(10-07-2017, 11:40 AM)Zen Ares Wrote: One thing I've learned through 20 years of RPing is that a red flag in one person may not be a red flag in another person. Human beings are so complex! And there are no two people alike in the world. It boils down to my preferences and perspective as to whether I'll get on with someone, and how our little "crazy patterns" do with each other.Â
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There are people out there bent on maliciousness, stalking and other sociopathic(...) behaviors, and when you come across one of these people, if you're in tune with yourself, you'll get the biggest NOPE feeling crawling down your spine and little alarm bells going off in your head saying, DON'T ENGAGE, RUN AWAY. Thankfully they're not as abundant as they once were, since more victims are stepping forward and naming names. But always listen to that inner voice when engaging people, even if you can't explain it.
This is what it comes down to for me. Although it's not a rare occurrence for me to avoid meeting up with someone a second time for RP due to red flags, I found I had trouble pinning down exactly what those flags were for me in the form of concrete, universal rules that I could post in this thread... and I think Zen put a finger on why I was struggling.
So many of my "red flags" are about recognising patterns I know from past experiences. I haven't RP'd in "grown up" communities for quite as many years as Zen on account of only having existed for 24, but it's honestly been almost as long, and I've learned a lot of hard lessons in that time about who not to associate with. It feels like a cop-out for me to say "I just have an intuition", but that's basically what it is.
One important thing, though - knowing when to listen to that intuition and when to disregard it can be just as difficult to learn as developing it is, especially if you've been through some really bad experiences like I have. But it's just as important for your enjoyment of any given community.
A big one for me is separating someone's mannerisms from their actions. I frequently meet people who remind me in one way or another of people who've treated me badly in the past, and I have to be very careful to dissect why they do. Is it just because they structure their sentences in a similar way, or use similar emoticons? If so, it's in my best interests for me to recognise the irrational fear for what it is, and work through it. On the other hand, is it because (for example) they're pushing boundaries and then playing it off like a joke when I object? Because in that case, it's probably in my best interests to heed my instincts and slow-fade.
And I do prefer the slow-fade in the huge majority of circumstances. When I'm pulling back not necessarily because they're explicitly doing something horribly wrong, but merely because I'm noting signs that they might do in the future... I see no reason to make it a big blow-out.
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