Too many personalities in the scene routinely showcase incredible abrasiveness and arrogance which pushes away newcomers and fosters general toxicity and negativity in the community.
I’m thinking about creators such as IWD, LS, Thorin and Monte, people like Forest and Veigarv2 on twitter- they all often do this thing where if they disagree with someone they don’t know, they treat them with absolutely 0 respect, making it clear that not only do they disagree, but that the person is an idiot for thinking/feeling it.
Watching these streamers treat people like dirt over low-stakes disagreements while their chat eggs them on and echoes them is just shit to see and clearly fosters even more toxicity in a community struggling with that already.
And obviously not all creators are like this, Caedrel for example has a much more positive, self-deprecatory vibe and I’m not surprised he has blown up to the level he has.
And I’m not speaking on their analysis here, they are clearly intelligent about the game/industry. They also don’t treat people like this all the time, but it does happen far too often, and I think the community suffers for it.
I don’t expect anything to change, and if any of these creators saw this thread I’m sure they’d much sooner treat me like an idiot before anything else, but I just wanted to get these thoughts out.
A lot of it is insecurity. I mean, also arrogance, lack of social skills, and so on. But I think a lot of them are extremely insecure. So instead of calmly explaining a stance, it’s easier for them to just call whoever disagrees with them an idiot.
It’s a public argument tactic that basically relies on swaying onlookers by taking advantage of the natural tendency people have to not want to be exposed as not knowing/understanding something.
Basically, instead of having a rational discussion on the topic, they do two things:
All the while being unable to have a calm discussion where they actually break down their thought process.