I'm a very firm believer in the idea that anyone who goes on the Internet has an obligation to become their own filter. Ignore the bits you don't like, pick out the parts that you do. If you see something you don't like, pay it no mind and move on, which is exactly what I do. Powerplayers, absurd lore breakers, people ICly calling my character out for bullshit reasons, whatever you can think of. They are perfectly free to play whatever character they want however they'd like, in the same way that I am perfectly free to retcon them out of existence for my own convenience and sanity.
You could make the reasonable argument that this is exceptionally close-minded of me, and that by doing this I am removing the arguably most intriguing part of online role play--that is, new situations emerging and new characters spontaneously making themselves known, forcing me to adapt and improvise. You wouldn't be wrong. That said, I'm a working adult. I consider my time to be quite valuable. I have better things to do than wasting seconds of my life acknowledging or dismissing the latest half-primal son of Bahamut or Alphinaud's ex-boyfriend or the secret black ops assassin of the Scions whose name is only written in the margins of discarded middle school lab notebooks or outdated issues of The Punisher.
At one point I used to be more than willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and to roll with the punches--however, years and years on the Internet has taught me that there is absolutely no quality control, and that if you give an inch of exception, people will gleefully take a mile. So at the most, I'll humour them with one or two superficial sentences of affirmation or vaguely apathetic brushing-off and then continue on my merry way.
You could make the reasonable argument that this is exceptionally close-minded of me, and that by doing this I am removing the arguably most intriguing part of online role play--that is, new situations emerging and new characters spontaneously making themselves known, forcing me to adapt and improvise. You wouldn't be wrong. That said, I'm a working adult. I consider my time to be quite valuable. I have better things to do than wasting seconds of my life acknowledging or dismissing the latest half-primal son of Bahamut or Alphinaud's ex-boyfriend or the secret black ops assassin of the Scions whose name is only written in the margins of discarded middle school lab notebooks or outdated issues of The Punisher.
At one point I used to be more than willing to give people the benefit of the doubt and to roll with the punches--however, years and years on the Internet has taught me that there is absolutely no quality control, and that if you give an inch of exception, people will gleefully take a mile. So at the most, I'll humour them with one or two superficial sentences of affirmation or vaguely apathetic brushing-off and then continue on my merry way.
