Goonhub
07-28-2021, 12:14 PM
This has been something that has bothered me for quite some time as well. I hope this won't be considered peanut posting, and if it is, I apologize. I also apologize for how rambly this got. I worry about being misunderstood in situations like this, so I kinda tend to overdo my clarification a bit...
I wholly understand the points made by the admin team. This is just a video game, and in most instances, just telling people to cut it out is good enough to get people to actually cut it out. Low effort trolls and griefers don't tend to appeal anyways, so the system works, right? Sure, the system works like a well oiled machine, in the sense of treating Goonstation as any online server for any online game. You play online games with shitty people without knowing it all the time, it's just a fact of life and this is no different.
However, here's where my issue comes up. Goonstation... doesn't treat itself like any ordinary server for any ordinary game. As we speak, the Goonstation discord icon has the stripes of the pansexual pride flag. Every map in the game has a locker with a healthy number of free jumpsuits in most flavors of queer pride. The Discord has for most of its history had a dedicated lgbt channel, which one could argue traces even further back to IRC splinter channels. The server is clearly treated with the intention of being "safe" and "inclusive" and whatever else. This is not compatible with the earlier statements. I've been pretty on edge and cynical about Goonstation's presentation since the admin drama last year, when it turned out several of the admins were not exactly 'on board' with the whole queer acceptance thing, and where several community members came out of the woodwork to also be shitty about things like the pride locker. The admin who brought up these problems was rewarded with a (thankfully ultimately temporary, I wouldnt have come back if it wasn't) total demotion for their commitment to inclusivity. I understand this is not the whole story, and may not even be accurate due to how frantic things were, and this is not an attempt to relitigate old drama: I'm just mentioning it because it is necessary context for how I personally see Goonstation.
Between that event, the leniency on some appeals, and some older, less well remembered interactions from days in the IRC, I've had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about Goonstation and it's presentation/aesthetic. It either is a standard video game community which cares more about if you can play nice without causing problems, which is entirely fine and completely justifiable, or a queer safe space, which is entirely fine and completely justifiable. It feels to me that Goonstation tries to straddle the line between the two, celebrating queerness while politely asking its bigots to keep the bigotry in their PMs, and I'm not sure that entirely works out in the end. I believe this is what Mushroom means by "feeling bad about roleplaying with a racist". Speaking from personal experience, it doesn't feel particularly good to find out someone you interacted with in a presumed safe space was actually a deeply shitty person, and just keeping quiet about it. The difference in presentation is the difference in expectations in who you are going to be interacting with on a regular basis, and I personally feel like Goonstation has some mixed signals about what these expectations should be for players.
The thing about this post is I don't really have any demands, or even requests, or conclusions on what is to be done or anything. This is honestly mostly me thinking out loud: This sort of thing has been on my mind for at least over a year by this point, and this thread looked like a good spot to add my two cents. Again, sorry for the rambling, I just hope some of it is of interest to people or useful to constructive conversation.
I wholly understand the points made by the admin team. This is just a video game, and in most instances, just telling people to cut it out is good enough to get people to actually cut it out. Low effort trolls and griefers don't tend to appeal anyways, so the system works, right? Sure, the system works like a well oiled machine, in the sense of treating Goonstation as any online server for any online game. You play online games with shitty people without knowing it all the time, it's just a fact of life and this is no different.
However, here's where my issue comes up. Goonstation... doesn't treat itself like any ordinary server for any ordinary game. As we speak, the Goonstation discord icon has the stripes of the pansexual pride flag. Every map in the game has a locker with a healthy number of free jumpsuits in most flavors of queer pride. The Discord has for most of its history had a dedicated lgbt channel, which one could argue traces even further back to IRC splinter channels. The server is clearly treated with the intention of being "safe" and "inclusive" and whatever else. This is not compatible with the earlier statements. I've been pretty on edge and cynical about Goonstation's presentation since the admin drama last year, when it turned out several of the admins were not exactly 'on board' with the whole queer acceptance thing, and where several community members came out of the woodwork to also be shitty about things like the pride locker. The admin who brought up these problems was rewarded with a (thankfully ultimately temporary, I wouldnt have come back if it wasn't) total demotion for their commitment to inclusivity. I understand this is not the whole story, and may not even be accurate due to how frantic things were, and this is not an attempt to relitigate old drama: I'm just mentioning it because it is necessary context for how I personally see Goonstation.
Between that event, the leniency on some appeals, and some older, less well remembered interactions from days in the IRC, I've had a bit of a bad taste in my mouth about Goonstation and it's presentation/aesthetic. It either is a standard video game community which cares more about if you can play nice without causing problems, which is entirely fine and completely justifiable, or a queer safe space, which is entirely fine and completely justifiable. It feels to me that Goonstation tries to straddle the line between the two, celebrating queerness while politely asking its bigots to keep the bigotry in their PMs, and I'm not sure that entirely works out in the end. I believe this is what Mushroom means by "feeling bad about roleplaying with a racist". Speaking from personal experience, it doesn't feel particularly good to find out someone you interacted with in a presumed safe space was actually a deeply shitty person, and just keeping quiet about it. The difference in presentation is the difference in expectations in who you are going to be interacting with on a regular basis, and I personally feel like Goonstation has some mixed signals about what these expectations should be for players.
The thing about this post is I don't really have any demands, or even requests, or conclusions on what is to be done or anything. This is honestly mostly me thinking out loud: This sort of thing has been on my mind for at least over a year by this point, and this thread looked like a good spot to add my two cents. Again, sorry for the rambling, I just hope some of it is of interest to people or useful to constructive conversation.