A Discussion on Metatrust

[Emrsnn]

I smacked this in my drafts after writing it between about 3a and 430a today and after skimming it this afternoon, I'm fairly sure you can kinda tell what points I was getting at.

Yeah, I'd trust someone that I know is a HoS or mentor to not be a shitter over someone I only met this round. That's just how familiarity works. I make a point of making sure it doesn't effect things like who I decide to execute or who gets their access bumped up- But ultimately, if I have a question about how to do something I'm going to gravitate toward asking characters played by people with the "this guy teaches people how to do things" badge, because that's who I trust to have the most accurate answer.
I know there are people who feel similarly toward me because I've made some absolutely bizarre captain calls fully expecting pushback, just for the fun of the drama, but often everyone just rolls with it- And I don't necessarily think that's a bad thing. More often than not, blindly rolling with something is low-risk because it's just a game- worst case scenario is someone needs to press f1, type in a box, and then spend ten minutes as a sentient mouse in a color of their choosing. The problem is that I doubt a captain who isn't well-known could say "Well, I guess we need to slaughter the capybaras then- shit, is my radio on?" on general comms without imploding the chain of command. I think a lot of what's being talked about here is less about trusting the good sportsmanship of people we recognize over people we don't, but just the assumption that it's more likely to be present in people who've been vetted here. Frankly, some RP regulars get mean as hell when our blorbos have a bad day. Why are we allowed to fuck up and still remain part of the in-group while new people are out by default because of their potential to fuck up?
Really, we're a lot more likely to run into people who just aren't using custom emotes because they don't know how that works yet, are playing a default character because they don't know where the menus are, and are bad at their job because this game takes weeks to learn, than we're likely to run into someone who's figured out what they're doing and is doing it with malice. 
Using myself as an example, I really think the only reason I got scooped up into this community was luck, I think it's safe to say I've struggled to figure out what the hell I'm doing more than the average player. It's a running joke at this point that I still can't handle the combat system or keyboard shortcuts. On top of that, I'm irritable and excitable, far less now than I was four years ago, but I'm still working on it. Yet despite my past and present fucking up once and a while, I'm still extended the privilege of being welcomed back the next day because I've been around long enough that this community trusts me to have far more good days than bad. Would I have reached this level of trust if my bad days coincided too much just having no idea what I'm doing? Probably not. I wouldn't have trusted 2021 Emrsn with an auth disk and lethals. But if HoS is the only role that we have a whitelist for, we should be willing to trust anyone who's played xyz number of rounds to do whatever xyz number of rounds qualifies them for. 
Our admins can check if the new doctor is shit at surgery because they're a dick or if they're shit at surgery because this is their first doctor round, so what benefits everyone the most is trying to teach the new doctor surgery and if they're suspiciously shit at it, ahelp it.
Really though, I don't know why I'm taking the time to write all this out since we seem to agree treating new people worse is bad. It's time to suck it up and accept that most people who end up here do so because they want to play a game and make some friends. Feels really low-risk to roll with that assumption.

It's the nature of primates to not trust each other when we first meet, but we're playing a game on a rocks with screens that we tricked into thinking. It shouldn't be this hard to make some corrective action where we need to, and as the curator of the list of problems we love to talk about and never solve, I'm reaching the point where I think we're exhausting how long we can talk about the problem without starting to utilize the very obvious solution to it. In all honesty, I've started flat-out avoiding people in game who I know refuse to make an effort at this. If someone's disregarding people soley because they're new and clumsy and too excited to be here, they're an embarrassment to me. On top of that, I know if we'd met earlier they'd have been an asshole to me too, so why should I give them the chance to be nice to me now? (note specifically to the admin reading this- i stay tellin medass about that shit fr, pinky promise.)

TL;DR, I don't instantly become a social outcast despite regrettably being a dick once and a while, but new people become social outcasts because they have the potential to be a dick. Cannot stress this enough: video game. not a threat of national security. If you're taking the time to read a dense forum thread about why we should be nice, you're probably one of the people who're being nice so lets do that harder I guess? Leadership by example? Teamwork or whatever? Thanks for caring, I mean really mean it.