I left the HL community because of targeted harassment from the inner circle of the elite in HL, especially after taking the bullet and opening up the thread for racism. I specifically called for these players to be punished, but I guarantee it won’t happen, unfortunately.
I swapped to 6s, hopefully it’ll be a less toxic environment. After my first season, I’m a bit more confident in that regards, but still some bad apples. @rona
A discussion arose in the discord server about RGL’s policy on hate speech. To give context, RGL’s current rules:
ANY use of slurs either in in-game chat or found on named items during scrims and matches, whether directed or undirected, is STRICTLY prohibited.*
1st offense will be a 2-week ban (3 weeks for Invite)
Any further offenses will lead to increasingly longer ban lengths
Some examples of what harassment is:
Verbal abuse, offensive behavior, or hate speech made towards a player (through any medium) that makes them feel uncomfortable or threatened
Threatening to dox or harm another player
Stalking
Circumventing another player’s block over Steam/Discord/other social media
Some examples of what harassment is NOT:
In-game “trash talk” (ex: being called bad) (note that excessive toxicity/”trash talk” may still fall under the rules outlined in [1002.1] - Sportsmanship and Spirit)
Being spammed in private messages - If someone is bothering you, just block them.
Gossip in private Discords
To put it bluntly, the top levels of RGL is filled with players who actively spew hate speech, whether by spoken word, or on Discord servers (specifically not the RGL discord). I’m personally of the opinion that RGL should accept reports of these actions and subsequently punish such players for promoting/using hate speech. In addition, I believe RGL should tighten the punishment from being timed bans, to being permanent bans.
Firstly, allowing players who are actively known by players in the community to use hate speech is incredibly damaging to the image of RGL. RGL understands this and institutes their current rules (as given above). However, their stance on not “policing” the private discords or other media options players use still indirectly harms RGL’s image. In particular, there are a couple of private servers that come to mind that are filled with only RGL players where hate speech is used flippantly. My particular stance is that RGL should allow players to report these instances (with screenshots or voice recordings only) and punish the accused accordingly. RGL does not need a section of their community being thinly veiled wolves in sheep clothing. RGL does not need players who are “perfect saints” in matches and scrims, but are openly abusive to entire swathes of humanity everywhere else.
Arguments have been made that players should be allowed to have free speech, however there is a common misconception with this argument: You are totally able to say the n-word, for instance. However, there are consequences that can occur by doing so. RGL can punish offenders to the maximum of their ability, a permanent ban, if they so choose and it is not infringing on your right to free speech.
In reality, I can find no reason personally that RGL does not adopt a “once and done” ban system for hate speech, and I see no reason that players cannot report hatespeech/harassment against an entire race/sexual orientation/gender from a player outside of the RGL platform. If the argument is that there is not enough staff, I will gladly dedicate as much time and effort as I humanly can to assist in bettering the league.
Feel free to discuss, I will likely answer any opposition to my reasonings.
dojo > help 2-1
flow > own 2-0
nkb > 3L 2-0
koreans < depot 2-1
gramps < moveups 2-1
crit < risk 2-1
Upward week: I don’t think there will be any upsets in this week. Reasonably, any of the 2-1 games could flip the other way, but if I were to guess which ones: Dojo V Help could easily go 2-1 in Help’s direction. Gramps v Moveups could swing easily as well.
As for my own team, good luck to OWN 
I guarantee I could find numerous studies about the actual psychological harm that can arise from being called a slur for your race/gender/sexuality. The amount of suicides alone is incredibly telling.
Hate Speech is incredibly damaging and pervasive in the culture and should be treated just the same in my opinion.
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An incredibly well thought out response. I’ll attempt to respond the best I can. I will note, some of this will be anecdotal reasoning.
To your first point, I find there is nothing to counteract, it is simply a statement of fact. I believe everyone is in agreement to this point, so far.
Moving to the second point, I will clarify that my intent for “all” was referencing places like pug groups, but majority-RGL players would be an acceptable differentiation. The most particular of places I feel this is necessary is the “public-private” pug groups that are generally just based around the divisions of the League. I would move to classify them under the same basis of scrims being affected, as due to a players desire to improve, many will undoubtedly seek outside practice and come into contact with this layer of toxic behavior that is undesirable. This can either portray RGL in a damaging light as you mentioned, or players will just forget it and exist without it, thereby limiting their exposure to improvement. I personally mute every pug server I’ve joined due to this issue, but due to the fact this has been the only viable way for me to practice in high level games, I have had to deal with it. In addition, I would also like to give my personal view that while a specific individual may not be the target of harassment, using a slur becomes indirect harassment or an attack on a person’s race/sexuality/gender/etc by virtue of seeing or hearing it.
My issue here is that, in “private” discords such as team discords or pug discords, offenders are harassing people who do not wish to associate themselves with them, but are forced to do so due to the current circumstances. All the while, RGL could be doing more to influence the community in a positive light and continue to create an inclusive atmosphere, even in it’s outer circle. By choosing to take the risk and use hate speech around others, you would have to trust that these people either accept your thinking and agree, or else you would be encouraged to keep quiet if you wished to continue playing TF2 for RGL, who takes the most active stand (currently) against such hate.
To your third point: By signing up for an account on RGL, you implicitly agree to follow all rules they have instituted in the guidelines, or else you would be removed from the service. If the rules are changed to state that it is not acceptable in private discords and is reportable by players, by signing up to an RGL account you would implicitly agree to that stipulation. Anyone who continues to play after the rule is changed would implicitly agree to that stipulation.
For the fourth point: I spoke about this in my discussion of your 2nd point, but to reiterate, both are equally potential responses that are negative reactions to something that, honestly, could just not have a place in the community anymore if we so choose.
For the last point: There are businesses all over the world that are allowed to ban entire swathes of religions/genders based purely on who they are. I could go downtown right now and say I was a muslim or from Iraq for instance, and go to a mom-n-pop store and be barred from entry and I would have 0 legal recourse against them. My freedom of speech was not infringed on, but I was refused service. I was not free from “punishment” by this private business for what I said. I was still subject to their rules if I wanted entry into their establishment.
In any case, I appreciate your discussion and arguments greatly in contrast to half of this threads meaningless memeing.
I’ve personally never seen a team held at 1st unless there is a large skill disparity of some sorts, like on a Sniper or Flank classes. The only realistic hold for 1st is to do an aggressive hold on the flank overlook, but that crumbles to any actual coordination from your team and subsequently neuters your 2nd hold if it get’s broken in any meaningful way.
That 1st hold is super unsafe to get back to if you die without a TP because sniper can play on the offensive hill and just pick off your players trying to get back into position. Not only that, you can get airblasted or rocket/stickied off the side of the map.
In the current “hold”, you pretty much treat it like Swiftwater 1st: Try and get a few picks on the cart so that you get an extra 15 seconds or so before it inevitably gets capped. The main area of 1st is just way too big for any team to reasonably hold without high ground advantage.
As for how to fix it, I personally don’t have any experience in making/changing maps so it’s hard for me to give advice. All of the other holds are perfectly fine IMO.
Probably one of the best players you could have on your team. He never complains, he puts out mad DPM, and he efficiently leads a team in game. I don’t think I’ve played with a Demo that was better than Rasta in all of these categories.
It would be an absolute travesty to not pick Rasta up. You will not be disappointed.
With the sheer amount of modes and functionalities for drafting and queues, isn’t there going to be an issue of too few players playing the same mode, because they’re preferences might differ? If you have 14 players, but 6 wanna do exclusive and 8 wanna do inclusive, neither game can start due to lack of players. If there are too many queues, modes, and other such systems, then players may diffuse over too many of them and less games could be started overall.
How will the site/RGL handle this, should it occur?
@shia-wno New players will fill in the gap.
In fact, I do ignore most of the hate speech, and it doesn’t even affect me personally. That doesn’t mean we should be lax on the issue. Keeping players who use hatespeech because they are “good” is horrible reasoning. The players are actively harassing an entire race by saying the n-word, and I guarantee that there are players in RGL that are African American.
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First, I don’t see at all why it’s ridiculous to punish a player for actively using hatespeech against an entire race/gender/sexuality. I also have specifically never stated that RGL should have staff in every team discord/group chat, only stated that they should accept player reports that come from such discords and punish accordingly.
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Your post didn’t counter any argument I’ve brought up so far.
There is no breach of privacy here. My given solutions have amounted to: “RGL, I do not want to play in a league with x user of hatespeech. Here is my proof that this has occurred.” You will lose players for hatespeech if you don’t adequately deal with the issue. You are free to say whatever you want in your discord/twitter/texts, but just like in real life, if it gets seen in public, you can quite possibly get bad backlash. Companies may fire you, friends/family may disown you, or other punishments.
@vryktion
Let me give a hypothetical.
Let’s say I am hypothetically a flaming racist. I have been this way for years, even before TF2. I may or may not have posts on twitter, facebook, or discord in this instance that state openly racist/anti-lgbtq friendly words or phrases.
However, whenever I am playing an RGL match, or scrim, I am the perfect angel. No one would know otherwise if that was the end of it.
BUT! Players from RGL gather in a separate discord, for instance, for pugs to practice in. Inside this server, I spew my racist/anti-lgbtq friendly words and phrases. Outsiders to the community see me, a potentially prominent TF2 player, being openly racist/anti-lgbtq, and begin to associate RGL with the same. It promotes the idea that RGL is not actually a safe haven against this threat, but just a thin veil. Players inside the community are turned away from the league because the community is only inches away from the hate speech.
I am specifically asking for harsher punishments (instead of just the weeks that increase each time to instead be permanent), and for players to be able to report such harassment to the staff. I will counter your argument by stating that my proposed solutions would create an influx of report/bans in the short term (as RGL would need to catch up to the issue and deal with more reports coming in due to what has been said already by players in the community), but it is a necessary evil that I think RGL should be prepared and willing to accept.
I left the HL community because of targeted harassment from the inner circle of the elite in HL, especially after taking the bullet and opening up the thread for racism. I specifically called for these players to be punished, but I guarantee it won’t happen, unfortunately.
I swapped to 6s, hopefully it’ll be a less toxic environment. After my first season, I’m a bit more confident in that regards, but still some bad apples. @rona
I appreciate the good criticism and feedback Alto. I’ll try my best to answer best I can.
I will go ahead place the disclaimers here: This discussion was started before I was even awake on the day of the posting, and eventually we were asked to move to the forum. I figured no one else would really do it, so I decided to stick my neck out and make the post. There is no clout to be gained here, if anything it’s probably only going to(or already has) hurt my reputation. I don’t mind it, because for the people that will look down upon my reputation, I probably wouldn’t want to interact with them in the first place.
I am passionate about human rights issues, even if I am not personally affected by them. I’d go so far as to say I’m a pretty politically active debater, as I quite enjoy public discourse. You are correct in stating I am not doing this solely out of concern for the league itself, but for those that potentially could/would be affected by something I think should be curbed. I do know people in my life who have been affected by hate speech, but I prefer to try and keep as objective a view as possible in regards to my emotions when I make arguments.
With all of that said…
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I can understand your argument, and would like to raise an objection that pug groups are essential. I find it incredibly unlikely that people will grow to higher level TF2 based solely on scrim time and matches alone. Consistently throughout my career I’ve been instructed or advised to join pugs to improve. It is not absolutely necessary, but I think players would severely hamper their growth and improvements by not taking this advice. Which then leads to the issue at hand of all the pug groups I’m aware of being filled with the toxic behavior.
In the case of using a game of CSGO or LoL as a reference: The main difference is that we are treating this as a competitive league, not going onto the ranked ladder. The actual comparison would (for NA) the LCS, LCS Academy, and Collegiate League for LoL (using this as a reference as I know the most about it.) To explain the similarities for those unaware: the LCS would be considered the Invite/Div-1/Challenger of TF2, the Academy would be the Div-2/Adv/Main, and Collegiate would be IM and lower. In all of these cases, as competitive leagues sponsored or run by Riot Games, they are subject to rules that include punishment for Hate Speech used by teammates. Fines, suspensions, bans, etc. These players are subject to it out of game too, so they must always be on guard in that situation if they wish to continue playing the game competitively under Riot Games.
I think it’s completely reasonable to assume that RGL can have the same capacity to handle such issues, if they so desired. If I missed anything to respond to in your post, feel free to let me know and I’ll address it, but I believe I got everything.
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I have not addressed the “thick skin” argument for that exact reason. I would actually say I have pretty thick skin. It does not pain me to see someone called the n-word in front of me for instance. I am sympathetic to the issue, however people like to assume the two are interchangeable.
To your second post: enforcing the system is not fool-proof as I mentioned, but I think it is something that would prove difficult to start with, but given enough time would mellow out and become manageable as eventually the problem will dissipate due to bans or people hiding away their hate speech much more carefully.
I guarantee I could find numerous studies about the actual psychological harm that can arise from being called a slur for your race/gender/sexuality. The amount of suicides alone is incredibly telling.
Hate Speech is incredibly damaging and pervasive in the culture and should be treated just the same in my opinion.
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An incredibly well thought out response. I’ll attempt to respond the best I can. I will note, some of this will be anecdotal reasoning.
To your first point, I find there is nothing to counteract, it is simply a statement of fact. I believe everyone is in agreement to this point, so far.
Moving to the second point, I will clarify that my intent for “all” was referencing places like pug groups, but majority-RGL players would be an acceptable differentiation. The most particular of places I feel this is necessary is the “public-private” pug groups that are generally just based around the divisions of the League. I would move to classify them under the same basis of scrims being affected, as due to a players desire to improve, many will undoubtedly seek outside practice and come into contact with this layer of toxic behavior that is undesirable. This can either portray RGL in a damaging light as you mentioned, or players will just forget it and exist without it, thereby limiting their exposure to improvement. I personally mute every pug server I’ve joined due to this issue, but due to the fact this has been the only viable way for me to practice in high level games, I have had to deal with it. In addition, I would also like to give my personal view that while a specific individual may not be the target of harassment, using a slur becomes indirect harassment or an attack on a person’s race/sexuality/gender/etc by virtue of seeing or hearing it.
My issue here is that, in “private” discords such as team discords or pug discords, offenders are harassing people who do not wish to associate themselves with them, but are forced to do so due to the current circumstances. All the while, RGL could be doing more to influence the community in a positive light and continue to create an inclusive atmosphere, even in it’s outer circle. By choosing to take the risk and use hate speech around others, you would have to trust that these people either accept your thinking and agree, or else you would be encouraged to keep quiet if you wished to continue playing TF2 for RGL, who takes the most active stand (currently) against such hate.
To your third point: By signing up for an account on RGL, you implicitly agree to follow all rules they have instituted in the guidelines, or else you would be removed from the service. If the rules are changed to state that it is not acceptable in private discords and is reportable by players, by signing up to an RGL account you would implicitly agree to that stipulation. Anyone who continues to play after the rule is changed would implicitly agree to that stipulation.
For the fourth point: I spoke about this in my discussion of your 2nd point, but to reiterate, both are equally potential responses that are negative reactions to something that, honestly, could just not have a place in the community anymore if we so choose.
For the last point: There are businesses all over the world that are allowed to ban entire swathes of religions/genders based purely on who they are. I could go downtown right now and say I was a muslim or from Iraq for instance, and go to a mom-n-pop store and be barred from entry and I would have 0 legal recourse against them. My freedom of speech was not infringed on, but I was refused service. I was not free from “punishment” by this private business for what I said. I was still subject to their rules if I wanted entry into their establishment.
In any case, I appreciate your discussion and arguments greatly in contrast to half of this threads meaningless memeing.
Then why ban Nursey or Shaggy, yknow? All of that happened in the privacy of his DM’s/servers, right? Why are we policing someone for their off-platform actions in some cases but not all cases? I guarantee they weren’t grooming/sexting minors on RGL discord or in pugs/matches/scrims. By your own argument, did it really have any bearing on the way the game is played at all?
There is a precedent set already: Actions/words outside of the platform can and will get you banned if they are bad enough. I’m advocating that hate speech should be under that umbrella too.
@toast
No, and that’s why the argument that “African American’s can say it, but we can’t” is inherently ineffectual in an online context.
Reminder to actually post useful criticism/discussion.
That’s a gray area that I find hard to determine. But, by your own logic, african american’s shouldn’t be punished in the current rules for saying it mid match, right?
Feel free to refute my reasoning as to why you believe so instead of just saying it’s stupid. I feel I’ve given adequate reasoning as to why this would work.
In addition, it’s not like admins are only able to ban everyone in a single second. It will take time for admins to go through the bans, and RGL can be prepared for this.
I do not wish to make the admin’s job “harder”. I wish to reduce the player base currently to create a better environment and increase future growth.
Fraudulent reports are possible. This is not a fool-proof system, but the staff that work on the reports should be aware of this issue and subsequently deal with it. Multiple reports, making sure timestamps are included (both your own time and the time of the post), and a small bit of investigation. You can even ask the reporter to invite the staff to the discord/group chat so that they can do their own personal investigation. There are plenty of ways to handle this issue.
If a player is willing to report to RGL about someone saying the nword, then somebody was offended. Even “funny” uses of hate speech should not be tolerated. It’s just morally wrong and by normalizing it’s usage, we just give the users a platform to continuing their toxic behaviour.
Replacement words are generally not as hurtful if they aren’t the most obvious changes. Personally, I’ve never seen “mega” used, for instance, and until you told me that it was a replacement word, I would have never known probably. These can be done on a case by case basis, I’d suspect.
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In regards to staff/resources, as I’ve mentioned, it is up to the players to do the reporting. Staff will have to deal with an influx of reports for some time, and we’d see an increase on bans, but it would not be permanent. Eventually, the toxic weeds would be filtered out of the community and it would level out considerably. RGL can find volunteers and give them guidelines on how to handle the issues if they don’t have the manpower to handle the reports now.
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Once again, I will address freedom of speech:
Your fucking right to speech isn’t being infringe on. You are completely free and able to speak your mind. You are completely free and able to have the mindset that all african american’s are n-words that are should be at the heel of a white mans boot. You are not free from any or all consequences of such actions. In an organization that is trying to curve itself away from toxic behaviours like hatespeech, it should adequately punish the players that use it. It should not tolerate it being apart of the league in any capacity. It’s not illegal for you to have the ideal. You can go outside right this moment and say “FUCK N-WORDS”.
This is a private organization, and is therefore, to the fullest legal extent, allowed to say “No, you may not use our service because you are racist.” You have zero legal standing. Your privacy is not being intruded on. You are being allowed to spew your hate speech, and a private business/org decided it didn’t want to do business with you.
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Lastly, in regards to the discussion about loss of player count:
Good. RGL can comp the players eventually. The league will survive and can bounce back. People who don’t want to deal with the toxic behavior will come to the league eventually.
Just because people are complicit, does not mean people outside of the community coming in will be. Even if someone is not offended by hate speech, it does not change the fact that it is hatespeech.
In addition, please try and construct longer messages into singular posts, so we aren’t just spamming a couple sentences back and forth x.x