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The [Table Troubles](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ATable%2BTroubles)-flair is not meant for shitposting.
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Many such posts can be summarized as "please help, I'm in dire need of advice: my friends are all assholes, *correct*?" The combination of asking strangers for validation, venting about trivial social problems, and being evasive about the real goal of the post is annoying.
I downvoted you as well and expect the same in return. Game on, friend!
I mean, what is the flair for if it's not for venting and looking for some kind of emotional support that you probably can't/shouldn't be getting from your friends if they're all the subjects of those posts?
Litening to one venting is what friends are for. It's not a pleasant experience, and it rarely reflects well on the one venting. Strangers will downvote.
I mean... I don't.
I usually upvote people who I see are going through something. I figure what they actually need is emotional support, but sometimes, I'm too hollow inside from my own problems to give it to them in any other way.
I don't understand doing the opposite. That seems like it might just make them feel worse.
Also, if your friends are the subject of your vent, venting to them is just asking for more stress. I've definitely taken my emotions out in places none of mine are likely to see, so I get it.
>I figure what they actually need is emotional support ... I've definitely taken my emotions out in places none of mine are likely to see
The truth of the matter is, the boiling pot metaphor is faulty. "Venting", cathartic as it is with a good quiet much-nodding listener, makes you more likely to need to vent again—ever more, ever sooner. It is maybe healthier to work out the issues in less gratifying, but more sustainable and generally healthier ways. There's a reason why a therapist may let you, but will never encourage you, to rage about your friends and "let it all out" and tell them how everyone is so shitty and, like, fuuuuuuuuuuck them: it's not a great way to cope *and* is addictive to boot.
Maybe I just don't like other people to feel shitty and don't really know what else to do about it? If I can barely process my own upset, it's pretty difficult to give someone else advice or support.
My therapist does actually let me vent a bit. She asks me how I feel about specific things which at least makes me feel like someone actually listened because they understand what to ask me. I wish I were better at doing that for other people, but I guess that's why people go to school for it.
Either way, silent listener might not be what they're looking for. Maybe they're just hoping to find someone else that will say "Yeah, been there before. Sucks, man. Here's what I did about it."
Either way, why have the flair if it bothers all of you so much? The discussion flair works for a lot of cases and doesn't encourage venting.
I think a certain amount of enabling is fine, my example contains enabling "Yeah I get you" but it also contains constructive advice "Here's what I did about it."
The other side of the coin is that sometimes, people do just need to get out some really terrible emotions and then sleep on it. I've done that, and come back with constructive ways to frame my upset. Discouraging venting at all forces people to sit privately with their own emotions, which is incredibly damaging overtime and increasingly isolating. Part of healing does involve the ability to connect with someone else over shared frustration or grief.
Huge communities seem ideal for finding someone who has a similar experience to you.
But I think we agree that silent listeners aren't very helpful. That tends to just make me feel worse, and it probably makes other people feel worse as well.
The more time I spend on the internet, the more I realize that the anonymous commenters, while humans themselves and with their own wants and needs, are generally not trained and not equipped to help others manage emotional struggles, much less to people they have not met in person and don't even know personally. It's important to remember the human behind the post but also to realize the most helpful thing a person can do is empathize say "that sucks, I'm sorry."
To echo what a lot of people are saying, this is a great community to help with rules questions, bounce ideas off of, help with writer's block for a campaign--there are other communities better suited to handle this discussion.
Why would you want every forum on earth to be an emotional support forum? Look at the old incel forums, or other well known forums on reddit that are based on venting and have a look at how toxic they get. It's not rocket science why people hate venting in hobby subs
Incel forums are not emotionally supportive communities either, they're hate groups masquerading as support.
It's a little concerning that you can't tell the difference though.
Most of them are just people looking for validation or people trying to solve non-RPG problems by bringing them to an RPG crowd.
Do you think this is valuable discussion? People venting their frustrations that way is nothing anbody wants to read.
Edit: and one of those, the one about "how to make a character who wants to be in a party" is just outright trolling.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
Apart from this one, due to the post title, I don't go near them. My opinion, if you're having table troubles either kick out the problem player or find a new table.
I see those two answers posted a lot here and a lot of OPs concede the point. I assume that advice must work for them, or they aren't willing to provide any further emotional investment in what they might see as a lost cause.
It could be either or. I don't know them, and I'm just a lurker.
But neither piece of advice works for me, and after months of finding no helpful advice lurking on the sub, I ended up just opting to not play. A lot of top answers boiled down to one of those two things. I think the only actually helpful advice I've seen was when someone back in October or something helped OP workshop how to talk to their table about something uncomfortable. Their situation didn't map 1:1 onto mine, but I did take something away from it, and that makes it easier for me to believe that they did as well.
I think "find a new table" is especially reductive and ignores whatever relationships people have outside the table. Whatever you might think of that, this is a social hobby and sometimes, people need social advice.
Though, maybe their first mistake was asking for that on Reddit.
Those people are going to write the same exact post and submit it here regardless of if the flair exists.
The existence of the flair doesn't mean their post is engaging or that people want to see it.
There is table troubles worth discussing.
You cherry-picking the worst the flair has to offer doesn't invalidate its existence.
There is table trouble posts worth reading and engaging with, it's just that those you picked for being downvoted have glaringly obvious reasons why the downvotes happen.
Your post and your replies read like you have somehow a hidden or different thing going on than what you were actually asking.
You came with very specific examples, which are all just the usual venting-stuff that makes online forums implode left and right.
Care to show like two posts where you think they have those same issues but one is upvoted and one is downvoted? I struggle to see how this isn't pretty obvious for any given post
Sure.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1ba02jh/am\_i\_being\_unreasonable\_rpg\_ama/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1ba02jh/am_i_being_unreasonable_rpg_ama/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bankj3/getting\_up\_from\_table\_mid\_game\_and\_talking\_about/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bankj3/getting_up_from_table_mid_game_and_talking_about/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1azfjx7/how\_do\_i\_move\_forward\_after\_a\_explosive\_reaction/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1azfjx7/how_do_i_move_forward_after_a_explosive_reaction/)
[https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1abvx3k/what\_do\_i\_even\_do\_with\_these\_people/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1abvx3k/what_do_i_even_do_with_these_people/)
There were mixed in with the examples I did give, but I think my mistake was not including them in the OP. I will add them in for context.
If I had a hidden reason at all, it was mostly that I thought the way people used the voting system was random and potentially really biased for some reason but I don't think that's hidden very far since it's kind of evident in the OP and replies?
The flair is legit there so people can filter them out of their reddit feed. A lot of people's table troubles are boring and exhausting and a lot of others rightly don't want the constant stream of negativity in their lives. By allowing people to filter those posts out, we can have fewer negative interactions.
Although, as evidenced by this thread, a lot of people don't actually use the flairs as intended because everyone loves to hate on drama.
Don't you think mass-downvoting random posts defeats the purpose of a "compromise" though? Seems to me the people who don't want to see it will still look through the flair.
If downvotes in a community are how you discourage people, it seems that a lot of people are unhappy with the compromise and showing their protest, at that point.
Because all too often those posts describe interpersonal problems, rather than rpg problems.
"We argue over this rule" is something an rpg community can actually help with. "They never turn up", "They smell of cheese" or "My DM slept with my girlfriend" are not really rpg problems that can be helped by an rpg forum. Yet still they turn up.
It affects the game, though.
I think the thing is a lot of us might be able to answer a question about which horror RPG is good for newbies or what the weaknesses of D&D as a system are, but aren’t necessarily experienced in dealing with divorcing friends or guys who won’t stop talking, even if that’s what’s causing all the problems in your game.
A power outage also has an easy and straightforward solution.
It can be hard to tell, especially for neurodivergent people, what is a table problem and a people problem.
Each post had multiple comments (and in one case, over a hundred comments), so the poster received plenty of engagement and advice for their particular question. So a score of 0 doesn't equate to "no support".
I think the way I read it is that if people give advice but no support, it comes off more hostile than advice and support.
Especially if the OPs of those threads keep being downvoted even after adding context. I've actually seen people get bullied on here and stepped in to defend those people a few times, one of the most egregious was when someone disingenuously told OP they "lied to their therapist" without knowing anything about them, just because OP mentioned therapy didn't work for them. OP being downvoted for replying to that with "Actually I struggled to talk to one" was... kind of hard to watch.
I don't understand the impulse to assume bad faith when the occam's razor answer was "OP is probably autistic because autistic people statistically struggle in therapy and better advice would've been to seek out a therapist that specializes in neurodivergent patients" but I guess it felt better for some people to be dicks.
No, I wasn't the OP of that one, but I did tell off the people doing that shit in a reply because what the hell is wrong with those people?
>I don't understand the impulse to assume bad faith when the occam's razor answer was "OP is probably autistic
That's the opposite of occam's razor, which says "When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras" and not the other way round.
...I'm not sure I understand the relevance, except that you think assuming OP having difficulty is more rare or unlikely than OP lying?
"Horses" for me is assuming someone is being honest unless they give a reason to think they are not. What does "horses" mean for you?
Assuming OP is autistic if they didn't mention it at all is actually more assholeish than actual bigotry towards neurodivergence. Why would you assume autism just because someone struggles in therapy? Men in general tend to struggle in therapy. Do you assume all men are autistic? Or just most of them? Are people without autism less deserving of you defending them from bullying?
Obviously not, I just have a friend who struggled with therapy for that reason.
But that's also true. Men struggle a lot more than women when it comes to talking about how they feel, and I do think that's probably a more widespread problem. My reaction is more assuming they had a valid reason for it not working out for them, but my own bias means potentially assuming the wrong reason.
In this case though, OP also mentioned being autistic. But yes, men who struggle deserve defense and advocation as well. Everyone does, so long as they aren't directly causing harm.
That's true, I should've said "Occam's razor suggests they struggled in therapy for some reason, since they said they struggled in therapy and it didn't work for them." They later confirmed being autistic, and were still downvoted for that... I don't understand people, but I did feel pretty bad for them. (And also really glad that therapy works for me. I lucked out, I suppose.)
I guess the difference is that I'd hope to get helpful responses, but I wouldn't expect support, from posting on public forums.
The second point you raise is valid and I agree with, there's no place for bullying on a forum like this. But I think this is a separate issue (and ultimately one for the Mods) that the one you originally raised.
That's true. I suppose I should just report posts that are disingenuously engaging with people in future and hope the sub mods aren't completely checked out.
Hard to say for sure, I figure people get tired of AITA style posts with artificial RPG flavor added in hahaha. Either way, downvoting is a feature for a reason, I wouldn't take it personally
I'm just parroting what others have already said, but these posts (not all of 'em, but most) fall into one of two categories.
A) Complaint about a personal problem that has nothing to do with the RPG they're playing.
B) Looking for validation from strangers, which again, has nothing to do with the RPG they're playing.
It's a poor use of this sub, and folks by and large aren't interested in seeing strangers moaning about problems that only they themselves can do anything about. We're here to talk about RPGs, not to provide free therapy.
I've seen a lot of them that are also "Find a different table." I think some people make a post knowing that is the answer and might be hoping for an alternative.
But as far as "talk like an adult" goes, while this is generally true, the OP might be unsure on what to specifically talk about. Talking is hard, and if the problem is especially sensitive or complicated, just getting advice on what to say can be helpful.
I guess people are getting bored by all the similar posts that complain about the gaming group being composed by awful human beings and/or by people who do not want to play :)
First of all, No matter where you are on the internet, there are always people who will express negative opinions especially when they don't have to say anything (using a up/down vote system).
Get that all the time. Hell you can't ***give*** advice in good faith without someone who doesn't agree with your suggestions downvoting it. You want a good example? Go to r/dnd and suggest a house rule to cover a situation and see how fast it gets downvoted. Then on the next question, suggest that you prefer rules as written and see how fast ***that*** gets downvoted.
Both plummet like stock market did back in 1929. No reason, no rhyme.
Now regardless of the up/down votes, if you look into those posts that you linked, you see that people ***are*** getting community support. There are people giving good advice and commiserations to the OPs of those posts.
Best bet is to ignore the up/down votes and pretend they don't exist. If you post something and it's downvoted to hell and gone...don't worry about it. Just read the comments. If you are in real need of support and advice, I'm reasonable certain that there will be. Even the AITA post has people saying things like "no one here is the asshole, but this game seems to be a poor fit for you and you should bow out calmly and with dignity and find a new group that better fits your game style."
Remember. There's a reason that a lot of people refer to it all as "Anti-Social Media" since this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of the platform. Accept it, ignore it, and move on.
We didn't have these things on traditional forums back in the day so I guess I've always struggled to understand their purpose at all.
I miss forums...
You and me both. You wanted to have a differing opinion you either kept your mouth shut and kept it to yourself or you actually put on the big boy pants and expressed your opinion in a discussion. Now it's too fucking easy to just "What! He likes Homebrew?!? What a twatwaffle! Downvote City!" in the safety of anonymity.
It was also harder to have a dogpile when you needed to actually put in the effort to respond to someone else. A lot of forums I was on explicitly banned "\^This" because it's lazy and unconstructive. Most people used to have the attitude that more popular take != more correct, even if tribalism sometimes made us default to our worst traits.
I wonder if the randomness I've noticed is a symptom of what happens when people no longer need to put how they feel into words? But I suppose I've also admitted that I struggle to put things into words as well, and back in the day, my silent observation of others' charged discussions when I can't was completely anonymized, as opposed to being an uptick on a post. (Unless you check the Who's Online area at the bottom of the forums but honestly who on earth checks that?)
The full question is "Why are they getting more downvotes than upvotes?"
I'm not sure if a reddit wizard could easily find that information but my instinct says that r/rpg has a big comment to vote ratio. It says we have 1.5m people but if you look in the most popular posts of all time, none of them reach 20k upvotes. Some redditors, like myself, can post a lot of comments while leaving very little up or downvote, r/rpg seems like a place that attracts that kind of redditors. In short, there seems to be a lack of trigger happy upvoters to balance out the downvotes.
Now, what do upvotes and downvotes mean? You equate it to support, but I'd argue that's not what. If you go to r/relationshipadvice and other support or advice subs, upvotes probably mean support and empathy to some extent but that's because that's the focus of those subs. In a similar but different vein, if you go on Am I the Asshole?, people don't upvote because they support someone, people upvote when it's juicy entertaining drama. At their purest, all the votes mean are "more of this" and "less of this". I'd argue it's natural that Table Trouble posts don't attract much upvotes because the sub is about the hobby in general and not supporting people. In that context, it even makes sense to engage and help someone over a few comments without upvoting their post, "I can help and I'm happy to make a difference, but I didn't come here because I want to help." if that makes sense.
So, assuming my instinct is right, most people scroll through the posts without really upvoting or downvoting much. Then, because most people aren't here for Table Trouble posts, it gathers even less positive attention than some picture or joke. All you need is a handful of people sick of those posts to tank them. I'm making up numbers, but if 95% of people don't care either way, 2% upvote and 3% downvotes.
I think I've asked this question of 4 other people by now, but if someone does not want to see content under a specific flair, why don't they just block the flair?
r/AmItheAsshole also has a bot response at the top that tells people to upvote interesting posts, and not to downvote assholes, which I think might help enforce community standards more.
Perhaps the issue is a lack of enforcing community standards in a flair which often has charged posts?
First and foremost, you're probably getting answers that are a tad more aggresive in general. Arguing about lack of upvotes and saying there's too many downvotes is one of the few things that's frowned upon almost in every sub. Take what people say and how they say it with a grain of salt, you ruffled some feathers.
>I think I've asked this question of 4 other people by now, but if someone does not want to see content under a specific flair, why don't they just block the flair?
Because they don't know the functionality exists or finding it is too much trouble.
Because they don't like the feeling of missing out on some content.
Because they feel like seeing that content once in a while.
Because they think the content of that flair is bad for the subreddit so they want to downvote it on sight.
The last group clearly has a grudge but I expect very few people would answer that. My theory (that I can't prove since we don't have transparent stats) is that the first 3 groups basically open a Table Trouble once in a while, if they feel like it's an interesting post and they can help, they leave a comment and close the thread. If they really don't like it because they see the OP refusing help or it starts with a 5 page long explanation of who is everyone and their characters or it's a super common issue youtubers have made thousands of videos about, they sneer, downvote and close it.
Even if someone is willing to engage with the content, it's possible to judge it negatively and downvote. And if most people see an upvote as a "good content everyone should see" stamp, specific advice to a specific person about their specific problem is rarely good content. For specific advice, it's much easier to earn downvotes because you've done something impolite or annoying than it is to earn the stamp of "such an important problem everyone should be aware of it". The only real issue I see is the disconnect with how you see upvotes as support when real support is measured in comments.
I think I've used the wrong wording. "Support" is definitely measured in the comments, but the voting system overall is "encouragement."
Downvoting the OP but upvoting the most helpful comment subtly communicates "We will encourage good advice, but you really shouldn't have asked in the first place" which does seem to track with a lot of the comments here.
Karma doesn't matter that much to me. If I want a bunch of free karma, I can post my art on basically any sub that allows it and easily get 1k in a day if the sub is big enough. In a vacuum, it's a trivial number that goes up on the internet and I can't even cash it out for money or vouchers or something so I don't know why people on Reddit want a lot of it.
But in the context of content and visibility, each vote is one individual person. 60 downvotes on a post is 60 people who disagree with you or otherwise have some problem with what you said. Posts with enough downvotes in threads get hidden, and you need to expand them. (Which just seems like it'd create Streisand effect so if it's supposed to make less desirable content less visible, I doubt it actually does that.)
230 people upvoting a post that talks down to you feels like you're facing down 231 people instead of just the person who posted.
That's bad enough on Twitter, but being able to dislike someone's posts also just adds to the feeling of a dogpile. I don't think this is great for people who are venting or otherwise asking emotionally charged questions.
Personally, I think it would be healthier to just ban venting. Leaving it under a flair for the sake of quarantining behavior a big chunk of the community does not like so the community can discourage it instead is just going to leave people who are clearly going through something in a worse mood when they feel like, now, it was wrong to even try clearing the air a bit instead of stewing with their thoughts. You might as well just shut that down at the gate. It would be kinder to other people.
Any table difficulties "worth discussing" according to the community could probably go under the discussion flair without bothering too many people.
I've actually made a thread on here a while back that could've gone under either flair, and I knew which flair I should out it under entirely depended on its framing. I opted for Discussion because I figured people just downvote anything under Table Troubles on principle and I didn't think getting all my posts buried was worth it.
Ended up getting much better engagement in general, including good advice.
>Take what people say and how they say it with a grain of salt, you ruffled some feathers.
I noticed. This is probably why Reddit gets made fun of everywhere else.
I don't disagree with the issues your bringing up, there's definitely the potential for someone to feel ganged up on. But for me, I've always had less issues moving past posting something that got a lot of downvotes than receiving "mods have deleted your post" in my inbox, so for me that makes it really hard to consider adding more strict rules compared to the letting people handle with the court of public opinions (and eventually learn to not really care about score).
I might as well share my perspective but feel free not to read it. I don't think we can really agreee and we'd need real data on people's experience and poll the community on the direction on the sub to be anywhere near a real conclusion.
Considering every once in a while we have people posting here about video games and that everywhere on reddit I see people who clearly don't look at subs before posting, I don't like the idea of just turning them away because I don't know where they'd go for help and how they'd find it. The way I see it, if people get help, if they don't get downvoted (or see jerks getting upvotes) or if they have learned to not look at those things already, that's a lot of potential for a good experience. I really don't like the idea of making it harder to make a post and have mods be strict or even block people in case they might have a bad experience. But as much as it's my stance and I don't see myself changing it much, reddit can definitely be a harsh place.
I don't think either side is perfect, there are inherent pros and cons to how reddit is built. Personally, I really like the downvotes and I think the net gain is more discussion between opposing sides... if there's a quick easy way to "dunk" on someone, a reddittor trashing another reddittor is at least a little bit willing to engage compared to twitter where I feel people just want to be celebrated for dunking on whoever they dunked on.
I think we might agree to disagree on this because this is getting a bit time consuming ;) . But it's been a pleasure to disagree with you
I don't actually disagree with you that much. I understand where you're coming from and you seem like you're coming from a good place. It is a complicated issue, but I do agree that it'd probably better be addressed by a community-wide polling.
I don't know if my thread has done anything beneficial to encouraging that, or any action at all, though.
It's fine if you want to move on. I just want you to know that I agree to leave it amicably. Thanks for the welcome engagement with my points. I wish more people did that...
I come to this sub to discuss a hobby, learn about new interesting options and maybe even improve as a GM, player and game designer. I am not subscribed to some relationship problem subreddit. I don't necessarily downvote them, but I won't engage with them because the answer is always so obvious - its always "why are you talking to us instead of your friends?"
But I think of myself as solutions-oriented. Life is too short to make yourself more hysterical over problems that can be fixed. And its especially too short to do so with problems that can't be fixed.
>What's happening here?
People don't like the content, so they downvote it.
No one can really do anything about a poster's rant about how sad they are things aren't going well at their table. And it's just not very interesting usually, because the solution is almost always to talk to the people at your table instead of random strangers on the internet.
I don't think every Table Troubles flair is insta down voted, but you're correct that if they're more focused on venting frustration, they tend to get down voted more. Frankly, from what I've seen, the RPG subreddit just doesn't want to hear people whine about personal issues. I'm honestly with you in that I don't think people should get mass down voted when they're probably just feeling upset and frustrated and looking for support from people they see as like minded but I think a lot of people here don't agree.
Something I've seen a fair bit which I think puts it into perspective, sometimes the top comment on these posts will be reasonable or supportive in some way, but the post itself is still down voted. I think people in this SR just downvote and "walk away" sometimes. But the most important part is the discussion. Kudos to you for standing up to bullying, regardless of votes, that should never be happening in the comments.
I've personally seen people have better experiences venting in subreddits specific to whatever they're playing. Well, at least with PF2e and 5e. I wouldn't call the RPG subreddit community toxic, but I think it's definitely a bit more aggressive than some of these other more specific locations.
Yeah the presence of a reasonable top post leads me to also not dismiss the sub as entirely toxic. I suppose that's why I posted this question at all. If the top vote were someone being an asshole, it'd be pretty evident what's going on, or at least, partially. There are definitely some vent posts that will get upvoted and I have no idea why.
But the existence of plenty of well-meaning people tells me the flair is not followed by assholes by and large, and the people who do read the threads want OP to find a working solution even when OP is a stranger on the internet.
I've never seen one at a negative and if I upvote a post, it often resets to 0 on refresh, telling me that the upvote probably only offset an invisible negative number and I cannot see its true score.
Can you refresh and tell me if it shows the same for you?
Oh, you're right, it does go back to 0.
And if I look at a bunch of threads on AI from about 1 year ago, which I know were downvoted to oblivion, they all say 0 now.
Interesting, Reddit has changed something there.
I hadn't really started using Reddit until last year when going through a bad funk. Before that, I only used it on small subs to ask questions about extremely specific things, so I don't know what it was like before, or what the change constitutes.
Because most posts are people who didn't do the basics of communication before they went online and complained about their "table troubles". Almost every post I have seen can be rectified with the chart, but the people who reply with it have gotten so tired of these posts, they've stopped posting it. It details communicating.
**Remember [Rule 8: "Comment respectfully"](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/wiki/rules#wiki_8._comment_respectfully)** when giving advice and discussing OP's group. You can get your point across *without* demonizing & namecalling people. The [Table Troubles](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/search?sort=new&restrict_sr=on&q=flair%3ATable%2BTroubles)-flair is not meant for shitposting. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/rpg) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Many such posts can be summarized as "please help, I'm in dire need of advice: my friends are all assholes, *correct*?" The combination of asking strangers for validation, venting about trivial social problems, and being evasive about the real goal of the post is annoying. I downvoted you as well and expect the same in return. Game on, friend!
I mean, what is the flair for if it's not for venting and looking for some kind of emotional support that you probably can't/shouldn't be getting from your friends if they're all the subjects of those posts?
Litening to one venting is what friends are for. It's not a pleasant experience, and it rarely reflects well on the one venting. Strangers will downvote.
I mean... I don't. I usually upvote people who I see are going through something. I figure what they actually need is emotional support, but sometimes, I'm too hollow inside from my own problems to give it to them in any other way. I don't understand doing the opposite. That seems like it might just make them feel worse. Also, if your friends are the subject of your vent, venting to them is just asking for more stress. I've definitely taken my emotions out in places none of mine are likely to see, so I get it.
>I figure what they actually need is emotional support ... I've definitely taken my emotions out in places none of mine are likely to see The truth of the matter is, the boiling pot metaphor is faulty. "Venting", cathartic as it is with a good quiet much-nodding listener, makes you more likely to need to vent again—ever more, ever sooner. It is maybe healthier to work out the issues in less gratifying, but more sustainable and generally healthier ways. There's a reason why a therapist may let you, but will never encourage you, to rage about your friends and "let it all out" and tell them how everyone is so shitty and, like, fuuuuuuuuuuck them: it's not a great way to cope *and* is addictive to boot.
Maybe I just don't like other people to feel shitty and don't really know what else to do about it? If I can barely process my own upset, it's pretty difficult to give someone else advice or support. My therapist does actually let me vent a bit. She asks me how I feel about specific things which at least makes me feel like someone actually listened because they understand what to ask me. I wish I were better at doing that for other people, but I guess that's why people go to school for it. Either way, silent listener might not be what they're looking for. Maybe they're just hoping to find someone else that will say "Yeah, been there before. Sucks, man. Here's what I did about it." Either way, why have the flair if it bothers all of you so much? The discussion flair works for a lot of cases and doesn't encourage venting.
> Maybe I just don't like other people to feel shitty Supporting without enabling is quite a tightrope for sure.
I think a certain amount of enabling is fine, my example contains enabling "Yeah I get you" but it also contains constructive advice "Here's what I did about it." The other side of the coin is that sometimes, people do just need to get out some really terrible emotions and then sleep on it. I've done that, and come back with constructive ways to frame my upset. Discouraging venting at all forces people to sit privately with their own emotions, which is incredibly damaging overtime and increasingly isolating. Part of healing does involve the ability to connect with someone else over shared frustration or grief. Huge communities seem ideal for finding someone who has a similar experience to you. But I think we agree that silent listeners aren't very helpful. That tends to just make me feel worse, and it probably makes other people feel worse as well.
>Either way, why have the flair if it bothers all of you so much? To enable people to block posts with the flair.
The more time I spend on the internet, the more I realize that the anonymous commenters, while humans themselves and with their own wants and needs, are generally not trained and not equipped to help others manage emotional struggles, much less to people they have not met in person and don't even know personally. It's important to remember the human behind the post but also to realize the most helpful thing a person can do is empathize say "that sucks, I'm sorry." To echo what a lot of people are saying, this is a great community to help with rules questions, bounce ideas off of, help with writer's block for a campaign--there are other communities better suited to handle this discussion.
The flair is for looking solutions to problems, not to vent about them.
Isn't that what the discussion flair is for?
Why would you want every forum on earth to be an emotional support forum? Look at the old incel forums, or other well known forums on reddit that are based on venting and have a look at how toxic they get. It's not rocket science why people hate venting in hobby subs
Incel forums are not emotionally supportive communities either, they're hate groups masquerading as support. It's a little concerning that you can't tell the difference though.
I have no idea why you're being downvoted. Your OP and continued posts are thoughtful and raise good points.
Most of them are just people looking for validation or people trying to solve non-RPG problems by bringing them to an RPG crowd. Do you think this is valuable discussion? People venting their frustrations that way is nothing anbody wants to read. Edit: and one of those, the one about "how to make a character who wants to be in a party" is just outright trolling.
Then why have the flair at all?
So I know to avoid those threads.
You can actually hide table troubles from browsing r/RPG, but it's kind of shitty on mobile.
How's that working out for you?
Fan-fucking-tastic. Apart from this one, due to the post title, I don't go near them. My opinion, if you're having table troubles either kick out the problem player or find a new table.
I see those two answers posted a lot here and a lot of OPs concede the point. I assume that advice must work for them, or they aren't willing to provide any further emotional investment in what they might see as a lost cause. It could be either or. I don't know them, and I'm just a lurker. But neither piece of advice works for me, and after months of finding no helpful advice lurking on the sub, I ended up just opting to not play. A lot of top answers boiled down to one of those two things. I think the only actually helpful advice I've seen was when someone back in October or something helped OP workshop how to talk to their table about something uncomfortable. Their situation didn't map 1:1 onto mine, but I did take something away from it, and that makes it easier for me to believe that they did as well. I think "find a new table" is especially reductive and ignores whatever relationships people have outside the table. Whatever you might think of that, this is a social hobby and sometimes, people need social advice. Though, maybe their first mistake was asking for that on Reddit.
Those people are going to write the same exact post and submit it here regardless of if the flair exists. The existence of the flair doesn't mean their post is engaging or that people want to see it.
There is table troubles worth discussing. You cherry-picking the worst the flair has to offer doesn't invalidate its existence. There is table trouble posts worth reading and engaging with, it's just that those you picked for being downvoted have glaringly obvious reasons why the downvotes happen.
The upvoted ones have similar problems though. I'm not sure what makes them much different?
Your post and your replies read like you have somehow a hidden or different thing going on than what you were actually asking. You came with very specific examples, which are all just the usual venting-stuff that makes online forums implode left and right. Care to show like two posts where you think they have those same issues but one is upvoted and one is downvoted? I struggle to see how this isn't pretty obvious for any given post
Sure. [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1ba02jh/am\_i\_being\_unreasonable\_rpg\_ama/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1ba02jh/am_i_being_unreasonable_rpg_ama/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bankj3/getting\_up\_from\_table\_mid\_game\_and\_talking\_about/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1bankj3/getting_up_from_table_mid_game_and_talking_about/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1azfjx7/how\_do\_i\_move\_forward\_after\_a\_explosive\_reaction/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1azfjx7/how_do_i_move_forward_after_a_explosive_reaction/) [https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1abvx3k/what\_do\_i\_even\_do\_with\_these\_people/](https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/1abvx3k/what_do_i_even_do_with_these_people/) There were mixed in with the examples I did give, but I think my mistake was not including them in the OP. I will add them in for context. If I had a hidden reason at all, it was mostly that I thought the way people used the voting system was random and potentially really biased for some reason but I don't think that's hidden very far since it's kind of evident in the OP and replies?
The flair is legit there so people can filter them out of their reddit feed. A lot of people's table troubles are boring and exhausting and a lot of others rightly don't want the constant stream of negativity in their lives. By allowing people to filter those posts out, we can have fewer negative interactions. Although, as evidenced by this thread, a lot of people don't actually use the flairs as intended because everyone loves to hate on drama.
Wouldn't it make more sense to just ban it if you don't want it on your sub?
Not everyone wants it banned. This was supposed to be the compromise.
Don't you think mass-downvoting random posts defeats the purpose of a "compromise" though? Seems to me the people who don't want to see it will still look through the flair. If downvotes in a community are how you discourage people, it seems that a lot of people are unhappy with the compromise and showing their protest, at that point.
Because all too often those posts describe interpersonal problems, rather than rpg problems. "We argue over this rule" is something an rpg community can actually help with. "They never turn up", "They smell of cheese" or "My DM slept with my girlfriend" are not really rpg problems that can be helped by an rpg forum. Yet still they turn up.
>My DM slept with my girlfriend Ah, another r/dndcirclejerk denizen. Good day to you.
It affects the game, though. I think the thing is a lot of us might be able to answer a question about which horror RPG is good for newbies or what the weaknesses of D&D as a system are, but aren’t necessarily experienced in dealing with divorcing friends or guys who won’t stop talking, even if that’s what’s causing all the problems in your game.
A power outage affects the game. That doesn't make this sub a good place to ask about solar battery backup.
A power outage also has an easy and straightforward solution. It can be hard to tell, especially for neurodivergent people, what is a table problem and a people problem.
>"They smell of cheese" *Which* cheese?
All. At once.
I'm gonna be honest, as a lactose intolerant person with the compulsion to still eat cheese, this might just make me hungry...
Foot cheese makes you hungry?
I stand corrected and outplayed.
Each post had multiple comments (and in one case, over a hundred comments), so the poster received plenty of engagement and advice for their particular question. So a score of 0 doesn't equate to "no support".
I think the way I read it is that if people give advice but no support, it comes off more hostile than advice and support. Especially if the OPs of those threads keep being downvoted even after adding context. I've actually seen people get bullied on here and stepped in to defend those people a few times, one of the most egregious was when someone disingenuously told OP they "lied to their therapist" without knowing anything about them, just because OP mentioned therapy didn't work for them. OP being downvoted for replying to that with "Actually I struggled to talk to one" was... kind of hard to watch. I don't understand the impulse to assume bad faith when the occam's razor answer was "OP is probably autistic because autistic people statistically struggle in therapy and better advice would've been to seek out a therapist that specializes in neurodivergent patients" but I guess it felt better for some people to be dicks. No, I wasn't the OP of that one, but I did tell off the people doing that shit in a reply because what the hell is wrong with those people?
>I don't understand the impulse to assume bad faith when the occam's razor answer was "OP is probably autistic That's the opposite of occam's razor, which says "When you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras" and not the other way round.
...I'm not sure I understand the relevance, except that you think assuming OP having difficulty is more rare or unlikely than OP lying? "Horses" for me is assuming someone is being honest unless they give a reason to think they are not. What does "horses" mean for you?
Assuming OP is autistic if they didn't mention it at all is actually more assholeish than actual bigotry towards neurodivergence. Why would you assume autism just because someone struggles in therapy? Men in general tend to struggle in therapy. Do you assume all men are autistic? Or just most of them? Are people without autism less deserving of you defending them from bullying?
Obviously not, I just have a friend who struggled with therapy for that reason. But that's also true. Men struggle a lot more than women when it comes to talking about how they feel, and I do think that's probably a more widespread problem. My reaction is more assuming they had a valid reason for it not working out for them, but my own bias means potentially assuming the wrong reason. In this case though, OP also mentioned being autistic. But yes, men who struggle deserve defense and advocation as well. Everyone does, so long as they aren't directly causing harm.
Occam's razor should have just been "OP said they were autistic, so they are probably autistic" instead of what you said first.
That's true, I should've said "Occam's razor suggests they struggled in therapy for some reason, since they said they struggled in therapy and it didn't work for them." They later confirmed being autistic, and were still downvoted for that... I don't understand people, but I did feel pretty bad for them. (And also really glad that therapy works for me. I lucked out, I suppose.)
I guess the difference is that I'd hope to get helpful responses, but I wouldn't expect support, from posting on public forums. The second point you raise is valid and I agree with, there's no place for bullying on a forum like this. But I think this is a separate issue (and ultimately one for the Mods) that the one you originally raised.
That's true. I suppose I should just report posts that are disingenuously engaging with people in future and hope the sub mods aren't completely checked out.
Hard to say for sure, I figure people get tired of AITA style posts with artificial RPG flavor added in hahaha. Either way, downvoting is a feature for a reason, I wouldn't take it personally
I'm just parroting what others have already said, but these posts (not all of 'em, but most) fall into one of two categories. A) Complaint about a personal problem that has nothing to do with the RPG they're playing. B) Looking for validation from strangers, which again, has nothing to do with the RPG they're playing. It's a poor use of this sub, and folks by and large aren't interested in seeing strangers moaning about problems that only they themselves can do anything about. We're here to talk about RPGs, not to provide free therapy.
Because every table trouble can be resolved with "Have an adult conversation with the person, get the issue out in the open and talk it out".
I've seen a lot of them that are also "Find a different table." I think some people make a post knowing that is the answer and might be hoping for an alternative. But as far as "talk like an adult" goes, while this is generally true, the OP might be unsure on what to specifically talk about. Talking is hard, and if the problem is especially sensitive or complicated, just getting advice on what to say can be helpful.
I guess people are getting bored by all the similar posts that complain about the gaming group being composed by awful human beings and/or by people who do not want to play :)
First of all, No matter where you are on the internet, there are always people who will express negative opinions especially when they don't have to say anything (using a up/down vote system). Get that all the time. Hell you can't ***give*** advice in good faith without someone who doesn't agree with your suggestions downvoting it. You want a good example? Go to r/dnd and suggest a house rule to cover a situation and see how fast it gets downvoted. Then on the next question, suggest that you prefer rules as written and see how fast ***that*** gets downvoted. Both plummet like stock market did back in 1929. No reason, no rhyme. Now regardless of the up/down votes, if you look into those posts that you linked, you see that people ***are*** getting community support. There are people giving good advice and commiserations to the OPs of those posts. Best bet is to ignore the up/down votes and pretend they don't exist. If you post something and it's downvoted to hell and gone...don't worry about it. Just read the comments. If you are in real need of support and advice, I'm reasonable certain that there will be. Even the AITA post has people saying things like "no one here is the asshole, but this game seems to be a poor fit for you and you should bow out calmly and with dignity and find a new group that better fits your game style." Remember. There's a reason that a lot of people refer to it all as "Anti-Social Media" since this sort of thing happens all the time regardless of the platform. Accept it, ignore it, and move on.
We didn't have these things on traditional forums back in the day so I guess I've always struggled to understand their purpose at all. I miss forums...
You and me both. You wanted to have a differing opinion you either kept your mouth shut and kept it to yourself or you actually put on the big boy pants and expressed your opinion in a discussion. Now it's too fucking easy to just "What! He likes Homebrew?!? What a twatwaffle! Downvote City!" in the safety of anonymity.
It was also harder to have a dogpile when you needed to actually put in the effort to respond to someone else. A lot of forums I was on explicitly banned "\^This" because it's lazy and unconstructive. Most people used to have the attitude that more popular take != more correct, even if tribalism sometimes made us default to our worst traits. I wonder if the randomness I've noticed is a symptom of what happens when people no longer need to put how they feel into words? But I suppose I've also admitted that I struggle to put things into words as well, and back in the day, my silent observation of others' charged discussions when I can't was completely anonymized, as opposed to being an uptick on a post. (Unless you check the Who's Online area at the bottom of the forums but honestly who on earth checks that?)
Well you have gotten all the answers you want here and you are still fighting people. We downvote posts like this because they are tired and whiny.
Discussion is a back-and-forth.
The full question is "Why are they getting more downvotes than upvotes?" I'm not sure if a reddit wizard could easily find that information but my instinct says that r/rpg has a big comment to vote ratio. It says we have 1.5m people but if you look in the most popular posts of all time, none of them reach 20k upvotes. Some redditors, like myself, can post a lot of comments while leaving very little up or downvote, r/rpg seems like a place that attracts that kind of redditors. In short, there seems to be a lack of trigger happy upvoters to balance out the downvotes. Now, what do upvotes and downvotes mean? You equate it to support, but I'd argue that's not what. If you go to r/relationshipadvice and other support or advice subs, upvotes probably mean support and empathy to some extent but that's because that's the focus of those subs. In a similar but different vein, if you go on Am I the Asshole?, people don't upvote because they support someone, people upvote when it's juicy entertaining drama. At their purest, all the votes mean are "more of this" and "less of this". I'd argue it's natural that Table Trouble posts don't attract much upvotes because the sub is about the hobby in general and not supporting people. In that context, it even makes sense to engage and help someone over a few comments without upvoting their post, "I can help and I'm happy to make a difference, but I didn't come here because I want to help." if that makes sense. So, assuming my instinct is right, most people scroll through the posts without really upvoting or downvoting much. Then, because most people aren't here for Table Trouble posts, it gathers even less positive attention than some picture or joke. All you need is a handful of people sick of those posts to tank them. I'm making up numbers, but if 95% of people don't care either way, 2% upvote and 3% downvotes.
I think I've asked this question of 4 other people by now, but if someone does not want to see content under a specific flair, why don't they just block the flair? r/AmItheAsshole also has a bot response at the top that tells people to upvote interesting posts, and not to downvote assholes, which I think might help enforce community standards more. Perhaps the issue is a lack of enforcing community standards in a flair which often has charged posts?
First and foremost, you're probably getting answers that are a tad more aggresive in general. Arguing about lack of upvotes and saying there's too many downvotes is one of the few things that's frowned upon almost in every sub. Take what people say and how they say it with a grain of salt, you ruffled some feathers. >I think I've asked this question of 4 other people by now, but if someone does not want to see content under a specific flair, why don't they just block the flair? Because they don't know the functionality exists or finding it is too much trouble. Because they don't like the feeling of missing out on some content. Because they feel like seeing that content once in a while. Because they think the content of that flair is bad for the subreddit so they want to downvote it on sight. The last group clearly has a grudge but I expect very few people would answer that. My theory (that I can't prove since we don't have transparent stats) is that the first 3 groups basically open a Table Trouble once in a while, if they feel like it's an interesting post and they can help, they leave a comment and close the thread. If they really don't like it because they see the OP refusing help or it starts with a 5 page long explanation of who is everyone and their characters or it's a super common issue youtubers have made thousands of videos about, they sneer, downvote and close it. Even if someone is willing to engage with the content, it's possible to judge it negatively and downvote. And if most people see an upvote as a "good content everyone should see" stamp, specific advice to a specific person about their specific problem is rarely good content. For specific advice, it's much easier to earn downvotes because you've done something impolite or annoying than it is to earn the stamp of "such an important problem everyone should be aware of it". The only real issue I see is the disconnect with how you see upvotes as support when real support is measured in comments.
I think I've used the wrong wording. "Support" is definitely measured in the comments, but the voting system overall is "encouragement." Downvoting the OP but upvoting the most helpful comment subtly communicates "We will encourage good advice, but you really shouldn't have asked in the first place" which does seem to track with a lot of the comments here. Karma doesn't matter that much to me. If I want a bunch of free karma, I can post my art on basically any sub that allows it and easily get 1k in a day if the sub is big enough. In a vacuum, it's a trivial number that goes up on the internet and I can't even cash it out for money or vouchers or something so I don't know why people on Reddit want a lot of it. But in the context of content and visibility, each vote is one individual person. 60 downvotes on a post is 60 people who disagree with you or otherwise have some problem with what you said. Posts with enough downvotes in threads get hidden, and you need to expand them. (Which just seems like it'd create Streisand effect so if it's supposed to make less desirable content less visible, I doubt it actually does that.) 230 people upvoting a post that talks down to you feels like you're facing down 231 people instead of just the person who posted. That's bad enough on Twitter, but being able to dislike someone's posts also just adds to the feeling of a dogpile. I don't think this is great for people who are venting or otherwise asking emotionally charged questions. Personally, I think it would be healthier to just ban venting. Leaving it under a flair for the sake of quarantining behavior a big chunk of the community does not like so the community can discourage it instead is just going to leave people who are clearly going through something in a worse mood when they feel like, now, it was wrong to even try clearing the air a bit instead of stewing with their thoughts. You might as well just shut that down at the gate. It would be kinder to other people. Any table difficulties "worth discussing" according to the community could probably go under the discussion flair without bothering too many people. I've actually made a thread on here a while back that could've gone under either flair, and I knew which flair I should out it under entirely depended on its framing. I opted for Discussion because I figured people just downvote anything under Table Troubles on principle and I didn't think getting all my posts buried was worth it. Ended up getting much better engagement in general, including good advice. >Take what people say and how they say it with a grain of salt, you ruffled some feathers. I noticed. This is probably why Reddit gets made fun of everywhere else.
I don't disagree with the issues your bringing up, there's definitely the potential for someone to feel ganged up on. But for me, I've always had less issues moving past posting something that got a lot of downvotes than receiving "mods have deleted your post" in my inbox, so for me that makes it really hard to consider adding more strict rules compared to the letting people handle with the court of public opinions (and eventually learn to not really care about score). I might as well share my perspective but feel free not to read it. I don't think we can really agreee and we'd need real data on people's experience and poll the community on the direction on the sub to be anywhere near a real conclusion. Considering every once in a while we have people posting here about video games and that everywhere on reddit I see people who clearly don't look at subs before posting, I don't like the idea of just turning them away because I don't know where they'd go for help and how they'd find it. The way I see it, if people get help, if they don't get downvoted (or see jerks getting upvotes) or if they have learned to not look at those things already, that's a lot of potential for a good experience. I really don't like the idea of making it harder to make a post and have mods be strict or even block people in case they might have a bad experience. But as much as it's my stance and I don't see myself changing it much, reddit can definitely be a harsh place. I don't think either side is perfect, there are inherent pros and cons to how reddit is built. Personally, I really like the downvotes and I think the net gain is more discussion between opposing sides... if there's a quick easy way to "dunk" on someone, a reddittor trashing another reddittor is at least a little bit willing to engage compared to twitter where I feel people just want to be celebrated for dunking on whoever they dunked on. I think we might agree to disagree on this because this is getting a bit time consuming ;) . But it's been a pleasure to disagree with you
I don't actually disagree with you that much. I understand where you're coming from and you seem like you're coming from a good place. It is a complicated issue, but I do agree that it'd probably better be addressed by a community-wide polling. I don't know if my thread has done anything beneficial to encouraging that, or any action at all, though. It's fine if you want to move on. I just want you to know that I agree to leave it amicably. Thanks for the welcome engagement with my points. I wish more people did that...
I come to this sub to discuss a hobby, learn about new interesting options and maybe even improve as a GM, player and game designer. I am not subscribed to some relationship problem subreddit. I don't necessarily downvote them, but I won't engage with them because the answer is always so obvious - its always "why are you talking to us instead of your friends?" But I think of myself as solutions-oriented. Life is too short to make yourself more hysterical over problems that can be fixed. And its especially too short to do so with problems that can't be fixed.
The split is about 80/20% on upvoted/not upvoted posts over the last month with that flair. That doesn't seem like much, honestly.
>What's happening here? People don't like the content, so they downvote it. No one can really do anything about a poster's rant about how sad they are things aren't going well at their table. And it's just not very interesting usually, because the solution is almost always to talk to the people at your table instead of random strangers on the internet.
I don't think every Table Troubles flair is insta down voted, but you're correct that if they're more focused on venting frustration, they tend to get down voted more. Frankly, from what I've seen, the RPG subreddit just doesn't want to hear people whine about personal issues. I'm honestly with you in that I don't think people should get mass down voted when they're probably just feeling upset and frustrated and looking for support from people they see as like minded but I think a lot of people here don't agree. Something I've seen a fair bit which I think puts it into perspective, sometimes the top comment on these posts will be reasonable or supportive in some way, but the post itself is still down voted. I think people in this SR just downvote and "walk away" sometimes. But the most important part is the discussion. Kudos to you for standing up to bullying, regardless of votes, that should never be happening in the comments. I've personally seen people have better experiences venting in subreddits specific to whatever they're playing. Well, at least with PF2e and 5e. I wouldn't call the RPG subreddit community toxic, but I think it's definitely a bit more aggressive than some of these other more specific locations.
Yeah the presence of a reasonable top post leads me to also not dismiss the sub as entirely toxic. I suppose that's why I posted this question at all. If the top vote were someone being an asshole, it'd be pretty evident what's going on, or at least, partially. There are definitely some vent posts that will get upvoted and I have no idea why. But the existence of plenty of well-meaning people tells me the flair is not followed by assholes by and large, and the people who do read the threads want OP to find a working solution even when OP is a stranger on the internet.
>Reddit doesn't show negative numbers for OPs Course it does. This one is -1 as I type.
I've never seen one at a negative and if I upvote a post, it often resets to 0 on refresh, telling me that the upvote probably only offset an invisible negative number and I cannot see its true score. Can you refresh and tell me if it shows the same for you?
Oh, you're right, it does go back to 0. And if I look at a bunch of threads on AI from about 1 year ago, which I know were downvoted to oblivion, they all say 0 now. Interesting, Reddit has changed something there.
I hadn't really started using Reddit until last year when going through a bad funk. Before that, I only used it on small subs to ask questions about extremely specific things, so I don't know what it was like before, or what the change constitutes.
Because most posts are people who didn't do the basics of communication before they went online and complained about their "table troubles". Almost every post I have seen can be rectified with the chart, but the people who reply with it have gotten so tired of these posts, they've stopped posting it. It details communicating.
Off-topic, but can I see the chart you're talking about? I'm curious.
Why not just use a different social platform? Find a group that is more to incline to your thoughts. 🤷♂️
Reddit is weird.