[Society]R-E-S-P-E-C-T

Day 2,077, 11:33 • Published in Belgium USA • by MaryamQ

In the last week, there has been a lot of discussion in eBelgian media, centered around an insult to me by the Party President of PANDA, who received a temporary ban for breaking the 1st law of eRepublik, and thus harmed his own party as he was not able to set the Congress list. He did make an apology to me after the ban was lifted, which may or may not have been sincere; time will tell. While I am overwhelmed by and very grateful for the love and support expressed in the various articles, comments and friend requests from all over the eWorld, I would really like to broaden the focus a bit.

Some mood music

Many players claim, since this is the internet and, therefore, not “real”, it does not matter what you say to anyone else; they have no right to be offended because you have rights of free speech and it’s “only a game”. There are people who don’t accept this viewpoint, and they write about the need of respect for all. Examples include this recent article by AlexMCS182 and the first principle of the Individualist Society: 1. Every citizen in this world has value. No exceptions.



The comment made to me was sexist and extremely vulgar. Players and game administrators rejected that behavior in this case. But this is far from an isolated incident. Players frequently say nasty and very personal things to other players, and it needs to stop. Why? Because you have no idea who is on the other side of the screen and how they might be affected by your hateful words. As an immediate example, the PANDA PP used a very crude description of something he would do to my mother. It happens that my mother died approximately 6 months ago. When you make a nasty remark to someone you don’t know, you have no way of knowing what life issues might affect that player’s reaction. Many players have lost loved ones, some very recently, and many of them would be in a much more fragile emotional state than I happen to be. Most of us have no idea what is going on in other players’ real lives. Do you really want to be responsible for hurting another human being who is already in pain?



eRepublik media, forums and IRC channels are filled with insults thinly disguised as trolling. Cotarius and I have been made objects of such “trolling” in a newspaper from another country which I will not dignify with a link. This particular article, by someone who does not know either of us, but who used us to get at a friend of mine, speculated about the nature our relationship, based on the fact that Cotarius wears a female avatar – a not uncommon practice in eRepublik. Does that do us any real harm? No, but does the author really know it will not? He has never interacted with us in any way, does not know our real life situations, and he doesn’t know how we will be affected by his words.



His suggestion that we were in a lesbian relationship may have seemed funny to him, but I have spent far too much time in this game listening to people who self-identified as homosexual, who were afraid to come out or were persecuted in RL because they had already come out. I have seen the effects of societal homophobia on my own RL family. Of the reported 223,827 active citizens in the New World, we could estimate that as few as 2000 or as many 22,000 – most likely about 9000 based on several published studies – self-identify as gay or lesbian. The suicide rate for gay and lesbian teens is reported to be up to 5 times as high as that of the general population. A game ought to be a place where players can relax and escape from RL issues. That includes everyone, not just the ones you happen to like!



There is no place for sexism, racism, homophobia, or any other form of hate speech in a social game. The next time you start to post something mean or disrespectful, think before you press that send button. You’ll like yourself better in the morning if you do.


MaryamQ