Unban Request - Comrade_Watermelon

[Comrade_Watermelon]

BYOND Key: Comrade_Watermelon
Total Ban Length: Permanent
Banning staff member's Key: ReadThisNamePlz
Reason of Ban:  "antisemitism, sexual creepiness"
Reason for Appeal:

This ban's immediate cause was a complaint against me by a player for a reference towards an antisemitic conspiracy theory. I have cleared things up with them over discord and was trying to imitate the rhetoric of some conspiracy theorists rather than post veiled antisemitism. There was no deeper meaning to it other than playing a character, and when what I was doing got engagement from different people I leaned further into it. Later I was given a bwoink by an admin online for misunderstanding part of the lore about the SRF which is the group I was IC defending because I had read only the wiki blurb on them and thought they weren't openly genocidal and far less fascistic than they actually were. I had a brief conversation with an admin about the lore and they cleared it up for me and said I had made an 'understandable mistake' (or something along those lines) if I had only read the wiki because the information about the SRF I did not know was on forum posts. I received no notice that anything I had said IC was considered a break of the rules during this conversation, only that I had made a large error about the lore. At this point I stopped the gimmick and made efforts to de-escalate and bury the issue because I interpreted the message as a sign of disapproval, which it was. If another player had complained in LOOC or OOC that what I was doing made them uncomfortable I would have immediately stopped the gimmick, which I know isn't enough but it was the mindset I was in at the time.

In the past I have interpreted any type of player engagement with my gimmick as approval for it to continue. This links to the second reason why I was banned which was a vampire gimmick I ran where I accidentally stepped over the ERP rule's boundaries by having my character become obsessed with another character. I also mistook engagement for approval in that situation and when nobody in the round was complaining about the gimmick or told me OOC that they disliked the gimmick when I asked went further into it. Fundamentally I have made the same mistake twice which is assuming that people choosing to engage in game meant that players, or admins, must have found whatever character gimmick I had going along good, and the more people engaged with it the more I went into it and the closer I came to violating rules. This may be the case elsewhere, but it is obviously not on Aurora.

Absolutely nothing I did was done with the intention of trolling or otherwise screwing up the game for other people - the root of it is me making social mistakes. I have shown in my communications with the admins on the game a desire to follow the rules and off the game when I contested my warning for the vampire gimmick on this forum I did so attempting to better understand the rules and why what I did was against them. I will not make this type of social mistake in the future and assume player engagement means approval of some sort to continue a gimmick. If I have doubts, I will ahelp the issue and ask an admin if the gimmick I am going to do is permitted or not. I had already begun doing this and in one of the rounds I played before I was banned asked admins if what I wanted to do violated rules that concerned game play (self-antagging). In the future I will extend this to asking if role play gimmicks I have a degree of uncertainty about break rules and generally be more restrained and careful in the way I engage with other players in the game.

[ReadThisNamePlz]

To clarify, is this an unban request or a staff complaint?

[Comrade_Watermelon]

19 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

To clarify, is this an unban request or a staff complaint?

This is an unban request. I am not complaining about staff action, I am trying to explain why I made the mistakes that led me to getting banned and what I will do to avoid them in the future.

Edited May 23, 2023 by Comrade_Watermelon
clarification

[ReadThisNamePlz]

After much deliberation, I’ve decided that if you want to be unbanned it will have to be done via staff complaint. 
 

I simply cannot believe that BOTH of these instances took place because you simply weren’t aware of how it was “coming off”. 
 

To put it bluntly, it would be setting an extremely poor precedent to unban someone who is using the “I didn’t mean to!” Or “I didn’t know it was this bad!” Defense when it comes to these topics. 
 

I simply don’t believe you. I could be wrong, I’m only human. Though, I am certain in my belief that you’re not as “dumb” as you’re intending to come across as.

[Comrade_Watermelon]

8 minutes ago, ReadThisNamePlz said:

After much deliberation, I’ve decided that if you want to be unbanned it will have to be done via staff complaint. 
 

I simply cannot believe that BOTH of these instances took place because you simply weren’t aware of how it was “coming off”. 
 

To put it bluntly, it would be setting an extremely poor precedent to unban someone who is using the “I didn’t mean to!” Or “I didn’t know it was this bad!” Defense when it comes to these topics. 
 

I simply don’t believe you. I could be wrong, I’m only human. Though, I am certain in my belief that you’re not as “dumb” as you’re intending to come across as.

If I was aware of how it was coming off I would not have done it. I am aware I have some social deficiencies, which is part of the reason why I asked during the vampire round several times if people were enjoying the gimmick. The aim of explaining why I made the mistakes I did was to show you that I was not acting with the intention to troll, break rules, or otherwise cause problems. In the second instance in particular it did not even strike me that I could be making someone uncomfortable because I was referring to an organization rather than a race. I left the round thinking that the player who would eventually complain against me had actually enjoyed the gimmick because they actively sought to beat me up IC for it. In all situations where an admin has PMed me telling me to stop doing something I have stopped it at once. In my more recent time playing the game I accumulated two warnings, the first of which was for a rage quit, and the second was for the vampire round. The only other warning I have was from 2018 where an admin told me not to plasma flood the station and I immediately abandoned my attempt at doing that. It has since expired. In 99% of the rounds I have played I have followed the rules well. I do not think that the person who complained against me believes I am an antisemite. I have Jewish ancestry and genuine antisemitism is poison to me.

I don't know if I lack some form of social intelligence or have some type of personality defect. When put in context I think what has occurred are clear mistakes. I hope that you've looked in the logs of the round that I had the complaint against me come from and saw the way I interacted with the admin who PMed me there. I have never wasted anyone's time and have always been attempting to follow and understand the rules as well as the lore. I do not think my behavior fits someone who is stupid or otherwise out to cause problems. Maybe I lack social intelligence in an online environment, but regardless I have tried to show you and others what the immediate cause of my mistakes are and how I can fix them. If my unban request is rejected at least consider reducing the ban to a temporary one because of the context I provided, although I believe you'd say an argument for that belongs in the staff complaint board.

I understand that the rules make no statement that breaking them is permitted if nobody is harmed or if people on the server find it amusing or anything, and I also understand that admins are obligated to view people who have already broken rules with suspicion considering the number of trolls that exist in any online environment. This is also why I have tried to make my explanations of my thought process as clear as possible in both the complaint I made before and this thread. Even if I haven't been able to grasp the spirit of the rules without difficulty I have made an effort to follow them to their letter. A troll or bad actor of any type does not make the type of effort I have made.

I do not think this belongs as a staff complaint because I am not contesting a specific action or warning, I am arguing that I should not be banned for what mistakes I admitted I have made. If you say I need to make a staff complaint about this I will do it and defend myself there.