Harassment in the RGL Community
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Hi. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m rona. I play medic in Challenger and I’ve been playing in RGL since S3. This isn’t an anti-RGL statement, but it is about the RGL community.
As someone who has spent the last 2 years in RGL being harassed for my gameplay, gender, and appearance, I have many strong thoughts on the overall culture of our community. This document details my experiences and goes further into depth with my thoughts about harassment. It’s important to make people feel welcome in a community, and I have felt anything but welcome for much of my time. -
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@Austin I never understood this. Some players are genuinely terrible to be around and it seems like nobody cares while on the other hand someone will be doing the best they can and get bullied into quitting the game.
Really seems like some messed up priorities here
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@Rene
why should I have to “take all the punches”? why does that thought even occur in your head?
the whole point is you shouldn’t single out females in the community for whatever reason (i.e the RGL fanfic or getting socials like TikTok leaked)
i shouldn’t have to “take the punches” because they shouldn’t happen in the first place.
i used to defend you when you were shitty towards people and people spoke towards you poorly but holy fuck off. -
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@rona Bro, you want my honest opinion? As long as the galaxy group is still around, highlander will remain dogshit. I’d play 6’s at that point.
I’ll support you all the way regardless.
I’m not saying I’m a saint either, but at the end of the day it is just a game, and I know it’s a stupid argument but investing so much time into a format such as highlander, which doesn’t give you anything in return for winning outside of invite, makes you wonder why you haven’t thought about leaving the highlander scene. I’ve stuck around because of the pandemic, if covid never happened I wouldn’t even be playing this awful game. Oh well.
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@Rene
This is quite literally my goodbye post. I didn’t say it because I didn’t want what I said to be invalidated because ‘she’s leaving, why does it matter’ but I probably am done. Someone shouldn’t have to get harassed to the point of leaving the community though lol. That’s the whole point.
I’m not going to play anymore mostly because I dislike the game but the community definitely contributed to me not liking the game anymore, and it’s not okay for that just to be the way that it is. Yeah, the community sucks. Why do we tolerate it though?
It’s a smaller community and if we wanted to, we could stop letting every shitty person contribute and communicate with the community because as a smaller community, we have that power lol.
Saying that I should just move on because of being harassed is a stupid argument because I honestly stayed as long as I did half because of COVID and half because I didn’t want people to think they could bully me out of a community for a game I enjoyed. -
@rona, I’ll admit I’ve been a piece of shit, and it’s a shame that you’re going out this way, but you could legit play 6’s. It’s way more fun, but it looks like you’re deadset on leaving. I wasn’t involved in all the IRL stuff that people gathered about you. I actually didn’t even know that was going on, but people fed me certain things, and I was a fool for believing some of it. Highlander went to shit a long time ago, and it’ll only get worse due to the moderating. Everything needs to get reformed to save this dying format.
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The amount of deleted replies to this post is telling to say the least.
When you completely belittle someone to the point that this has gotten to over looks or gender you damage the community much more than anyone else can. Rona might not have played as long as some of us and she may have climbed the ranks quickly, but that’s because she put in the work and wanted to learn. The Femboy Hooters team went from being bottom of Advanced Qualifiers to 3rd place the season we played. Even though Dolphin and Rona were new to the scene, and we had some other players that weren’t considered really good, we all put in the effort and came out with a dub when we almost got sent to main. The reason for this was everyone wanted to learn and was thirsty to get better. This included Dolphin, Ghost, Myself, everyone; including Rona. Players like this, who are willing to learn and who put in effort are what will grow this community faster than ever before.
Another person who gets flak a lot is Davidredface. I mentored this guy and he went from the worst team in open to adv in one season, and grill him all you want, but he does better then even some low invite engineers because his resolve to improve and get better is so strong. The stigma around David is mostly jokes from what I’ve seen though, but I’ve seen some harassment go his way. I digress.
Yet we have players that will take someone like Rona, who is eager to play and to learn and get better, and bring her to the point where she no longer likes the game and is quitting. And it’s not because of some tough love “you suck at the game and this is why” type shit. It’s not because she can’t take criticism. It’s because of blatant and accepted harassment. This isn’t healthy for a community, NOR does it help RGL gain players. It in fact does the opposite. It drives them away.
Instead of focusing on getting sponsors that will never come (see the UGC Ramen Sponsor incident for example), RGL should try and come up with a way to help the community deal with people like the ones who are driving Rona, and other players, out of the community. It’s not all on RGL though, we have to do it as a community. No one is gonna give you shit for banning a toxic person from your discord server.
