“Look, the important thing to recognize is that there isn’t an ‘enemy’ here—I mean, there is, but it’s not some sort of external group, or ‘other.’ It’s not an organized collective or anything—it’s just people who independently wake up, and decide to be assholes. And those people are us. We need to remember that those people are us,” commented Steam user Weeaboo_Genocide, making no mention of the fact that his profile picture displays a prepubescent anime girl in the middle of a screaming, shuddering orgasm.
“Now, being an asshole isn’t really a conscious decision,” Weeaboo_Genocide continued, his avatar of choice writhing, frozen, in a suspended shower of unidentified bodily fluids, “I mean, it is, but it’s influenced by a lot of unconscious factors. Maybe the guy flaming you had a rough day at work, or the girl feeding got laid off, or the other guy calling the feeding girl a whore spent years getting bullied, and ended up in a place where the only solace or sympathy he could get was from misogynists, and become misogynistic himself almost out of self defense.”
“Now, we need to recognize that this doesn’t excuse those assholes—I mean, they’re still being assholes—but it can help us understand the assholes, and not become them. Everyone has the hidden potential for dickishness inside them, and you need to be vigilant about keeping it under lock and key.” At this point, an odd connotation between the words “asshole” and “dickishness” began to form in the minds of other thread-goers, who nevertheless pressed on, desperately trying to pretend that this message was being delivered by anyone, anyone else.
“Games are supposed to be fun, man. Try to keep them fun for everyone. Sure, it’s important that as a community we take steps to try and prevent toxicity, but it’s never going to work if we don’t understand toxicity on an individual level, more than ‘some people are toxic and some aren’t,’” concluded the man three cropped pixels away from being arrested. “We need to remember that no one ever sees themselves as the villain. Even the most depraved and despicable among us.”
Several hours later, after receiving moderate support by optimistic, non-judgemental, or just plain unobservant users, the original post was edited to include: “Okay, since this has been getting a lot of responses: if you have any pictures of barefoot Zero Two sneezing, please send them to me. No questions asked, no questions answered.”
