Moderation, Group Resolution, and Abuse
So, here’s the situation. The Floraverse community has a discord server, which I help run. It’s split into 2 groups- Hellside, the more public channels, and Topside, the more private channels. Why the split? For a lot of us, the flora community is our primary online hangout. It’s nice to have a space to meet new people, form new friendships, interact with acquaintances and get to know people better. It’s also nice to have a comfortable private space to go to talk to people you know and trust, where you can talk about more vulnerable personal stuff. It’s like having a public friend group anyone can join, and also having friends you invite back to your house.
About 2 weeks ago, someone in the topside chat decided it would be a good idea to post about 3 months of logs from one of the topside channels to kiwifarms. They’ve been going through it and speculating a lot, so, it seemed like a good time to talk about some of what we’ve done in our chat, and clear up some speculation.
What the heck is Kiwifarms
Kiwifarms is a forum in the style of Encyclopedia Dramatica or Something Awful, where they pick a target to make fun of, and devote days of their time to discussing why everything the target does proves they’re a horrible person who should kill themselves. You can read more about them in the
NY Mag article, or in personal accounts from
Eevee and
Opa.
Remember the mass shooting of a New Zealand mosque, that got filmed and uploaded online? These are the people who hosted that video.
This is a forum that puts up a celebratory rainbow banner ad when one of their harassment targets dies.
This is a forum that’s devoted over a thousand pages to stalking and harassing my partner, Glip.
So, you know, leaking a bunch of me and my friend’s most vulnerable conversations to them was, kind of a dick move.
Kiwifarms took the logs, pored through them, and it seems one of their major takeaways is that I’m being abused, and they’re just, super concerned about me, and everyone else in the chat. How sweet, maybe they’re not so bad after all. Let’s break that down a bit.
Scenes
One of the big bits of evidence that I’m being abused is that Glip yelled at me in a scene. Scenes are a moderation/ conflict resolution tool we’ve been trying in the server, and I think they’re super interesting, so, let me explain the idea.
Basically, at its heart, a scene is an intense emotional conversation. If you’ve ever approached a friend with “hey, we need to have a serious talk,” congrats, you’ve done a ‘scene.’
Sometimes they take on other forms- like, emphasizing certain emotions in order to work through a topic you’re struggling with. You could view this as role-playing for practice.
We’ve had people do solo scenes to talk through a personal trauma. We’ve had people do scenes to talk through mean jokes, misunderstandings, and patterns of misbehavior. We’ve had people ask for scenes where they’re yelled at, blamed, accused of bullshit, and thus been given a chance to face that in a safe environment with people that care about them, and who can talk through the experience with them afterwards.
Obviously, some of this has potential for hurt feelings and issues breaking out. It can be a lot to deal with for the people in the scene, it can be hard for other bystanders to watch if they don’t know what’s going on, it can be difficult for the participants to deal with interruptions, and the content can sometimes bring up heavy topics for people watching.
To deal with some of the risks, we’ve built up a protocol around them. When people decide they want to do a scene, they use the discord bot’s /joinscene command. This makes cosmetic changes to their name and the channel name, to make it clear a scene is going on. The bot also posts pamphlets, as reminders of proper scene protocol, and reminders of the safewords, in case anybody runs into a difficult topic and needs a break. If the participants want to guard against interruptions, they can lock the channel to just themselves and the moderators.
Alongside this, we have the Audience channel. This serves a few roles- it’s a place for people to discuss the scene, ask for context, and talk about their own experiences and struggles, without interrupting. It’s also a place for the community to discuss what’s going on in the scene, talk about dynamics they see, and give feedback. The audience channel is invisible to scene participants while a scene is active, so it allows for discussion and feedback, while preventing dogpiling.
So, why do all this? Why bring your personal conflicts into a public area like this? Why not just work it out in DMs?
Turns out, having the support of a whole community can be pretty helpful for working through personal issues. It’s pretty standard for someone to interject with something they notice about a misunderstanding, or to chime in with an illustrative personal experience.
Turns out, having a space to talk about your struggles around people who care about you can be pretty nice.
Who’d’ve thunk.
So, imagine my bewilderment when we got a message from a server member asking about the “hazing room” in the server. Referring to a room that they have access to. Referring to a tool we’ve made to help people talk out issues, without dogpiling, without interruptions, and with the support of the rest of the community.
So, some friends poked at KF, and, turns out, the whole rumor started with me. And, looking back over it, I can see why.
Sometimes things suck
Early July was a lot to deal with for the chat. Turned out, someone in the chat had been sexually harassing a lot of people. Someone came forth with their experiences. A lot of other people started piecing together their own experiences with this person, and as it turns out, a lot of people had been having issues. Being treated as sex objects. Being harassed if they tried to talk about anything that wasn’t fucking. Being treated like they were attacking the person if anybody brought up their issues. It was a mess. A lot of people had been hurt, Glip among them. So, that was being resolved, but we were exhausted.
On top of that, I’d recently moved in with Glip. There’s a lot of adjustment to do when you start sharing a physical space with someone. The house is filled with cats, which I am allergic to. I’m mostly fine with allergy meds, but basically I’m surrounded by toxic gremlins who want to snuggle, but that I shouldn’t make skin contact with. If I leave a cup on the counter, it will be destroyed. If I leave a knife on the counter, one of them might get hurt. If I leave the toilet seat up, one of them might jump in like a dumbass and make a mess of the house. If I leave a door open, one of them might get out. And then, there’s all the social dynamics of cohabitation to adjust to. It’s fine, it’s just, rocky at times. I’ve gotten some things right pretty consistently, I’ve messed others up quite a bit.
On the evening of the third, that came to a head. Glip was feeling exhausted with the server stuff, and was struggling with the feeling of people not caring about them, hurting them for selfish gain. Eevee and I stumbled over some personal triggers of theirs, Glip got overwhelmed and had to leave the room. I talked a bit on discord about it, they brought up some of the things I’d been messing up. I tried to acknowledge it.
Here’s what I meant: “I wish I could get these things right the first time. I don’t like hurting you, I wish I was more conscientious, I wish I could correct this stuff more easily.”
Here’s how Glip interpreted it: “I hate that you keep reminding me of stuff that hurts you, get off my case.”
It was an unfortunate miscommunication, and it basically jabbed Glip right in the topic they were struggling with- “nobody cares about your pain.”
The next morning, I woke up to a mess in the server. Glip was struggling with everything that had been happening, and my comment had set them off, so they were dealing with horrible intrusive thoughts about how nobody cared. A huge crowd of people were chiming in and validating that. Comparisons were being made to every other time that someone in the chat was horrible. People were poling on about their own stories of abuse, and connecting it to shit like how I slammed the car door. Glip’s emotions were Valid, and it was a travesty I was treating them that way. Mine were not. I was the villain.
So, that was the atmosphere I woke up to. When I tried to chime in and talk, it was treated like I was unwelcome. Everyone was telling me I needed to “ask questions,” which would have made sense for the various people I’d been compared to who only spouted excuses, but didn’t make much sense in the context of Glip having vented for hours and then me asking them to repeat themselves just to prove I can. Everything I brought up was picked apart and critiqued, viewed in the worst possible light, and the only road to redemption I was offered only made sense in the context of this villain fantasy I’d had painted on me. People didn’t care about my side of the story.
Solution- Address the things that suck
Nobody cared about my side of the story, except for Glip, actually. After fumbling around in the server for a bit, I went downstairs, Glip and eevee and I had a chat, and we worked out what had happened. The stuff that I’d said had brought up a bunch of heavy feelings for them, which I acknowledged, and they talked about how their behavior had sucked a lot, listened to me and eevee vent, and talked about how they could avoid it in the future.
This was not all on Glip. This was a large crowd egging on a bad mood. But, Glip took full ownership of the issue, and spent days working through it, working out how to avoid getting caught in a similar pattern in the future.
Somewhere in there, I went back to the server and laid out for everyone why what they’d done sucked. Went through the whole vent line by line, and laid out why the behavior had been shitty. And, the server listened, and apologized.
This was framed as “Axi having a breakdown.”
This was framed as “Axi said all that stuff and Glip just ignored it,” because I guess the people making a tabloid out of my life forget that people who live together sometimes talk on not-the-internet.
Anyways. We talked through it. Glip resolved to swear off yelling, because they didn’t like how it affected me. I didn’t love that result, because, I didn’t want to shut off them expressing and thus working through feelings. But, Glip was right- I’m not able to respond well to yelling. And, shutting me down wasn’t an effect they wanted to have on me. So, it was a pretty reasonable stopgap measure while we worked through the issues in more detail.
Why would you even want to yell
The issues on the 4th got worked through, and we settled into a safe stable pattern. Occasionally Glip would get upset over something, and, we’d just talk about it. I’d explain my reasoning. Glip would acknowledge that it made sense. And, they’d still feel bad about it, and just resolve to deal with that on their own. Which, kind of sucked. Basically, they were over-correcting. They’d seen me have a hard time with yelling, they didn’t want to have that effect on me, so they stopped. But it denied them an outlet for expressing their own hurt and working through it. That wasn’t an effect I wanted to have on them.
So, as I worked through my feelings about the stuff from the 4th, I began to push them to express more, to do scenes, to yell, if that’s what they needed to express themselves.
This is like, the whole reason scenes exist. The 4th sucked because it happened uncontrolled. The whole chat dogpiled on to a bad feeling, I wasn’t around to address it directly at the time, and I got hit by it when I was unprepared.
Doing it as a scene means that I can mentally prepare, I can go into it with the intention of helping them address their hurt, I can use it as an opportunity for growth for us both. It’s like sparring, in place of a brawl.
Anyways, after the 4th, Glip wasn’t ready for that for a while. They were still dealing with feeling bad for how that had gone, so despite some prodding, they declined to try yelling again, even in a scene.
Things come to a head
Alongside all this stuff, I’d been dealing with some of my own issues. I’ve worked as a commission artist for 5 years, and I hit burnout, and I’ve been struggling with making stuff in general, and feeling bad about my work. Glip had been doing their best to talk through the issues with me and offer suggestions, and I’d been mostly feeling stuck in addressing any of it.
So, one night, I was feeling pretty exhausted, and I made a joke loaded with some of those insecurities. Glip asked about it, and I couldn’t handle it- I was pushing my sleep schedule, and up about 5 hours past when I should have gone to bed. So, I tapped out of the conversation.
The next day, we picked it back up and tried going through what had happened. The conversation didn’t go super well- Glip was patient, but I kept running into my own mental blocks. Eventually I kinda froze, and Glip checked in if I needed a break. I acknowledged that I did, and stepped away to my room.
After taking a bit of time to re-center myself, I realized it might be better to have the conversation over text. So I asked Glip if we could do that, they agreed, and we picked it back up on stage. This is the part that made it into the logs.
On stage, Glip asked me if I wanted to practice yelling, and I expressed that I wasn’t really feeling up to standing up to that. They pointed out that it might be good for me to hear anyways, and, it was a good point. I’d been locked in my own head in weird ways over the art stuff, I clearly needed a push. I told them to go ahead.
So, they laid out how I’d been being shitty towards them. They’d been doing their best to help, and I’d been lashing out. I’d been taking my bad feelings about art out on them. It was pretty much exactly what I needed to hear- it was learning how my actions had affected the people I care about around me. So, I asked about it, and I listened. We had a good scene, it turned out it’s way easier for me to deal with someone yelling when I’m open to what they’re saying and they’re making good points. So, we had a good scene, and then I went downstairs to hang out with them for the evening.
Kiwifarms looked at the brief segment of log that was shared with them, and spun this as, clearly I’m being abused. Glip “forced” me into the scene, “forced” me to be yelled at- despite the fact that the scene and the yelling were both things I’d explicitly asked for, in conversation away from the computer.
Sympathy from the devil
So here’s the gist: A bunch of piecemeal logs get leaked from a channel for private heavy emotional discussion. They get sent to a community of stalkers that find victims and spin their lives into a personal tabloid. They read through some interactions I have with my partner, Glip, their target, ignore the concept that we might also talk in other channels or in real life, and spin some of the heaviest stuff we’ve been dealing with into a story of Glip abusing me.
As soon as the logs got leaked, I knew it was gonna turn into something like this. I knew that people would be putting the worst spin on Glip’s interactions they could. But, frankly, their sympathy for me surprised me. I was expecting a mess to clean up, I wasn’t expecting kindness aimed in my direction.
Where did that come from?
My first theory was, Glip is the Enemy in their narrative. I’m currently a bystander. If they can turn my experiences into Glip being a monster, then cool. But, I feel like there’s something more to it.
Look at the pattern of shitty behavior Glip and the server directed at me on the 4th:
-I am the villain
-My perspective doesn’t matter
-Any action I take can be attributed to me simply being bad as a person
-The avenue I’m granted for resolution is nonsensical. It treats me as someone who just needs to submit to the will of the crowd. It doesn’t acknowledge any room for misunderstandings or clarifications, only Listening. Only Apologies.
-Any attempts I make to pursue a resolution get shot down. Any questions I ask aren’t the right questions, they’re just proof that I’ll never ask the right questions.
This dynamic sucked a lot. Dealing with it on the morning of the 4th fucked me up for a solid week.
This is the dynamic that Kiwifarms has been subjecting Glip to for 5 years.
Why the sympathy?
Do they feel like this too?
For a few days, I wondered if this same feeling was directed at the thread users, constantly. Can’t speak out against the party line. Can’t speak up in support of the Lolcow. Can’t ask whether they’re going too far, without the wrath of the thread turning on them.
What’s that like? What’s it like, to be in a community that will turn on you if you say the wrong thing? What’s it like, to be in a community that will devour you if you express sympathy or vulnerability, untainted with poison for their target victim?
What would happen, if one of them were to express a concern, or to try to resolve things? A few days later, I got to see that for myself.
A nice chat with the mods
So, kiwifarms has this thing going where they redesign floraverse. Because apparently Glip’s allegorical autobiography is a great piece of media, if only it didn’t have Glip associated with it.
So, some of them made a discord server to work on this fanfiction AU. Some kiwifarmers joined, and some kiwifarms mods joined.
And then Glip joined.
The conversation started off about as you’d expect, with everyone in the server chiming in to dunk on their moral enemy Glip. Glip rolled with it and asked about redesigns and whether they could cameo some of the fanwork. The discord mod of the kf-redesign server did their best to smooth things over, and get people talking to each other instead of slinging insults.
Instead of having a chat, the KF mod:
-accused Glip of playing therapist
-diagnosed Glip with “narcissism”
-told Glip they needed to see a therapist
-told Glip that a therapist wouldn’t be able to help them
-told Glip that Glip reminded the KF mod of their mother
-and, generally tore into the discord mod for having let Glip in to the server. Now everything was ruined.
The discord mod responded by giving Glip admin permissions in the KF redesign discord server, pointing out that everyone was being dicks, and that people should chill and talk it out.
Around this point, the KF mod accused Glip of abusing me, and Glip invited me to join the server to talk about that.
So, the KF mod bailed on the server, posted the full logs to Kiwifarms, and turned the kiwifarms thread on the discord mod that had dared to stand up to them.
A lot of people on kiwifarms saw the stage logs from my server, and expressed concern for me. They saw my situation as abusive and urged me to get out of there.
I’m okay. We talked through stuff. We resolved things. I trust Glip to work through things with me, I trust them to look at where they messed up, apologize, and do their best to improve. And I’ve got a community that can support me and back me up, help me work through things, and acknowledge and work on their own issues.
Do you? Could you bring up issues with the moderators in your communities? Do you think they’d be responsive to requests to be kinder, to address their own behavior, to apologize to people they hurt? Do you have a community that can face their mistakes, apologize, and grow?
Do you want one?
Public server opening
Glip and the floraverse community took the floraverse-redesign server, and we’re turning it into a public server.
https://discord.gg/hMRV45A here’s an invite link.
We’re gonna be turning it into a space for community prompts, as well as a place where fans in the general public can join and chat and hang out.
And, we’re gonna use it as a space where people can talk through rumors they hear, challenge us on stuff they’re concerned about, and get an opportunity to resolve stuff that bothers them, rather than just feeding into a rumor mill.
If you’re concerned about me, please come talk to me. Please don’t express your concern on a site that’s worked for years to ruin the livelihood of my loved ones. Please don’t express your concern on a site that celebrates the death of the people it claims as fodder. Please don’t express your concern on a site that asks you to twist that sympathy into a weapon to wield against the people I care about.
And, to everyone else- if this sounds cool, we’d love to have you. Come check it out if you want to join in on community projects, or chat with a crowd of positive creative folks.
Hope to see you there~
