Tom,
1)
I am not Philippines in the game you refer to.
2)
I'm very sorry to hear about your mother's condition. I know from experience what you may be feeling and going through, and I know the way it can affect everything else in your life. We're playing a game here, which means nothing next to life and death in the real world. Even so, many of us invest a great deal of mental and even emotional energy in our games, and it doesn't take much to generate significant negative stress. There's a strong probability that such helpless emotional turmoil as your family situation currently creates results in amplifying the things here that cause you stress and anxiety.
I've certainly given you plenty of crap in your time here, and as it is with many players in the community the intention is good-natured ribbing. Sure, as many can attest, I can be a grumpy, nasty s.o.b. when the conditions are right, and I don't hold back from speaking the truth as I see it without adding a sugar coating, but I'm not mean-spirited. I feel terrible when I know I've gone too far and made someone feel badly. As a member of this community, I'm probably fairly middle-of-the-road when it comes to this. There are many who are nothing but polite and positive, and many who are not.
You have to understand that you -- knowingly or not -- invite the kind of treatment you constantly rail about. For some players it's irresistible to toss a match in the direction of your pool of gasoline, because it's guaranteed to produce an explosive reaction, usually far out of proportion and relevance to the initial spark. Now, before you say that verbal abuse is never acceptable and should never be tolerated, and before you draw comparisons to extreme analogies that have no true relevance (Pedophilia? Really, Tom?), let me repeat a point I've tried to make to you before.
You may well have clearly defined criteria for what constitutes verbal abuse, personal attacks, or just plain bad manners. But those criteria are your own. Each one of us has our own definitions and limits, and collectively they probably form a bell curve of sorts. So there's a spectrum of acceptable behavior. As a community our actions and words may inform the moderators who ultimately dictate what kind of behavioral controls the site will enforce. As you've noticed, there really aren't many. That's because it's nearly impossible. As I asked in-game (my identity is likely no secret, and I've long been eliminated), who gets to decide what is and is not acceptable? Who the hell would want that job? [Now hiring: Arbiter of Assholes]
To make a short story long, it's ultimately up to us individually to be grown-ups and handle what comes our way. If someone is over the line, we can mute them. We can block them from playing in the same game we are. We can certainly attempt to address them head on, to reason like adults and hope for progress. Then, when that most likely fails and results in doubling down on the insults, we can simply.......ignore them.
Most of your rants have continued far beyond the early stage where someone gave you the information you needed, the tools to address your problem. Blocking. Muting. In this recent case, the ability to find a sitter. Why didn't you just ask someone to take your game, enter the disband order, and be done with it? Thousands of words could have been saved by taking the simple action.
When I have been targeted by nasty insults, or been subjected to someone's bigoted point of view, I have simply ignored it -- and <Every Single Time>, it has just gone away. I'm not going to change anyone here, I'm not going to make anybody adhere to my own personal standards. Why would I try?
Tom, this is an internet community comprised of people representing numerous nations and cultural quirks, a wide spectrum of ages, personality types, backgrounds and life experience. I have absolutely no expectation that people will behave as I might wish them to. All that considered, I find this to be an extremely welcoming, intelligent, tolerant, and -- let's be honest -- very good-looking community of people. Of course there are flare-ups, of course there are those who have very different approaches to communication and standards thereof. *It's a community of hundreds of people!* On the internet, no less.
You've got all the tools you need to control who you play games with. If it's still too much for your standards of decency, then just don't participate. Return to one of the sites full of well-mannered gentlemen that you keep comparing us to. But please, stop shouting endlessly in the middle of the room. It does nothing for your cause, and only invites and encourages more matches to be thrown your way.
I hope you stay. You've got a lot to contribute, and I'm always in favor of growing the community, here on vDip and in the game overall. I thoroughly enjoyed playing your Explore variant. On a more human level, I think we give up on each other and put up walls far too easily. I'm more willing to accept people's differences and work cooperatively around them than to shut people out for offending me in some way.
This is all just my opinion of course, and there will be a range of agreement and disagreement. That's my point. I can't change that, and neither can you.
I hope your mother defies the odds and sees many happier days. I wish you strength in navigating a very difficult time. When and if you come back, I hope you enjoy hundreds of games here with the players you choose to engage with.
- Brian