Quote:No one is innocent of letting their biases dictate which RP they choose to pursue...or not.
This is an odd statement for me because with me it's only partially true. I honestly don't RP with people who meet my asshole bias. What decides mostly who I don't RP with is their player and their behavior towards others more than their characters. If I know someone's an asshole, tends to shit talk about people, fuck people over, don't play reindeer games with them because they're snobbish, cliquish, etc. I don't really want to roleplay with them. No matter how lore compliant or cool their characters are or how many people say they're awesome.
The only bias I have against actual characters or character ideas are ones that are made to make fun of minorities, groups, or sexualities specifically. So I suppose in a sense this statement is true for me, but it kind of errs into common sense territory in that regard. But I'm also quite open minded otherwise. I've gotten into RP with ERP-centric/focused characters before, and turned it via conversation and interaction into normal everyday RP, because even if someone's specifically looking for one thing, it doesn't mean they eschew the other, if you can turn it in that direction. Through effort and attention, a lot can be done. News on that at eleven. But, that brings me to my view.
The problem is, in this community I've noticed, a lot of simply judging or being personally biased turns into shaming, mocking, and shit-talking. It's one thing to say that something isn't up to your standards, but it seems to be that a lot of people want to roleplay police and use 'the community standard' as their Captain America shield. I've seen a lot of threads asking about something, and while it starts as constructive discussion, certain individuals tend to come in and just bash the unholy hell out of someone's concept or idea and state why they're wrong as fact rather than opinion, then shut down any arguments or facts to the contrary and sit on their soapbox, calling them selfish, or lazy, or other such things. That's more than a standard, that's being intolerant.
The amount of close-mindedness generally has nothing to do with actual standards, and everything to do with heavy biases or past experiences that went sour. These things are different. For example. Someone may be playing a world-hopper. (This seems to be a hot topic.) Instead of interacting with this person IC and thus, IC deciding that maybe this person is crazy, which is very viable, they instead decide to never RP with this person, who outside of the character idea they may not like otherwise may very well be an excellent roleplayer. But the moment someone hits another person's bias meter, they never want to RP with that person, even if they run into another character of theirs that may be entirely lore compliant.
The thing about having standards is that standards aren't always able to be met by everyone, and when people tend to bunch into groups, as people are wont to do, it cuts people out that otherwise would be fun to play with. Standards often also tend to create tension as much as doing any weeding out, especially I've noticed, with people that hug lore like a bible, despite the fact the lore has a lot of holes and inconsistencies at times. That, and this community has some of the worst standards of character idea tolerance I've come across in my 20+ years of roleplay. Don't get me wrong; I have seen worse, but this is in the top 10 by far. If I had a dollar for every instance of the words 'edgy' or 'special snowflake' uttered casually by people in a snide fashion at some just asking for opinions, I'd be sitting on Trump money.
There are some accepting people. I've met some. But I also see a lot of judgment. And I don't mean casual judgment based on standards, or 'I don't agree with this idea, but best of luck'. I mean snobbery, mockery, and disdain before they ever get a chance to interact with someone more than once or twice. I agree with OP to some extent. It is good to be open minded and not be judgmental. And I disagree to some point; we are allowed to have our own standards because we do want to have fun and not have our time wasted. But I also know some people will sit in their own corners, play in their sandboxes, and pull a George Lucas and kick all the toys out they don't like and say 'my sandbox'. And that makes me a little sad. I think we should all be a little more accepting and open, or at the very least, not be complete douche canoes about it when we don't like something. Giving someone a chance may indeed waste your time. But you might also be pleasantly surprised. You never know.
Just my two gil.
![[Image: ihatehim2.jpg]](http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc129/Inverse_Entropy/ihatehim2.jpg)
