, hypocrisy, and at worst actively enabling the offenders because they can just go "well clearly I'm not harassing people otherwise I'd be called out on it."
It's understandable when it comes to cases of, say, accusations of cheating, where there could well be an innocent explanation for suspicious-looking behaviour, but when it comes to blatant toxicity, things are far more black and white. Benefit of the doubt should never be given to those who cause harm to others by harassment, toxic behaviour, and other bull*****.
You know, you think this is funny but I'm a prison guard.
When I was going through the academy we got a chance to look through some contraband and one guy had two (what I assume to be) Edh decks proxied out on pieces of paper. Just hundred of hand written cards. I thumbed through the list. Like 30% of the cards had the wrong casting cost.
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That's the remarkable thing about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse
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When I was going through the academy we got a chance to look through some contraband and one guy had two (what I assume to be) Edh decks proxied out on pieces of paper.
Curious: what made pieces of paper/functionally playing cards contraband?
go sign up with gamergate, i'm sure that'll help improve mtg
These people are being influenced by the dark corners of the MTG world that are basically bankrupt at this point and a lesson as to why it is important to be able to recognize when someone is pushing their own agendas for personal gain. Basically, there's a subset of channels that I'd put as "avoid like the plague" at the moment: The Quartering, Unsleeved Media, and Desolator Magic. There's a bunch of other smaller channels I'd recommend avoiding, but those three are turning into ground zero for a lot of really bad stuff.
If people want good content creators to look at on Youtube, look at Tolarian Community College, Rogue Deck Builder, Jumbo Commander, Loading Ready Run, MTG Purple (yes, he is a little controversial at times, but he is actually earnest in his love of the game), Heroes and Legends, The Mana Source, Strictly Better MtG, and the Aether Hub. I'd say Alpha Investments, but his channel and content can rub certain people the wrong way, so I'm 50/50 on his channel.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Personally I like Jolt539. He makes 1v1 EDH videos on MTGO, and often builds deliberately odd decks which are usually pretty funny.
Day9's Spellslingers is good too, and I'm glad he's back.
As far as Tumblr goes, vorthosjay writes good stuff, but he already writes articles for mtgs so y'all probably suspected that.
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“Tell me who you walk with, and I'll tell you who you are.” Esmeralda Santiago Art is life itself.
Personally I like Jolt539. He makes 1v1 EDH videos on MTGO, and often builds deliberately odd decks which are usually pretty funny.
Day9's Spellslingers is good too, and I'm glad he's back.
As far as Tumblr goes, vorthosjay writes good stuff, but he already writes articles for mtgs so y'all probably suspected that.
To be frank, there's a lot of great people on youtube who don't get a lot of subs or viewers. Geektopia does both MtG and Force of Will decks and matches, for example. Jolt539 I haven't looked at yet, but I'll give him a shot.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
i used to not like desolater magic but have changed my mind. i feel he is a more casual magic player and thus talks down on pros or people who do buyouts and the like.
i used to not like desolater magic but have changed my mind. i feel he is a more casual magic player and thus talks down on pros or people who do buyouts and the like.
That changed after the "Winter of Hell" as I'm calling it. The problem is he sided with Unsleeved Media and by extension has been spreading the same hateful and misinformed views that Unsleeved Media maker Jeremy ended up eventually pushing. Also, I have a lot to say on that one individual, because he's a manipulative sensationalist liar.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Just be careful about what you post about him, because his followers are very good at making a big ruckus, harassing those involved, and forcing people/sites to cave to their demands no matter what resistance they initially face. Also:
Organizing buyouts like some self-styled "financiers" do is one of the more antisocial things you'll ever see in this community. They legitimately don't care that making a quick buck or "growing their portfolio" or whatever involves depriving people of the pieces required to play certain formats or decks. In a way, it's like how you'll see entire city blocks in "hot" real estate markets where absolutely no one lives, because the houses are simply part of an investment portfolio to the absentee owners, and having anyone live there would devalue the property.
There's no excuse for talking down to pros, but when it comes to speaking ill of coordinated buyouts, well, a broken clock is still right twice a day.
Just be careful about what you post about him, because his followers are very good at making a big ruckus, harassing those involved, and forcing people/sites to cave to their demands no matter what resistance they initially face. Also:
Organizing buyouts like some self-styled "financiers" do is one of the more antisocial things you'll ever see in this community. They legitimately don't care that making a quick buck or "growing their portfolio" or whatever involves depriving people of the pieces required to play certain formats or decks. In a way, it's like how you'll see entire city blocks in "hot" real estate markets where absolutely no one lives, because the houses are simply part of an investment portfolio to the absentee owners, and having anyone live there would devalue the property.
There's no excuse for talking down to pros, but when it comes to speaking ill of coordinated buyouts, well, a broken clock is still right twice a day.
I wouldn't over blow his followers. He had a lot of people backing him during the winter season due to the MTGO issues and the controversy over Sprankle. Right now it's mostly people getting misled.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
MTG the worst community? You clearly have never played Overwatch.
I'd argue that League of Legends has yet to be topped, but in general the MOBA game type is well known for it's social issues. In fact, the problems plaguing MOBAs are the very same ones that have plagued casual raiding of moderate difficulty content in theme park MMOs for ages.
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1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
The problems with MOBAs and those type of games is that they are games that require people to play cooperatively and for other people, but usually people end up playing selfishly.
If you invest too much of your own interest into any cause, you risk damaging it at the expense of others.
I wouldn't over blow his followers. He had a lot of people backing him during the winter season due to the MTGO issues and the controversy over Sprankle. Right now it's mostly people getting misled.
The problem is there's a large number of disaffected young men out there who think that giving themselves a cause in pushing others down means they're pulling themselves up. The kind of people who think bullying others makes them feel powerful. It's a pattern that will repeat itself, even if not with the same people as the prior few major cases of drama in the Magic community. It gets even worse when they identify themselves so strongly with a hobby that they see changes to that hobby or the demographics who enjoy it as a threat. This is why it's important that all levels of a hobby—the company behind it, the people in charge of its social spaces, and the playing community itself—band together to excise harassers and other abusers, not empower them or give them space for their antics or the implication that such antics are acceptable. No endorsement of hate, no platform for hate, no acceptance of hate. That's the trifecta that needs to exist before a community can truly improve, and if even one of them is missing, it's only going to invite further trouble.
The problem is there's a large number of disaffected young men out there who think that giving themselves a cause in pushing others down means they're pulling themselves up. The kind of people who think bullying others makes them feel powerful. It's a pattern that will repeat itself, even if not with the same people as the prior few major cases of drama in the Magic community. It gets even worse when they identify themselves so strongly with a hobby that they see changes to that hobby or the demographics who enjoy it as a threat. This is why it's important that all levels of a hobby—the company behind it, the people in charge of its social spaces, and the playing community itself—band together to excise harassers and other abusers, not empower them or give them space for their antics or the implication that such antics are acceptable. No endorsement of hate, no platform for hate, no acceptance of hate. That's the trifecta that needs to exist before a community can truly improve, and if even one of them is missing, it's only going to invite further trouble.
It all comes down to what you identify as "harassment" and "abuse" , as these words lost any form of meaning in the last bunch of years.
That all said, the magic community on a local level is universally great and welcoming. Its a crucible of nerdy people and as long as they enjoy the game everything is fine and happy.
Everyone that brings in outside problems into the game, including politics, religion, sexuality, race/gender and what not will run against a flat WALL and earn disrespect and simply annoy people. That doesnt mean the community is bad, it simply means these people completely miss the point of what makes a game a game, people use the game to avoid real life crap topics that only fuel hate and ultimately violence.
The only feasible solution for the good of the game is to avoid these topics in your game , not push it harder to start a civil war in the community, as that is what will happen and there are no winners in such a conflict, only people that leave the game.
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That's the trifecta that needs to exist before a community can truly improve, and if even one of them is missing, it's only going to invite further trouble.
Anyone that believes magic needs to "improve" just misses what makes the game good to begin with.
Its an extremist stance to think "Go all in or you fail" , yea, that simply translates to guaranteed failure, as you will never ever have 100% of a community agree to anything and so it can only fail, it has not a glimmer of hope to succeed, so all it does is fuel hate and disagreement that will just stack up till someone gets aggressive, either physical or by spreading lies and inducing hate mobs.
Its all terrible and can be avoided by not parting with these topics at all. The game doesnt need it, the community doesnt universally want it, and it does nothing good for the game at all.
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Some people have a deep interest to tell the community how BAD it is, for who knows what reasons.
They "feel" that the community MUST change, because they cannot identify with their local group or they are incapable to discuss it with their local people to find a reasonable solution (as guess what, talking to people in a reasonable manner will almost guarantee you to find a solution to make people happy, the moment someone gets aggressive you can kick your happy solution down the bucket).
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I play magic pretty much non-stop for 20+ years and universally all the people i met are pretty nice people and if someone wants to stick around a group you can talk in private if you want to solve specific issues, in a neutral adult way,
Pointing fingers and calling someone "the problem" are fundamentally wrong, deeply disrespectful and will only fuel hate and aggression. So if you can avoid it, dont ever do that.
Everyone that brings in outside problems into the game, including politics, religion, sexuality, race/gender and what not will run against a flat WALL and earn disrespect and simply annoy people.
I mean, one of my friends met his boyfriend through Magic so have fun being wrong I guess.
Look, the problem isn't people bringing themselves into the game while not being the heterosexual cis white nerd boy standard, it's parts of the magic community acting like going after people for not being the standard is acceptable. We're all here to have fun with friends and/or beast the tournament, so telling people they can't exist in that space without hiding parts of themselves is messed up.
all it does is fuel hate and disagreement that will just stack up till someone gets aggressive, either physical or by spreading lies and inducing hate mobs.
Yeah, which is why the solution is to kick out the reactionary idiots starting the hate mobs, rather than going after the people who just wanna live.
EDIT: I'm not saying people should just start fights regarding identity and I'll back them up, I'm saying that generally in society the public existence of minorities is seen as the beginning of a fight by a non-zero percentage of the majority group. Like, to use an example I didn't mention earlier, in majority [fill in your favourite religion here] regions of the world the public existence of Atheists and/or people of [fill in second religion here] can be cause for a *****storm.
The fact that we live in a world where the existence of minorities is seen as a political act means that people can't help bringing outside problems into nerd space because being an outside problem woven into their existence, and will continue to be so for as long as we live inside the cultural structures that we live inside.
You're saying "I just want to play without worrying about politics" like people are deliberately trying to mess with you, when the fact is they just want to play too, so let them in. The only people who need kicking out of a pluralistic group are those that can't stand people being different, for example the previously mentioned reactionary idiots. Karl Popper backs me up on this and you know he's legit.
A close friend shared a story with me recently,
he told me that after he beat another player at an FNM, the guy said to him.
"Ya now. If you would have played that right. I would have won."
That's a little cocky and unnecessary...but toxic? No. I mean we've gone from talking about whining and slightly cocky people to sexual harassment, racism, etc. (which of course are toxic, but not part of your conversation).
"Why is it so hard for people to shut their mouths, play the game..." Yeah, I don't see much difference in your behavior and the one you described. Sorry. Sometimes looking away, picking up your cards, and walking away is the best thing to do. Everything the whiner is complaining about is immediately negated and loses any power. Take your win and be happy with it...that's what the game is about. Once you start trying to control people's behavior and what they say, nothing but trouble can come of that. JMO and all that.
i used to not like desolater magic but have changed my mind. i feel he is a more casual magic player and thus talks down on pros or people who do buyouts and the like.
That changed after the "Winter of Hell" as I'm calling it. The problem is he sided with Unsleeved Media and by extension has been spreading the same hateful and misinformed views that Unsleeved Media maker Jeremy ended up eventually pushing. Also, I have a lot to say on that one individual, because he's a manipulative sensationalist liar.
When I was going through the academy we got a chance to look through some contraband and one guy had two (what I assume to be) Edh decks proxied out on pieces of paper.
Curious: what made pieces of paper/functionally playing cards contraband?
Probably some CO thought it had something to do with gambling.
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That's the remarkable thing about life. It's never so bad that it can't get worse
Calvin and Hobbes Cube Tutor
Although this has already been said, I wish people would let go of this idea that toxic people are only a part of certain communities/fandoms. Your personal experiences aside (be they good or bad), every community has its unsavory individuals. I can cite at least a dozen examples off the top of my head of communities where people have done something awful and people have used said example (or personal experiences) to color the whole community as toxic. There's a lot of casting aspersions on strangers based on the actions of a few individuals.
Regarding discussion of politics or outside things, I think this is fine. Its something that can be difficult for people to discuss maturely without coming to blows, but I don't think it should be outright banned. Some people want MTG to be their escape from real world concerns whilst others don't mind the intermingling of the two; Id say use discretion when deciding if its an appropriate topic to delve into.
Lastly, content creators are not responsible for the actions of their followers. If one of you were to say, create a negative review lambasting the creative decisions in a new MTG set or story, then someone who watched it went out and sent hatemail or death threats to WOTC because they had a similar opinion, that would not be your fault for putting your opinion out there (unless you were outright telling people to harass them).
i used to not like desolater magic but have changed my mind. i feel he is a more casual magic player and thus talks down on pros or people who do buyouts and the like.
That changed after the "Winter of Hell" as I'm calling it. The problem is he sided with Unsleeved Media and by extension has been spreading the same hateful and misinformed views that Unsleeved Media maker Jeremy ended up eventually pushing. Also, I have a lot to say on that one individual, because he's a manipulative sensationalist liar.
Lol you are way off on that, man.
Seems spot on to me. Are you going to try to back up your claim?
[quote from="Teia Rabishu »" url="/forums/magic-fundamentals/magic-general/793278-mtg-the-worst-community?comment=69"]Everyone that brings in outside problems into the game, including politics, religion, sexuality, race/gender and what not will run against a flat WALL and earn disrespect and simply annoy people. That doesnt mean the community is bad, it simply means these people completely miss the point of what makes a game a game, people use the game to avoid real life crap topics that only fuel hate and ultimately violence.
The only feasible solution for the good of the game is to avoid these topics in your game , not push it harder to start a civil war in the community, as that is what will happen and there are no winners in such a conflict, only people that leave the game.
Do you feel that such subjects should also remain outside the mandate of, say, literature? Television? Movies? Performance art? "I just want to read my book and not have to worry about social issues"? Because if you think gaming is some kind of exception to the use of creative media to explore social issues, I've got some tremendously bad news for you: It's not, and in general, only the people with the privilege not to care about such subjects in the real world want to ensure it stays out of gaming.
I play magic pretty much non-stop for 20+ years and universally all the people i met are pretty nice people and if someone wants to stick around a group you can talk in private if you want to solve specific issues, in a neutral adult way,
Pointing fingers and calling someone "the problem" are fundamentally wrong, deeply disrespectful and will only fuel hate and aggression. So if you can avoid it, dont ever do that.
You're engaging in a very classic conflation of people's actions with people themselves. In essence, it's the notion that "person who did a bad thing" means "bad person." That isn't the case, and what's being called out as "the problem" are not people per se, but specific patterns of behaviour that make Magic unnecessarily unwelcoming to specific individuals or groups. Just because your experience is rosy doesn't mean that the experiences of women and minorities are universally rosy. People like the toxic individual responsible for that debacle last winter (whose name I continue to refuse to give publicity to) are never going to stop their toxic behaviour if they're asked in a "neutral" way.
Find someone who believes that women and/or minorities are ruining "their" game, who feel it justified to harangue others and act in offensive ways to make members of groups they don't like uncomfortable, and try to talk them out of their reactionary beliefs. I'll wait.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that he was saying that minorities shoudn't play magic, but that in a fnm should be better to not discuss such topics.
If you've ever heard someone say of a gay couple "I don't have anything against gay people, but they shouldn't rub it in my face" over, say, two men holding hands in public, then you know the kind of mentality that drives comments such as "FNM should be free of discussion of social issues." This one is particularly invidious because it reinforces the notion that people uncomfortable with offensive behaviour should stay quiet about it and not rock the boat, even when the only reasonable recourse is to rock the boat. "Hey, those words/actions are offensive and make me feel unwelcome" should never be met with "keep those subjects out of FNM."
i used to not like desolater magic but have changed my mind. i feel he is a more casual magic player and thus talks down on pros or people who do buyouts and the like.
That changed after the "Winter of Hell" as I'm calling it. The problem is he sided with Unsleeved Media and by extension has been spreading the same hateful and misinformed views that Unsleeved Media maker Jeremy ended up eventually pushing. Also, I have a lot to say on that one individual, because he's a manipulative sensationalist liar.
Lol you are way off on that, man.
Seems spot on to me. Are you going to try to back up your claim?
There's no way to safely discuss this without going into a direction that involves talking about the term "Social Justice Warrior", even if it is basically saying why the term is pointless and shouldn't be taken with any kind of seriousness at this point. I know the low hanging fruit is tempting, but just leave it as is.
Here's the truth: Battlebond is not Politically charged at all. Some of the art is really bad CGI akin to BFZ, and I think making people think Scott Pilgrim and League of Legends with the bright colored hair and character variety was not going in the right direction, but they did this because they wanted to make a two headed giant set, wanted a world story that works with the game type, and threw a bunch of reprints into it as a plan B in case the plan A ended up going as well as Planechase Anthology. Pir and his imaginary friend do feel really out of place, but it's not like the developers are going "we need to represent kids because kids are a horribly abused minority group!" It's more like "We need to represent kids because it will possibly make us more money by being family friendly."
So basically, the people who have dug themselves into their little personal echo chamber on youtube are too busy reaffirming their misguided beliefs to stick their head out of the sand and now everyone is having to do damage control to keep their miniature Fox News Network from ruining peoples day.
Private Mod Note
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Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
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The bigger problem is essentially not making pariahs of individuals. "We're against harassment," people will say, but when harassers do their thing, those same people will hem and haw and wring their hands because they aren't prepared to call out the offender. Often this is because calling out specific offenders is met with the label of "witch hunt" (even when it's not a witch hunt at all), and in the case of larger sites may be a liability thing, but the community itself ultimately shapes what's acceptable by what it allows to happen, not by what it says. Actions speak louder than words, and all that. Claiming to be against harassment while being utterly unwilling to do anything about harassment is, at best, hypocrisy, and at worst actively enabling the offenders because they can just go "well clearly I'm not harassing people otherwise I'd be called out on it."
It's understandable when it comes to cases of, say, accusations of cheating, where there could well be an innocent explanation for suspicious-looking behaviour, but when it comes to blatant toxicity, things are far more black and white. Benefit of the doubt should never be given to those who cause harm to others by harassment, toxic behaviour, and other bull*****.
You know, you think this is funny but I'm a prison guard.
When I was going through the academy we got a chance to look through some contraband and one guy had two (what I assume to be) Edh decks proxied out on pieces of paper. Just hundred of hand written cards. I thumbed through the list. Like 30% of the cards had the wrong casting cost.
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These people are being influenced by the dark corners of the MTG world that are basically bankrupt at this point and a lesson as to why it is important to be able to recognize when someone is pushing their own agendas for personal gain. Basically, there's a subset of channels that I'd put as "avoid like the plague" at the moment: The Quartering, Unsleeved Media, and Desolator Magic. There's a bunch of other smaller channels I'd recommend avoiding, but those three are turning into ground zero for a lot of really bad stuff.
If people want good content creators to look at on Youtube, look at Tolarian Community College, Rogue Deck Builder, Jumbo Commander, Loading Ready Run, MTG Purple (yes, he is a little controversial at times, but he is actually earnest in his love of the game), Heroes and Legends, The Mana Source, Strictly Better MtG, and the Aether Hub. I'd say Alpha Investments, but his channel and content can rub certain people the wrong way, so I'm 50/50 on his channel.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Day9's Spellslingers is good too, and I'm glad he's back.
As far as Tumblr goes, vorthosjay writes good stuff, but he already writes articles for mtgs so y'all probably suspected that.
Art is life itself.
To be frank, there's a lot of great people on youtube who don't get a lot of subs or viewers. Geektopia does both MtG and Force of Will decks and matches, for example. Jolt539 I haven't looked at yet, but I'll give him a shot.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
That changed after the "Winter of Hell" as I'm calling it. The problem is he sided with Unsleeved Media and by extension has been spreading the same hateful and misinformed views that Unsleeved Media maker Jeremy ended up eventually pushing. Also, I have a lot to say on that one individual, because he's a manipulative sensationalist liar.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
Organizing buyouts like some self-styled "financiers" do is one of the more antisocial things you'll ever see in this community. They legitimately don't care that making a quick buck or "growing their portfolio" or whatever involves depriving people of the pieces required to play certain formats or decks. In a way, it's like how you'll see entire city blocks in "hot" real estate markets where absolutely no one lives, because the houses are simply part of an investment portfolio to the absentee owners, and having anyone live there would devalue the property.
There's no excuse for talking down to pros, but when it comes to speaking ill of coordinated buyouts, well, a broken clock is still right twice a day.
I wouldn't over blow his followers. He had a lot of people backing him during the winter season due to the MTGO issues and the controversy over Sprankle. Right now it's mostly people getting misled.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
I'd argue that League of Legends has yet to be topped, but in general the MOBA game type is well known for it's social issues. In fact, the problems plaguing MOBAs are the very same ones that have plagued casual raiding of moderate difficulty content in theme park MMOs for ages.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!
If you invest too much of your own interest into any cause, you risk damaging it at the expense of others.
The Unidentified Fantastic Flying Girl.
EDH
Xenagos, the God of Stompy
The Gitrog Monster: Oppressive Value.
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I make dolls as a hobby.
The problem is there's a large number of disaffected young men out there who think that giving themselves a cause in pushing others down means they're pulling themselves up. The kind of people who think bullying others makes them feel powerful. It's a pattern that will repeat itself, even if not with the same people as the prior few major cases of drama in the Magic community. It gets even worse when they identify themselves so strongly with a hobby that they see changes to that hobby or the demographics who enjoy it as a threat. This is why it's important that all levels of a hobby—the company behind it, the people in charge of its social spaces, and the playing community itself—band together to excise harassers and other abusers, not empower them or give them space for their antics or the implication that such antics are acceptable. No endorsement of hate, no platform for hate, no acceptance of hate. That's the trifecta that needs to exist before a community can truly improve, and if even one of them is missing, it's only going to invite further trouble.
It all comes down to what you identify as "harassment" and "abuse" , as these words lost any form of meaning in the last bunch of years.
That all said, the magic community on a local level is universally great and welcoming. Its a crucible of nerdy people and as long as they enjoy the game everything is fine and happy.
Everyone that brings in outside problems into the game, including politics, religion, sexuality, race/gender and what not will run against a flat WALL and earn disrespect and simply annoy people. That doesnt mean the community is bad, it simply means these people completely miss the point of what makes a game a game, people use the game to avoid real life crap topics that only fuel hate and ultimately violence.
The only feasible solution for the good of the game is to avoid these topics in your game , not push it harder to start a civil war in the community, as that is what will happen and there are no winners in such a conflict, only people that leave the game.
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Anyone that believes magic needs to "improve" just misses what makes the game good to begin with.
Its an extremist stance to think "Go all in or you fail" , yea, that simply translates to guaranteed failure, as you will never ever have 100% of a community agree to anything and so it can only fail, it has not a glimmer of hope to succeed, so all it does is fuel hate and disagreement that will just stack up till someone gets aggressive, either physical or by spreading lies and inducing hate mobs.
Its all terrible and can be avoided by not parting with these topics at all. The game doesnt need it, the community doesnt universally want it, and it does nothing good for the game at all.
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Some people have a deep interest to tell the community how BAD it is, for who knows what reasons.
They "feel" that the community MUST change, because they cannot identify with their local group or they are incapable to discuss it with their local people to find a reasonable solution (as guess what, talking to people in a reasonable manner will almost guarantee you to find a solution to make people happy, the moment someone gets aggressive you can kick your happy solution down the bucket).
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I play magic pretty much non-stop for 20+ years and universally all the people i met are pretty nice people and if someone wants to stick around a group you can talk in private if you want to solve specific issues, in a neutral adult way,
Pointing fingers and calling someone "the problem" are fundamentally wrong, deeply disrespectful and will only fuel hate and aggression. So if you can avoid it, dont ever do that.
WUBRG#BlackLotusMatterWUBRG
👮👮👮 #BlueLivesMatter 👮👮👮
Look, the problem isn't people bringing themselves into the game while not being the heterosexual cis white nerd boy standard, it's parts of the magic community acting like going after people for not being the standard is acceptable. We're all here to have fun with friends and/or beast the tournament, so telling people they can't exist in that space without hiding parts of themselves is messed up.
Yeah, which is why the solution is to kick out the reactionary idiots starting the hate mobs, rather than going after the people who just wanna live.
EDIT: I'm not saying people should just start fights regarding identity and I'll back them up, I'm saying that generally in society the public existence of minorities is seen as the beginning of a fight by a non-zero percentage of the majority group. Like, to use an example I didn't mention earlier, in majority [fill in your favourite religion here] regions of the world the public existence of Atheists and/or people of [fill in second religion here] can be cause for a *****storm.
The fact that we live in a world where the existence of minorities is seen as a political act means that people can't help bringing outside problems into nerd space because being an outside problem woven into their existence, and will continue to be so for as long as we live inside the cultural structures that we live inside.
You're saying "I just want to play without worrying about politics" like people are deliberately trying to mess with you, when the fact is they just want to play too, so let them in. The only people who need kicking out of a pluralistic group are those that can't stand people being different, for example the previously mentioned reactionary idiots. Karl Popper backs me up on this and you know he's legit.
Art is life itself.
That's a little cocky and unnecessary...but toxic? No. I mean we've gone from talking about whining and slightly cocky people to sexual harassment, racism, etc. (which of course are toxic, but not part of your conversation).
"Why is it so hard for people to shut their mouths, play the game..." Yeah, I don't see much difference in your behavior and the one you described. Sorry. Sometimes looking away, picking up your cards, and walking away is the best thing to do. Everything the whiner is complaining about is immediately negated and loses any power. Take your win and be happy with it...that's what the game is about. Once you start trying to control people's behavior and what they say, nothing but trouble can come of that. JMO and all that.
Lol you are way off on that, man.
Probably some CO thought it had something to do with gambling.
Calvin and Hobbes
Cube Tutor
Although this has already been said, I wish people would let go of this idea that toxic people are only a part of certain communities/fandoms. Your personal experiences aside (be they good or bad), every community has its unsavory individuals. I can cite at least a dozen examples off the top of my head of communities where people have done something awful and people have used said example (or personal experiences) to color the whole community as toxic. There's a lot of casting aspersions on strangers based on the actions of a few individuals.
Regarding discussion of politics or outside things, I think this is fine. Its something that can be difficult for people to discuss maturely without coming to blows, but I don't think it should be outright banned. Some people want MTG to be their escape from real world concerns whilst others don't mind the intermingling of the two; Id say use discretion when deciding if its an appropriate topic to delve into.
Lastly, content creators are not responsible for the actions of their followers. If one of you were to say, create a negative review lambasting the creative decisions in a new MTG set or story, then someone who watched it went out and sent hatemail or death threats to WOTC because they had a similar opinion, that would not be your fault for putting your opinion out there (unless you were outright telling people to harass them).
Seems spot on to me. Are you going to try to back up your claim?
Do you feel that such subjects should also remain outside the mandate of, say, literature? Television? Movies? Performance art? "I just want to read my book and not have to worry about social issues"? Because if you think gaming is some kind of exception to the use of creative media to explore social issues, I've got some tremendously bad news for you: It's not, and in general, only the people with the privilege not to care about such subjects in the real world want to ensure it stays out of gaming.
You're engaging in a very classic conflation of people's actions with people themselves. In essence, it's the notion that "person who did a bad thing" means "bad person." That isn't the case, and what's being called out as "the problem" are not people per se, but specific patterns of behaviour that make Magic unnecessarily unwelcoming to specific individuals or groups. Just because your experience is rosy doesn't mean that the experiences of women and minorities are universally rosy. People like the toxic individual responsible for that debacle last winter (whose name I continue to refuse to give publicity to) are never going to stop their toxic behaviour if they're asked in a "neutral" way.
Find someone who believes that women and/or minorities are ruining "their" game, who feel it justified to harangue others and act in offensive ways to make members of groups they don't like uncomfortable, and try to talk them out of their reactionary beliefs. I'll wait.
If you've ever heard someone say of a gay couple "I don't have anything against gay people, but they shouldn't rub it in my face" over, say, two men holding hands in public, then you know the kind of mentality that drives comments such as "FNM should be free of discussion of social issues." This one is particularly invidious because it reinforces the notion that people uncomfortable with offensive behaviour should stay quiet about it and not rock the boat, even when the only reasonable recourse is to rock the boat. "Hey, those words/actions are offensive and make me feel unwelcome" should never be met with "keep those subjects out of FNM."
I've written an entire article on the subject in the past, and it remains just as relevant as ever.
There's no way to safely discuss this without going into a direction that involves talking about the term "Social Justice Warrior", even if it is basically saying why the term is pointless and shouldn't be taken with any kind of seriousness at this point. I know the low hanging fruit is tempting, but just leave it as is.
Here's the truth: Battlebond is not Politically charged at all. Some of the art is really bad CGI akin to BFZ, and I think making people think Scott Pilgrim and League of Legends with the bright colored hair and character variety was not going in the right direction, but they did this because they wanted to make a two headed giant set, wanted a world story that works with the game type, and threw a bunch of reprints into it as a plan B in case the plan A ended up going as well as Planechase Anthology. Pir and his imaginary friend do feel really out of place, but it's not like the developers are going "we need to represent kids because kids are a horribly abused minority group!" It's more like "We need to represent kids because it will possibly make us more money by being family friendly."
So basically, the people who have dug themselves into their little personal echo chamber on youtube are too busy reaffirming their misguided beliefs to stick their head out of the sand and now everyone is having to do damage control to keep their miniature Fox News Network from ruining peoples day.
1. (Ravnica Allegiance): You can't keep a good esper control deck down... Or Wilderness Reclamation... or Gates...
2. (War of the Spark): Guys, I know what we need! We need a cycle of really idiotic flavor text victory cards! Jace's Triumph...
3. (War of the Spark): Lets make the format with control have even more control!