LIGGERS.

[Pepper]

lol. jannies clicked this thread so fucking fast.

It's clear at this point that sentiments surrounding the in-character use of ligger to refer to lizard players has changed over time. With the recent admin complaint and subsequent thread in the hut (that i am far too handsome, wealthy and affable to bother reading myself) there seems to be an official change looming regarding this kind of thing. In the spirit of gauging opinion from those of us who matter most (sorry, Terry players.) I poise these open questions to you, dear reader, and anyone else interesting in having their voices heard.

1. What are your thoughts on IC racism in general? Is it kek or cringe? Does in-character specii-ism-sim-speciiesism enrich your roleplay experience, or is it an overall net negative?

2. Does the term 'ligger', in your view, hold any kind of worse baggage due to it's obvious parallels to a real-life gamer word? Is usage of 'catbeast' or other similar whimsical epithets more, less or the same in severity?

3. Do you believe there is merit to the idea that allowing the use of 'ligger' encourages veiled real-life racism to express itself in the community?

4. Does the current policy of 'ligger-makes-you-valid' embolden lizard players to misbehave, in hopes that they can collect those tasty valids if someone drops the hard L? Would allowing lizard players to RR someone for it worsen this potentially nonexistent problem?

5. How much of this actually matters to you? Should the rules regarding ligger be altered further? Where do you draw the line, personally?

Please let me know what you think. I'm sure the replies to this thread will only be civilized and coherent.

[Chadley]

Seems this headmin term would much rather the speciesism policy be more along the lines of "talk shit get hit, don't cry about it to us."

IMHO! The line should be

> mean word
>> go fuck yourself
> no, mean word again
>> beat the shit out of the guy
>> revive them now having proved your superiority over the IC bigot

This is an MSO thing, you're not going to get it kicked out, based off what he said:

The free speech people should be happy. I kept lame arguments about "effort" and "one letter away" from being used to curtail speech.
and
The Limit speech people should be happy. Somebody who said a nono word and alienated themselves from the people who could save them died because of their hate when one of those people figuratively said they couldn't feel a pulse and declared them doa. Like this is the perfect allegory for racism, how can you be mad?

seems to me like he agrees that if you say the nono word gets their ass beat into the floor. Unless I'm conflating him being flippant in a post it sounds like it's all kosher to increase speciesism to the death penalty.

[TheLoLSwat]

in game speciesism is a fun way to create rp conflict but using ligger is minimum effort because thats all you could come up with?? it doesnt even make sense since the game takes place in the future

[Timberpoes]

1. What are your thoughts on IC racism in general? Is it kek or cringe? Does in-character specii-ism-sim-speciiesism enrich your roleplay experience, or is it an overall net negative?

IC specieism is based. Players having preferences on which species they do or don't like is kickass. Those preferences influencing IC interaction to the extent that players aren't just being dicks to eachother FNR gives the game world flavour. Cross-species hate is a HUGE part of fantasy and sci-fi genres. Star Trek is a shining example of this. People of different walks of life can still operate together, but some people will always be thought of as lesser to others.

2. Does the term 'ligger', in your view, hold any kind of worse baggage due to it's obvious parallels to a real-life gamer word? Is usage of 'catbeast' or other similar whimsical epithets more, less or the same in severity?

Ligger stands apart to me in that it's clearly and obviously an OOC slur first (nigger) and an IC slur second (li).

Calling lizards scale-snouted, taildragging, fork-tongued snakes plays off so many IC factors. Calling felinids mangy, mutant moggies and making fun of earless or tailless felinids is the same. Pulling a HK47 and referring to every human you see as meatbag. You get the idea. They're RP-friendly speciest epithets.

3. Do you believe there is merit to the idea that allowing the use of 'ligger' encourages veiled real-life racism to express itself in the community?

Due to being derived from nigger, I think using it is always an attempt to bait an emotional reaction from your target based not on their disgust of it ICly, but their disgust of it OOCly.

I don't think it encourages real-life racism to express itself in the community per se. But the word itself is such a low-effort word play on saying nigger that our community is more attractive to genuine racists that can use it in place of nigger. It's a word that has one purpose, to be edgy for the sake of being edgy.

4. Does the current policy of 'ligger-makes-you-valid' embolden lizard players to misbehave, in hopes that they can collect those tasty valids if someone drops the hard L? Would allowing lizard players to RR someone for it worsen this potentially nonexistent problem?

If lizard players misbehave, they can just be beaten up. Or called any other form of IC slurs than ligger. All that falls under standard expectations for escalation: start shit, get hit.

I think using the word ligger is a learned behaviour; most new players in current tgstation culture won't play the mental word association game to independently create the slur ligger. They'll just see someone say it, realise it gets a huge rise out of people because it's nigger with an l, over time realise that it doesn't seem to be against the rules (they may even ahelp it and be told as such) and either add it to their own vocab if they're a bit of a shitter or edgelord, or make note to round remove anyone that says it if they dislike the slur.

5. How much of this actually matters to you? Should the rules regarding ligger be altered further? Where do you draw the line, personally?

What I can't do is ban ligger or add ligger to any of the filters to prevent or discourage people from saying it. What I can do is ensure that the players can adequately deal with anyone that says it ICly.

Very similar to when WGW was permitted but made the person valid (to admins and players alike) - if it can't/won't be prohibited, then the next alternative is to empower others to make it as unfun as possible to say/do so those others can fix the issue IC and get back to enjoying SS13 as scheduled.

[blackdav123]

speciesism is one of the only distinct things we have in the TG setting and I think it can greatly enhance our roleplay if we just use it right. its the reason we've held onto the human-sided asimov and it can be used to create good conflicts

saying "ligger" is nrp garbage and there are far better ways to create speciesism than using this gamer buzzword

instantly validing people for saying it is also NRP garbage on the same level as the old "read wgw so someone comes and kills me". in no world do people respond to rudeness by jumping straight to murder and any green light to skip straight to murder diminishes the roleplay and instantly breaks immersion of the game.

ideally we just ask people who frequently participate in either side of this NRP death spiral to either give more effort and make something meaningful out of it or to cease the overused gimmick

i said this in another thread but every way other than round removal is much better for dealing with speciesism. cut out the person's tongue or turn them into the species they claim to hate so much.

[Vekter]

-snip-

As the premier anti-racist bullshit admin, I'm going to just gesture broadly to everything Timber said on the topic and give it a thumbs-up. I can't add anything here, it's my exact feelings on the matter. Get out of my head, Charles.

[Screemonster]

what happened to "if you do something of no benefit to you besides making others upset, I'll ban you if you ahelp over getting killed for it"

where does "I found this person sideways, but even though I didn't personally make them like that they pissed me off earlier in the shift so I'm just going to leave them as they are" fall on the escalation scale, does tossing someone in medbay count as far as "due diligence to get them revived" under escalation policy if medbay have no inclination to revive the guy

is there an escalation standard for "this person didn't do anything to get round-removed but they've certainly done enough shit to make it an IC issue if someone decides they aren't worth reviving"

[Timberpoes]

From my perspective, there are three approaches to escalation:

First is escalation applies fully. You must take reasonable steps to ensure your escalation partners are healed/revived as necessary as long as escalation's round removal clause hasn't kicked in. Examples: Almost every time two non-antags get into a fight over anything. Common sense would dictate that handing off the body to medical staff should be sufficient, and babysitting someone 24/7 until they're revived when the escalation validly reached the stage someone got crit/killed is a bit onerous.

Second is escalation applies loosely. You have no obligation to revive the other player and may leave their body where it falls, but must not take any steps to push them closer to round removal than the consequences of leaving their body where it falls. Examples: Mime talking. MRP antagonistic escalation. A player having some level of mercy when escalation's round removal clause is invoked.

Third is that escalation doesn't apply at all. This will follow some level of binary validity, with active steps towards round removal being an option. Examples: Dealing with confirmed antags on LRP. Non-antags acting like antags. Old WGW readers before it was banned.

Importantly for the second and third approaches above - admins can allow players to ignore normal escalation and either grant them soft-escalation or let them ignore it entirely.

[Not-Dorsidarf]

what happened to "if you do something of no benefit to you besides making others upset, I'll ban you if you ahelp over getting killed for it"

where does "I found this person sideways, but even though I didn't personally make them like that they pissed me off earlier in the shift so I'm just going to leave them as they are" fall on the escalation scale, does tossing someone in medbay count as far as "due diligence to get them revived" under escalation policy if medbay have no inclination to revive the guy

is there an escalation standard for "this person didn't do anything to get round-removed but they've certainly done enough shit to make it an IC issue if someone decides they aren't worth reviving"

I ignore dead people lying around in the station all the time even if they never did anything to me, unless I'm in a role where that's not appropriate like sec or doctor.

[EmpressMaia]

Go back to 4chan

[Boot]

I wish I could go back to 8chin but people who also wanna take away ligger got it nuked from orbit.

[conrad]

Every insult ever conceived had a pre-existing notion or precept attached to it.
Nigger is just a bastadization of the spanish word Negro. Ligger is a bastardization of Nigger. There is no IC justification for that. The lore doesn't support that. It only exists due to shock value, and only persists as the allowed gamer word because of MSO's ruling. The proof is that there is no parallel insult for felinids or plasmemes.

I don't think people who use Ligger are racist per se, just insensitive to IRL racism. If you use it in game, get in a fight and lose, congrats, you fucked around and found out.

Ligger is lazy and dumb. You wanna get creative? Come up with an insult that sticks that's also IC to permeate your speciesm. Call felinids space pussy. Call lizards geckos. Call plasmemes bungus. If your insult doesn't stick, do better.

Rise above. Propagate your speciesm with grace and poise.

As for whether it should be removed, nah, I agree with MSO. You should be allowed to use the very lazy OOC insult only to then get your shit pushed in. It's funny when that happens.

As for Pepper's:

1. Species hate is ultimately meaningless when it comes to IRL. So if it rocks your boat, go for it. And if you get targeted by it, beat them up. On this alone, it adds to the round.

2. I think I answered that above.

3. I think I answered that too. It's less about racism and more about being insensitive to IRL problems other people face.

4. I don't think the policy is "ligger-makes-you-valid". The policy is "ligger-instigates-conflict" and the actuality of that conflict is no admin is gonna hold your hand if you use ligger. Allowing lizard players to RR other players could generate the problem of antag rolling, since people would use it to get round removed and roll midround antags. The solution is to attach this into the policy (it is already true, but some people have trouble reading so making it perfectly clear in the policy that saying ligger and getting RR'd is grounds for antag rolling suspicion).

5. It INFURIATES ME because it's lazy. It's low effort. MSO calls this argument lame, but idgaf. Be creative in your RPGs man. As for a policy change, I would like that "saying ligger" === "treated like antag".

[Farquaar]

Never really liked the word "ligger". Doesn't really make much sense IC. And as Uncle Ruckus once said, you gotta rotate your racial slurs. There are plenty of fine substitutes.

As for IC species-ism, it's a great thing for a great variety of reasons, some of which have already been elucidated above. It's fuels RP when characters have flaws, including flaws like prejudice.

[RedBaronFlyer]

Never really liked the word "ligger". Doesn't really make much sense IC. And as Uncle Ruckus once said, you gotta rotate your racial slurs. There are plenty of fine substitutes.

As for IC species-ism, it's a great thing for a great variety of reasons, some of which have already been elucidated above. It's fuels RP when characters have flaws, including flaws like prejudice.

I've seen a few and heard a few over my time on TG, here's ones that come to mind:

Humans: It's kind of hard to think of one for humans. Usually, just use the usual insults used today. If it's a non-human insulting a human, then it's usually some variation of "shaved ape" or something.
Lizards: lisping fool, rat eater, trash eater, cold-blooded freak, tell them to get back to the only thing they're good at, mining, tell them you can't understand because you don't speak farm tool.
Plasmamen: walking fire hazard, tinder man, ugly mushroom, walking mold chamber.
Moths: maggot, bug, bug man, lamp humper, spider food, underwear muncher, sock eater, vegan.
Ethereals: broken light bulb, faulty battery, worn out glowstick, glowing snowflakes.
Felinids: mongrel, mutt, crossbred, half-breed, genetic defect, bastard, cur, tyke.
Borg: tin can, toaster, trash can with wheels, glorified toaster with legs, broken calculator, glorified door opener.

Lore insults:

Lizards: Tiziran degenerate, coward, draft-dodger, militaristic baboon, drone, too pathetic to serve the Tiziran military, etc.
Moth: filthy nomads, too stupid to remember where they left their homeworld, Tell them to go back to their homeworld, then pause and go, "oh wait, you don't even know where it is!"

[dendydoom]

i think speciesism is fine: prejudice is a part of many compelling stories and settings, it would be silly to shy away from that sort of conflict. it's already somewhat baked into the game: non-humans aren't strictly protected under asimov and can't be command.

imaginative derogatory terms are great. calling a lizard a coldblooded forktongue will piss them off in an IC sense and utilizes aspects of the fiction to keep it IC. calling that same lizard a thinly veiled real-world racial slur doesn't hit those same notes, and i am much less fond of it. i pretty much share all of timber's sentiments in this regard, and would rather people didn't do it. but if we as a community have made the collective decision that these terms aren't politically or racially motivated in a real-world sense, then we at least must accept that they are still grave, inciteful insults that deeply upset people. it's my belief that we should be trying to piss each other off in an IC sense, but should avoid using "IC" aspects of the game to piss people off in an OOC sense. detached from any real-world narrative, it just makes the game a nicer place to participate in if everyone wasn't being an asshole OOCly.

wrt escalation, i feel that using a slur counts as some of the highest levels of "fighting words" and people should be able to retaliate to them within reason. as for the recent peanut surrounding a medbay of lizards refusing to treat someone, i would rule on that differently because it was a case of someone alienating themselves from the crew for their prejudice after throwing slurs at pretty much everyone that was in a position to help them, and it came down to choices made by multiple people which created a pretty compelling story when you really get down to it. that situation is much more complicated and i would rather preserve the story being told than step in and referee it on the basis of if everyone had their allocated 2 slurs before being valid to kill someone.

[Screemonster]

as for the recent peanut surrounding a medbay of lizards refusing to treat someone, i would rule on that differently because it was a case of someone alienating themselves from the crew for their prejudice after throwing slurs at pretty much everyone that was in a position to help them, and it came down to choices made by multiple people which created a pretty compelling story when you really get down to it. that situation is much more complicated and i would rather preserve the story being told than step in and referee it on the basis of if everyone had their allocated 2 slurs before being valid to kill someone.

That whole thing was some ken mcelroy shit, it's generally not a good idea to piss off literally everyone to the point where nobody saw anything when someone finally puts you on the ground.
The person who turned the guy sideways fulfilled his escalation obligations by taking him to medbay.
The guys in medbay, who he also pissed off, didn't take any actions to harm the guy, they just decided "fuck that dude" and didn't bother reviving him. They didn't push him closer to round removal than he already was by spacing/debraining/gibbing/cremating the body, but they weren't the ones who put him in that state in the first place so they had no obligation to undo the damage.
Nobody individually escalated things past where escalation would allow, but the dude pissed off so many people that the aggregate response was getting round-removed. Stupid games, stupid prizes.

[RedBaronFlyer]

as for the recent peanut surrounding a medbay of lizards refusing to treat someone, i would rule on that differently because it was a case of someone alienating themselves from the crew for their prejudice after throwing slurs at pretty much everyone that was in a position to help them, and it came down to choices made by multiple people which created a pretty compelling story when you really get down to it. that situation is much more complicated and i would rather preserve the story being told than step in and referee it on the basis of if everyone had their allocated 2 slurs before being valid to kill someone.

That whole thing was some ken mcelroy shit, it's generally not a good idea to piss off literally everyone to the point where nobody saw anything when someone finally puts you on the ground.
The person who turned the guy sideways fulfilled his escalation obligations by taking him to medbay.
The guys in medbay, who he also pissed off, didn't take any actions to harm the guy, they just decided "fuck that dude" and didn't bother reviving him. They didn't push him closer to round removal than he already was by spacing/debraining/gibbing/cremating the body, but they weren't the ones who put him in that state in the first place so they had no obligation to undo the damage.
Nobody individually escalated things past where escalation would allow, but the dude pissed off so many people that the aggregate response was getting round-removed. Stupid games, stupid prizes.

Basically:

[Longestarmlonglaw]

Me on my way to use an agent id and chameleon kit to get manuel players to start killing people by framing people, i also feel like they chose not to revive them because, if they did, they'll end up like them too (dead)

[PengisBungholius]

1. Has a place, just like most mean/heel/whatever characters. Game is boring with only mechanical strife, plus it's cute to have mean characters call you "not so bad" or other similar stuff, makes the game feel more like a roleplaying game than a dumb boring NRP game. Obviously, just like rude characters, there's good and bad ways of doing it roleplaying-wise.

2. Yah. It's obviously the hilarious gamer word. It's ooc, most people view it as such, but it's been around too long to just be scrapped. If WGW was tossed "ligger" should be too, imo.
If "catbeast" was palpably ooc, then yeah it'd be of similar severity. But when the stereotypical janny race's biggest slur is just the real-world one, that's lame.
Remember, you're not dealing with adults, you're dealing with "adults" who noticeably get worse during the summer... right about when school lets out...

3. Lol. Yeah, but losers express themselves regardless. It's why it's called "dogwhistling" instead of regular whistling.

4. Probably not, I doubt anyone that'd drop the hard L would wait until the lizard in question "deserved it" or anything. I doubt anyone who is so excited to use the not-a-real-world-slur is someone that we should cater to rules/escalation wise. They should get RR'd ingame for saying it atleast so that they don't say the hard R irl and get their irl head caved in.
Would be best to flat out ban it imo, you send a weird message leaving it in and you kinda attract the OPPOSITE group of escalation baiters.

5. It's a funny spaceman game. None of this REALLY matters.
The line should always be "does this make someone/enough people uncomfortable enough for them to not want to play the game" cause that's what actually matters. if this was a small group of people that could be trusted to not be creepy/annoying/severely underaged, then there'd be a better argument for keeping it. We don't have that tho, we have weirdos and the grossly underaged.

[Fren256]

I think folks here know my stance on this matter, so I'm gonna jump straight to my proposal:

Disable escalation policy on people that say the slur. In other words, allow players to round remove someone if they see them saying it. This way we reach a compromise: racists get to keep their dogwhistles and normal people get to shit on them without administrative repercussions.

Note: This ruling should also apply to any word that resembles a real-life slur, not just the L-word. Please refer to the satirical list I made a few months ago to see some examples: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33754

[Jacquerel]

I think folks here know my stance on this matter, so I'm gonna jump straight to my proposal:

Disable escalation policy on people that say the slur. In other words, allow players to round remove someone if they see them saying it. This way we reach a compromise: racists get to keep their dogwhistles and normal people get to shit on them without administrative repercussions.

Note: This ruling should also apply to any word that resembles a real-life slur, not just the L-word. Please refer to the satirical list I made a few months ago to see some examples: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33754

An issue that policy like this has caused in the past is that to some people, removed escalation policy is a reward and not a punishment. They will do it specifically to provoke that kind of response, which negatively impacts other people anyway because they have a negative interaction with this player and then the response triggers OOC behaviour in other characters as well.
See: the time-honoured tradition of reading bizarre child erotica over the radio.

[Yulice]

An issue that policy like this has caused in the past is that to some people, removed escalation policy is a reward and not a punishment. They will do it specifically to provoke that kind of response, which negatively impacts other people anyway because they have a negative interaction with this player and then the response triggers OOC behaviour in other characters as well.
See: the time-honoured tradition of reading bizarre child erotica over the radio.

Simple: If you're going to say slurs, you don't get the same escalation removal. You can only soft crit people and run away, and if you use it as a way to try and finagle into hard round removing people, you can get slapped for baiting by an admin. Ergo, there is no benefit to saying slurs because it can lead to you getting round removed but you can't do it back.

[Archie700]

An issue that policy like this has caused in the past is that to some people, removed escalation policy is a reward and not a punishment. They will do it specifically to provoke that kind of response, which negatively impacts other people anyway because they have a negative interaction with this player and then the response triggers OOC behaviour in other characters as well.
See: the time-honoured tradition of reading bizarre child erotica over the radio.

Simple: If you're going to say slurs, you don't get the same escalation removal. You can only soft crit people and run away, and if you use it as a way to try and finagle into hard round removing people, you can get slapped for baiting by an admin. Ergo, there is no benefit to saying slurs because it can lead to you getting round removed but you can't do it back.

So basically the same as the time-honored tradition of beating the shit out of people who read bizarre child erotica over the radio.

I don't even think they should soft crit.

[Fren256]

I think folks here know my stance on this matter, so I'm gonna jump straight to my proposal:

Disable escalation policy on people that say the slur. In other words, allow players to round remove someone if they see them saying it. This way we reach a compromise: racists get to keep their dogwhistles and normal people get to shit on them without administrative repercussions.

Note: This ruling should also apply to any word that resembles a real-life slur, not just the L-word. Please refer to the satirical list I made a few months ago to see some examples: viewtopic.php?f=2&t=33754

An issue that policy like this has caused in the past is that to some people, removed escalation policy is a reward and not a punishment. They will do it specifically to provoke that kind of response, which negatively impacts other people anyway because they have a negative interaction with this player and then the response triggers OOC behaviour in other characters as well.
See: the time-honoured tradition of reading bizarre child erotica over the radio.

I don't believe this is enough of an issue to be relevant, even on MRP. In fact, I remember one time someone on Manuel got lynched over building a "smut hallway" and making creepy sexual comments (they got banned shortly after I think). That's pretty OOC behavior if you ask me, but even after that the round went back to normal and everyone returned to behaving IC again. This is the equivalent of some asshole disrupting a play in a theater, bouncers removing said asshole from the room and then the actors continuing the play.

Besides, we also have Rule 0 if someone keeps repeating their behavior just to get a reaction out of other players. Admins have placed QC bans before, so I don't see why it should be different on this case.

[Timberpoes]

I got bonus guidance from MSO on this one in the admin channels, which I think is important if any future term wishes to undo these changes:

(The secret is i only specified 'initially non-lethal' just to avoid boxing future headmins in from curtailing 'valid' culture should they decide they need to)

So there is a wonderful degree of flexibility that headmin terms can enjoy when it comes to validity for stuff like this.

This term isn't particularly worried about valid culture. The use of ligger IC will now render you totally valid. And no, you can't use it to fight back or escalation bait either. You'll be at the mercy of those around you, so only use it when it's most appropriate because you will not get any administrative protection when you are spaced and will be laughed at or banned if you ahelp it.

This ruling applies across all tgstation servers, regardless of roleplay level.

Using ligger as a mask for OOC bigotry is still bannable.

KIETH4 BEING THE UTTER FUCKING GRASS-DENIER THAT HE IS ASKED ME TO PROVIDE YOU DEGENERATES WITH ACTUAL EXAMPLES OF HOW TO GET BANNED FOR USING THE WORD LIGGER. So here's Chapter 1 from The Bible on How To Get Banned. I can't believe I'm even going to write this.

Comments like "go back to ligfrica" and "despite only making up 10% of the crew, liggers make up 80% of the permabrig population" will almost assuredly get you banned, for example.

So basically if you try to tie ligger into real-world concepts, ideas and bigoted dogwhistles, you're probably going to get cremated IC and then banned OOC.