by bumfrog » Thu Mar 24, 2022 7:21 pm
I have had some experience with this user and feel qualified to provide some nuance to the critiques of his character here.
For one, several of the posters expressing discontent with his petition for mod here could best be described as "social rejects" each for their own distinct and exciting reasons. I won't be naming names but we all know who they are, even if they don't have the self awareness to know that of themselves. They are generally disliked for their own personality flaws ranging from mental illness to social/developmental disorders to just being boring assholes, and several only continue to exist here by the grace of the dev/mod team's lax approach to moderation owing to early-00s internet attitudes a la chans and SA. However these users place the blame for the community's negative perception of them on the community itself and not their own transparent bad intentions or antisocial behavior. While it's true that, due to the community's roots in the aforementioned internet nihilism centers there is a wealth of trolling/griefing/whatever other schadenfreude-focused mal-intentions in Haven, these users, having been cast out for their antisocial behaviors, imagine a monolithic Cabal of Evil Trolls intent on keeping "good, innocent people" like them down.
While it is true that zentetsuken/aleck has power within the game community from which they have been ostracized, and true that he partakes in what could be called trolling at their expense from time to time, they are giving him far too much credit to put him in any kind of leadership role. We all know who the current top dog in the most socially powerful and in-game malicious Hafen trolling community is and it isn't aleck nor is he even remotely part of that player's faction. They are also misreading aleck's strategic toleration/low profile towards this person and his ilk as cooperation, when in fact this is a deliberate choice to avoid "kicking the hornet's nest". I would imagine this is particularly hard to grasp for the chronic hornet's-nest-kickers whose 4 or 5(!) digit post-counts contain overwhelming evidence for a social intelligence in the negative if they are not somehow 'pretending to be retarded' and frankly even if they are. Though I also figure that for such individuals being themselves to be more punishment than crime.
"The Trolls" are not monolithic, and aleck is at best warily complicit in what social power they do have. The ramblings of these social rejects are worthy of no further consideration.
However that is not to say opposition to aleck becoming a mod is without validity. The most compelling critiques come from the user "VDZ" who specifically cites aleck's own words. They paint a picture of aleck as hating the game/moderation/developers, as seeing its players as appropriately miserable for engaging with the game, and as being generally disgusted towards anyone who is an active part of this community. Taking aleck at face value I believe the point to be quite effective: from what he has said, it would seem he views the game and community with complete disdain.
However this is a surface level reading at best, and here is where that nuance I promised is most enlightening. The most succinct way to describe the highlighted statements is "projection"; aleck is correct to state that the game is a directionless mess, a game that the developers refuse to see as a game and so one destined to be both unfinished and without satisfying gameplay systems. The community is plagued with bad actors and autists looking to provide direction where j+l will not, who create systems that are typically obtuse and/or malicious but consistently half-baked. However all his statements calling the playerbase pathetic for sticking around this long apply most potently to himself. For whatever irrational reason aleck continues to be involved and hopeful despite all evidence pointing in the opposite direction. By his own logic none is more sunk-cost fallacied than himself, especially since he is somewhat more mature than the average troll or social reject that has played this game for over a decade.
Aleck's best-kept secret is that he very much loves Haven and Hearth and its community, even with these innumerable flaws. All his frustrations and whining about the developers, or all you morons, are his way of expressing how much he cares about this game even if he sees himself as pathetic for continuing to. He would make an excellent candidate for mod, though I'm not sure if even he understands how miserable it would be for him.
+1 but with a heavy heart.
If aleck wants to become a moderator he is more than committed enough to this community and would be the least, uh, "neurodivergent" person to fill the role in years. In fact he and Coles are probably the only people in the game who are both involved enough in the forums/community at large to do the work consistently and socially/emotionally intelligent enough to address moderation issues with a level head. However as a sworn enemy of the greens and of any kind of voluntary internet janitor it will certainly degrade my opinion of him should he actually be put in the position of 'does it for free' babysitter here, and it would surely alienate him from whatever groups of trolls his opponents here imagine him to be a part of.
Last edited by
bumfrog on Thu Mar 24, 2022 9:43 pm, edited 18 times in total.
![¦]](./images/smilies/troll.gif "Trollface")
