WotC WotC blacklist. Discussion

[billd91]

i am all over the map on this one... I don't trust blacklists...

yes "I am not doing business with bad people" sounds great, as long as you agree with who bad people are.

lets say I root for team orange, and you root for team purple. but some people in public say that anyone rooting form team orange must be bad people... and other on team orange say the same about rooting for team purple... it leads to issues.

That's why I'm curious on how WotC supposedly use their blacklist. Do they pressure other companies to follow the list? What's the penalty if they don't? What gets someone on their blacklist?

Does anybody have any receipts on this or is this just a rumor?

 

[Jer]

I dont remember it when I was younger either. First time I remember encountering this type of logic was in the late 90s/early 2000's when the participation trophy was instituted in tee ball. Now those kids are adults, see the connection.

Just as an FYI - participation trophies have been around at least since the 70s and complaints about participation trophies ruining the youth of today have been around since at least the 80s if not before.

And honestly the "weird apologies" have nothing to do with anything like that. What's really changed is that the world is fully connected through social media and people have parasocial relationships to celebrities in ways that are more public than they were before. So where in the past your friend group would either ostracize a bad actor or demand that they apologize and shape up, in a parasocial relationship the dynamics are all screwed up. When people are demanding "weird apologies" what is happening is that celebrities have slotted into the "friend or acquaintance" place in folk's psyches without actually being a friend and they are reacting as they would if a friend had done something - ostracizing or demanding they apologize and shape up. Except in parasocial relationships the dynamics aren't between equals - you have the celebrity on the one side and the mob of fans who have that person slotted into the "friend" place in their brain on the other.

It's not a healthy dynamic, and if anything it's evidence of people being more and more isolated from real communities and looking for something to fill that psychological role in their brains. Social media makes it even worse because social media "celebrities" are at the same level as everyone else in your feed and feeds into that delusion that they're actually your friends and not people you have a commercial relationship with.

 

[humble minion]

And at that point it was made abundantly clear to the D&D team that trying to talk to us internet rando fans like reasonable people was a complete and utter waste of time. And they rightly shut the F up after that because a bunch of us here ruined it for the rest of us. And ever since then? It's been proven time and time again that their decision was indeed the correct one, as we STILL get people here calling members of the D&D team talentless and lazy because they choose to institute rules into the game that the ENWorlder doesn't like. So quite frankly, I don't blame them ONE BIT that they don't show up around here anymore because there is nothing to be gained by them doing so. We ENWorlder message board cretins have made sure of that.

I dunno about that. Loads of WotC writers still post on Twitter, and Twitter is not exactly known for its strict enforcement of anti-personal-abuse policies or its universally constructive and vitriol-free discussion.

 

[billd91]

I dunno about that. Loads of WotC writers still post on Twitter, and Twitter is not exactly known for its strict enforcement of anti-personal-abuse policies or its universally constructive and vitriol-free discussion.

Twitter is a weird beast in that regard. It's wide open and frequently hostile - yet it's also a format where you kind of expect people to toss out a comment and not necessarily follow-up with anything else. By contrast, I think a message board may have a different implied function for back and forth conversation?

Plus, I think people also got used to Twitter's short format. Toss out a quick drive-by comment and you're then back to the work of the day.

Then there's also the herd. It's the place where people ended up, particularly after Google closed down its social media. There are some active communities on Facebook, but that's more where us older fogies go, it seems.

 

[Ancalagon]

The recent WotC surveys mention ENWorld by name.

That's an excellent observation

 

[LordEntrails]

The only list I have is "that vendor charges too much, find someone who charges less". Which isn't a blacklist as I will still use them if I can't find anyone else to buy from.

So you will buy from NuTSR? Zak S? Satine? If their are any companies or people you refuse to do business with, you have a 'blacklist'. As is your right and possible even your responsibility.

I'm not sure, but I think WotC staff generally don't post much on social media that isn't official promotional stuff these days. I don't have any insight into it, but looking at a couple of them, they've steered away from online discussions.

Every company I work for has a policy that employees do not make public statements about the company's work. Pretty standard stuff.

i am all over the map on this one... I don't trust blacklists...

yes "I am not doing business with bad people" sounds great, as long as you agree with who bad people are.

You shouldn't trust them. But you also seem to realize they can be good and often are needed.

Does anybody have any receipts on this or is this just a rumor?

Rumors, supported by a bit of common sense.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Every company I work for has a policy that employees do not make public statements about the company's work. Pretty standard stuff.

Even schools do that.

 

[Umbran]

@Morrus has done literally everything he can in this and the other thread to say "ENWorld is blacklisted by WotC", without actually saying it. So do you believe him? Because I do. Like, I don't agree with @Morrus on everything, but he is one of the most honest people I've come across in RPGs.

With respect, he's not going to like you putting words in his mouth.

In order to say that EN World has been blacklisted in some manner, you have to establish that EN world is treated differently than other similar venues. It is not enough that we don't work with them often. How often do they work with anyone that's not on their payroll?

 

[GMforPowergamers]

You shouldn't trust them. But you also seem to realize they can be good and often are needed.

this make it SOOOO very complex and case by case

 

[GMforPowergamers]

With respect, he's not going to like you putting words in his mouth.

In order to say that EN World has been blacklisted in some manner, you have to establish that EN world is treated differently than other similar venues. It is not enough that we don't work with them often. How often do they work with anyone that's not on their payroll?

part of this is (and I know morus hates i bring up my age so often) we are old and 'old school' message boards are not the way MOST kids see the internet. I remember AOL D&D board and even have friends who knew BBS boards just before that. However even Twitter and Facebook are 'getting old' and I am not going to pretend to know for sure what the new is I THINK it is tic tok... and I am sure by 2024 there will be at least 2 new ways to advertise.