how to recognize a crusade
sometimes, when you’re a site admin, you’re faced with the unfortunate reality that some members are scads. absolute dickwaffles. assholes, if you will. sometimes even worse, sometimes they’re known to commit roleplay sins like fomenting drama over impressions or powerplaying, or getting gold and disappearing, or art theft, stuff like that.
sometimes they’re known for worse shit. irl sins like abuse and betrayal of trust. sometimes they’ve hurt a lot of people, or badly hurt one or two, forever putting a strain on this little fandom because we really can’t afford too many burnt bridges.
when a member like that comes knocking at the door, or commits these sins under your watch, you have a really hard path ahead as an admin. there’s a lot to be said for both the forgiving and the hard-line approaches. talking about and learning from situations like that is really important for admins of any age or style, but that’s not what this post is about.
this post is about spotting people who spread shit instead of letting it lie. who try to control others’ opinions about certain people and certain things. who claim to defend but instead reach out to maim, to isolate, to shun. sometimes when a member with stains on their history comes to join your site, they bring harbingers of doom on their coattails.
a warning is always a good thing. however, some people come warning because they hate the person involved more than they hate the bad deeds.
here are some signs that a warning is actually part of a crusade.
they are quick on the scene, usually contacting you mere minutes after they have heard their target has joined your site
they bring friends to provide additional evidence or just to agree (aka, dogpile)
they express joy that they’re about to get their target banned again
they express a desire to see the target suffer
they want immediate action
they insist that the target may seem harmless, but will cause problems in the future
they insist that the target themself is a bad person, not just their deeds
they haven’t read your site’s lore (ok, maybe just a pet peeve. but they’ll be like “oh [the target] will do anything to get gold!” and your site doesn’t have golds)
they are willing to provide hours of stories and examples of bad deeds, but often cannot produce screenshots or other evidence
evidence or screenshots often reveal a general assholery but zero evidence of the target actually doing the bad things
they claim to be defending someone who was badly hurt, but when you contact them they don’t want to be involved, or barely knew about the crusade
they air the debacle publicly, such as on a livestream on their site’s discord server
these are not all the hallmarks of a crusade, and a legitimate warning can exist with many of these traits as well. as with most things, it isn’t black and white. it’s very important to hear the target’s side of the story if you think a warning is part of a crusade; in general it’s best to hear both sides but in some cases a warning warrants an unappealable ban.
learning active listening and rhetorical analysis is a much broader topic than this little post can cover, and you’ll need both tools to be able to sort fact from motive from feeling from bullshit. some small notes however:
assume both parties are telling the truth as it pertains to them; look for actual events, and understand how and why each party has taken something different from the events
do not lie about playing both sides of the field, but:
be friendly with all sides, assume or at least act as if their side is valid
examine motives. typically, a target’s only motive is to remain. if they demand a retributive ban against the crusader, it is a bad sign.
contact external sources, but be aware that doing so may wake more dragons
the most important thing to remember about a crusade is that it never backs down. a legitimate warning is not always private, calm, specific, and ultimately ambivalent about the outcome, but they often are. remember, a crusade’s point is not to defend. it does not take “no” for an answer, the crusaders become defensive if you say you aren’t convinced or need time to think, they do not settle for a compromise solution, and they will block you on discord if you call them out for publicly airing private drama.
their crusade is not limited to the interaction they had with you. they will continue it in many forms. they will assume maliciousness in any of the target’s opinions; some may legitimately be bad or in some way -phobic or -ist opinions, but often they have nothing to do with the target’s supposed bad deeds. they will crash other admins’ dms. they will spread rumors. they will fail to respect privacy. they will vague about the target’s bad takes on tumblr, then block you when you call them out.
in a crusader’s mind, the target can never be redeemed.
this, as we all know, is false. we are all bad people sometimes, and when we are isolated from kindness in our favorite places, we cannot improve or move on.
prguitarman
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jacobvanloon
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