An Open Letter to the Fearless Staff

[goigle!]

Dear Fearless Staff:
                I am going to begin this open letter with some background. I am a freshman in college living with four roommates, three of whom are on the lease for the apartment. Two of these roommates are a gay couple, one who is not legally my roommate but spends the night close to every night. I have no problem with them other than their occasional loud intercourse or the frequent playing of loud music at early in the morning. They openly identify as gay. I have recently been blacklisted for making a “homophobic slur in OOC,” after I said “my roommates are literally so gay omg.”

                The rule I am accused of violating is 1.13:

Racism, sexism and discrimination is not allowed OOC and IC.

My comment was not racist or sexist so therefore it has to fall under “discrimination” in order for me to warrant a blacklist. The relevant definition from Merriam-Webster of discrimination is:

the act, practice, or an instance of discriminating categorically rather than individually

I can understand how in-game and at that moment someone may have interpreted my comment as discriminatory. However, there is absolutely no excuse for someone to interpret my comment as discriminatory after I clarified why I wrote what I did and the intended tone of it. Not only did you, the Fearless administration, choose to use an entirely arbitrary tone for my message, but you also decided to apply your own context. Given the proper context, a member of the LGBT community and our community said that my comment was not “worthy of [a blacklist, ban, or even a warning].” My comment was not made because my roommates were gay and was not targeted at gays. I chose the words I did because they were the most specific and accurate at that time – gay men have were having gay sex. How is that derogatory? What is wrong with saying somebody is gay? I did not say that I hate them for being gay; I did not say gays need to die; I did not say that I had a problem with their sex exclusively because it was gay.

                On the topic of gay being a homophobic slur, I ask: since when? Every gay person I know identifies as “gay.” Homosexual is more a scientific term – most people call women either “women,” “ladies,” or “girls” as the semantics of “female” often seems creepy and awkward in an informal setting. The preferred term for the overall community, LGBT, even has the word gay in it. Sure, “that’s so gay” may be a homophobic slur but when talking about one’s sexuality, especially in the aforementioned informal setting; it is most definitely not a slur. How can you even choose to be offended for my roommates?

                Finally, I implore you to stop putting your own implied tone on messages, especially when you have already been told the intended tone. Criminal law takes intent into account when deciding what punishment fits the crime, why should you not? I have had three different staff members (of three different ranks no less) apply a false connotation to my message. This is a connotation which the majority of voters in the discussion thread about my blacklist (which was not started by me and that should speak for itself) agreed was false. Coincidentally, three voters did agree. The final decision that was made on my UBL did not even make sense – it looked as though the supervising admin had not read the UBL at all and left a sour taste in my mouth. He then had the audacity to link to a video advocating not using “gay” to mean “dumb or stupid” after I spent three pages saying that is not what I meant in the slightest. I hope the irony was not lost on the Fearless administration when Grub linked me to the “Think Before You Speak” campaign yet obviously failed to think about or even read the rest of the thread. He did not even proofread his one and only reply. I do apologize for the potential initial confusion; I however do not see that as a failure on my part. I was enjoying the game, talking with friends, and I got excited and was beginning a story in OOC. The way I used “omg” is similar to how a teenage girl might start her own story for friends, intending she had feelings about the story and was about to elaborate. As I said to Hitman before he stopped responding, this blacklist was due to no failure on my part:
You, the Fearless staff failed to interpret my OOC comment correctly, even after clarification was given.
You, the Fearless staff failed to wait and see if I would clarify.
You, the Fearless staff failed to use the tools at your disposal (PM, OOC, Steam, TS) to ask for clarification of what I said.
You, the Fearless staff failed to take context clues into account.
You, the Fearless staff then took action on the assumption that their interpretation of my comment was correct.
It wasn’t.

So to conclude this, I ask one final time:
What exactly did I do wrong?

[Ali]

I understand that you are upset that you have been blacklisted from OOC but there is nothing that you can do other than post an unblacklist request, which you have done and was denied. The quote can be interpreted in different ways. It is always up to the staff member online at the time to gage the atmosphere of the OOC chat and interpret your message, it sucks that according to you the staff that was present misinterpreted the quote, but there is nothing you can do about it. I personally do not see the quote as homophobic but I also was not online during this time, sorry that you feel that you have been wronged, best of luck.

[goigle!]

I understand that you are upset that you have been blacklisted from OOC but there is nothing that you can do other than post an unblacklist request, which you have done and was denied. The quote can be interpreted in different ways. It is always up to the staff member online at the time to gage the atmosphere of the OOC chat and interpret your message, it sucks that according to you the staff that was present misinterpreted the quote, but there is nothing you can do about it. I personally do not see the quote as homophobic but I also was not online during this time, sorry that you feel that you have been wronged, best of luck.

Thank you. Unfortunately, like you said my UBL has been denied. As it was for only 30 minutes I cannot post a second. I know that it will not be removed from my record. The only thing I can do now is this. I only posted it because it disgusts me that this is on my record permanently now and I wished to express some opinions in once concise letter rather than multiple short posts.

Being online is irrelevant - it was the first message I put in OOC and there were no relevant messages prior to it. You have the full picture,

[Suarez]

Was there any actual to make another massive fuss in discussions? Most of these discussions could have been simply PMed to a relevant admin instead of making a massive public fuss everytime.

[Ali]

Was there any actual to make another massive fuss in discussions? Most of these discussions could have been simply PMed to a relevant admin instead of making a massive public fuss everytime.

You are not allowed to message staff members about unban/unblacklist related issues. There is no other place to see what people have to say other than the forums.

This is the message you get when you start a PM to Soul:

[Image: ZUiEDnP.jpg]

And this is in the forum rules:

7a.) Do not use Private Messaging to contact staff members regarding Ban/Blacklist related issues.

So saying that he should message a staff member is going against the forum rules.

[Suarez]

He never asked once to be unblacklisted in that post

[Ali]

He never asked once to be unblacklisted in that post

But the entire reasoning behind this post is because he got blacklisted from OOC and filed an unblacklist request. If he were to message Soul with his arguments as to why he shouldn't have been blacklisted that would most definitely be in violation of forum rule 7a.

[Suarez]

There's nothing wrong with asking what he did wrong, in my opinion

[Awestruck]

Was there any actual to make another massive fuss in discussions? Most of these discussions could have been simply PMed to a relevant admin instead of making a massive public fuss everytime.

He is making a ''fuss'' so it can be seen by the whole community. Its called gaining support. His unblacklist was denied, so he came to the discussions part of the forum to vent his feelings. Surely this is partly what discussions are for? If he wanted to PM a member of staff, then he would have done that. Please don't insinuate that posts shouldn't be made if someone doesn't like a situation that has occurred within the community.

[Ali]

There's nothing wrong with asking what he did wrong, in my opinion

You don't see a problem with (After his unblacklist request got denied) copy and pasting the arguments from that post into a PM and sending it to Soul?

EDIT: Sorry to Goigle for swaying the post. As of now I will refrain from posting.