A Discussion on Metatrust

[Silent Majority]

I kinda do try to treat eveyone with the same familiarity...our characters work and by all seeming logic live together. Presumably their at least a little familiarity going around.

[BurgerWithButter]

I feel I never see too many blatant cases of metatrust, though I’vent been around very long and as others said things don’t seem terrible at the moment (though I could also be blind to them)

Metadistrust is something I’ve seen a bit as well. People identifying antags based on “they’re normally not like this” or “I see them doing this when they’re causing trouble” is an occurrence (I’d like to again say I’ve seen VERY few cases of this myself, I don’t want to say this is a huge issue)

On what Violetsaber said, whitelisted players are trusted a lot more than players that aren’t, and if for example Jimmy Novach showed up as a HOS tomorrow there would be a LOT of eyebrows raised and as I am not whitelisted. On the other end if Bob Whitelisted was mindhacked/faked HOS and executed the bartender for mixing his drink wrong it’d take a while for somebody to go “heeey this seems reallly excessive, what’s up with that?”

I do recall a round not long ago where Violet Kirsch tried to run the bar in HOS attire+ a fake ID, she was immediately investigated and brought to security in maybe 15-20 minutes. I was a security officer that round and helped investigate her and later was the one who arrested her.
I shamefully confess that I follow the appeals/applications thread closely, I knew Violetsaber still had their application out and that part did play a big role in why I was suspicious of them, hell I said something similar to “I don’t recall you getting promoted” during interrogation.

Recently I’ve been making an effort to NOT DO THAT and be less trusting/distrusting of people OOC, especially when playing security. Though I’m not sure if there’s a way to get people to not flag John Unwhitelisted as a syndi when he shows up in a HOS cape OR question Bob Whitelisted’s gross abuse of power until he’s gone full psycho. (Though these examples are VERY RARE)

[Cheese]

Excuse the typos, using a phone.

We are a small swarm of around 300-400 bees visiting the hive daily. Pulling that from Goonhub stats.

I'd say it' around a 150/250 split between EU and US TZs. Pulling that completely out of my ass.

Spread that around the geography, add clock off times, and we are looking at what, 30-40 people one consistently sees?
People are tired after the coalmines. They will settle in ther favorite departments with their favorite people, and, well, they will favor. That's what we monkeys do. Subconciously.

Point is, things seem overall relatively healthy clique-wise compared to some time ago, and meta-trust while absolutely present is largrly unavoidable. Forcing the issue would just scare off folks.
We are in a "putting blorbos in a situation" game a lot of the time, the ol' disbelief suspenders are stretched too thin to hold them "social murder mystery" pants. You and I may have the energy to intentionally seek interaction with the people left tad behind - not everyone will. Leadership by example is nice, but not enough.

The main way to alleviate this further, imo, is to somehow use gameplay to reward playing as a randomname. Interacting more with people you rarely have a reason to visit. Culture changes will follow.

Salvies are a good start.
Hell, just more interdepartmental work would be nice. Goon has the most isolated engineering I ever saw, often made obsolete by a coil of wire and a single borg, paramedics are not really a thing and research serves practically no social function.

Maybe its purely my personal experience, but I never felt the overall station's team coherence. I did in the other corners of the BYOND hub, and those usually had more reasons for people to interact.