Whaaaaat (Destiny)

by CruelLEGACEY , Toronto, Tuesday, November 06, 2018, 13:49 (2278 days ago) @ Harmanimus

If the only voice that is heard is vitriol that is the only voice of the fan base.

I have yet to encounter a case of nerd-culture drama where the only voice is vitriolic. What usually happens is a whole bunch of people complain for a bunch of reasons that range from reasonable critiques all the way to pure insanity, the people who go way to far get all the attention, and then those making reasonable critiques get lumped in with the whackos until they’re too sick of the whole thing to care anymore and they move on to something else.

There’s another issue here, which comes down to how people choose to interpret the outbursts of rage that come from online communities. I’ve worked closely with several community managers for large IPs (Xbox, Xbox Canada, Halo, just to make a few). One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that just because someone is behaving horribly online, it doesn’t mean they don’t have a point. Sometimes, there really is nothing of substance behind them. But more often than not, if you look beyond the keyboard-rage and dig into the reasons why that person is acting out, you’ll find that they actually have some sort of valid point. That doesn’t excuse or justify their horrible behaviour. Sometimes people just need to be ignored. But I’ve found that the most of the times when I’ve had to deal with people who are lashing out online, I’ve been able to reach past all the faux-outrage and connect with the real human being. And when that happens, both sides learn and come out better for it.