A Meta-Friending/Clique Discussion.

[Emrsnn]

Resurrecting this thread to say that there was an additional point I wanted to make that I was struggling to put to words up until I was trying to explain it to someone in my PMs earlier this week. 
Keep in mind that this is definitely a situation where I think the majority of the times I see it, it's being done unintentionally. I think it's easy to get a sort of tunnel vision for one particular conversation and unknowingly tune out everything else. Anyway, here it is:

I think there's this false idea that as long as you're not actively telling people to go away, its impossible for you to be excluding people.
But it gets so painful when I'm actively trying to say "hey, literally everyone on station: I am inviting you to this thing" and then watch it turn into another round of a few people being deeply into Character Lore™️ or some conversation dominating IC relationship or any other You Just Had To Be There To Get It type beat while everyone else just waits for them to finish so we can move on.
I used to be so proud of myself for not telling people who I play and going out of my way to not find out who other people play, but I got lonely so I stopped trying. The problem isn't really getting told to go away, (afaik it was on 2 but thats different from 4) its just feeling like a person of higher priority walked into the room so I get like.. downgraded out or something
(sorry for being kinda ranty. this has been brewing in my head for a while and I was really fighting to say it politely on the forums)
I deleted my sec character after someone said on the discord that I played her. She used to get ignored but suddenly everyone paid attention to her and seeing the difference was making me a little paranoid because it felt like people like my name but not me.

Apologies for the wording, I didn't want to risk changing anything I was saying. 
A solution I try to use is taking into account who's in the room or involved in the conversation, and explaining to make sure they know what's going on, or steering the conversation toward something more approachable like a job role, what the antags of the current round are up to, someone's passion project for the round, "hey let me teach you something new", "wow that chef we have sure is cooking some weird shit", etc. There's a lot of topics to talk about or things to do that aren't dependent on knowing character-specific lore.
I also see a lot of strength in simply saying things like "Not now, Joe Newguy wasn't finished talking", just like I (hope you) would in real life if you noticed someone was being ignored or forgotten about.

TL;DR: I think the explanation of "I wouldn't have told you to go away, you should just work harder at being included" is dismissive of the issue. I feel that talking about public things in public spaces and private things in private spaces would be a better response.

[babayetu83]

yeah i can kinda see that, i remember a few weeks ago i was in the middle of watching a trial when somebody literally sprinted in the room, grabbed the lawyer, and ran them to the chapel so they could do their own thing, killing the scene then and there. i shouldve ahelped it because that kind of thing definitely seems against the spirit of rping but i was just so dumbfounded somebody would do that kind of thing. kind of tangentially related to the above post because it made me remember that kind of ic relationship thing steering things when it should be more of an open thing.

[Silent Majority]

The Rounds Story>Your Story. the round influences your story. Your story influencing the round should be a very rare case of kismet, not an expectation.

[Kotlol]

The Rounds Story>Your Story. the round influences your story. Your story influencing the round should be a very rare case of kismet, not an expectation.

100% True. I gave up on my antag stories or own gimmicks when a bigger story that involves the station comes in.
I don't join all of them, but I won't interrupt that story or disrupt it.

And why would I give up being an antag? I am not.. I said STORY. It still means I can antag.
For example if another antag is doing a hostage situation, I won't do my antag thing but insted see what I can add to it.
I once bailed out a fellow antag with a mind hack after they did their thing.

Though if that antagonist attacks me, I will counterattack.
Make a killer AI when I am setting up something and ruining my plans? I will probably interfene cause that AI will try to kill me.

Remember that... involving as much players into a RP is the best thing and even if someone is being an "obivious antagonist" , it's an invitation to interact with them.

[OctoberNovemberDecember]

Never really had a problem with this. I'm something of a loner pursuing my own agenda until someone crosses over with mine, though the times I see someone doing a similar routine I often chime in and join in if it interests me. People standing around talking about their backstories doesn't really interest me, so I never felt too inclined to get involved in those moments. I feel like its fine if people want to engage in that purpose, we only orbit each other.

I do enjoy spying on people's conversations from time to time, even if I don't understand what they're talking about. There's very few situations where I attempted to engage and was rebuffed as these sort of groups rarely grow larger than 2-3 people, hardly the lion share of server activity most the time.

Maybe I'm just speaking from the experience of someone who never wears a headset, but cliquing doesn't really seem to be a huge issue.

[FishyCrea]

I'm late to join the discussion but wanted to share some thoughts on this topic. It'll probably be long and a little wordy, but I'll do my best to try and organize my thoughts on this.

I want to start out by saying that I agree with a lot of what has already been said. I've had some similar experiences to what SirSwagmeyer and Hollandaise shared, though I haven't experienced something like that recently.

A lot of conversation has been had about how this doesn't happen intentionally, and I do think that's absolutely true. I even slightly disagree with the use of the term "meta-friending," as I feel like it's giving a negative connotation to just...making friends with other players in a multiplayer game. But again, we're talking about a multiplayer game where everyone interacting with each other is the key draw of the roleplay. Having friends is fine, but constantly excluding others just to rp with a specific group of friends isn't.

Something that a few people have touched on that I want to provide a bit of thought on is characters leaving their positions to rp with their friends. I feel like a lot of players forget that their character is at work. They have a job that they're expected to do. While there are some jobs that can get away with that a bit more than others, it absolutely bothers me when I see a department head ignoring the other characters in their department. I personally experienced more than one shift where new players were left aimless while the department head was off rping with the same couple of people they would always interact with.

However, some of my favorite memories on Goon have been one on one interactions that, admittedly, may have come across as cliquey. While I won't get into specifics since it isn't the main point, I'm referring to when one of my characters went stargazing with another after they bonded over shared trauma. The little ways in which their personalities bounced off each other was a really awesome interaction to watch happen, but it also wasn't a situation where other players couldn't really get involved. I think these kinds of things aren't bad, but they shouldn't be the bulk of your interactions on rp.

It goes back to that idea of balance I mentioned. Having personal stories play out isn't bad, but they shouldn't come at the expense of excluding other players if it makes sense to do so. On top of that, I also agree with what a lot of folks have said when it comes to out-of-game RP. It's unrealistic to have every important moment of your character's life play out in a workplace setting. Their job at Nanotrasen is really only a snapshot of their day. Stuff might happen, for sure, but if there's an important conversation that your character wants to have with another, I don't think a round on RP is the right place to do that.

I've been a bit all over the place, so I think I'll wrap up here. I wanted to share my thoughts because cliques are an issue I've seen and even participated in because I felt like it was the only way to really "fit in." That shouldn't be the case, and I like to think that things have changed for the better since this post was made, at least a little. I hope so, at least.