Thread: Partners Vanishing Without a Word: You Are Not Alone

There's something I would like to address because it came up in chat and it kind of deals with this situation. What about those rpers who set the standard for this behavior? What about those rpers that us habitual abandoners are trying to avoid? You know, the justifications you see me make in this and a couple of other threads is that sometimes when you tell someone I don't want to rp with you anymore they react badly. Let's talk about those people for a minute. On the whole, most rpers are not going to have personality disorders. I like to think of the scale like this 80 - well adjusted people looking for fun just like you 19 - weirdos who exhibit a variety of unpleasant personality traits 1 - malicious trolls and fatal attraction types who will follow you to the ends of the earth in pursuit of wearing your skin at some point Seriously, think of how long you've been role-playing and what percentage of those people actually turned out to be clingy, desperate, insecure, or rude people who were just uncomfortable to deal with. If you try to tell me that MORE than 20 of your encounters have been negative and awful then I'd like to hear your justifications and excuses for continuing to role-play. Why are you continuously exposing yourself to these types of people and situations? What? For the 40-50 who write really well and actually end up being livelong friends? There are less risky and less emotionally damaging hobbies to have. And I think 20 is a generous designation. It just doesn't make sense for people to continuously expose themselves to the chance of crossing paths with these people if they were any more prevalent. Not to mention we all have different degrees of passive aggressiveness, insecurities, and lapses in judgement. So, that partner who was particularly clingy to you at this one time, might have reasons and motivations that go beyond a chronic condition for clinging to their partners. Which means, they had one slipmom just died and they really need the fantasy right now because they're trying to deal, lost you as a partner, and either learned from it or woke up from the emotional turmoil to their regular self. That means they may be a part of your 20 experience but they won't become someone else's. So, even if we go with the numbers that each one of us experiences 20 of our partners being weirdos and emotionally stunted freaks20 of my partners have been insecure nitwits 20 of PP's partners have been insecure nitwits 20 of Broom's partners have been insecure nitwits, etc. they are not the same people and they are not a static total of the rpers out there. There isn't like a constant pool of rpers that we're drawing from, especially as it shifts and grows over the years, each individual changing as well. People come in and out of this hobby so in that light, 20 is certainly a generous notation to put on it, when it is statistically low for you to encounter these types of people. So. Howwhy is this a justification to abandon the rp without word? I know what the OP says because I wrote it. I wrote it from my perspective and from my own justifications in the past. Changing gears now as I reassess the arguments and realize...that doesn't really make sense. To just hit that button right away because one guy was really passive aggressive and sent you a lot of messages one time. So, that becomes a reason to treat the other 80 like trash? And it is rude, we've established that even though we owe nobody anything online, it's a shitty thing to do to another person. And like I said before, you can't know these people on sight... I can count on my hand the people who I just never messaged back because they were immediately unstable and clearly so. The rest, it wasn't until I said no thanks that they got all weepy and whiny and irrational. So, you can't know if who you're not too keen on rping with anymore is going to flip their lid or if they'll placidly go off into the night, leaving you in peace after a simple goodbye. Are there worse things? Sure. But saying that someone else should suck it up because you can't be bothered to give them the minimum of dignity which is a simple response, is a cruel reflection on what has been done to you. Confrontations are not easy and we all should be aware of the risks of being told no at any time during the process. We're not helping ourselves by training others to accept and expect they either love it and stay or they disappear because then you get a situation where if you're still willing to talk to them, it is the equivalent of you staying, giving them an opening, a chance to correct what they did wrong. If more people said no then that would be added as a viable third option. I think being able to say no to rpers, whether they have the slim chance of being incredibly toxic people or we're just inflating the one or two bad experiences we've had, we owe it to ourselves to own our ability to make demands of this hobby. We already discussed how inconvenient it is to rp with other people and that needing someone else that you have no control over for a story you're invested in tends to breed resentment, so, we need to be able to know that we have permission to make demands somewhere. Say no because you deserve it. Who cares if they get all creepy and feelings on you? And that brings up another point that came up in chat reporting harassment. You are allowed to report people for breaking the rules. You do not deserve to be made to feel uncomfortable or unsafe here and in this regard, the staff and the rules of the site will always be on your side. The staff isn't going to enable some sort of weird rape culture where if you cannot prove that you don't want any more contact with someone that the mods are going to be like, Well, you did say in earlier messages how you want to be besties and everything, so, now you have to just continue to deal with this situation on your own. The mods are really chill and really protective of the members here. And just like anyone, they don't want to deal with a potentially escalating, messy confrontation on the forums. If they can catch it before that point, they will. At the very least, someone will get a talking to and if it escalates from there, it's like all cameras are on that person now and they just stepped in it. Feel validated in hitting that little exclamation point on their stalker message, in your RT. But you can't just go from 0 to 100. You can't report somebody that doesn't know you don't want any more contact. I mean you can, but that's kind of shitty too when you have the power to diffuse escalation before it starts. Plus, if we set up a culture where 1. people will say no if they don't want to rp with you and 2. if you continue to pester them or act like a obnoxious asshat you will get a spanking from someone with a red name, doesn't that add a deterrent to the type of 20 behaviors we're so desperate to avoid? The more I look at it and analyze it the more I see the passive aggressive avoidance of responsibility as a way to give our power away. In the end, isn't that what a confrontation is? Making your voice heard in a situation that affects you. Just some thoughts, would love to hear what people think about battling this culture of apathy from the seats of people who feel justified in keeping it alive.