The Stoa

The Stoa - Censorship is not debatable.

2025-07-29T21:52:45+00:00

Censorship is not debatable.

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - Evelyn Beatrice Hall

I originally wanted to make a longer post; there were a lot of angles I wanted to explore, and maybe I still will at some point. However, for now, the only way I feel right saying this is to keep it short and to the point. Censorship is not debatable.

Everyone has their own definition of what is and isn't ok. What is or isn't too far, or too sexual, or too depraved, or too obscene. Everyone has their own level of comfort, and their own traumas, their own phobias. There is no solid definition of what should be censored that a majority of people can reasonably agree on. If you're reading this right now and trying to think of specifics, you've already missed the point.

There is no bureau of contexts, there isn't a person sitting in a government office stamping the seal of approval on the story that talks in detail about being a rape survivor while denying the story that contains the implication of rape. There isn't a person writing the "cartoony swirly-eyed hypnosis mind control is acceptable when conducted between cartoon animals" clause. There is all or nothing. Each time something is censored, it creates a precedent that is used for the next thing, and the next thing, and so on. If there's still something you're thinking about that you feel should be illegal, chances are there's already a law against making it.

The content you consume is on you. You are responsible for what you listen to, watch, read, and play. It is OK to set your own boundaries for content you refuse to engage in, and it is OK if things make you uncomfortable. Ideally, you should try and challenge your views and push those boundaries when you can, but at a pace you are comfortable with. With children, it is up to the parents to make these decisions. In an ideal world, a parent should be able to discuss serious topics with their children, which includes media. Shielding a child from every possible "offensive" thing in the world until they're 18 has and will only continue to create 18 year-olds who have their entire world view shattered suddenly, and are unprepared for topics like consent or communication.

If the point of censorship was to protect children, then the same care and attention would be given towards homelessness, school shootings and violence, mental health, hunger, parental resources, and poverty.

Being uncomfortable with a subject should not give anyone the authority to censor it for others. Telling people not to engage in an idea does not make the idea dissappear. It is a pointless effort that only serves to punish "dissenters" and innocent people. A comtemporary example of this is how FOSTA-SESTA, a law meant to curb sex trafficking ultimately made it more dangerous for sex workers by removing access to online safety resources while actually limiting the tools used by law enforcement to seek out victims of sex trade.

I personally follow a simple rule. In a real life scenario, all parties engaged in an activity should be able to consent and have done so. It's that simple. Art is different, art is fantasy. Once again, you may be thinking about certain things when I mention fantasy, again, I will argue that censors don't care. They don't care about exceptions; they don't care about context. Fantasy or not.

Censors don't care if feederism is a consentual act of bodily harm. They don't care that the A in ABDL stands for "adult." And they don't care when their actions put groups like queer youth at dangerous risk.

The last one is significant because like Steam or Itch, the censorship on their end is almost like an overreaction. The laws are so vague, broad, and confusing that it becomes safer to comply and ban everything. With the UK age verification law, American companies are forced to comply and set up invasive age verification tools, as well as adopt a "supervision plan" on how to handle vaguely defined problematic content. What is to stop any country from implementing similar laws that everyone needs to comply with. The UK isn't the only place; there are plenty of laws pending or getting pushed to accomplish the same thing. It may be easy to circumvent these tools, but that will just lead into the next step.

At the end of the day, censorship only ever exists to serve an agenda. It is used to punish people for ideas. You may reasonably be sitting here thinking it is OK when a racist get censored, and I am going to agree. But it doesn't make the racism go away. Are you against the genocide in Gaza? You may be considered an antisemite! Do you draw knots in your furry porn? Sorry buddy, you're a zoophile. Do you think trans youth should have access to gender-affirming resources? Wow, I didn't know a pedophile was reading this.

According to the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation, and Technology, Peter Kyle (What does that sound like to you?), a member of the Labour Party say, and I quote:

"If you want to overturn the Online Safety Act you are on the side of predators. It is as simple as that."

The Stoa - Who goes there?

2025-05-25T08:42:22+00:00

Who goes there?

What this article is and is not.

This article is about my personal perception of an emotional cost related to running a community and how my experiences as a community manager have led me to accumulate a vast knowledge of problematic, vile, and disturbing topics—and people—as their relevance to my role fluctuates. This is not meant to be a rant or a complaint. It isn’t meant to boast, or suggest that I’m more thick-skinned than others.

What this article is, simply put, is a reflection on my experiences as a community manager, particularly regarding my understanding of prejudicial terms, disturbing individuals, and toxic behavior.

The Burden of Knowledge

Everyone will experience a varying degrees of trauma in their lives. The loss of the loved ones, terrifying events, and so on. Many people will encounter deception by those close to them, or perhaps deal with the shock of learning that someone they looked up to has secretly been harboring terrible beliefs that go against your values or the values of your peers. People will get hurt, and every time they get hurt, they carry that pain in ways they may never notice. You might find yourself—once a vibrant, social person—suddenly weary of where you spend your energy. Less interested in talking or meeting new people, and may not understand why.

The point is, I want to emphasize that none of what I will be saying here is unique, just different. These things may be more familiar among fellow community managers, activists, organizers, and so on. Effectively, a trait among those whose lives involve managing large groups of people.

Historically, unless you found yourself in a role like or similar to those above, you generally never really pushed your attention outside of your circle. You didn't know or care about what happened in a different city or town. Had absolutely zero idea of what happened in a different country unless a traveler told you about it. Newspapers and TV, while informative, are still so new compared to how long humans have been organizing themselves.

But nothing has ever compared to the power of the internet. In just a couple decades, we suddenly can see what's happening virtually everywhere. And today, like it or not, we will know what is happening. Our circle of awareness has exploded into an unstable mess of celebrity drama, political discussions, endless arguments and 24/7 news. Chances are, the only people you really care about are still pretty few, you may loosely follow along with what's going on in the world, but it's more than likely you're up to date only because a youtuber with a nice voice caught you up while you ate lunch.

But for those like that list of roles I mentioned above, our roles require us to understand more. What is happening in our community, our pride, our schools, our local government, our chatrooms, our forums, our discords. Who did what, who said that, what stupid law is being talked about now.

Patterns of Harm

Over the years of running my community, I've picked up countless stories with the hundreds upon hundreds of people I've interacted with. Most of them good, but there's an untold number of experiences with people that wind up sour. How many people have I banned for being racist? How many people were aggressively anti-social? How many of them wanted to bother me or my friends because we're being queer in our own corner. How many times could you tell me a person's name, and I might have replied with, "Oh, them? I'm not too fond of them, because (insert reason here)". How many of those times were people I have only ever interacted with once, but left such a bad first impression, that's all they forever are to me?

But I have to know them, and what they've done, or might do. I have a community to protect, and there's always someone lurking in the shadows trying to do something to it. I really need to know if this person coming in for the first time is going to shout something racist!

Racism is a surprisingly difficult topic, it's very easy to condense it down to "we ban people who are racist". Most of the time, it's really easy to know when someone is doing that! But sometimes it isn't. There are a lot of ways people can be racist, a lot of terms, nicknames, seemingly innocent contexts, dog-whistles, etc. In order to keep vile people away from our community, it comes with the burden of knowing what to look for. As time passes and things change, words change, and that requires staying up to date on everything.

Dogwhistles, as I mentioned above, are a wild concept on their own. If you're unaware, a dogwhistle is when something is said or an action performed that seems absolutely innocent. It might be a completely ordinary term or phrase. However, there may be a hidden context inside, only those "in the know" (like how only dogs hear the whistle) understand, but you might not. That's a dogwhistle. The idea is that they can be used by trolls to try and identify each other. The ulterior motive is to make anyone calling them out appear crazy.

Here's an example; I once overheard a commercial that my father was watching. A certain pillow salesman was advertising a sale in which they offered a product for the price of $14.88. If you're unaware, 14/88 is understood to be a white supremacist symbol. 14 being the "14 Words" slogan, which I will not repeat here. The second is 88, which stands for "Heil Hitler". This is because H is the 8th letter of the alphabet. Thus, these two together can be seen as a hate symbol.

When I attempted to tell my father this information, and that pillow salesman surely didn't just accidentally price his product an unusual number for a sale, he accused me of just trying to start something and that the entire concept sounded made up. Now, I don't think my father was out to gaslight me in this instance, but trying to make others appear crazy is a tactic that people will do.

And this doesn't stop with racism. Homophobes, transphobes, animal abusers or simply all "trolls" may use these tricks to invade and destroy communities. Keeping up with these tactics demands constant vigilance, learning, and emotional resilience. Why is this term offensive, what did this person do and why are they disliked, why do these people believe the things they do, etc.

Why Vigilance Matters

It can be exhausting, each new person that walks in can potentially be your next headache, and it's a constant fight not to lose yourself to the paranoia that perhaps every single person is out to get you. You may perhaps worry about how far someone will take something if you have ban them or what can they do to retaliate. Vulnerable communities like queer spaces often need to be extremely vigilant to protect themselves from bad actors. They can come in the form of people intentionally trying to burn the community down, but they can also come from government interaction, or even their own members who end up engaging in vile acts.

Cliques of people form, united by sick desires or interests. It's a corruption that spreads to chats, to communities, to conventions. Education is the first step to fighting it. To see what is going on, who is doing what, who is friends with whom, it requires a lot of attention and the right charisma not to come off like the person who cried wolf. These memories weigh you down, you remember them forever. You remember each person you thought was nice that turned out to be awful. You remember the friend groups that were ruined by a single person, you remember all of the times you didn't see something and found out too late.

Again, these concepts aren't new or unique, but what is new is that our view of the world is incalculably bigger now than it has been ever in the history of civilization. We are bombarded with constant, up to the minute news from places we never would have heard about in our entire lifetime before the internet. A tragedy comes from the lack of action. Constantly hearing about who did what burns people out, they're not interested in callout post #5345. Some people defend those accused purely because they disagree with how internet justice works. It can be a special kind of exhausting knowing that people are getting away with things simply because there aren't enough people that care. That alone can be enough to make you think you're crazy.

A quote I once heard that has stuck with me was "If this is pointless, then we should be able to deal with it easily. If we can't even do that, what hope do we have against the serious stuff.", I still to this day don't really know how I feel about it, but the older I get and the lack of conclusions I see for most events, the more I think about it.

Coping With the Cost

Like everyone else, I am the product of my experiences. Shaped into the person I am today not only by my own actions, but including the actions of others. I love the person I’ve become, and I am proud of the work I’ve done—but I carry the weight of everyone who left a scar on me as they passed through my community.

I’m always watching, always learning, always protecting. I sometimes wish I didn’t have to know as much as I do. Some days, I hear a word or phrase that reminds me of soemthing vile or see a name I wish I could forget. But I can’t. I still hesitate when new people try to get close. I have to wonder what they might be up to. But I remind myself: most people are good. Most people mean well. I try to stay open. I try to keep talking.

The Stoa - I am no longer using Twitter.

2024-08-08T19:03:57+00:00

I am no longer using Twitter.

This is a personal post; I may move it to my personal website later and will create a redirect here if I do so.

Edit: 8/8/2024 I have edited this post to now say that I will instead be scaling back my usage of Twitter. My plans remain the same, I will start with my primary account and slowly move over others, however I will state on each of my intentions to post less. Only hours after my initial annoucement, the tragic news of the passing of Furaffinity owner Dragoneer prompted me to immediately return to share my feelings.

As of today, I am scaling back my usage of Twitter. I will start with my personal account (@rowedahelicon) and slowly move others over. As an alternative, I will continue using BlueSky and Mastodon.

I have been on the internet for a very long time, and I am no stranger to the trouble associated with moving away from a large social network entirely. Trying to move away invokes an issue where people will not move to a quiet platform if there is no one there, and no one is there because no one will move. It grounds a lot of people in a handful of places, but there is always a breaking point; people don't use Skype over Discord much these days! In the case of Twitter in particular, I've seen numerous events since it was purchased by Elon Musk claiming that it is dying or will be dead in a given time.

Again, having lived through numerous cases of this scenario, I have retained a healthy skepticism that things are truly "over"; Twitter is still technically around, right? However, today's announcement that X Corp. has filed a lawsuit with the Global Alliance for Responseable Media makes me question if this actually is the beginning of the end. Since Twitter was sold, there has been a reduction in features, a reduction in quality (media failing to play, posts failing to load, etc.), a tremendous rise in bot/scam activity, and most dreadfully, a dramatic increase in racist, transphobic, vile, and otherwise disruptful activity.

Elon's attempt at making a platform for free speech has failed, and this lawsuit only signifies (to me) that rather than look inward, they are choosing to believe they are being victimized and punished for their efforts, rather than acknowledge that advertisers do not want their ads placed next to fascist rhetoric. I've never been too optimistic that a drastic cleanup would ever occur, but like many other fellow artists and content creators, I rely on communal spaces to help gather support for our efforts and projects. However, I can safely say that I genuinely believe this could end in the company's ruin, and I would like to focus my attention more on the two alternatives I have listed above rather than continue to sift through garbage content and scams in my DMs.

My input means little, but I at least hope this may encourage others to see things as I do and consider making the move elsewhere, even if they have a temporary reduction in their reach. I've already been cross-posting all of my content between the three places for a while; I even wrote my own tool to do so! If the day comes that Twitter's ownership is exchanged back into the hands of a capable individual, I will return.

The Stoa - The Baseball Analogy

2024-02-21T08:12:47+00:00

The Baseball Analogy

This is an off-topic post. I am currently working on my first big article, and it has turned out to be a much larger task than I anticipated. Today, I will share with you an analogy I came up with a long time ago that I used to attempt to recite often.

Here is some quick context: There is a term often used in Team Fortress 2: friendly. A friendly player is basically a player who is intentionally not contributing to core game play; instead, they are goofing off, acting silly, etc.

The opposite end of a player who is doing nothing could be called a “tryhard”’: a term for a player who effectively is taking the game too seriously.

In my Team Fortress 2 community, our servers can only hold 24 players at a given time. During peak traffic, these spots are coveted by members of the community, who will sometimes wait until a spot opens up. Because of this demand, one of our rules is that we don’t allow “friendly players” when the server is at maximum capacity. Additionally, they are not allowed to be friendly if the result of their doing so is throwing their team off balance. For example, if the teams are something like 7 versus 8, but the team with 7 players contains a friendly, meaning it is actually 6 versus 8.

When these events occur, we will typically start by quickly asking the offending player to please participate and explain why, based on what criteria makes sense. This almost always results in the offending player being offended. Not understanding our perspective or accusing us of being tryhards.

After repeated instances of this occurring, I came up with the baseball analogy. I’d like to think that the way we operate our servers is more comparable to a game of baseball. Baseball is a sport that can be played competitively in a professional setting, similar to video games. But it can also be played non-competitively for fun, charity, a school activity, etc.

The idea is that it is fun when everyone is just having fun. While there isn’t much expectation of being great, at least everyone is doing their best and playing the game. A friendly activity wouldn’t be so enjoyable if you had a person randomly walking around the field, disrupting it for everyone, and then getting upset when being asked to move aside. Conversely, in the context of tryhards, it wouldn’t be so fun to be playing a casual game where one person (or someone’s parent) is taking things far too seriously.

An important detail is that there are definitely scenarios where these variations of behavior are OK. There are times when you can casually go for a stroll on a baseball diamond, and there are times where a team is working together for a very serious victory. That is the joy of having the freedom to approach a game like Team Fortress 2 in the way you want to play, because there are options out there for anyone.

These variations in behavior aren’t a problem; no one in these scenarios is automatically bad because they choose to do things differently. However, in these defined contexts, they do not always mesh together. These groups of people may not get along during a specific scenario, and that is OK.

We don’t want to punish friendly players or tryhards if we can help it, but sometimes our baseball field isn’t right for their game.

The Stoa - Preamble

2024-01-26T21:24:54+00:00

Preamble

The purpose of this post is to give you an introduction to me, my thoughts, and my goals. I am not a writer, nor do I usually feel confident trying to articulate my thoughts. My hope is that by elucidating myself, I'll provide enough understanding so you and others may follow along with my goals.

History

My name is Rowedahelicon. I am a furry, an illustrator, a programmer, a webdev, a computer nerd, a gamer, a community organizer, a public speaker, and whatever else seems relevant here. I've been playing games since I was 4, a computer user since I was 6, and an internet denizen since I was around 10. I grew up in the 90s and got to experience the wildest cultural shift known to modern humans. In the real world, I grew up like many nerds did in this period, lonely and perpetually confused. That said, I also grew up in a cozy small town where it was pretty normal to know everyone who worked anywhere. The town full of families with rich histories and a cooperative culture.

In 2005, when I turned 13, I got a Sony PSP for my birthday. That PSP led me to create an account on the (now defunct) Sony Playstation Underground forums; it also led me to discover console modding via homebrew software and hardware disassembly. The PSU was a delightful community; it helped teach me about all sorts of things, I made all sorts of friends, and I even discovered I was a furry (confirmed by my friend Collin, whom I met there).

It was the first community I was apart of and the first time I witnessed the death of one. Sony had come in, rebranded it all, ruined the charm, and eventually ruined the community. It went from a social hangout to a free help desk.

In 2010, almost immediately after I turned 18, I started up a TF2 server with some friends. That server turned into what is known today as Southern Cross Gaming. SCG has since become a tremendous part of my life; it has been the catalyst for almost all of the work I do and the skills I have. It's where I have met almost all of my friends, and it is almost the entire motivation for this blog.

SCG has helped my life in ways I cannot fully comprehend. Those apart of it have graced me with similar stories about how it it has helped them. Over these years, we have watched as gaming has shifted away from a social focus and on to a more serious and competitive one, all while trying to sell players virtually anything they can get away with trying to monetize. Because SCG (and, by proxy, TF2) has had the influence it has on me, I chose to start this blog to raise concerns over how things are headed and give perspective on alternatives.

My goals

My goal for this blog is simple: I want people to "consider community." The internet was founded by nerds, geeks, and other such culturalists, many of whom never felt quite right in traditional society. Early BBS pages, chat rooms, forums, etc. All pooled together into this massive social ecosystem never before seen in the history of humanity. For the first time, people of all races, religions, backgrounds, and more were able to get together to discuss, share ideas, and learn about each other directly without the typical cultural or physical barriers. The internet has organic languages and cultures of its own, which are comparable to any other major cultural collection throughout history.

From the very beginning, the internet was never taken too seriously. The idea of internet friends and relationships was mystifying and considered fake. News broadcasts around the world carefully tiptoed around this scary idea of "the email." But in almost no time at all, between governments and companies all shoving themselves in and cleaning things up, the internet we know today has infested virtually every single aspect of our lives. The nerds have gone back into hiding, and the forums have closed down. The once abundant humble internet spaces were replaced with "social media." Advertising engines that feed off of discourse and manipulation that are packed with unclear rules and boundaries and faceless robotic moderation that will penalize your account for unknown reasons.

I am realistic. I know we're likely never to be rid of these larger entities; I'm not on a mission to try and corral the entire internet into tiny forums. I simply want people to understand that the internet is a powerful place where anyone is equally capable of building or finding a community where they are accepted and treated just like anyone else would be. While I understand this idea could apply to those with harmful ideologies, it equally applies to those with positive ones, and I'd like to believe that if more people had places where they were accepted, there would be less motivation to take those places away from others.

Just know that anyone has the potential to start a website or host a mastodon instance, you all have the power, use it! Discord is not a safe replacement for forums, and your favorite Reddit communities do not belong to the people who run them. The work I put in gave me a second family; a group of people who understand and support me, a home away from home. I want others to have the freedom to find this joy; either creating it themselves or being able to take part in someone else's.

Because my experiences focus around gaming and Team Fortress 2, it is a subject I will touch upon from time to time; however, I hope to do so in a way that could be easily understood by those who have never even touched a video game.

Focus Points

The blog will focus on the following subjects.

Community
Digital / Internet Communities
Internet History
Team Fortress 2 / Valve (This is where most of my experience has come from)

I thank you kindly for reading through this page, and I hope to retain your interest as I continue to write on this blog. I will eventually try and carry my writings to a podcast. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to reach out to me!

The Stoa - Inspirational Quotes and Events

2024-01-15T20:31:38+00:00

Inspirational Quotes and Events

Quote: Megan Mallow

This is a quote from Megan Mallow spoken in the documentary WeWork: Or the Making and Breaking of a $47 Billion Unicorn that I found quite fascinating.

There's a lot of really special elements about WeWork that I hope continue to last. Like, especially as we sit in this time of covid and we're, you know, people are working from home, and, you know, I, myself, have been inside, mostly inside for, you know, months and months. And it is on the days that I get to interact with other people that I come home and I'm like "Wow, that was a fulfilling day."

Community, I think has been taken piece by piece from our world for quite a while, like very slowly, and then now we are sitting literally in... in a pandemic of lack of interaction and I would give anything to like... be consumed with people again. This vision of us working together, to be better together, is lacking today. I think we need that.

We go back in time to the Greek town squares. It has existed forever. Community has existed forever. Because it's crucial to our survival as human beings. What are we if we don't have each other?