EVE General Discussion

I'm posting a mittens thread because I'm annoyed about all the mittens threads cluttering up GD - how original, huh?

That being said I'm annoyed because many people are posting extremely stupid comments and I hope I can do my part to fix that:


From my POV three separate events happened :


some additional observations:


Instead of posting one big hurf blurf about cyber bullying it is in my opinion necessary to form an opinion on each of these events.

Only then is it possible to have a reasonable discussion about the incident.
Sadly most actual discussions on this forum seem to go along the lines of "Mittani should remove himself from the CSM because he did (3)", "you idiot, mittani should stay chairman for life because (2c) is perfectly fine", "but it is simply not right to act as in (1)", ... and in the end no insight is gained.


(My personal opinion is that (1) is ok as it does not meet the standards usually employed by GMs for griefing - no excessive directed harassment, just a target of opportunity. The "all I want to do is die" mail happens after the gank and the protection fee scam already took place. At that point it would have been wise to contact a GM to make sure The Wis is alright IRL (but no reimbursements/apologies/sending money back).
I have no problem at all with (2) - unless information that identifies me irl is involved I have no expectation of privacy regarding my in-game communications with other eve players. Ridiculing people in public is socially acceptable as part of the game, see half the C&P posts or the "singing ransoms" presentation at alliance panel.
(3) is not ok, period.)

oh a goon supporting mittani.

Your biased opinion towards your leader holds no weight.

A very clear analysis. The only formal point I would quibble over is the distinction between 2c and 3 which I would tend to see as a single act since 3 feeds back into 2c by naming the character and 2c obviously feeds directly into 3. However, I do appreciate the desire to distinguish them from the perspective of the premeditation angle.

On the other hand, depending on the exact nature of 2a and 2b, they might also be problematic as well, especially given the nature of Goons and the eve community as a whole in which the dangling of sufficient details in a mocking tone more or less amounts to an implicit encouragement to further grief the guy (with 3 simply being an explicit version). But that depends on certain assumptions that are not necessarily beyond doubt, unlike 3, which is pretty clear cut.

Most people claiming to be suicidal are just damn posers and only deserve being laughed at.
Also a guy with 22 mackinaws, seriously? Quitting eve is for his own good really, leave that boring **** to bots.

Personal opinion, #3 was the main issue. It was a public and direct call for a violation of the harassment portion of the ToS/EULA. The quote itself (section 2) was in bad taste, and would have put a sour note in many peoples mouths, some outcry, but wouldn't have been so bad.

Differences between 2b and 2c. This is like you said, the nature of the media. SA forum is like any forum, niche to people. The ones ranting probably don't head out there in the numbers that were watching fanfest stream and read major vid game publications. Getting drunk in a bar has different social ramifications than getting drunk at a political referendum for example.

In SA, it was a violation, and had somebody who gets offended by some acts brought it up, etc, not much would have came of it, majority rules. Offended huffs of with their feeling of morality. But the ones who don't care rule. Same statements are now in a different crowd, lots of pve'rs who enjoy the social aspect of eve, don't grief and the like. As such it is mainstream during a time where e-bullying is in the spotlight. Those offended are now in a majority, it has been petitioned before CCP as a legitimate violation.

Regardless of personal feelings and the loves and hugfest the goons are trying to support. You all agreed to the ToS and the EULA after every patch where it asks you. Mittani's client is no different (I assume) and he agreed to the same thing. Outside of the eve universe, that is for lawyers, and those around the person Alex to decide. Inside eve, there are rules and punishments, those should be enforced just like had it been any other person in violation. What reason should there be to anything else.

It holds more weight than your lack of an opinion in this post.

Yep, although I would still prefer 2c and 3 to be grouped together (possibly as 3a and 3b) given that much of the weight of 3 derives from 2c. It is not an isolated statement about making the guy kill himself, although that would arguably already be deeply problematic, but a statement on that subject specifically in the context of the revelations in 2c. It's not just anyone he has called this down on but that particular person, who had already self-identified in depressed/suicidal terms.

Edit - The point I'm clawing at is that one might reasonably respond to 2c+3 as a collective unit.

I see the if you want to make the guy go kill himself on the same lines of if the player stated he would quite eve forever. So if the guy stated that he didn't want to kill himself but quit the game forever over the incident then this would be a non issue in the exact verbatim context. The only reason this is an issue is because people threw down the cyber bully card and started to white knight, and then blow an issue out of proportion. To build on that statement the number of I quit forever tears that have been harvested over the years are uncountable and this other wise would have been another.

I agree with that point (they could reasonably be grouped together) and won't exclude the possibility that the very deliberate decision not to group them together (which is imo also reasonably possible) might be due to some personal bias.

One reason I keep them separate is that I am interested in the escalation from informing your eight thousand closest friends about what happened (2a), over posting the possibly embarrassing logs on forums which are public but have de facto a very narrow readership (2b), to public ridicule in front of "real people", several thousand stream viewers and the media (2c).

I also like to separate what was clearly planned (2c) from (3) as something that may have been planned all along but that can just as well be attributed to a drunken spur of the moment decision.
Whether we choose to believe The Mittani's apology or not - I think this distinction is important to evaluate its scope and also CCP's part in allowing "the incident" to happen (some people claim the presentation slides were pre-screened by CCP but (3) was not part of the presentation as such).

Of course the 5 months gap between the (1),(2a),2b) events cluster and (2c) & (3) could yield an argument in favor of treating the latter two as one group.

Overall my impression is that treating (2c) and (3) as one event has so far done more to confuse the discussion than to clarify it and as I want this thread to be different I think grouping them together would be unwise.


(edit: speaking of personal bias, note how I neglect the whole "he is chairman of the CSM, representing the game and its players to the public - even when acting in his capacity as alliance leader" discussion, which does imo not add much to the discussion before the basics are thoroughly covered)

Also with everything under 2 could be thrown at the wormhole corp who publicly humiliated every one they ransomed. Granted they didn't suggest additional harassment to those players but they shared their humiliation with the world.

The biggest thing I have been saying on this topic tonight is that these actions happen in eve all the time and this is getting blown up because who said them this time and not the merit of the actions themselves.