Passive Aggressive Emoji's plaguing the forums

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

I’ve seen suggestions to switch to upvote/downvote because people don’t like the confused emoji. However, look at Reddit. It has the proposed upvote/downvote system and people get bent out of shape about downvotes there. 

 

Basically, the confused emoji is a downvote variant and people dislike getting downvoted. You don’t need to make it deeper than that. Unless the forum only has upvotes people are going to complain about any “non positive” reactions. 

[DeceiverX.8361]

  

17 minutes ago, Silent.6137 said:

Here's the thing: What you wrote works in an ideal fotum where everyone follows conventions.

If you've read through all the comments, you'll see some of the reasons why the system is not really useful. A big reason why we keep getting threads on this topic. You can post a simple factual answer to a simple question from someone else and get a confused emoji from someone you had a debate with earlier. Best thing to do is get disable it, like some of us did through 3rd party apps. No emojis = no confusions.

Except they mostly do.  Which is why I pointed them out as such.  Unless it just so happens all of the competitive mode and professions forums and all of my responses to general feedback threads and most of the early responses in this thread all demonstrating similar behaviors for years is just mere coincidence...

In my thousands of posts here, almost all of them in terms of their emoji-responses follow a similar logic and convention.  I generally can identify who reacts to what and how based on responses in the thread as to who responds to other posts in the nearby timeframe, too.

I believe we call these "social norms."

 

[Hindenburg.3415]

6 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

You can show your disagreement or agreement without having to parrot what others already said. And that’s the better alternative, because forums would look way different without them. And not in a good way. Not sure what’s so difficult to understand about what I said. 

 

You can , sure but it's a meaningless action which adds nothing to discussion unless it's a vote of some sort as I said.

Not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

6 hours ago, Freya.9075 said:

Let me give you an example 👀

forums be like: 

1st person: -I think this is a good idea!

2nd person: -I do not because reason. 
3rd person: -I do not because same reason! 
4th person: -what they said ^

Wouldn’t it be a better solution if person 3 and 4 dislike the 1st persons post and like the 2nd persons post? Better than cluttering the forums with unneeded posts don’t you think? 

 

Person 3 and 4 can just move on if their opinion was already voiced.

[Linken.6345]

22 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

Person 3 and 4 can just move on if their opinion was already voiced.

No they cant since it shows more people have the same opinion.

[Freya.9075]

31 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

 

You can , sure but it's a meaningless action which adds nothing to discussion unless it's a vote of some sort as I said.

Not sure why this is so difficult to understand.

 

Person 3 and 4 can just move on if their opinion was already voiced.

Many people on the forums have a need to express their opinions. That’s why most of them are here. Do you really think they would just move on? It is not meaningless as they are able to express their opinion without parroting others. Which is enough for them to feel they are heard. It adds value to the topic by showing support and disagreement. If a post got 10 dislikes and 1 like it’s a good indicator to show what people think of the discussion. 

[Freya.9075]

4 hours ago, DexterousGecko.6328 said:

So make 'agree' emojis only then, they would serve all four people in that example. The 3rd and 4th person would simply 'agree' with the 2nd poster, the discussion would be civil, and the avoidance of confusion with the unclear confusion emojis.

Simply agreeing would not be enough as many people have the need to show their disagreement as well as agreement. Using the confusion reaction makes them able to say their part. And it’s vague enough to not stir too much in the pot. I don’t think sending confusion reactions would make a topic more toxic or uncivil as it just show how others feel about the topic. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by Freya.9075

[Silent.6137]

1 hour ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

  Except they mostly do.

What you're preaching is just the obvious. Which is what they were intended for and how they're supposed to work. Threads like this appear constantly on this forum because too often, it's not used that way. And this is upsetting to some as it creates confusions. It doesn't matter one iota if it's the "social norms" and if it works elsewhere if this system creates too many issues.  There's always a better system.

No emojis = No confusions.

[Hindenburg.3415]

53 minutes ago, Linken.6345 said:

No they cant since it shows more people have the same opinion.

 

And how exactly this is important ?

This is debate not voting.

 

42 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

Many people on the forums have a need to express their opinions. That’s why most of them are here. Do you really think they would just move on? It is not meaningless as they are able to express their opinion without parroting others. Which is enough for them to feel they are heard. It adds value to the topic by showing support and disagreement. If a post got 10 dislikes and 1 like it’s a good indicator to show what people think of the discussion. 

 

So you saying many people on forum act like children who have nothing to add to a conversation but still want to be "heard" ?

And as I said before "what people think of the discussion" is irrelevant if they have nothing to say.

This is debate not voting or something.

[Freya.9075]

6 minutes ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

So you saying many people on forum act like children who have nothing to add to a conversation but still want to be "heard" ?

And as I said before "what people think of the discussion" is irrelevant if they have nothing to say.

This is debate not voting or something.

Indeed. There are many in these forums acting like children, but what do you expect? This is online. I've seen 50 year olds acting like they are 12 and 16 year olds acting like they are 40. It's part of being human. Being mature is not something most of us are here as we can hide behind a screen. However, I would say many of these "children" posts in the forums and don't solely use reactions. Many times leaving it with "just reactions" is the mature thing to do. But that's a different topic.

Forums exists to express your opinions as well as debating or discussing topics. It is for the "irrelevance" to be heard and people to be able to say their part. It being "irrelevant" is your opinion and that's fine. It does not matter if you "vote" or take part of the discussion/debate as both are viable ways to express how you feel. 

[Ultramex.1506]

Wow....i worry about how people deal with the outside if  they feel "confused" emoji is a huge problem to them

[Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267]

36 minutes ago, Freya.9075 said:

Forums exists to express your opinions as well as debating or discussing topics. It is for the "irrelevance" to be heard and people to be able to say their part. It being "irrelevant" is your opinion and that's fine. It does not matter if you "vote" or take part of the discussion/debate as both are viable ways to express how you feel. 

Well here's the funny thing about debate. Very often a debate becomes onesided in someone's favor with the right manipulation skills. Less we forget about cancel culture, and the witch hunting it creates.

I bet if mukluk or any other Anet partner streamer get hit with allegations that are most likely false. You guys would jump at their throat at moment notice, and "Downvote" anyone trying to defend them. Guilty until proven innocent after all.

The confused emote, or emotes, voting or anything like that in general only stir that pot. At best? It's a pointless popularity contest to feed someone's ego. At worse? It can be use as a malice thing to cause real harm. But you know. People love their drama lol.

[Freya.9075]

2 hours ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

Well here's the funny thing about debate. Very often a debate becomes onesided in someone's favor with the right manipulation skills. Less we forget about cancel culture, and the witch hunting it creates.

I bet if mukluk or any other Anet partner streamer get hit with allegations that are most likely false. You guys would jump at their throat at moment notice, and "Downvote" anyone trying to defend them. Guilty until proven innocent after all.

The confused emote, or emotes, voting or anything like that in general only stir that pot. At best? It's a pointless popularity contest to feed someone's ego. At worse? It can be use as a malice thing to cause real harm. But you know. People love their drama lol.

Not sure what you're trying to imply here, but I fail to see what this has to do with what I said. I would be one of the people defending Mukluk if i saw injustice being done as I really despise when people are treating others badly. No matter how I feel about them. Can't speak for everyone about this, but that's how I feel about it.

I personally don't see confusion reactions as "popularity contest" but that's just me. And I can only speak of what i've noticed in these forums, and abusing confusion reactions is not something I've seen. 

Edited December 19, 2022 by Freya.9075

[Bakeneko.5826]

1 hour ago, Ultramex.1506 said:

Wow....i worry about how people deal with the outside if  they feel "confused" emoji is a huge problem to them

Eh, kinda feels like cesspool that is reddit. I'd rather read 5 posts than say same thing in different words, than see 4 stupid emojis. But that's me used to old school forums, where being called r----- was not an offence, but evaluation of quality of argument  

[ArchonWing.9480]

8 hours ago, DeceiverX.8361 said:

That's the nature of challenging the status quo.  Either you're ahead of the curve or you're acting like a fool.  Fact is, until that opinion is received by the populous, you don't know which it is, and the onus is on you to prove to everyone what you're positing isn't nonsense.  Sometimes, we're just dead wrong, and we can laugh at our mistakes, learn from them, and move on.  That's the function of any forum; if people are there, they're already hearing you out.

That was a pretty good take I think. It's up to you as the poster to take feedback and use it as needed. A lot of it is really noise but at the same time if you confuse everyone, then either you're a genius or just a fool. So do you have to change or does the whole world have to change? Only you can really decide since you are only in control of what you do.

The most important thing to realize is that the first few points of feedback, whether it be here or reddit, has an enormously disparate effect on the overall score. If the first few people you come across get kitten and dislike your post, it will generally snowball downwards and vice versa. So it's important not to be distracted by that sort of noise. Like if you go back and forth with someone, it's pretty obvious whose giving the votes.

It's simply not viable to second guess yourself because a handful of people don't like what you said. Because there's always going to be people to not like what you said.

I do feel it's very important to be proud of whatever you do end up writing and don't regret it. Because if you don't believe yourself, then who will? One thing to gurantee failure is to whine about "why all the emojis (or downvotes)" since that just guarantees more.

None of this matters too much for me as there's no grand total anyways on these forums and if you look at your own history, the system tallies all reactions. So 1 heart + 5 confused is still 6. And this brings another important point I feel. If one person did feel like they enjoyed your post, isn't that what it's worth? You made one person's day better.

Also I usually post because I can't play, so either way I'm back in the game anyways and doing much more important things. Whoever wins or loses in the forums? Won't matter by next week or even tomorrow.

I feel like that's a good image for most to visualize. Whatever got said, just go back in the game (or anywhere really) and just enjoy yourself while some sweaty wannabe philosopher spends an hour or two browsing wiki to find some inconsequential point in your post  to bicker about.

"You may have scored internet points, but I have chicken!", etc.

Edited December 19, 2022 by ArchonWing.9480

[Cuks.8241]

51 minutes ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

It's all about validation. If you post a topic that shows the share sentiment as the rest of the hive mind, of course it's going to get a lot of praise. But the very moment you go against the popular opinion. If you post an unpopular opinion, no matter how valid that's where everyone in this forum is going to pick up pitchforks and torches and start burning someone alive because the hivemind's validation is at risk. You are disturbing their echo chamber that is keeping their delusions in check.

But thats the point, the added value. Thats the only data you can get out of it. Is it a popular or unpopular opinion. It has nothing to do with correctness or validity. Its an opinion after all.

Youre making it sound like the popular opinion is something set in stone known to everyone and everyone is just going along. Well I am not in the popular loop, I dont know what is popular or not. But I can identify it quite easily through emojis. Much easier than reading all the posts.

I dont see how identifying a popular opinion is bad in any way. And this actually gives a reality check to the echo chamber. Echo chambers are dangerous when you remove all outside interruptions and everybody is just liking each other just further promoting one idea without possibility of counters. Its hard to enter such discussions, especially if the promoters are aggressive. Well guess what, a dislike button is perfect. 

Ill give an example. Right now we have a lot of these left wing, social justice agendas out there. Sane people dont really want to get into these discussions because they probably find them silly but also you can get bullied quite hard over it. Promotors are loud and aggressive. But luckily you have internet dislikes and similar and after all election. And its quite clear that these agendas might not be as popular as some would like to push them. 

[Fuchslein.8639]

17 minutes ago, Cuks.8241 said:

But thats the point, the added value. Thats the only data you can get out of it. Is it a popular or unpopular opinion. It has nothing to do with correctness or validity. Its an opinion after all.

Youre making it sound like the popular opinion is something set in stone known to everyone and everyone is just going along. Well I am not in the popular loop, I dont know what is popular or not. But I can identify it quite easily through emojis. Much easier than reading all the posts.

I dont see how identifying a popular opinion is bad in any way. And this actually gives a reality check to the echo chamber. Echo chambers are dangerous when you remove all outside interruptions and everybody is just liking each other just further promoting one idea without possibility of counters. Its hard to enter such discussions, especially if the promoters are aggressive. Well guess what, a dislike button is perfect. 

Ill give an example. Right now we have a lot of these left wing, social justice agendas out there. Sane people dont really want to get into these discussions because they probably find them silly but also you can get bullied quite hard over it. Promotors are loud and aggressive. But luckily you have internet dislikes and similar and after all election. And its quite clear that these agendas might not be as popular as some would like to push them. 

I didn't read much Here because it's to much and i'm Not against but also Not for emojis. And correct me If i missunderstood you.

But to give the emojis under a Post any importance seems rather naive to me.

"But I can identify it quite easily through emojis"

It's crazy how one Threads gets flooded with Angst comments about abusing an system and another Threads gets flooded with comments to Just move on or how helpfull it is for xy, althoug you can often clearly See that the confused and crying Emoji gets Used often from Trolls. Some people even get under EVERY comment an confused Emoji because people are bored and they stalk them.

Emoji reactions perse are Not a Bad Thing. But to give them any value is in my eyes wrong because you never know what people are behind These emojis.

There i give OP the Point, actuall comments Show how interested people are in xx. There you can See who has an honest interest in saying yes or No, orwho Just wants to Troll.

Emojis or Up- and downvotes,in my eyes, will never BE a valid sign If Something is good or Bad. And also, thistorum gets comments from the Same people das in day Out. Forumuser are a minority what makes votes even less meaningfull.

Just my opinion.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Fuchslein.8639

[Cuks.8241]

21 minutes ago, Fuchslein.8639 said:

I didn't read much Here because it's to much and i'm Not against but also Not for emojis. And correct me If i missunderstood you.

But to give the emojis under a Post any importance seems rather naive to me.

"But I can identify it quite easily through emojis"

It's crazy how one Threads gets flooded with Angst comments about abusing an system and another Threads gets flooded with comments to Just move on or how helpfull it is for xy, althoug you can often clearly See that the confused and crying Emoji gets Used often from Trolls. Some people even get under EVERY comment an confused Emoji because people are bored and they stalk them.

Emoji reactions perse are Not a Bad Thing. But to give them any value is in my eyes wrong because you never know what people are behind These emojis.

There i give OP the Point, actuall comments Show how interested people are in xx. There you can See who has an honest interest in saying yes or No, orwho Just wants to Troll.

Emojis or Up- and downvotes,in my eyes, will never BE a valid sign If Something is good or Bad. And also, thistorum gets comments from the Same people das in day Out. Forumuser are a minority what makes votes even less meaningfull.

Just my opinion.

I never meant emojis show if a post is correct or wrong (mostly we have opinions anyway, there is no correct or wrong). But they do show how popular the opinion is. Good or bad is a vague term but in general I feel that good posts are usually rewarded with positive feedback. Its not a foolproof system though so I wouldnt read to much into it.

Even if there are trolls, it doesnt matter, you just move the baseline above the troll line. If there actually are users that feel like they do anything meaningful with confuse bombing, I wouldnt call that trolling. Because you can not distinguish any real meaning out of emojis besides sheer volume of interest.

Again we have 1 emoji per user, this is not twitter with bots. You can not skew opinion unless you actually go out of your way and get multiple paid accounts. And if there actually are user that do that to "troll" or cause malice. Well they are probably in a pretty sorry mental state that they do something like that on a game's forums and are only trolling themselves. 

If I wanted to troll someone or even insult them, which can be the case sometimes, I will write it down. Thats the only effective way to do it.

Edit: If I look my post history, I can easily see which of my opinions are in general liked by forum community and which are not. These patterns are quite clear and I think are also correct also based on the content of replying posts. I like to see this data and its not always clear in advance to me.

Edited December 19, 2022 by Cuks.8241

[Vayne.8563]

16 hours ago, Thevaultdwellinggamer.4267 said:

So an echo chamber. For all intent and purpose.

We're becoming more like kiwi farm as we speak lol.

I express unpopular opinions from time to time and get a lot of confused emotes. It's not an echo chamber.  But for me it's a metric that lets me know my specific sentiment doesn't enjoy popular support, at least from forum posters.

[robertthebard.8150]

14 hours ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

 

And how exactly this is important ?

This is debate not voting.

 

 

So you saying many people on forum act like children who have nothing to add to a conversation but still want to be "heard" ?

And as I said before "what people think of the discussion" is irrelevant if they have nothing to say.

This is debate not voting or something.

Indeed.  My takeaway from this thread is quite simple, some people are only looking for validation.  Anything that runs contrary to that needs to be suppressed or removed.  That's why we see buzzwords like "passive aggressive" or "abuse" talking about emojis.  Sometimes, it's enough to read a post and know that attempting to discuss or debate the topic is a waste of one's time, and so an emoji will suffice.  I've seen "echo chamber" thrown around a bit here, mostly by people that are actually looking for that very thing, an environment where everything they say is heralded as the ultimate truth.  That's the very definition of an echo chamber.

It's also why we see comments like "if you disagree, just move on".  Posters that provide this feedback think they're scoring points in a debate.  What they're actually demonstrating is that they can't stand to have their ideas challenged and would rather people just didn't bother engaging if they're not going to validate whatever it is they've got to say.

[Hindenburg.3415]

1 hour ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

Sometimes, it's enough to read a post and know that attempting to discuss or debate the topic is a waste of one's time, and so an emoji will suffice. 

 

Suffice for what exactly ?

Letting people know you disagree with something ? Why ?

1 hour ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

What they're actually demonstrating is that they can't stand to have their ideas challenged and would rather people just didn't bother engaging if they're not going to validate whatever it is they've got to say.

 

I would say that people who hide behind emojis instead of actually voicing their opinions can't stand to have their ideas challenged.

Also it's cute that you think that using emojis actually "challenges" someone's ideas , lol

[Silent.6137]

3 hours ago, Cuks.8241 said:

Again we have 1 emoji per user, this is not twitter with bots. You can not skew opinion unless you actually go out of your way and get multiple paid accounts. And if there actually are user that do that to "troll" or cause malice. Well they are probably in a pretty sorry mental state that they do something like that on a game's forums and are only trolling themselves.

You do not need a paid account to use that but you do need it to post. One of the main reason I disabled emoji voting after noticing the ability and the trolling (yes, it does happen).

The forum population is very small. Any "upvoting" or "downvoting" can be skewed in a big way by just a couple of dedicated "voters".

Edited December 19, 2022 by Silent.6137

[robertthebard.8150]

3 hours ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

 

Suffice for what exactly ?

Letting people know you disagree with something ? Why ?

 

I would say that people who hide behind emojis instead of actually voicing their opinions can't stand to have their ideas challenged.

Also it's cute that you think that using emojis actually "challenges" someone's ideas , lol

I don't think it does, it's presented in comments in this very thread.  Of course, to know that, you'd actually have to read entire posts, instead of chopping them up.  If they didn't have issues with it, there wouldn't be multiple threads about it, right?

Then there's this post, where you felt it was necessary to pull some lines out of context to respond to.  Thank you for providing a classic example of why some would just as soon hit an emoji, as type a post.  What's the point of typing something out, if someone is just going to butcher your post in an attempt to misrepresent what you said.  Congratulations? 🥱

[Ashen.2907]

4 hours ago, Hindenburg.3415 said:

instead of actually voicing their opinions

Except that they are expressing their opinions with the emoji.

[Hindenburg.3415]

3 hours ago, Ashen.2907 said:

Except that they are expressing their opinions with the emoji.

 

Except I said voicing not expressing.

This is not mime show.

[Hindenburg.3415]

3 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

I don't think it does, it's presented in comments in this very thread.  Of course, to know that, you'd actually have to read entire posts, instead of chopping them up.  If they didn't have issues with it, there wouldn't be multiple threads about it, right?

 

You do understand that people  "have issues" for different reasons , right ?

Of course, to know that, you'd actually have to read entire posts, instead of chopping them up. 

3 hours ago, robertthebard.8150 said:

Then there's this post, where you felt it was necessary to pull some lines out of context to respond to.  Thank you for providing a classic example of why some would just as soon hit an emoji, as type a post.  What's the point of typing something out, if someone is just going to butcher your post in an attempt to misrepresent what you said.  Congratulations? 🥱

 

What context ?  I quoted a full sentence presenting a finished thought. What exactly was "misrepresented" ?

Thank you for providing a classic example of why some should just move on because they clearly unable to participate in conversation.