Decision regarding the use of the word “lynch”

I think the people who think it’s unacceptable to say it in a correct context is a problem in itself for other communities. We are not those other communities.
Only ‘problem’ with the moderation factor here is the minor inconvenience hosts + mods have, which isn’t even punishing it’s more of a ‘try not to use this word’
I think the most dangerous factor is the actual people

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I agree. If we were playing this in an era when the power of the Klans was at it’s peak I could agree that maybe lynch shouldn’t be used

As far as implementation goes, I think it is good the moderator team has given a stance on this in this thread, but I think it should be incorporated either in global rules or FM rules instead of this stand-alone (will be buried in a few months thread). That is until lynch falls so far out of favor of popular vocabulary that it could no longer be necessary if that’d ever happen.

I think FoL should definitely be flavor-swapped for this, as it makes more sense anyway with ToL not using that specific flavor.

I think double standards for hosts and players are more so a practical thing than the right thing, since editing all posts made is a bit more difficult than some OPs and I’d disagree with that to be honest. It either is racially sensitive or it is not. I can’t really see how it can be an in-between like this ruling suggests. If we decide that it is racially sensitive, then we should just incorporate it in the standard flagging/moderating flow, where users would report other users that use it or moderators see it and apply disciplinary measures with maybe a mild grace period for transitional purposes.

Kind of sad to see that politics even seep into games like these. I tried not to give an opinion on whether it is racially sensitive or not, because I have quite a limited view on this issue, because of my personal relations/background.

It also would need a stipulation on the acronyms like LYLO btw.

I actually fully agree with way Mods are doing this which is rare cuz I usually immediately want to disagree with anyone with any sort of authority.

Making Hosts who carefully plan games take it out of their OP’s and stuff makes sense, and so does understanding that in a high pressure environment like FM, players typing fast will say Lynch occasionally and shouldn’t be punished.

By taking it out of formal host vocabulary itll inevitably become less said amongst players in the long term anyways.

I will say that changing Lylo and Mylo seems unnecessary.

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I can see all the confused newbies already lmao

“what does lylo mean”
“it means l-- er… cuddle correctly or lose”
“why is it called lylo”

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people
it’s not “a racist slur”, but even so it should be changed
what it actually does is it makes people uncomfortable and is a barrier to entry for some african-americans

things can have racist and problematic connotations without being outright fucking slurs

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like if we suddenly went out of our way to have every single rolecard have a sexualised anime girl there I’d be made uncomfortable, but that doesn’t mean that using anime girls is aphobic. it just means that it’s a bit uncomfortable for me, specifically.

you simply have to imagine that there is a small but significant group of people who cannot play mafia because it’s not just a few games which have the proverbial anime tiddies, but all of them do, and people get offended if you suggest that maybe they shouldn’t be used by both the host and the players in every single game.

in the end the game should be enjoyable, and quite frankly making our vocabulary be a bit more awkward just so some people don’t feel uncomfortable and will have more fun with the game is ultimately a worthwhile trade

tl;dr the word lynch isn’t inherrently racist but it has connotations that make some people uncomfortable and the use of the word should not be ubiqitous for that reason

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/cuddle my katze
Meow

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it’s not our fault anyway
the game came from Russia, and over there lynching has no racial connotations and just means a mob killing
it’s just in the US there’s a bloody history to the term after the racists appropriated it to justify their hate crime

/cuddle Icibalus
Rip that I stopped playing FM, it would have been a great excuse to cuddle everyone

history time! The term originated from an unnofficial court run by one Colonel Lynch, and in fact had almost zero racial connotations, as Lynch found several african-americans not guilty in his mob courts and saved them from the gallows. This was so iconic that mob vigilantism became referred to as lynching. The problem is that in the South, racist eugenics and general racism were popular, and the racists called their hate crimes lynchings by making out that being black was a crime worthy of being lynched for.

This happened so often that the term picked up racial connotations down there, because it very rarely referred to the simple mob killing of somebody perceived to have committed a heinous crime, and instead usually referred to the horrific death of black people.

It’s been a long time since then, and in our minds it’s simply reverted to being a mob killing, so we used it in the funny Mafia game without thinking. And along comes somebody who still has a kind of familial memory of the term, who is hauntingly aware of the aftermath, and they are made rightfully uncomfortable by the casual use of the term being used agressively against people.

It’s easy to conceptualise fake internet death and laugh at it and not really take it fully seriously, but less so when the word used to describe that death describes how your grandfather died.

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so like
just say execute or eliminate or whatever
if a slight change in vocabulary means even 1 or 2 more people can enjoy the game that felt uncomfortable before, i’d consider that an absolute plus

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so like
you’re just being annoyed because you’re asking to make a minor sacrifice for somebody else, but the fact is that you can just make that sacrifice
but the people who this change is meant for can’t just decide to not be made uncomfortable by the word
simple as that

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also
it’s really not that hard to not be racist

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you dick

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yes okay i fell into that one
you know what I mean

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Thing is that the only person who supposedly got uncomfortable used the word lynch themselves before going rampant about how outrageous it was