Sometimes I wonder how many people ask themselves this. Today in raid, shandare was again really great at working to keep morale up. And most people seemed to enjoy themselves. It was mentioned to me that raid seemed really happy today by completely unrelated people. But if people paid close attention and were able to see the raid chat window, they would have seen certain flare ups that happened today that were not at all happy. A few different people got upset today and basically threw tantrums. Either they raged at themselves or raged at others, but one way or another they behaved in a way that caused everyone else to feel uncomfortable and awkward. And I wonder, do they even realize that in their own moments of anger, they are causing problems to many other people that have nothing to do with their anger?

The big question that I’ve been thinking about is, do people not have the bottom line of never allowing themselves to needlessly hurt others?

There are many times when I have gotten upset, and we all know when we get upset we behave in ways that we regret. My whole life I have been working on this, and with time I have gotten decent at it. At least, though I have been upset for a month, I have never actively hurt others by lashing out because I was upset. No matter how much someone angers me, or treats me disrespectfully, or attacks me, I have never turned around and treated them badly.

An example is that recently I joined a pug, and the raid leader of that pug had an idea for where everyone should stand at a particular moment, but did not communicate it. When the moment came, he said he wanted us to kill some far away mobs, so I moved to those mobs to kill them. However, he wanted only ranged players to do it at the moment and not tanks or melee, but he did not communicate that either. Then, after I moved, he said that everything bad that happened after was caused by me and that I am “a jackass”. Now, I think this is a far more justifiable moment for me to get angry and show my anger than any other moment in any of syzygy’s raids. No matter how frustrated you can get that people are making mistakes that affect your play, or no matter how much you may be frustrated that shandare did not give your ideas as much consideration as you feel they deserved, none of that rises to quite the same level as the raid leader blaming you for all the problems unrelated to you, then calling you a jackass for not knowing what was in his mind, that he didn’t communicate. I am not the type to avoid conflict when I feel there is injustice, be it against me or anyone else. So my reaction was to say, angrily, “excuse me? I’m a jackass for moving even though you didn’t say I should not move?”, and his reply was “….yes.” This infuriated me even more. But. My bottom line is to not needlessly hurt others. If I got into a huge argument then and there, or rage quit, my actions would have affected about 20 other people that did not at all behave badly and do not deserve to bear the brunt of other people’s bad behavior. So once we finished the pull, I typed out something along the lines of “We are all human beings and no matter what happens we should always treat each other with respect, and even if you think I did something you didn’t want, that does not mean you should insult me and treat me in a demeaning manner.” I was still very angry at this time, but had calmed down enough to be able to type that out. And that was the extent of my reaction. I stayed until I had to leave, and throughout this several people in the pug privately messaged me to thank me, to commiserate with me, to apologize to me on behalf of that raid leader, etc.

In the moment I was called a jackass, did I want to rage and fight with the raid leader or quit the raid? Yes. Did I want to say that his behavior is what constitutes being a jackass? Yes. Did I want to say “fuck you”? Yes. But I didn’t. Because I have a bottom line, I will never think it’s ok to needlessly harm others no matter what I feel or want or even need in any moment. Any of the above actions would have impacted innocent bystanders by escalating the situation. The worst I do is withdraw my ability to help because I need to take care of myself, if my emotions are so strongly affected I am completely traumatized. And I know many people in my life who are like this, who, even when they are at the height of their emotions, almost never act on them without thinking through how there can be repercussions to others. Of course, we all fail at it sometimes, but it does not happen regularly, and then after we calm down we apologize.

So, it shocks me a bit to realize that there are also many people who do not seem to have this bottom line. When they feel they are treated unfairly, they do just give into their anger and escalate situations and cause problems for others. They don’t seem to care how uncomfortable they make others in their moments of anger. They don’t realize how much hurt or pain they can cause because of what they say and how they say it. They don’t think through how, in their moments of frustration, their actions can have all sorts of repercussions. Because of how these people behaved today, though for the most part on the surface we seemed happy and had a fun raid, there are now some more sensitive people who have become seriously uncomfortable. Maybe they will leave the guild. So a possible repercussion to these tantrums is that the guild leadership needs to spend all this extra time and effort to reassure and console those who feel uncomfortable, possibly end up dealing with worse progression if they leave, spend more time recruiting and dealing with morale, and on and on.

In their anger and frustration, they have hurt many innocent bystanders. Made many people uncomfortable, created even more headaches for a guild leadership that is now mentally and physically stretched thin because of the shit that happened before, and just all in all caused a bunch of trouble. I understand it’s hard to be considerate and empathic of others when we’re at the height of anger. It is also hard to stay calm and mature. But I think that in this world, when our words and actions affect many more people than just ourselves, we need to have bottom line that we cannot cross. We need to ask ourselves, “if I do this, will I hurt others?”