Britt DK Gratreak 🖖 @Britt@qoto.org

A fascinating phenomenon related to building a local online culture like mastoson: I lead a guild in #WorldOfWarcraft and sometimes to fill your group appropriately you need to open your parties/raids to random people across the world. WoW can be an incredibly toxic place (you would be surprised what grown adults act like behind a cute elf avatar), but my guild exists solely to counter that. I set things up so that before people are let into the Discord (for coordination on boss fights) they have to pause, read, and agree to a simple rule, rule #1: don't be an asshole. (Or else Britt will kick you out immediately).There are other rules, but that is the most important one.

At first I thought it wouldn't do anything to temper the toxicity, but it really has largely prevented people from behaving badly! Over the past year we've cultivated a group that is diverse and, more importantly, feels safe hanging out in our little chunk of this video game. People stick around and they consistently come back. Our guild has far more women and LGBTQIA+ people feeling safe to use voice chat than I've ever seen in WoW.

I think this clearly established community standard is present in many mastodon servers and I think it too will prevent many people from behaving badly. I'm very hopeful about this place even though I don't know quite how to use it yet!

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