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The Web is a curious place. A land populated chiefly by cats and porn stars is also a land that helps to overthrow governments, spread awareness of important social and societal issues, and ensure that nobody has less than 200 "friends". It is also the land of text. For as much as some decry CN as outdated for its entirely text-based appearance and game play, the vast majority of communication on the web takes the form of text. Written language reigns supreme in the realm of interconnected microprocessors, speech is relegated to second place. However, this yields an important side effect: the !@#$%^& effect. Humans by and large are risk averse. As a species, we tend to avoid risk because where there is risk, there may be death. And life must find a way, or whatever BS Jeff Goldblum spouted in that small-time sci-fi indie movie. But it wasn't all BS: life, as a general rule, prefers to continue on living, and those that are living will do almost anything to remain living. So of course living beings tend to avoid anything that can get in the way of this drive. (Don't worry, there will be a point soon, I promise.) Given that as true, enter the !@#$%^& effect. The !@#$%^& effect states that we tend to, in the absence of contravening evidence, assume that others may not have the best of intentions. We may not necessarily assume they are #$%^&*!+, but we definitely don't assume they're angels either. We go with !@#$%^& over angel because we have nothing to fear from angels, it's the #@$*&(!+ we have to worry about, and if we wrongly assume that an !@#$%^& is an angel, we may be in for some serious trouble. The problem lies in where we find most of this contravening evidence: body language and tone of voice. The content of communication rarely offers enough insight to contravene the immediate assumption of less than beneficent intent. The largest exception to this is in fiction, where we are not generally interested in the author's intentions but in the intentions of the characters, and since they are in a whole constructed world, their intentions can be made clear even within the confines of text. In the real world though this usually is not the case. The internet thus finds itself with a problem. Even in cases where another has good intentions or is being entirely genuine in what they are saying, we have a hard time assuming or accepting this because we don't have enough evidence to the contrary. We can't hear their tone and we can't see what they are doing while they say it. Hence the !@#$%^& effect runs rampart, which makes genuine communication over the internet very difficult. Since this game is played almost entirely through text, the !@#$%^& effect runs this world, for better or worse. We can attempt to combat it by asking ourselves what intentions we would have if we said what another has said. Run the test of reasonableness (ToR) and see if the intentions we are ascribing to this other person make sense in the context. We must assume not that the other has less than beneficent intentions but rather that most here are reasonable people and it is unlikely that their intentions in given contexts are all that different from ours. We must do this because while the !@#$%^& effect is actually helpful off the web (since we rarely lack contravening evidence where it exists, and thus when the !@#$%^& effect takes hold, we are likely correct in our assumptions of intent), it is nearly useless here because we are almost never at risk of losing anything significant. This is a place where it's usually OK to give another the benefit of the doubt.
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It almost seems like the OWF is made up entirely of straw men. Is this the way it has to be? Rational argumentation should have a prominent place here. Why? Some may say arguing a point logically is boring, but to those that say that I say "You must never have studied philosophy." Rational arguments are chess matches, they require finesse, they require strategy. In other words, they're difficult. I know it's easier to eat the chips rather than the eggs or chicken, but the chips aren't worth it. You end up just as bloated and worthless as much of this place has become. Attempting to misdirect, mislead, go around, avoid the points made by another only leads to circular and entirely meaningless discussions out of which nothing arises, nothing is gained, and nothing is changed. Where's the fun in that? Claiming you don't care is patently ridiculous. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't be here. If you really didn't care, you wouldn't log in and comment, and participate, and put huge effort into doing so. You'd sit on your couch and watch TV, read a book, or do anything other than come here. Responding to a claim shouldn't be put down with shouts amounting to a sacrifice on the altar of common sense, such responses should be lauded. And no, responding to a point is not just semantics, it is not just semantics to respond if it's only a response to one small part of an argument or even to a part that seems trivial on its face. An argument is only ever made up of these small points, and one falling can ruin the jenga tower; sometimes the smallest of points can mean the most, and it can be hard to always know when this is the case and when it isn't. Mountains have been moved with less. My point is thus: we can do better, we should do better, and we must do better. We want this place to be a place of fun, not a place that discourages all but the most jaded to flock to its walls. It shouldn't be a setting for flinging feces, it should be a setting to move the world in which we find ourselves. This is the epicenter of the Cyberverse, and it sets the tone whether we like it or not. Changing the spirit here can improve everything else. And before you say it's too hard or it can't be done or this is the way it's always been, know that none of those points are an excuse or justification for the utter !@#$e that gets thrown around here. This place is us, in so far as it's made up of us. If we do better, so will this place become.
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Hypocrisy is an oft slung critique on the OWF. It's an easy argument to make because everyone in this game who's played for almost any amount of time can somehow be made out to be hypocritical on just about any topic. However, there is a massive problem with this: It doesn't work as an argument. Calling out someone for being hypocritical in their arguments is an ad hominem attack not a valid critique. Yes, the person in question may very well be hypocritical, but that hypocrisy does not necessarily make their argument invalid or unsound. When calling out someone for being hypocritical, what you're actually saying is not that what they're saying is false but that they may not be the best person to say it. However, that's just a straw man. By pointing that out you're trying to make the false claim that the argument is about who should be making a point not whether the point itself is valid. If you're not going to actually respond to the substance of an argument, then don't bother saying anything at all. It may work with some, but anyone who knows much at all will see through your veil of illusion and notice that you didn't actually argue against anything substantive and instead resorted to attacking another poster's character. It's easy to do, but it is also not particularly persuasive as an argument. Most of the decision makers, the people you might actually want to convince you're in the right, are fairly intelligent people as this game may have some standouts morons but really it is played largely by, let's face it, nerds. And nerds are disproportionately intelligent (relative to the general population) and thus able to see through these kinds of fallacious approaches to argumentation.
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Every month there is at least one thread on these forums devoted to the state of the game, specifically regarding how it isn't doing very well. The trouble is that even if no one mentions it explicitly, the main reason for this doom and gloom is that CN is not as popular as it was at its height. This is completely true; though I was not around back then, I have heard 50k players thrown around and I believe it. By that metric, CN has decline 80% over the years in user base. However, that isn't the full story. Comparing CN now to its heydays is a faulty comparison. Yes, the trend has been overall down through the years, but the last few years it has been relatively stable. In other words, the most invested players remain, some new ones have joined, and the rest have left. CN has always occupied a niche so all that is happening now is that that niche is stabilizing over time. CN back then was a fad, it became hugely popular for a time and then the fad went away and it started to decline in popularity. The thing is though, the end of the fad doesn't mean the end of the object of that fad. Remember Myspace, it was once the most visited site on the web, but then Facebook came along and stole its thunder. The fad ended and Myspace plunged down the Alexa rankings. However, though it is far from its heyday when it was pulling in $900 million a year in revenue, it still makes money ($20 million a year currently), and more importantly it still gets a million unique visitors in a month. So it isn't nearly as popular as it once was, but it isn't gone either; it's still kicking. It just operates in a small niche as opposed to the entire lake. The surest way for CN to fade away to nothing is to just assume that that fading is inevitable and then decide to just not bother anymore because it isn't going matter anyway. CN is just what we make it, so if we make it crap, it will be crap. Instead, make it great, and the self-fulfilling prophecy will work for us rather than against us.
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This will be the first in the Wow So Meta series of entries. Wow So Meta will talk about the talk that occurs all the time on the CN forums. This entry will be on why outrage is so alluring. One thing that really struck me is how much crap gets a great deal of attention, views, and comments. Of course, it's no secret that controversy breeds interest, but many topics and blog posts on these forums aren't particularly controversial but also aren't particularly well written, important, or interesting on the basis of their content alone. They are the reality TV of the CN world: the outrage posts. Outrage posts, as I'm calling them here purely out of convenience, are posts characterized by drivel, nonsense, and/or outright stupidity, but which nonetheless provoke (sometimes even thoughtful) debate and interest. I'm thinking about such posts as those by Tywin, Loki, Buckaroo, Tom Riddle, etc., etc. We as humans (except for the robot players, I KNOW YOU'RE OUT THERE DAMN IT!) are naturally drawn to that which is different from the rest. Being different can generate interest regardless of whether the thing in question is actually marked by any sort of quality. What's most interesting though is that despite the seemingly clear fact that these posts are, not to put too fine a point on it, !@#$, they actually do contribute in a positive way to the CN forums as they generate interest and activity that others can feed off of. Others can take that interest and activity and use it to garner interest in their much more high quality posts and content, in much the same way as viewers drawn to a particular channel for a reality TV program might end up watching something more high quality that comes on right after or before. They may even come to like the channel as a whole and end up watching other content that it produces on the basis of their liking one particular program initially. Even if this never happens, the ad dollars the channel gains from its reality TV programs can often end up funding more high quality program that might not otherwise be produced due to the risk associated with airing programs that aren't appealing to the masses. And that's how a seemingly annoying phenomenon such as outrage posts garnering more views, comments, and general interest than the more high quality ones can inadvertently help rather than hurt the forums on which they are all posted.
