The Toxic Syndrome

[Big Thanks]

People just like to be bad.
Reasons?
There are bad people in the world and most of them choose to be.

Is anyone surprised by this?

[Bbrigham]

People just like to be bad.
Reasons?
There are bad people in the world and most of them choose to be.

Is anyone surprised by this?

Yes. I am. Why be bad? Or more specifically, to this topic, why be toxic? It doesn't advantage you in any regard anyway. Its the social version of not wearing deodorant. Being obnoxious is only attractive in comedy, and only momentarily. I truly do not comprehend the ideology behind it. If you want others to like you- cooperate with others. If you're a introvert, as I have been in the past, keep away from others. Its fine. Why spew all over new or returning players? It literally boggles my mins.

[Big Thanks]

Yes. I am. Why be bad? Or more specifically, to this topic, why be toxic? It doesn't advantage you in any regard anyway. Its the social version of not wearing deodorant. Being obnoxious is only attractive in comedy, and only momentarily. I truly do not comprehend the ideology behind it. If you want others to like you- cooperate with others. If you're a introvert, as I have been in the past, keep away from others. Its fine. Why spew all over new or returning players? It literally boggles my mins.

What if i told you this "bad people" are not "lonely introverts and awkward" ?

Sometimes they have friends...MANY, in fact. Entire guilds to support them.
Guilds of only toxic people.

Ingame, inforum, indiscord, inreal life.

They just enjoy who they are...and that is...being an awful person.

Welcome to planet Earth and more specifically "The internet".
In real life this people HIDE their true faces.
On the internet? Is a godamn toxic party. Free for all.

[SirBeef]

Because of this (and the implications of internet anonymity):

This tread is over in one post. Seriously OP, there is nothing more to add. But I will, yes things were a bit less toxic before name and server changes came along. People were easily blackballed by the server. So there was some accountability and an obligation to behave or at least follow the server norms. Name changes happened came in TBC and toxic behavior grew. By late WotLK server changes and LFD came to be and that's when it became normal to be Toxic. No one had to worry about being banned by the server communities, no repercussions for bad behavior, and all that with the ability to queue instead of finding a group to dungeon, no you have what we have today.

- - - Updated - - -

imagine having it so easy in life you are most concerned with asking a pointless question like this

Imagine having it so easy in life you are most concerned with responding to a pointless question like this.

[CrawlFromThePit]

So, this may be a devisive post, but I'm curious what the general wow community thinks about it. In the decade plus I have played wow, I have experienced good interactions...and some really really toxic ones. Here too. But I'm curious why you-you being the WoW player, or the forum goer- why do you think people are so toxic? I mean, it doesn't help. It doesn't add to the fun of others. Its not conducive to a healthy game or forum environment. So why then?? Why be toxic. Either on WoW or in forum.

As a notoriously toxic person myself (based on the commonly known standards to which I don't agree) I can tell you from experience.
First of all it's important to note that most toxicity does not materialize out of thin air. An issue occurs first and becomes the source of the toxicity.
This source often happens to be something like excessively bad player skill, blatant ignorance concerning basic knowledge that players should have, or straight up stupidity. All of those are easily avoidable, and I'm not talking about new players, that's understandable, I'm talking about those with evidence of big experience in the game.
What they bring is worse than toxicity, and here's why: it doesn't add to the fun of others, it's not conductive to a healthy game or forum environment, but on top of all that they make players around them mad by wasting their time and creating a terrible gaming experience which then creates toxicity. Toxicity is just a negative interaction between 2 people, it is ONLY considered toxic by the receiver, are we then supposed to only listen to this person's feeling or is the "toxic person" in his right to express his opinion on someone's shortcoming? Are we, as a species, supposed to just accept all form of mediocrity without saying a word? Shouldn't we strive to better ourselves and move forward or just be content with being crayon eaters?

Simply put, if people stop sucking at video games or saying extremely stupid stuff on forums like "blizzard hates warlocks" or some other silly things that are the actual opposite of reality, then toxicity could probably straight up disappear.

Almost every instance of toxic behavior can be linked to a stupid thing someone else did or said in the first place. There are exceptions to this, best examples I can think of are people in LoL who just troll from the get go, like no one said anything to them and they just decide to pick a second jungler and just hope people will dodge for them or something like that. But this level of retardation is rare in general and almost non-existent in WoW or on forums, to my knowledge at least.

I strongly believe moronic behavior perfectly warrants a "harsh" response to some extent, in most gaming communities this type of response is considered "toxic" but I see toxicity as whatever is the beginning of things going bad, which is the sources I mentioned above. Being bad at games is the true toxicity, because if you're not bad then nothing goes wrong, everyone is happen, no bad word is said. But bad players have nothing to their defense because of the internet ego and anonymity and the current state of our society that tries to brainwash people into believing "we're all equal" and shits like that. No we're not, some people suck, some people are good, we don't contribute to society or life to the same extent, our own value on this planet is not the same, some people are simply more important than others.

To all the people out there who are prone to quickly report people because "they say bad words" or "they hurt my feelings" and other things along those lines, you want this to stop? You want to be valued? You want to have a good time online? Work on yourself, open your mind, thicken your skin, harden those fragile feelings, get better, improve, give no one around you a reason to be toxic, make them enjoy their time when you're around. Don't be the clown who has to get carried everywhere and needs better players to get shit done or need devs to implement a report system to make you feel "safe" in a gaming community.

Stop seeing yourself as a victim of other's "toxic" behavior. These comments are either easy to ignore because they're meaningless or they can be used as opportunities to learn and grow from.

When I said I say this from experience, I meant experience from both sides and I welcome it. They say don't do to others what you don't want done to you, I don't expect people to be happy when I I'm being stupid or if I fuck up, so I act that way in return as well. If we all work to be good enough to not have this happen then we will truly live in harmony while improving and moving forward. The only other way to not have "toxicity" is to all be equally terrible idiots, and that's simply not good as you can easily guess.

- - - Updated - - -

This tread is over in one post. Seriously OP, there is nothing more to add. But I will, yes things were a bit less toxic before name and server changes came along. People were easily blackballed by the server. So there was some accountability and an obligation to behave or at least follow the server norms. Name changes happened came in TBC and toxic behavior grew. By late WotLK server changes and LFD came to be and that's when it became normal to be Toxic. No one had to worry about being banned by the server communities, no repercussions for bad behavior, and all that with the ability to queue instead of finding a group to dungeon, no you have what we have today.

And what we have today are communities that cater to the weakest of them all who get bothered by literally meaningless things such as using a pornstar name for your character in a game. Meaning that someone who watches porn and knows who that name belongs to, also has such low self respect, lack of integrity and insane double standards that they are willing to report you for that.

I'll take the little easily offended people trying to blacklist me in old WoW over pathetic support for the weak minded that we have today. At least back then I could just play with other players like me who didn't get their panties in a bunch over things that are literally, objectively meaningless by definition.

[Lei]

I can deal with people who are not the nicest, but say things that are objectively correct ("Interrupt that shit, noob!" - totally fine with me). I prefer friends like that tbh. Forthcoming, but fair, clear to the point. What I can't deal with is people shouting objectively stupid shit, or just nonsense personal insults because they were called out for being stupid in the first place.
Like the other day I was on my hunter alt and it's my 4th alt in the past 3-4 weeks and I see people failing on the same thing in dungeons (queue is like 1-2 min on a dps nowadays, which is amazing). I was silent, but that day I thought to myself "Maybe I tell them this trick and they will appreciate it, seeing they are leveling allied races as well. So that their next run would go quicker, smoother." So I told them that little trick. Normal voice, nothing patronizing... And then got told I'm a noob and nobody cares, and then some twtich nonsense I couldn't fully comprehend. I play on alliance, my next alt will be on horde. I'm genuinly curious if this is an alliance thing where people play what looks like facerubbing on the keyboard or just a general thing.
I haven't leveled a single alt in dungeons since MoP I would say, but the average quality of players seems to have gone down quite a bit, and the way they take advice (god forbid criticism) as well. Again, last 3-4 weeks, 4 alt, just dungeon spamming up to 90.
On the bright side maybe wow really has quite some new players who have never been to Cata dungeons...

Btw the convo went like this:
Me: - If you do this ...., these mobs will not be this nuissance. Or deadly.
Guy: - Just play, noob. Nobody cares - said one of the dead guys
Me: - What's your problem?
Guy: - My class is shit...
Me: - No, you are shit tbh. - come on, had to do it, it was offered on a plate..
Guy: - twitch nonsense I can't recall or comprehend.

[SirBeef]

As a notoriously toxic person myself (based on the commonly known standards to which I don't agree) I can tell you from experience.
First of all it's important to note that most toxicity does not materialize out of thin air. An issue occurs first and becomes the source of the toxicity.
This source often happens to be something like excessively bad player skill, blatant ignorance concerning basic knowledge that players should have, or straight up stupidity. All of those are easily avoidable, and I'm not talking about new players, that's understandable, I'm talking about those with evidence of big experience in the game.
What they bring is worse than toxicity, and here's why: it doesn't add to the fun of others, it's not conductive to a healthy game or forum environment, but on top of all that they make players around them mad by wasting their time and creating a terrible gaming experience which then creates toxicity. Toxicity is just a negative interaction between 2 people, it is ONLY considered toxic by the receiver, are we then supposed to only listen to this person's feeling or is the "toxic person" in his right to express his opinion on someone's shortcoming? Are we, as a species, supposed to just accept all form of mediocrity without saying a word? Shouldn't we strive to better ourselves and move forward or just be content with being crayon eaters?

Simply put, if people stop sucking at video games or saying extremely stupid stuff on forums like "blizzard hates warlocks" or some other silly things that are the actual opposite of reality, then toxicity could probably straight up disappear.

Almost every instance of toxic behavior can be linked to a stupid thing someone else did or said in the first place. There are exceptions to this, best examples I can think of are people in LoL who just troll from the get go, like no one said anything to them and they just decide to pick a second jungler and just hope people will dodge for them or something like that. But this level of retardation is rare in general and almost non-existent in WoW or on forums, to my knowledge at least.

I strongly believe moronic behavior perfectly warrants a "harsh" response to some extent, in most gaming communities this type of response is considered "toxic" but I see toxicity as whatever is the beginning of things going bad, which is the sources I mentioned above. Being bad at games is the true toxicity, because if you're not bad then nothing goes wrong, everyone is happen, no bad word is said. But bad players have nothing to their defense because of the internet ego and anonymity and the current state of our society that tries to brainwash people into believing "we're all equal" and shits like that. No we're not, some people suck, some people are good, we don't contribute to society or life to the same extent, our own value on this planet is not the same, some people are simply more important than others.

To all the people out there who are prone to quickly report people because "they say bad words" or "they hurt my feelings" and other things along those lines, you want this to stop? You want to be valued? You want to have a good time online? Work on yourself, open your mind, thicken your skin, harden those fragile feelings, get better, improve, give no one around you a reason to be toxic, make them enjoy their time when you're around. Don't be the clown who has to get carried everywhere and needs better players to get shit done or need devs to implement a report system to make you feel "safe" in a gaming community.

Stop seeing yourself as a victim of other's "toxic" behavior. These comments are either easy to ignore because they're meaningless or they can be used as opportunities to learn and grow from.

When I said I say this from experience, I meant experience from both sides and I welcome it. They say don't do to others what you don't want done to you, I don't expect people to be happy when I I'm being stupid or if I fuck up, so I act that way in return as well. If we all work to be good enough to not have this happen then we will truly live in harmony while improving and moving forward. The only other way to not have "toxicity" is to all be equally terrible idiots, and that's simply not good as you can easily guess.

- - - Updated - - -



And what we have today are communities that cater to the weakest of them all who get bothered by literally meaningless things such as using a pornstar name for your character in a game. Meaning that someone who watches porn and knows who that name belongs to, also has such low self respect, lack of integrity and insane double standards that they are willing to report you for that.

I'll take the little easily offended people trying to blacklist me in old WoW over pathetic support for the weak minded that we have today. At least back then I could just play with other players like me who didn't get their panties in a bunch over things that are literally, objectively meaningless by definition.

Got it. You have no self control and use other people as an excuse for why you have to be toxic. You sir, are charming.

[Sanguinerd]

Until people can be held responsible for the shit they do online the internet will always be toxic.

[oplawlz]

Until people can be held responsible for the shit they do online the internet will always be toxic.

I'd rather live in a world with a few assholes than one where no idea can be shared that isn't approved by the masses.

[Bbrigham]

As a notoriously toxic person myself (based on the commonly known standards to which I don't agree) I can tell you from experience.
First of all it's important to note that most toxicity does not materialize out of thin air. An issue occurs first and becomes the source of the toxicity.
This source often happens to be something like excessively bad player skill, blatant ignorance concerning basic knowledge that players should have, or straight up stupidity. All of those are easily avoidable, and I'm not talking about new players, that's understandable, I'm talking about those with evidence of big experience in the game.
What they bring is worse than toxicity, and here's why: it doesn't add to the fun of others, it's not conductive to a healthy game or forum environment, but on top of all that they make players around them mad by wasting their time and creating a terrible gaming experience which then creates toxicity. Toxicity is just a negative interaction between 2 people, it is ONLY considered toxic by the receiver, are we then supposed to only listen to this person's feeling or is the "toxic person" in his right to express his opinion on someone's shortcoming? Are we, as a species, supposed to just accept all form of mediocrity without saying a word? Shouldn't we strive to better ourselves and move forward or just be content with being crayon eaters?

Simply put, if people stop sucking at video games or saying extremely stupid stuff on forums like "blizzard hates warlocks" or some other silly things that are the actual opposite of reality, then toxicity could probably straight up disappear.

Almost every instance of toxic behavior can be linked to a stupid thing someone else did or said in the first place. There are exceptions to this, best examples I can think of are people in LoL who just troll from the get go, like no one said anything to them and they just decide to pick a second jungler and just hope people will dodge for them or something like that. But this level of retardation is rare in general and almost non-existent in WoW or on forums, to my knowledge at least.

I strongly believe moronic behavior perfectly warrants a "harsh" response to some extent, in most gaming communities this type of response is considered "toxic" but I see toxicity as whatever is the beginning of things going bad, which is the sources I mentioned above. Being bad at games is the true toxicity, because if you're not bad then nothing goes wrong, everyone is happen, no bad word is said. But bad players have nothing to their defense because of the internet ego and anonymity and the current state of our society that tries to brainwash people into believing "we're all equal" and shits like that. No we're not, some people suck, some people are good, we don't contribute to society or life to the same extent, our own value on this planet is not the same, some people are simply more important than others.

To all the people out there who are prone to quickly report people because "they say bad words" or "they hurt my feelings" and other things along those lines, you want this to stop? You want to be valued? You want to have a good time online? Work on yourself, open your mind, thicken your skin, harden those fragile feelings, get better, improve, give no one around you a reason to be toxic, make them enjoy their time when you're around. Don't be the clown who has to get carried everywhere and needs better players to get shit done or need devs to implement a report system to make you feel "safe" in a gaming community.

Stop seeing yourself as a victim of other's "toxic" behavior. These comments are either easy to ignore because they're meaningless or they can be used as opportunities to learn and grow from.

When I said I say this from experience, I meant experience from both sides and I welcome it. They say don't do to others what you don't want done to you, I don't expect people to be happy when I I'm being stupid or if I fuck up, so I act that way in return as well. If we all work to be good enough to not have this happen then we will truly live in harmony while improving and moving forward. The only other way to not have "toxicity" is to all be equally terrible idiots, and that's simply not good as you can easily guess.

- - - Updated - - -



And what we have today are communities that cater to the weakest of them all who get bothered by literally meaningless things such as using a pornstar name for your character in a game. Meaning that someone who watches porn and knows who that name belongs to, also has such low self respect, lack of integrity and insane double standards that they are willing to report you for that.

I'll take the little easily offended people trying to blacklist me in old WoW over pathetic support for the weak minded that we have today. At least back then I could just play with other players like me who didn't get their panties in a bunch over things that are literally, objectively meaningless by definition.

Kindness teaches. Patience helps. Tolerance is its own reward. I feel like I'm running in circles here, but we want WoW to last forever, right? The only way that happens is new players....and the only reason is they enjoy it. Simple, to me anyway. I've been playing over a decade, there isn't a raid I haven't plugged, a dungeon I haven't farmed, and a battleground I haven't flopped in. Invariably, a great time is had when people are kind. I've dropped groups over toxicity, but rarely over performance. Kindness teaches. Patience teaches. And tolerance is key.

[Dellis0991]

So, this may be a devisive post, but I'm curious what the general wow community thinks about it. In the decade plus I have played wow, I have experienced good interactions...and some really really toxic ones. Here too. But I'm curious why you-you being the WoW player, or the forum goer- why do you think people are so toxic? I mean, it doesn't help. It doesn't add to the fun of others. Its not conducive to a healthy game or forum environment. So why then?? Why be toxic. Either on WoW or in forum.

I never really gave into the toxicity of either.....I may have been sarcastic or just plain silly to certain posts but I'll never get nasty. I can only surmise that the anonymity of the internet gives people the impression that they can be nasty to total strangers with no fallout to them other than being banned....civility be damned I suppose.

[Lavey]

Because the internet is an anarchy state. There is no central authority, there is no law, no police.

Remove those from real life and you will get the same results.

I'm all for an anarcho-capitalist society. We can only dream.

[Spiffums]

Lately we have had a "problem with toxic and elitist behavior" in our guild. Well it seems to be people who actually do the harder content don't play with the people who can't or won't learn how/do the harder content. It's like people talk about "this spec is OP and that spec is Trash" and then people who have no clue because they don't do said content difficulty add their 2 cents about what they have heard and tell those who do the harder content that they are wrong. "All opinions and views are valid" pops up every time but it's not valid if you have idea what is required to to time 15s with the different affixes or raid mechanics.

Therefore telling someone they are wrong with examples of why they are wrong becomes "toxic and elitist". So the people who want to time keys and upgrade the keys and down bosses stop playing with the people who can't or won't do what they need to do. Maybe these people get carried by the good players and think they can do the content.......or they buy a boost and "qualify" for the content they can't really do. Then they get mad when they get told the truth and people don't feel like they should have to explain a boss fight in a key level that people should have learned in a Mythic 0.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Got it. You have no self control and use other people as an excuse for why you have to be toxic. You sir, are charming.

You got nothing and you're making assumptions that reflects the opposite of what I said.

[Big Thanks]

Stop seeing yourself as a victim of other's "toxic" behavior. These comments are either easy to ignore because they're meaningless or they can be used as opportunities to learn and grow from.

I liked your post but i just had to correct this one part. (ofcourse, as forum goes, you make a huge post and someone quotes the one phrase just to nitpick)

Some toxic people are in a position of power.
Many times in fact.

Just now in GW2 some toxic person decided to ruin my game on purpose and spam chat telling me im bad.

The chat thing is ok...the ruining my game is not.

So i just wanted to say...yeah...soon as a troll is given power OF ANY KIND....watch the world burn.

[CrawlFromThePit]

Kindness teaches. Patience helps. Tolerance is its own reward. I feel like I'm running in circles here, but we want WoW to last forever, right? The only way that happens is new players....and the only reason is they enjoy it. Simple, to me anyway. I've been playing over a decade, there isn't a raid I haven't plugged, a dungeon I haven't farmed, and a battleground I haven't flopped in. Invariably, a great time is had when people are kind. I've dropped groups over toxicity, but rarely over performance. Kindness teaches. Patience teaches. And tolerance is key.

Hell no I don't want WoW to last forever. I want these poor devs to be freed from the clutch of this greed machine and be able to expand their creativity in new and more original projects that could easily be better than WoW.
Kindness CAN teach but doesn't always. I can count on the fingers of both my hands and the hands of everyone I know and their families and neighbors the amount of time I politely told people what they should do to improve and they replied something like "shut up don't tell me how to play my class". That's the stupid, and truly toxic thing that makes me reply in a harsh way. These subhumans need to be put in their place, kindness did not work, so they don't deserve it, they don't deserve silence either. They deserve to be ridiculed and put down like the fucking dogs they are. It's not hard to notice you suck, it's not hard to just say "oh ok cool thanks" when someone helps you improve.
Yes I've also seen people who take it the right way and that's fine, but that's not the subject here.
And the same applies to the other facebook quotes you pulled out of nowhere as if they were facts. Yes patience can teach when you're helping someone new who's learning, it won't come instantly, but someone who has been playing for as long as me and still moves his character all wrong and body pulls shit we should never fight in a dungeon WILL NOT learn from my own patience in a 30 minutes dungeon if he hasn't learned this basic thing in over 10 years of playing the same game.

As for tolerance, this entirely depends on context. You can tolerate your girlfriend whining about her shitty day if it makes her feel better, but there's no valid reason to tolerate a bunch of things in life such as female genital mutilation and god knows what other atrocities I could bring up to turn your entire quote in something that only sounds like something bad for the world. Tolerance can become an enabler of terrible things, so it can't be put considered a "key" as a general statement.

- - - Updated - - -

I liked your post but i just had to correct this one part. (ofcourse, as forum goes, you make a huge post and someone quotes the one phrase just to nitpick)

Some toxic people are in a position of power.
Many times in fact.

Just now in GW2 some toxic person decided to ruin my game on purpose and spam chat telling me im bad.

The chat thing is ok...the ruining my game is not.

So i just wanted to say...yeah...soon as a troll is given power OF ANY KIND....watch the world burn.

Yes this is true. There is legit toxicity that becomes too much or is, huh, I would say according to my views "unjustified". This is confusing but to put it simply the problem about toxicity is that there is no "set in stone" definition that everyone goes by.
Some people keep doing the same mistake and someone in the group start calling them stupid. This person could say that's toxicity, in my book I think doing the same mistake over and over IS the toxic behavior that's wasting everyone's time. At that point being called stupid is not toxic to me, it's only justified. But it's true that if the group member just keeps bashing and then spamming trade chat to insult then that becomes even worse. There's levels to all this, it's really not a one way thing where the first person to say a bad word is the toxic one regardless of what happened before.

Being toxic is not just the first person to say a bad word. Playing terribly and wasting people's time is a form of toxicity in itself, no one plays a game to get ragdolled because of their own team, it's a terrible experience, just like it's terrible to be called stupid. But if no one is being stupid then there's no bad gameplay experience and no reason for anyone to be toxic towards someone else. Of course, outside of the outliers who go out of the way to be assholes for no reasons, I just think it's rare that there is no reason.

[neik]

I don't believe that "toxic" people are necessary evil. Most players just want to have their voice heard, clashing between people often comes because of inability to manage emotions at that particular moment.

[MoanaLisa]

...confirmation that you're better than the rest of the internet because you don't feed into the soulless well of douchebaggery anonymity provides other people...

Arguably, they are...better. Either people are really awful or they are expending a lot of energy to convince others they are. Neither is worthy of any kind of praise. Making things personal is generally not very useful.

[MrKnubbles]

Toxic people only care about themselves. They also somehow believe that yelling at you and insulting you makes you play better. If you don't play their way, you're wrong.

[VladimirM]

The internet generally brings out the worst of people.

anonymity does.
In my country, you can't have a part in any online discussion/video game, unless you registered with an id card.
You can say whatever about privacy, but 99% of people in the world don't deserve online privacy.
As a result, you can't find anyone being toxic, even in video games like League of Legends.