[Jester's Trek] COTW: Outlier
COTW: Outlier
There are lots of comments already about my post earlier today about Erotica 1 and his behavior. I want to address a couple of them real quick so the discussion doesn't go off on pointless tangents.
Very occasionally, I get accused of wanting to ban the grey areas of EVE Online. People who level such accusations at me are charming, dumb, and flat wrong. I accept, embrace, and defend the gray areas of EVE, from scamming to non-consensual PvP to unequal warfare to corp names that some might find questionable. People who actually read the blog have read me defending these things. If I didn't accept and embrace these things, I would not play this game.
But there are limits. There are points where grey becomes black.
The most common tangent of my post today is people claiming that this behavior is an "outlier" or a "fringe case." I could not agree with you more. It's definitely an outlier! But the question here is where oh where does the line get drawn between grey behavior and black behavior? I again invite you to let a neutral observer living outside the bubble decide. Tell your mother or your sister about Erotica 1 or about the recent "go back to WoW" scam. Play the story for laughs. See how quickly the amusement on her face becomes revulsion.
This was an outlier, but it's an outlier that must be opposed and punished. This, I'll remind you, is coming from the very same guy that said The Mittani should not be kicked off the CSM for the wizard hat incident. EVE is not a free country nor a democracy. Hard limits are needed on behavior and those limits should be enforced. I don't know where the exact line is but any reasonable neutral observer would rapidly conclude that this behavior was well beyond that line.
Unacceptable outliers that are not opposed have a funny way of moving toward the fat end of the bell curve and not being outliers any more. Anything that "works" in EVE immediately has imitators and copy-cats and anyone who denies it is deluding themselves.
The second tangent is coming from people claiming that I'm railing against the entire EVE community for what Erotica 1 does. This is also not true. I was very specific about this in my post today. The people I'm railing against are people who think what Erotica 1 does is acceptable or "funny." Make no mistake: there is absolutely nothing funny or acceptable about taking a person's every in-game asset and then torturing him for hours -- while recording it! -- and his vain hope of getting them back... and then broadcasting the results of that torture across the community.
If you think there is, I am afraid for you and yes, I'm going to call that out.
Clear? Lovely. Carry on.
Source: COTW: Outlier