Good for you calling him out though. Unfortunately this is why people don't call it out. It goes against the status quo, and not everyone is brave enough to stand up. That's why we need to make sure these guys don't have a soft place to land. Or at the very least, make sure they are segregated away from the good men so we know who is who. Which of course happens by all the decent men cutting these dudes off. You did the right thing. You can't fix shit people.
Thing is I did the right thing but I lost out from it. Ultimately, still the right thing to do but no good deed goes unpunished. On the plus side I don’t have to spend time with the guy anymore. Once all this happened I just left the group. Posted in the chat saying ‘I’m leaving, last session just wasn’t what I wanted out of d&d’ then messaged the dm saying I’m leaving because I don’t want to force a ‘him or me situation’ but it was a bit disappointing no one stood up for me seeing as I’d been in the group longer. But I didn’t want to force people into that, you know?
It’s about calling out enablers too. I get that it’s tough/awkward/challenging/maybe even scary sometimes. Thank you for what you did regardless and I hope the other members have more confidence to call out bad behaviour in the future because they saw you do it.
Yeah but if I had done that I would have just lost four other friends. And honestly these are good people. They just are a little spineless, they’ve been bullied a lot in the past. They hate conflict. If I had forced the issue I know they would have sided with me, but they work with the guy so it’s hardly fair to put them in that spot you know. Sometimes life is more complicated than theoretical right/wrong on the internet unfortunately. Ultimately I’m happy with how I handled the situation. I didn’t upset my friends, I stood up for my values, and the dude has been done for a DUI and so can’t make the group anyway now and everyone is glad I’m back. If my friends didn’t work for this asshole (and in a less senior position) I would have kicked off more.
No im not lol I stood up for my own values and decided not to torpedo a bunch of friendships. Did you not hear they work for the guy? They can’t kick him. How selfish would I have been to make this about their jobs rather than my personal upset.
You’re exhausting haha. You’re on Reddit going after the guy who stood up against it. Direct your energy to those who don’t. You’re angry and arguing with the wrong person and you don’t even have the context to make your argument.
You didn't go against it. You said "um, I don't want to offend you but," to the guy, you defended the other friends, and you left the group bc it wasn't what you wanted from d&d, not bc you're sick of a racist, sexist gasbag. You did very little and now you want all the praise.
Which is guess is about par for the course for a man.
I had to quit a job I loved because there were multiple racist freaks on the team. I reported everyone, they got fired and I quit the job because of my disappointment with the entire team. You should always follow your principles, even when it results in some negative outcome for yourself - that is the cost of standing up for one's beliefs sometimes. I think you (and myself) did the right thing overall, at the very least for not having to interact with those people any longer.
I had a woman that was in love w me and refused her unwanted advances for years. She was a friend of my cousin. One night she was staying the nite at my house with my friend. But she didn’t want my friend, she wanted me to so she came in my room when I was asleep and started oral sex. I woke up. I was drunk and asleep and ended up letting her have sex with me. She told me three times she was on birth control. Turns out she was not. Sixteen years later I’m paying for her child that she tried to trap me with. She did the same thing a few years later to another “friend”. Women can be awful people too.
Not telling that story to disagree with anyone in this thread. Men are assholes. Js women are assholes too.
Dude obviously there are shitty women, but seriously, read the room. Focus on the topic here without deflecting and please help find a solution to the pervasive global problem of male violence.
For one, she might have been on birth control and it didn’t work. Two, your fault for fucking and cumming in someone you didn’t know. That’s wildly stupid even if she had bad intentions. Three. This is not relevant to the conversation in any way shape or form.
Sure, but I know the other guys there. They are genuinely good people, just a little spineless due to being bullied their entire lives. It is a crowd of misfits. I’m just the outspoken misfit lol.
Being bullied is no excuse. If anything they should know better. I might not raise an issue for myself but when it comes to others I will make a big problem when I see someone else being bullied. We're adults now guys. Be the person you needed - and needed to see - when you were a kid. Its scary but damn does it feel good afterwards when I didn't let it slide like how was allowed for so long in my case. If people don't respond well, you just saved yourself the hassle of figuring out who you want to associate with. Being responsible for choosing the people around us is something we need to work on because when you lay with pigs you smell like s*&t. Good for you at least for getting out of the pen.
My husband wanted me to add that he DMed a group where one of the players kept incessantly r&%$*g the NPCs with graphic detail and had to shut the whole thing down. He made it very clear that this one person was the reason and that he would never be allowed in any of his campaigns again. That's how you deal with these people. Make it cost them something to be what they are.
I’m glad you’re in that position. I’m glad I’m in that position. They were not. We need to give them some grace here… they aren’t evil. Just hurt people who are a bit cowardly and too trusting of a colleague who has the power to make their lives hell at work.
I get that, but it’s also worth considering that there is even goodness/good qualities in the most evil of people. To me, those are absolutely not good people by virtue of the exact actions taken to not stand up for others. But we need good people to champion that goodness in them as well, so I can understand if you are trying to steer the ship in a moral direction—but be careful not to lose yourself. Good people do not tend to associate with unsavory characters.
Thing is, you’re judging these guys based off of one post on the internet. I’ve spent thousands of hours with them. One is an LSA who gives his life to helping children and is training to be a therapist and has been there for me in my darkest hours. He has never hurt anyone ever. So am I supposed to disown him because he didn’t speak up against his colleague at our d&d game? He is also autistic. Like… at some point you have to make a judgment on people and I’m not writing off 6+ years of perfect friendship and hundreds of observed acts of kindness over one awkward conversation where he wasn’t - in the moment - willing to jeopardize his work life over a game of d&d. Like, there is nuance in all things.
So in a plus/minus column for him, it is about a million in the plus and one single instance of not speaking out in the con. And I’m a big boy I can stick up for myself I didn’t need help. And I can’t write him off for that. If you write people off for every little thing you end up with no one because people make mistakes.
Well said. I respect that well thought out reply, and I do understand where you’re coming from. I made a misassumption and thought this group of DnD was a group of acquaintances—like work friends or something, and that you didn’t really know their character outside of these small interactions.
Thanks for taking the time to understand, actually means a lot from a stranger on the internet (being totally genuine not sarcastic there, it restores my faith in online dialogue a bit)
I replied to your comment above with a similar story, but this reminded me of something. By cutting him out, I have lost my connection to a large MTG group who gets together to play commander or draft nights or board games. It sucks, because I really love that kind of thing, and everyone else in the group was really cool and normal.
He stays mostly quiet about it with the group around. It's usually those one off comments that can be seen as jokes. He's also a recovering meth addict and says/does strange things in general, so I don't blame them for not seeing it as well as I do.
He would call me on Discord to play games at night, typically just the two of us. That's when he would rant on and on about stuff. I'll say though, we would play with two other guys sometimes, and this friend has a habit of saying the f slur constantly. They both called him out on it several times when he said it, though we all gave up on attempting to talk sense into him about it.
Respectfully, why didn’t you stay and force the issue?
I do mean respectfully. I get speaking up against friends and shifting the culture of a group is hard. I’m not attacking you. I am inviting you to think deeper.
Referencing the 4 categories in the video, based on what you just said, you ducked down to the “men we aren’t talking about” category for one D&D session.
And then quickly moved right back into the “Men who do nothing wrong” category you had occupied up until you spoke up.
Especially since you had seniority, you could have lobbied people to get the jerk making the jokes kicked out. You could have tried harder to change the culture.
Maybe the other guys didn’t speak up, because they were waiting to see what would happen. Silence doesn’t always equal agreement as you yourself know.
No one said this was easy.
If the guys who don’t believe that crap like you just leave the spaces, who is left to voice the objections?
I don’t host the group or DM, so I do not have seniority.
This asshole works with my friends. He is senior to them at work. If I make this a ‘him vs me’ thing, their work life could be affected rather than just our silly little d&d group.
They had their chance to speak up. I spoke up publicly. They had a chance to side with me and didn’t. They didn’t side with him either and I didn’t want to start a disagreement that would affect two people’s livelihoods because of my personal morality.
My friends struggle with knowing when people are joking or not. One is very autistic and he never believed this asshole meant the things he said because he was nice to him.
The cost of speaking up is going against your level of comfort TO speak out. If the result is a return to the same status quo because you didn't want people uncomfortable, then there's a lot more you need to learn.
Something good did come of it. You stood up for your morals. You don’t have to hear that every session now. And you led by example, meaning other folks maybe, just maybe, will follow your example someday. You nudged society a tiny bit further along towards being better.
Doing the right thing can be a lonely place at times. You lost a gaming group. But you maintained your integrity and will be able to look at yourself in the mirror.
When you keep this up, you’ll find it gets easier, and you’ll find you’ll attract and find people more aligned with your moral compass into your life.
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u/FloppyDickFingers 3d ago edited 3d ago
Edit: forced to delete this comment because a few people are now harassing me for apparently not doing enough. Honestly Reddit sucks.