I feel kind of weird writing about this, because it's kind of personal to me and a bit touchy.
I knew this guy who I used to play tennis with who had cerebral palsy. He could move fine, as long as he was doing something very actively, but once he stopped, it was hard for him to stand still. I found out that he liked to play WoW, and he told me a story about how when he was a newb, there was a clan leader who told him he could join the clan as long as he gave him a certain amount of gold each month. I don't know much about gold in WoW, but by the way it sounded, it was enough gold to be slightly more than what he would make each month. He said that it made him a better player, because he started to die less, and started to learn which monsters to kill to get the most gold. Some months he said he would make it, but while other months, he said he had to pay for it.
I asked him why he paid for the gold, and he said that he just wanted to be part of a team. I felt really bad for him, and told him that I liked playing tennis with him, and that some of the best things are free. That's when he started telling me that he had to stop playing WoW, because it was giving him sleep problems, in which he would have problems doing the tests. All I can imagine is that he's playing like 24/7 till he's practically falling asleep trying to make enough gold to pay his clan leader. I don't know if his clan leader knew he had cerebral palsy, but I would like for the people on this forum to think that the person that they're playing against may have never had friends besides their nurses and doctors.
People tend to treat each other horrible on the internet... whenever I catch myself being mean to someone, I feel bad, because that person could be just like someone I love. =(
On August 13 2012 10:18 ninazerg wrote: People tend to treat each other horrible on the internet... whenever I catch myself being mean to someone, I feel bad, because that person could be just like someone I love. =(
I usually tell people to stop fighting or treating some one wrong, but this usually ends up bringing the negative attention to me. I just wish I could tell people to quit being such negative nancies at times. It's like a miracle for some people to go from bronze league to silver or E to D-. Should never criticize them, because they might be working way harder than you have ever worked.
Your story is so depressing ;__; taking advantage of that guy's wanting to belong and fit in
The gotfrag story is also sad but inspiring though, yeah. Tennis is a great sport, love watching and playing it. It makes me rage really hard sometimes though.
Everyone will have people trying to scam them in some fashion at some point in their life. Whether it be your 401k, a reverse mortgage, or paying someone gold in a video game people will do the strangest things.
Anyhow, instead of focusing on the pond scum, (you will never get rid of pond scum)... you need to focus on the things that you can change. For your friend, that means taking him out and socializing a bit to help build his confidence so he doesn't think he has to "buy" company.
On August 13 2012 13:34 Smoot wrote: Everyone will have people trying to scam them in some fashion at some point in their life. Whether it be your 401k, a reverse mortgage, or paying someone gold in a video game people will do the strangest things.
Anyhow, instead of focusing on the pond scum, (you will never get rid of pond scum)... you need to focus on the things that you can change. For your friend, that means taking him out and socializing a bit to help build his confidence so he doesn't think he has to "buy" company.
Anyhow, good luck!
Thanks, The guy with cerebral palsy only had 3 hours a week to leave the hospital. My job was to build up his confidence, so that he could feel good about himself, because he's doing something that people would say he could never do. By the end of the summer, before I left, he hit a 40 ball rally with me. If you don't know what cerebral palsy is, it's like this.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmaDtbQ1nuA This video tears me up.
Alright I feel like I have to share my thoughts here. Once again I spend entirely too much time explaining my thoughts.
First, While your friends story is very sad and it bothers me that people ever took advantage of his desire for friendship by using him. In order for this scenario to work, he had to willingly agree to these terms. Obviously, if he was farming the gold and all that. I honestly dont know what else to say on the topic aside from this. It sucks he was taken advantage of and it's certainly not right for people to behave that way. But in order for it to happen he agreed to it.
A "real world" example that comes to mind is something like fraternity hazing. Of course they only haze you for a period of time and then you're a brother or w/e. Guilds in WoW to some degree operate like that. Especially higher level ones, the best on the server. There's a certain elitism in WoW. I no longer play the game but I used to quite seriously and heavily before the release of SC2. It's a little bit different than SC2 because of the aspect of smaller servers. To use another analogy, for me WoW was a lot like cyber high school. It can be very clique-ee and people around you tend to act as if because they are somebody in that small world they are somebody out in the big world. Anyway these are all secondary points. What I'm saying is a lot of people that play WoW may conceivably play it to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Sometimes the leaders that hold command over that something(raids/PvP/etc) are douche bags with all sorts of insecurities and complexes to themselves. I'm speaking hypothetically here of course, I'm sure there are plenty of nice considerate guild leaders. But just like in the real world, some people are just ignorant to how their behaviors can effect other people.
Why's all this relevant? Because "bullying" or being "used", "trolled" can only happen when you let it get to you. Of course there are extreme examples to this idea. In real life notably the lines are much more vague. But I feel like a lot of being bullied or picked on is a part of growing up. I wasn't a tremendously sociable kid in high school. in fact I mostly played WoW and socialized there. I wasn't really a staple on the bully/shit list, but on occasion I was talked down to and marginalized. Always over trivial things like gaming mostly. And sometimes it bothered me. But after awhile I guess I learned that what people say about you, or anybody else, says much more about who they are. A linch pin in the abuse of a human being like the OP described requires that the bullied allows the bully to box them in, control their behavior etc. I got the bulk of this lesson in my first year at college just from observing how people act and treat eachother. I'm not saying your friend enjoyed being bossed around or forced to farm gold, but he let it happen.
Ignore the idea of the victim, someone powerless to stop something + Show Spoiler +
So what I want people to consider or take away from what I am saying here, are purely the implications for your own life and interactions with people. Don't let people put you into a box of conformity. They need your permission to do it. Whether its because you're a gamer, non-white, mentally/physically handicapped, LGBT, overweight, ginger, or just plain different. Exercise your will power as a person. Use your voice, and choose your own actions. People like to dump their own negative emotions on other people. It's one thing to help a friend or someone you know through a hard time in their life. But dont let them make you the hard time. A lot of people conform or passively accept being controlled and pushed around as unavoidable sad truths in their lives.That's a case of the bully winning the war. "Oh well I guess I HAVE to stay up all night and farm this gold otherwise I wont have friends or people to raid with". To your friend, this thought probably rang out in his mind as absolute truth. But really its just all a ruse. In reality an easier and less emotionally and physically draining option would be to simply find a different guild. Preferably one that didn't use him. Anyway sorry OP, for making an example of your friend but I felt the need to flesh out these points.
Aside from the OP's story, why do I have so many words on this subject? + Show Spoiler +
I've been playing more team games than I used to. A bunch of 2v2-4v4's and a fair amount of LoL. Here it's usually pretty evident when someone is pushing their negative thoughts and emotions onto other people, usually their teammate. It's almost comical to see how quickly people start to play the blame game so they're not seen as the "scrub" on the team. I personally do not care. It all comes down to MMR and luck of the draw anyway. Sometimes I'm the best on the team and we win, sometimes i'm the worst and we win, sometimes I try a new strategy and we lose(or win), pretty much anything could happen. Point being there's no reason to talk shit because it's actually irrelevant to winning. It's in a way sad, or it used to make me sad because I think everybody should just play the game out to the best of their ability. This relates to the OP because in a way when people argue, they're simply bullying one another because they're frustrated. The mor people can forgive one another for their perceived shortcomings/failures/"bad" qualities/etc, The easier working together becomes.
The initial reason or thought that spurred me to respond here was a memory of playing WoW back in highschool. Like the OP's friend I was grinding out gold on my freshly level 60 hunter. I was a bit behind the hardcore crowd at that point cause I got the game for christmas a few months after release, had school in the day yaddya yaddya. So the first thing I did was begin farming gold from NPCs so I could get my epic mount. So I heard about how the Chinese farmers made all their money farming in Tyr's hand in Eastern Plaguelands. I went there and it was all alliance members. Later one of my favorite things to do was go there and gank them as they farmed. Just now thinking about this, is this considered cyber bullying? I didn't think of it as such at the time, a good example of being ignorant to how your actions effect people. Anyway somehow I ended up in Hearthglen in WPL. There were usually three horde there, two mages AoE farming and a rogue. Over the course of about two weeks I hungout in Hearthglen with Chinese people farming virtual currency so they could eat food in real life. What ended up happening is the mages hated me because I would pull mobs into their blizzard spell after I tagged them. I'd use my volley shot too. Me and the rogue worked as a collaborative team though. Eventually we started attempting to communicate. His english was AWFUL, like passed google translator awful. But eventually we became what i'd call "friends" regardless of lack of fluent communication. Fast forward a month or so we had an open spot in our Molten Core run so I convinced my guild leader to let em come for the bosses we had on farm. He got some nightslayer armor from it. Whch was great to see cause anyone familiar with WoW gold farmers know they had basically the worst gear. It was just good enough to do their job. I dont think i'm a saint or anything for getting a Chinese kid some gear or anything, But at the end of the day I guess it felt good to pay him back for all the time I sat in his group and more than likely limited his profits to some extent.
TL:DR-- People can sometimes be ignorant to their own adverse behavior toward others. Considering that, it's possible to take bullying in all forms a little less personally, and therefore look past the weighing attitudes of others. I think this is a lesson that all of us at least touch upon when growing up. That said, sometimes the golden rule of treating others as you want to be treated is sometimes lost on us. If someone is treating you poorly make sure you communicate clearly to them in some way your perspective. If that does not work, always remember the only determining factor in your life is yourself. Your happiness, success, physical/mental well being, goals, and overall how you are living is reliant only upon the thing resting on your shoulders.
-note-no offense to you OP, I kind of went with the original message and spun it in my own way for hypothetical purposes. I dont know the full story about your friend. I hope he's found healthier hobbies and more people like you to be friends with. Thanks for sharing your very interesting and unique story, clearly it made me think.
-note- If anyone who played WoW read this and was wondering, I played on North America servers, Azgalor.
Man, I don't know how many hours I spent playing WoW but never once ran into the kind of twat GM mentioned in the OP. Shit, I don't think I contributed anything more than the occasional low-level mats to the guild bank out of laziness more than anything. It takes a special kind of low-life to charge a guild member a "membership" fee. IDGAF how good your guild is.
EDIT: I'm rooting for your friend to get out of the MMO scene altogether, and to attune his awareness of shit-heads to an acceptable level.
What gets me is how people with self-confidence/esteem issues, for whatever reason, seem to just accept those kinds of situations. It's really sad.
Even a slightly more self-assured person would just say no when asked to pay for clan membership and just move on and it would never develop into that horrible, spiraling situation. A person like that clan leader might not have even been meaning to take advantage of someone's loneliness, or whatever, and was simply trying to create some income for himself through his team (although that's still a pretty douche thing to do on it's own). It's not very likely that he didn't realise what he was doing, but it's a possibility.
If someone asked me to pay for clan membership in an online game, I'd probably initially laugh, thinking they were joking and move on when I found out they werent. It saddens me that people will so readily put themselves in a position to be so dominated and taken advantage of, but it saddens me even more that it doesn't come as a suprise anymore as more and more people suffer with these issues, it seems.
On August 13 2012 18:00 jtype wrote: What gets me is how people with self-confidence/esteem issues, for whatever reason, seem to just accept those kinds of situations. It's really sad.
Even a slightly more self-assured person would just say no when asked to pay for clan membership and just move on and it would never develop into that horrible, spiraling situation. A person like that clan leader might not have even been meaning to take advantage of someone's loneliness, or whatever, and was simply trying to create some income for himself through his team (although that's still a pretty douche thing to do on it's own). It's not very likely that he didn't realise what he was doing, but it's a possibility.
If someone asked me to pay for clan membership in an online game, I'd probably initially laugh, thinking they were joking and move on when I found out they werent. It saddens me that people will so readily put themselves in a position to be so dominated and taken advantage of, but it saddens me even more that it doesn't come as a suprise anymore as more and more people suffer with these issues, it seems.
It's not exactly self confidence. It's more like some people are forced to live in a bubble for their entire life. I guess another example is this girl I know. Her dad died from cancer when she was 12, and her mom says that she needs her to cook for her and keep the house clean, and make the money for the family. She is kind of forced to live a sheltered life, in which she doesn't know much about the outside world, and expects everyone to wait till their parents pass away, and then get married.
It's also like some religious groups, in which they aren't supposed to use electricity and other things.
Yea I think that's a more obvious and extreme way that it can develop in a person, but I think that on a basic level self-confidence is the far more common issue. It's people not having the self-esteem/confidence/value/worth to make a stand whenever they're being taken advantage of. These people will be more likely to accept when people make demands of them, or put them down, because they don't realise their own personal value.
edit - it's part of the reason so many kids allow themselves to get bullied at school. The bully doesn't even have to be bigger/stronger than the victim (in fact they're often not), they just have to trigger that reaction in the victim that makes them not stand up for themselves. That kind of instinct/characteristic can stick for life and it can almost seem like people who allowed themselves to be bullied at a young age actually seek out those who will dominate them, because they are more used to being subservient. The same way some women seem to always go for violent/abusive boyfriends to their detriment.
I should note that I don't think every case of bullying is case of the victim initially having low self-esteem and allowing it, but I do believe that 'victim mentality' is a real thing and is something that a lot of bullies take advantage of, whether consciously or not.
On August 15 2012 13:37 jtype wrote: Yea I think that's a more obvious and extreme way that it can develop in a person, but I think that on a basic level self-confidence is the far more common issue. It's people not having the self-esteem/confidence/value/worth to make a stand whenever they're being taken advantage of. These people will be more likely to accept when people make demands of them, or put them down, because they don't realise their own personal value.
edit - it's part of the reason so many kids allow themselves to get bullied at school. The bully doesn't even have to be bigger/stronger than the victim (in fact they're often not), they just have to trigger that reaction in the victim that makes them not stand up for themselves. That kind of instinct/characteristic can stick for life and it can almost seem like people who allowed themselves to be bullied at a young age actually seek out those who will dominate them, because they are more used to being subservient. The same way some women seem to always go for violent/abusive boyfriends to their detriment.
I should note that I don't think every case of bullying is case of the victim initially having low self-esteem and allowing it, but I do believe that 'victim mentality' is a real thing and is something that a lot of bullies take advantage of, whether consciously or not.
You don't understand. It's that he's had hardly any social interaction with the real world.
I'm not saying you're wrong. I think you actually need to read what I'm writing. I'm saying that the situation you're describing isn't the ONLY reason that this behaviour develops.
On August 16 2012 08:41 jtype wrote: I'm not saying you're wrong. I think you actually need to read what I'm writing. I'm saying that the situation you're describing isn't the ONLY reason that this behaviour develops.
I know what you're saying, but you're miss judging the situation. I wasn't saying that I thought you thought I was wrong. I'm not sure how old you are, but there are sheltered people out there, in which they live a life in a bubble. I'm not sure if this makes sense to you, but Tina Fey has a crush on a guy, but she believes that she can't be with him.
I guess we both feel that the other is miss-judging the situation. I don't think what you're describing relates to what is outlined in the OP and I don't think that 30 Rock video makes the point you think it does.
On August 16 2012 10:01 jtype wrote: I guess we both feel that the other is miss-judging the situation. I don't think what you're describing relates to what is outlined in the OP and I don't think that 30 Rock video makes the point you think it does.
It's like you don't want to pop some one's bubble the day he leaves the hospital. You want him to come out to the real world, because he's going to have to leave the hospital some day. I mean this guy was like 25 years old when I was 19, and he said that I was the only time he got to leave the hospital. He said before me, he would occasionally get to go home, but it was about once a month.
You don't just criticize some one because of the way they look, or because of the way they walk. Could you imagine what that would do to some one who had never left the hospital. Like he was living a life, where the nurses would clap to him as he would be rapping/singing things like Lil Jon songs. These aren't really things you can get away with here, without getting a bad reaction. You just smile, because he's able to walk. You don't want him to be laughed at, because then he'd just be shy, and maybe depressed. I mean it's like a culture shock. I don't see why you would really want to throw him out into the deep end. There are sharks, pimps, and prostitutes out there.
Ah ok, yea that makes more sense to me I guess. I can see where you are coming from now. I hadn't got that from the OP so I didn't realise that was the situation.
edit- And now I can see why you posted the 30 Rock video, lol. I had no idea that was the case.
EPT
