Catharsis in Text Format

12 Jan 2018

Not pictured here: r/destinythegame

It would be a slight understatement to say that the community for Destiny 2 has been underwhelmed by the game’s total package. While I personally am relatively happy with the game’s offerings, there are both major and minor … oversights … that can restrict the enjoyablility for some. (The precise details of which is outside the scope of this article)

The big issue with this, as far as I’m concerned, that the internet has a really bad habit of taking problems with something and blowing it widely out of proportion with a melodrama lens that would make Shakespeare lean back and go “geeze, tone it down, would you?”. Net result being, the major subreddit for Destiny (and pretty much Destiny’s first point of call for the online community) becoming somewhat akin to a “Toxic Hellstew”. The whole place just became an incredible self-feeding feedback loop of negativity and … salt … and it just wasn’t fun anymore.

So what did you do?

It took me a while, but I eventually recognised that the attitude of the community was reflecting into me quite badly. I’m not exactly known for my long fuse when it comes to these sorts of things, you see. So when I recognised the behaviour in myself, I took a simple step to try to help it - I found the unsubscribe button, and clicked it. I already knew about other subreddits (by the way, when your ‘community’ needs another community literally called r/lowsodiumdestiny, you might have a problem) so I just subscribed to those instead. Problem mostly solved, right?

For me, sure, why not.

Then I forgot I followed the mods of the main sub on twitter.

And?

So the main subreddit mods were having a little congratulatory twitter round over the fact that they had reached the 500k subscriber mark. Me, being my usual irascable self, may have subtweeted this in a sort of response:

tempted to tweet at the main destiny subreddit mods "yeah, you got 500k subscribers, but when are you going to do something about the fact that y'all are salty bastards"

— Chris Hayward (@ellji) January 12, 2018

And a couple of days later, I got this reply from one of the mods (god I hate people who scan the timeline for relevant terms) and roundly ‘liked’ by the rest of them:

Which drove me into a goddamn rage; not because of the reply itself (well, that too) but because I wasn’t going to let myself respond. That’s just rage bait to me, which I promised to myself I was going to try to not get into internet arguments anymore. Which is why I’m writing this, and not posting it on twitter. And thus the title: Catharsis in Text Format - because I really need to write this down.

And so here is the response I’m not going to write:

Diplomatic Version:

This is why I left r/destinythegame, as we have a difference of opinion about how a community should be managed, and that is your community, so I left for greener pastures.

Not so Diplomatic Version:

It’s not a binary choice - there are places inbetween those two options that mean that your community doesn’t spill it’s salt bags all over the place. You can contain and control, and direct discussion to more fruitful places. Your sub is not a healthy community - and one of the reasons why I snarked in the first place is that you might have reached your 500k milestone sooner if this all hadn’t happened. I know that Bungie hasn’t exactly made your lives easy, and this isn’t a paying job, but you have put yourself in a position of stewardship over the direction over a very large community and I feel that you have done them a massive disservice. I feel that you have done me a massive disservice, and that is why I have left.

There might be a even more less diplomatic version, but I’m not writing that. I am very specifically not writing that, because I am trying to not be that person.

sigh.

One day I might be able to skip this step.

So I wrote a thing. I wrote this thing. It’s the digital equivalent of yelling into the void. My ego won’t let me write anything and not try to show this to anyone, so I’ll post it to facebook at 1:30 in the morning where nobody will really see it.

I’ma go back to playing Destiny 2 now.