We’ve been having issues recently with some people who have gotten to feel excluded from the core of the guild. Mostly they’re people who are more likely to become defensive when others speak to them. The person I’m going to talk about today is one of these people. He’s called olbida. He’s not at all a troll (those will come later), but he does take offense very easily, and as I have not been able to spend time reassuring him and things have been building up, he’s extremely extremely sensitive now.

Now, some background on him. I do not view him as a very strong player at this moment. He makes more mechanics mistakes than I would like and his numbers need improving. However, as far as I’ve seen, when I talked to him before, he’s more than willing to put in the hard work to become more of an assets. But he is sensitive and easily defensive and is likely to want to shift blame away from himself. But if I’m careful not to trigger him when I talk to him, he’s open to my suggestions and will work to improve. Or at least he was before, I don’t know if by now he’s so upset that he won’t be willing to anymore. This is the negative side of him, from the perspective of the guild. The positive side is the following: for whatever he has recognized that our guild needs he has worked hard for. Be it getting traits by grinding on multiple specs and toons, making multiple specs and toons available to us, or donating to the guild bank, or just bring uber reliable and there for us whenever he is needed as long as he feasibly can at all. When a ton of people left and it looked like we may not succeed any longer, Olbida was there for us every step of the way. Knowing that just one person less could ruin us, he never allowed us to worry that he wouldn’t be there. When I was at my darkest and suicidal, it was people like him who were my very tiniest beacons of hope.

So, today, someone asked an unrelated person called Sautoire-Sargeras from Currently Online to message him saying “you suck”, and other such harassment. After awhile, this person told Olbida “sorry for what I wrote earlier, Tiffanie told me to write it”. Tiffanie is our guild officer, literally the person who took charge of pulling our guild together when it was on the brink of dying, and as such plays a big role in helping me become less suicidal (my plan before was to disband the guild then commit suicide).

So what are these people doing with trying to emotionally destroy one person who was already in a bad emotional state, and at the same time perform a character assassination of another person who is doing her best to keep me from committing suicide? What are they trying to accomplish? These trolls aren’t even some random teenager who doesn’t know any of us outside of seeing us on YouTube. These are people who intimately know us and know that olbida is in a particularly rough situation. Most internet trolls, at least they can hide behind the excuse of not being personally connected with those they troll, not aware that these people being trolled are actual human beings. But whomever did this knows us, has talked to us, interacted with us, is or was part of our guild. Has seen me pour out my flesh and blood for this guild, and is not actively, using planning and finding people, to act in a way that accomplishes nothing other than to sow discord in our guild. They are essentially people who will come up with an execute a scheme to hurt and ruin those who have done nothing but try to treat them well. They are people who willingly try to devastate people they know and have talked to, and who as far as I can see have done nothing at all to deserve this, and who have always tried to do their best by them.

I’ve known there are psychopaths who really just don’t care if they hurt those who treat them well. How is this action any different? I would not feel nearly as shocked if it was a random internet troll. I’m shocked because it’s a person who knows us as human beings, performing an action that is designed purely to hurt us.