Hey there, NPH, could I please get some advice from you? I'm running a group and someone asked about whether or not problematic faces will be allowed. I don't want to say yes because then the community will come to the illogical conclusion that because I allow those faces, I endorse their ideology. However, I don't want to say no, because then I have to go down the rabbit hole of every single problematic FC that comes up. What would you do?
(anon about problematic faces) Any advice you could offer would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!
Yeah, that’s definitely a dilemma that a lot of people have to muddle through. I mean, heck, my own FC blog has over 4,000 FCs - if I were to keep track of the behavior of over 4,000 people in their interviews and social media and such, I would lose my mind (and probably wear out the battery on my time machine, because that’s the only way I could possibly keep up).
This is one that’s going to be tough for me to address because I know how intense the RPC can get about these things; I’m going to turn off my anon option for a while after answering this question. But the thing is, you’re right about the rabbit hole thing. I see celebs on my dashboard constantly having PSAs and “your fav is problematic” posts made about them, and they seem to feel that all problematic behavior is created equal.
Now, let me make this perfectly clear: I do not ever think that the problematic things that these celebs do are okay. They’re not. When someone, say, makes a racist tweet or sexist comment, they are in the wrong. That’s not up for debate, and I’m not saying it should be excused.
However, I think a lot of people in the RPC forget what the outside world is like. And not in the sense of “oh, you’re being overly sensitive, you need to grow thicker skin, and so on and so forth”.
I mean in the sense that pretty much everyone has grown up completely surrounded by problematic behavior that everyone just accepted as the norm. People everywhere are out there making racist jokes and ableist remarks and using homophobic slurs and enforcing gender roles and just being toxic. And that influences you.
Hell, even I had some pretty backwards views for a lot of my life that are embarrassing and revolting to me now. For example, and this is something I regret, but up until I was in college, I was very against same-sex marriage. Looking back I can realize what an idiotic and close-minded standpoint it was, but the thing is, I had spent my whole life growing up in a rural small town in Indiana where 90% of the town is related to each other and people are so set in their ways that a couple of the Lutheran churches in town still hold their services in German. And until I left for college, I had never heard any other viewpoint in person.
Not being problematic isn’t a matter of just being a good person - it’s about having to un-learn all of the problematic views that have been drilled into you practically since birth.
Which isn’t impossible, certainly. If you put the time in to actually learn about these matters that you were ignorant about before, you can get turned back the right direction. But it’s not an easy undertaking, especially when you’re constantly being bombarded by these sorts of things. I mean, I’m still un-learning, and more likely than not, I’m still going to screw up; it’s a question of whether or not I’m willing to learn from my mistakes, acknowledge that I was wrong, and grow.
So, a lot of times, the problematic behavior I see from celebrities aren’t them being intentionally malicious, but just ignorant. And no, ignorance isn’t okay - at times ignorance is more dangerous than malice - but it’s often less a reflection of their morality, and more that of the surrounding environment.
Now, this isn’t the case for ongoing or extreme problematic behavior. No one has been bombarded since childhood with varying opinions about whether abuse or sexual assault are okay (spoiler alert: they’re not, and everyone knows it), so if they do something like that, that’s all on them, and they are bad people. And if someone has made constant and repeated offensive statements, then they would have had ample opportunity to see the backlash and learn what they did wrong, so if they’re willingly choosing to ignore that, that makes them bad people too.
So those are the ones who I would be more careful about. For so many of the others, well, although of course the problematic behavior is, well, problematic, that doesn’t automatically mean that they’re bad people, or that you should dislike and stop supporting them. It means they were wrong, they messed up, but they can still un-learn.
As for the others, from a couple paragraphs ago, because there are thousands upon thousands of celebrities and faceclaims out there, it would be incredibly unreasonable for the admins to be able to keep track of the real lives of all of them and have an exhaustive list of faceclaims to ban. Instead, ask your roleplayers to use their best judgment in selecting an FC the group will be comfortable roleplaying with, and if you do know that an FC someone has applied with has exhibited extreme or ongoing problematic behavior, address it with the applicant. But you don’t need to take it upon yourself to run a full background check on every FC - all that is, is a great way to eat up all of your time and make yourself miserable.
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turnnoffyourmind
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