Taking the heat

[Apps]

You seem to be under the impression that I don't understand the argument being made for good behavior. I do understand it, but I reject the premise.

Here is why:

1) There is zero burden on me to prove anything to someone else because that person has run into other people who share a trait with me who were jerks. The only person whose actions I am responsible for is me, and I simply will not accept the burden of having to prove anything because of the actions of someone else. I want to be treated as an individual, and I expect to be treated like an individual. When one deals with me, the individual, they should deal with our shared history together because that is the only fair way to deal with me because that is the only history I can be responsible for. I don't care if I remind someone of someone else - I am not that someone else, and holidng me responsible for that someone else's behavior is wrong, period.

2) The same thing is true of me: It is unfair of me to require that another person take on the burden of proving they aren't a jerk just because other people who share a trait with them may have behaved like a jerk. Just as I want to be treated as an individual, so, too, must I treat others as individuals.

3) People who make a point of letting me know that they are putting a burden on me without my consent are being jerks. Anyone who criticizes me simply because I am a multi-boxer (or a hunter, or a dk, or a rogue) and not because I, personally, have behaved poorly, is basically wearing a big flashing sign saying "I am a jerk, and probably not worth listening to." I have very little patience for trying to educate people who don't want to learn, or for discussing things if they are unwilling to change their viewpoint.

4) I agree that it is not difficult to act like a good citizen, and think that the world would be a much better place if everyone were to avoid jerk-like behavior. However, I will absolutely refuse anyone's efforts to put a burden on me to behave in any particular way in the name of the reputations of others. My reputation is *mine* not yours, and your reputation is *yours* not mine. People who cannot or will not understand and accept that are simply not important to me and I won't bother trying to change their opinions. The same goes here - there are some people who post on this forum who engage in behavior I personally find obnoxious, immature, stupid, anti-social, whatever. I don't bother engaging with those individuals, and I don't bother caring about what they say.

Edit: One thing I forgot to say - the only time I feel like it's fair for me to put an expectation on someone is when their behavior *directly* impacts me. I don't feel like other multi-boxers on servers I don't play on, who I don't interact with, who I have never met even on this site, directly affect me, and I don't feel it's likely that them acting like real jerks ever *will* affect me directly. And I don't consider having to rarely have someone insult me for being a boxer a direct impact.

You're absolutely right that I have no evidence, and in fact, no such evidence can exist unless Blizzard were to release the numbers to the public.

However, in my experience as a human being, I often see people getting pissy and ranting about things and threatening to quit and then they do not. Also in my experience as a human being, I see people enjoying a thing and paying money for it, and, when the thing gets changed to where they do not enjoy it they stop paying money for it. Based on those factors, in my experience, it's much more likely for boxers who can't play anymore to quit than it is for angry pissy people who get stomped once in awhile to quit. Is it possible I'm wrong? Surely. Is it likely? Who can say without real numbers? But this is the way my experience in the world says things tend to go. I do not have any experiences with the opposite thing being true (people quitting in droves over one bad experience while other people stay in droves despite the thing they enjoyed being made literally impossible). It's a perfectly reasonable conclusion for me to draw, and the opposite conclusion wouldn't make sense based on my experience of the world.

You seem to be drawing the conclusion that I am advocating for people to not give a shit and be jerks or whatever. That is not true. I like it when people behave nicely and wish that everyone would. However, I do not feel that I have the right to place any kind of expectation on people to behave nicely when they have not explicitly given me cause to believe that they will give me reason to expect that. Just because someone else multi-boxes (like I do) does NOT give me the right to say "Hey, you're representing me now, so behave how I would like you to behave" because that individual has never consented to representing me. Conversely, nobody else has the right to put a burden or expectation on me to behave in a certain way because they are under the mistaken representation that by my multi-boxing I am somehow consenting to represent them.

tl:dr version: People shouldn't be jerks, the world is a better place when they aren't, but if someone who has something in common with me wants to be a jerk I'm not going to bother losing sleep over it or trying to correct them unless we have that kind of relationship.

Edit: Just as I think the world would be a better place if everyone behaved nicely, I also think the world would be a better place if people stopped trying to control other people's behavior when the relationship between those individuals contains no consent from either party to be controlled.

I bought my very own red shirt. I always wear the red shirt.

Someone was once beaten up by a guy in a red shirt. Now that someone is wary of all red shirt people.

Clearly the abused guy has issues. And for me to say "from now on, all red shirt people should be nicer, because I don't like being profiled." well, that's just naive... NICE! (dont get me wrong... ) Still naive.

totally 100% with Kate on this one.