Ban reason: The ban reason is: “Core rule 3: ‘Stop pulling the race card to get out of this fight’”**Length of ban:**Indefinite**Ban Issue:** I did not do what I was banned for`
Events leading to the ban
I was planning a fight with a player who’s characters named was Pelvis Sergey or something like that, and he stated over the radio later that he had been arrested/shot at by an officer for being a skeleton. I expressed disbelief, assumed he was joking, and said stop pulling the race card to get out of this fight as a joke. The player and I had a good fun round until I got almost instantly banned, we had respectable boxing fights. I was even trying to look for him at one point to see what deal actually was with him being shot at. The problem with all of this is that I can’t get logs from anything ingame so I can’t double check, look information up, etc.
Reason the ban should be removed
I did not get a chance to respond to the admin because the screen that shows the rules got forcibly put on my screen and I had to wait. Instead of waiting for a response they banned me pretty fast.
I re-read the rules during this time and I still don’t understand how a joke about such a thing could be construed that way. It is a common idiomatic phrase in response to somebody else bringing up race, not I, aswell as not directed to any real world ethnicities. It was not meant to be interpreted as mean spirited. I was playing on another server (Vulture, I believe) where a captain who was a moth was leading a bunch of other moths and attacking people, including myself, who weren’t moths. One person was killed because of that and subtly told me I should ahelp. I did, and didn’t get a response. How then, was I supposed to know that you consider that phrase to somehow be a racist term? The same captain continued to be captain in the next rounds with seemingly no repercussions. How is that allowed but this was an instant permaban with probably no chance of passing an appeal?
I didn’t even mention a race in particular. I would like to apologize to the other player if they got offended, but they never gave off any indication that they were and they seemed to genuinely enjoy playing with me. Does this really deserve a permaban by itself?
Also, I would like to know if admins play the game while they are moderating, as the person who banned me shares the first name of a person who had an issue with me because of a previous round where I was antagonist and ended up killing her. Could be a coincidence and if so I apologize, but this ban really came out of nowhere and I am trying to make sense of it. It really doesn’t have to be a permaban for a joke about skeletons in a video game.
We have a 0 tolerance policy on discriminatory language and although I understand you meant as a joke the wording was poor and allowed your joke to be misinterpreted. I would suggest something on the lines of “Stop pulling the skeleton card …” the next time
Since I understand you didn’t actually meant to discriminate against the skeleton I am accepting this ban appeal.
Side notes:
You can actually still respond to a ahelp while in the rule page. the ahelp window shouldn’t close but in case it did you can press F1 to open it
I am sorry for what happened in the round with the captain and the moths. I assure you that even if there isn’t a admin to see your ahelp message at the time they do get relayed to discord where they are later investigated
I understand you have a 0 tolerance policy for discriminatory language but understand- The term “race card” in itself is not a discriminatory phrase in the English language, and certainly not in this context. I want this to be extremely clear.
It is a common phrase, just like “play the orange card” or “play the trump card”. This is easily verified by a quick google search. You can keep telling me you have a 0 tolerance policy on discrimination but this is not what this is about nor did it occur. The example you mentioned effectively means the exact same thing as what I said, as skeletons are a race in this game. What part of the wording was poor?
Furthermore, who did it harm in the first place? It’s not like I was HoP refusing to give IDs to skeletons because they are not alive. How does this translate to real world discrimination, when:
A) the races in the game are not real
B) the term “race” actually applies as not everybody is the same species and therefore have different qualities causing palpable differences, as opposed to real life where it is an antiquated term and every human alive today is part of the same species?
The xenos can’t eat the same food, they aren’t built the same way, etc. They have actual advantages and disadvantages compared to other races. You put these races in the game. Can we not bring those things up or joke about it, then? Where do you draw the line? How was this even brought to the admin’s attention that they decided to bring it up to me late round?
This isn’t up for argument, what I have said so far have purely been facts. I don’t know where you pulled that from but “offensive” is absurd and clearly a biased hot take for a common phrase you can see get used all the time in comedy, movies, tv shows, talk shows like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, politics etc., and not only that, you are still forgetting the key context which is that the aliens in the game are actually different races, species even. This isn’t real life. Look up “play the orange card” and “play the _ card”, as well. It is an observable type of behavior that isn’t exclusive to referring to race, as the other two examples I mentioned show. It literally says “can”.
If I go around and do bad things and then try to use my actual minority status in order to exploit it to my advantage, then I am clearly in the wrong and it does nothing to help solve racism. If two people are having a formal professional discussion on TV about racism and a bunch of people storm the stage, grab everybody’s mics, trash the set, and yell “stop playing the race card” then they are in the wrong. Further examples can be found on Wikipedia, and searching “playing the orange card”. Other examples include politicians using strategies that literally involve exploiting racial among a population, ie playing the race card.
Either way, you have already stated that the joke was not a problem, yet in the same breath claim that the joke IS the problem. Which is it? Either way, my previous points still stand. You put the non-human races in the game, and they all have actual valid differences.
People make jokes everyday, including you and the person that banned me, about these differences, yet don’t notice that it is the exact same type of harmless thing as what I said. “Slime people are getting slime everywhere”, “A skeleton jumped out of a locker and scared me”, etc.
You are going to continue to choose to randomly interpret my joke as evil and racist and ignore these examples, when the different species are literally different and therefore the same values don’t apply the same and ban everybody? This is completely arbitrary, and you know it. Like what are we even doing here? What is the point?
We do not wish for discriminatory language in our servers, whether it is said seriously or as a joke. Determining if language is discriminatory is left to the admin in game assessing the situation. Admins are trusted members of the community who have the responsibility to make that call.
The simple reason for this is that trying to make some distinction between “serious discrimination” and saying something discriminatory jokingly allows people to try to sidestep our rules and try to discriminate against others and when questioned will simply claim “it was simply a joke”. This is a major pain in the ass and we do not wish to deal with it nor does it provide anything beneficial to the game.
Any further debate on this does not belong on this appeal which has already been resolved.
