Forums » Smalltalk » Toxic Culture of role playing

Greetings, my friends.

I don't wish to bring up negative topics, but I'm completely baffled by the amount of rude and abusive people I've encountered on this website.

I'm the type of person that hates drama, I always avoid it. If someone is being problematic, I don't even wish to argue with them, I just delete/block them because I don't have the energy to deal with them. So, as you can see, I'm absolutely not someone that attracts rudeness or seeks it out. I understand that I shouldn't let a few bad apples spoil the bunch, but I feel like this has to be said: Something desperately needs to be done about toxic and abusive users on all role playing websites!

This website (and many others) are being taken over by users that disguise themselves as role players, but in truth they're trying to spread hate and sadness. Why is nothing being done about this?!

If you are running into rude and abusive users, then please consider reporting them so that the mods can do something about them. The reported person doesn't see anything and our mods are very friendly/good at their jobs. In doing so, you would be helping RPR mods in making the site a friendlier and happier place. I can assure that our mods would be only to happy to help you with these users if they know about them, but they can't help if they are not aware of the problem. After you report, you can block the user and move on, knowing that you are helping the community.

I assure you that there are lots of good apples here and I am sorry you have been running into quite a few of the bad ones.

I completely agree with everything Katia said.

Unfortunately, the mods can't be everywhere at once, but they take these kinds of things seriously. If you want things to change, it starts with you; PLEASE report any abusive/mean RPer you find! The mods are VERY quick to respond to reports and will have things taken care of in no time. Sometimes you just need to give 'em a heads-up, y'know?

I'm so sorry you went through this! I promise, not all of us are mean; the bad apples are always the most noticeable in any community. There are some fantastic people here!

Hi there

If you see any aggressive or abusive behaviour please don't hesitate to contact us by clicking "Request Mod" at the top of any forum or PM post. The very first rule of RPR is Be Nice and we do take it very seriously.

I will also ask that members to not use this thread as an outlet to discussing specific instances of abuse they have encountered because that kind of thing very quickly can derail into vaguely venting about other members. This runs very close to our policy against Pet Peeve threads.

Sadly it happens. I've been on this site for over two years and have had my own share of toxic encounters. Katia, GingerHades, and Claine have all given sound advice. Report and block anyone you see as harmful.

You're here to write, have fun and feel safe, and I hope you will find the good apples, if you can't then look for a different fruit, quinces are nice.

Thank you, everyone. Thanks for your wonderful suggestions and support.

I have blocked this person, and I also wrote down my reason for blocking them. I just hope they don't go around being mean to other people.

Please be sure to use the "request a mod" link on the actual message where they were rude to you so that we can review what happened.

I won't repeat what everyone else already said, but I will add that I don't think it's anything specific to roleplaying. From what I can tell, there's a lot of toxicity in basically any hobby community, especially those relating to gaming and media. Some of it is just poor taste in humor (especially around sarcasm and how serious statements can inversely end up interpreted as just jokes), some is dramatically different expectations in availability, some is just incredibly inadequate social "training" to know how to handle things in a healthy way, etc. These sorts of communities also still tend to be heavily populated by "social cast-out" types who often have higher barriers to developing healthy social skills since it's so often treated as "learn by experience" thing.

Online, there's still also often the sense that other people aren't real.There are still those who go so far as to talk about people online as some obscure, singular, foreign entity that's just an enemy or a tool (or both). And those people will usually be expressing this online, seeming to think that they alone are the exception to the faceless mass that is "people online."

In any case, sorry you've been having such an unpleasant experience. Mine's usually been pretty positive here, and I've long regarded RPR as one of the two friendliest places on the internet. I admit it hasn't been perfect, and I'm a lot less active than I used to be, so might be missing a lot of things going on now, but I still see this (RPR specifically, not the roleplaying community as a whole) as one of the healthier communities out there. Hopefully the good parts will start downing out the bad for you. (And yeah, massive respect for Kim and the mods in how they handle things and work to promote a healthy, friendly community.)