this shit's bleak and it makes you feel helpless. i get people making jokes so they feel even a bit of control over the situation, but i feel you that it doesn't fix things.

a hot take perhaps, but TFTV isn't the right place

Imo the right move for TFTV regulars is to drag abusers through the mud until their behavior is all that remains. Nursey, coyo, broking, dashner. Plenty more. Whatever they contributed at some point no longer matters. Now their name only reminds people of one thing

They can change their alias, change communities, but it will follow them whenever someone connects the dots

Taking things seriously inevitably results in people walking on egg shells discussing the situation. Silence is what helps them outrun the consequences. Protect the victims, ridicule the nonces

I've talked about being a victim before in some TFTV thread (it happened before I played TF2). Mostly on a whim. Behind the scenes I was approached by people showing me support. Some were TFTV regulars I'd not talked to prior. It was appreciated, but in reality I already had a social safety net with my close online friends to help me process things. Not all victims have this privilege ofcourse, but TFTV isn't the place to find or create one

A large concern I have had for a while is the lack of legal involvment into these issues. These people are pedophiles and child predators and we just "remove them from the community", at the very least with things like lans and etf2l emails we have tangible links to these peoples internet personas and real life indentities and the police should be informed. We need to stop just playing this down as "online" because it still has effects on these children and who is to say these predators don't think they can now get away with it now and act in person.

As part of the improvements to ETF2L i'd love them to commit to (where possible) notifying police of people involved with children at the very least. If we are gonna be a community that allows children to particpate we need to do more to keep them safe.

When I was 15 I was on a team a 22 year old player asked to enchange sexually explicit images of eachother with me (not as a joke, if you know this team you wouldn't be suprised), looking back on that now as an adult the biggest shock to me was how this was known by my team and the people around us. I think the number 1 think we all need to do is watch out for this kind of behaviour, not turning a blind eye, no "its probably legal in there country" or "they are just joking". You see this kinda shit you call it out and report it.

Also can we shun those who defend pedos more? Fed up of seeing #freeplayer when that player was banned for being a nonce.

Sure, I'll be the guy.

The TF2 competitive community has blackpilled me on large/online communities maybe just about as much as anything ever could. There is something very sick that is very deep in this community, but absolutely not unique to it, and it's made it very hard to want to participate over the years in any community at all.

That said, I think it behooves me not to beat around the bush. I had some very alarming experiences when I started climbing the skill and recognition ladders more quickly. Specifically with coaching / mentoring. Even me, a complete nobody, had a lot of people reaching out for demo reviews and whatnot. But what was alarming was how many of them were quite young, and what was much more alarming was how many of them were way overly personal and even, on occasion, explicitly flirtatious. Obviously I rebuffed all of these advances and, when appropriate, tried to offer some guidance towards not making themselves vulnerable to complete strangers, but what has stuck with me for years now is how often it was happening, and how nobody in the community was talking about it.

Since then, I've spoken privately with other TF2 players about this, with much trepidation, and to my horror, had it confirmed to me that I wasn't crazy. And I've even spoken with people in other communities, both online and IRL, and again to my horror, been made aware that this isn't even a specifically gaming, let alone TF2, problem. Everywhere, apparently, there are kids making themselves vulnerable to complete strangers and no one is talking about it.

Please do not confuse this for victim blaming. I don't blame anyone for developing parasocial relationships in today's world, least of all kids who lack the experience and guidance to know better. The Nurseys and brokings of the world are obviously the ones at fault for taking advantage of that vulnerability, and should be punished fully, both legally and socially.

But what frankly disgusts me about our community is the complete vacuum of conversation about this. These kids need to be told that they are NOT safe around someone just because they're better than them at a videogame, or stream every now and then, or play shows at the local DIY venue, or hang out at the local card shop, or whatever. And people in these positions of even marginal power need to know that their behavior matters. They are in a totally unique social situation where they need to be very careful to yes, be respectful, but also maintain very clear delineations between acceptable and unacceptable behavior.

Frankly, I'm surprised there haven't been a lot more stories like Nursey's. Hopefully that means that most community members are good people behind the scenes and feel the way that I feel about all of this. But it terrifies me to think that that might not be the case, and that it's only the most disgusting, egregious, evil people that are actually getting caught and punished. And the recent ETF2L admin situation doesn't exactly inspire much confidence in the former.

All of which is to say that you're absolutely right, Alias, that we do an honestly embarrassing job of protecting kids in this community. Both in terms of policing inappropriate behavior from potential predators, as well as educating kids on how to stay safe in a community so beset with, frankly, freaks and losers.

As far as what exactly to do? I don't have much of an idea. I agree with Tob that continuing to ridicule the perpetrators is a good start, as far as it keeps the possibility of this stuff happening top of mind for the community at large. I would very much also like to see the conversation expanded to include ways for kids to keep themselves safe online, and draw very clear lines around acceptable behavior in these kinds of situations for anyone in an exploitable position of power. As far as how to accomplish any of that? Again, not much of an idea. As funny as it is to imagine mandatory sexual misconduct training for invite players, I don't think that's feasible or likely to be effective.

I also agree with Tob that tftv isn't the place necessarily to focus on the victims in cases like this. I've also known people who've been victims of grooming and abuse, and having an entire community barrel down on them, even with good intentions, is not as helpful as the community might hope it to be.

I think focusing on prevention & punishment in public forums like this is much more appropriate, and if anyone is going to offer support and/or resources to victims outside of their extant support network, it should be someone within the league organization that is qualified & responsible enough to do so. Having admins, or maybe one or two of the top admins, go through training to be qualified to offer resources and support where appropriate might actually be both feasible and effective, and could even lead to other effective policies being implemented league-wide. Unfortunately, neither of the two most relevant leagues to tftv have a particularly good track record with policies like that in the past, but hey, we can dream, can't we?

TL;DR: Many kids make it a habit to make themselves vulnerable to more powerful people in communities. We should do a much better job educating them on how to stay safe online, as well as educating the community at large how to maintain appropriate relationships from both sides of the power dynamic.

Thank you for starting this conversation. This has been on my mind for a very long time, and I'm just as disappointed in myself for not having it as I am in the rest of the community. Kids, stay safe out there, and everyone else, don't be a fucking nonce.

I was groomed a fair amount when I was a young 16/17 old trans girl in this community. Some of the groomers are permanently banned, many are not, and unfortunately I've witnessed a lot of my peers from that era end up repeating the cycle of trauma and passing on the pain they were undeservedly given to the next generation of young community members.

I really plead with anyone who's ever been groomed, or hurt in other ways by sex pests, to attempt to seek mental health resources and deal with the pain that was inflicted on them.

the two most hopelessly horny demographics:
- undersocialized adults with poor ethics due to lack of social participation
- teenagers

it should therefore not be shocking that these groups ultimately attract eachother. grooming is talked about like its child abduction when its just a natural consequence of having an overrepresentation of group A in an online setting that children have access to. these people arent being held hostage in someone's basement, they're having (from their perspective) mature and exciting relationships with people they look up to.

i think people avoid talking about this stuff within this framework since it comes off as victim blaming, even though the whole point is that an underage person cannot consent, even if they are willing to.

refer to this thread for a good example of what im talking about: https://www.teamfortress.tv/59217/warning-about-nursey-trying-to-come-back

it's no surprise that - speaking from my own experience here, not victim blaming, this is straight up the shit i went through when i was about 15-16 - in society where being a child is a detriment and a hindrance and everybody outside of (and a lot of the times, sadly, even including) your own closest family just fucking hates you and treats you like disposable garbage, it's really difficult to not just suppress the nagging voice in the back of your head telling you that you're dealing with a predator that just wants to use you because a "relationship" with someone older than you makes you feel much more adult and therefore less like a "burden" that a kid on the internet is normally seen as. i know that i bragged to my highschool friends about the woman who preyed on me back then because nothing made me feel more "adult" and therefore "cool" and less childlike than getting what i perceived to be romantic attention from someone much older

if you're a child on the internet with no actual real life social outlet (an incredibly common thing in the 21st century) and frequently co-habit a space with adults, there's a 99.99999999% chance you're going to be treated like a complete subhuman by almost every adult you interact with because your vibes are off and so the worst kinds of people are going to try and fill that attention and affection gap for their own repulsive gain

(also doesn't exactly help that in modern neoliberal society, pedophilia is seen as a taboo at best and the governments of world superpowers actively cover for it but that's a story for another time)

Prevention at our level is difficult because the issue goes beyond the borders of TF2. A lot of these exchanges also tend to be secretive--which means that by the time they are caught it's deep in the rabbit hole. I think that makes a lot of community members feel that the bulk of this interaction is reactive so when the response is lack-luster, it makes it all the more obtuse.

TF2CC sees a lot of new and often young players through our step in the pipeline into the competitive community, especially with the Newbie Cup. We try to host classes when we have the resources to on topics relevant to their journey, including one on mental health. Would players be interested in an online safety guide for both adults and minors? Maybe it would help create a standardized language and model specific to our realm for discussing a concern like this.

In that vein I'd also like to show my appreciation for the shared experiences in this thread despite the weight you all might be carrying from it. If something like the above was made I think it should definitely have persons impacted as consultants.

To set expectations though, it would not be completed for a long while. I especially would not want to create the bulk of this project without better education and certification(s) as the ones I have under my belt are not relevant the subject matter.

I would also love for our community to be more disciplined with the engagement of players who negatively impact this environment. From those who maintain their association with disgusting players and or share harmful media along with rhetoric. Your compass should not just be defined by who has red text on their league profile. Many people will admit privately that they will play on a team, especially a good one so long as the team members are not banned.

This is definitely a common experience. I have had to quite explicitly draw boundaries with newbies I've coached in the past and in once case outright stop mentoring a minor who would not stop making raunchy and flirtatious jokes. I'm generally a friendly jokey guy with people I've mentored but have learned to tone that down a bit as its sometimes taken as an invitation for a more personal relationship than I'd be comfortable with. The crass/ flirtatious jokes seem to be a big part of these younger clique's sense of humor and nobody before me had really explained to them why it wasn't a good idea to behave that way with strangers online.

I've had to have a conversation around these lines with every team or player I've coached and I think its been valuable to the newbies every time. I also had to learn for myself how to draw these boundaries early and set a good example for younger players. A formal resource would have definitely set me up for success. Standardizing something like this in an organization like TF2CC sounds like a really good idea. If the goal is to get people into the scene teaching them how to safely be a part of an online community should be a part of that.

I agree. Having widespread awareness/standardization of explicitly what is considered ok and what isn’t sounds like a solid first step. I know most of us probably feel like we know what is ok and what isn’t but those lines can get blurry real fast when dealing with real and complex situations, especially if you know and like the people involved. Because of the secrecy of these situations, the community as a whole will need to be the ultimate observers and enforcers of safe behavior rather than leaving it up a few unpaid and unqualified admins

i am of the opinion that any community that allows minors to regularly interact with adults without the supervision of their parents is always going to lead to some type of grooming. online games are particularly bad however because growing up with videogames as one of your main hobbies is very likely going to rob you of many important social development experiences and lead to the type of arrested development/socially stunted people who will end up forming inappropriate relationships with the minors in said community because they "can relate to them" and they struggle to form close bonds with people their age due to spending their formative years online. if you look at the rate of esports players getting in trouble for grooming compared to any irl hobby this unfortunate fact becomes impossible to ignore. the only real solution would be to limit these communities to 18+ which would be next to impossible to enforce

Around when this thread was first active I wanted to post something regarding how leagues and admins, in particular RGL, handled grooming and predatory individuals. Eventually I chose not to out of fear that it would derail the thread, especially when a lot of productive discussion was occurring, but given the other HL thread and the fact that the discussion here has concluded I wanted to raise particular concerns that I've had with RGL. So apologies for the necro, but I felt that the topic serious enough that it warranted these posts, and I didn't want to start a new thread given that much of what I am about to write is related to the great points that Tob, ghadilli, and others have brought up. Some examples specifically regarding the leagues are as follows:

My main concerns are twofold: the first is that at least as currently written, RGL rules are in my opinion insufficient at blocking groomers or otherwise dangerous individuals from participating in the community within a realm that I believe they [RGL] should have jurisdiction. Obviously I do not expect the staff to trawl through every private discord or DM's or whatever ready to execute any player that has any ties to a groomer (seems like a bad idea regardless), but I do think at least playing/pugging with said individuals should be prohibited by RGL. In fact, precedent on this front already exists in the form of an (intentionally) limited policy, see the following:

Note the particular focus on the "scrim" portion - explicitly denoting that normal pugs would not constitute a violation. To my knowledge this is because of RGL's general policy on not policing things off-platform, and also to note is that this policy extends to everybody who is permanently banned - the bulk of whom I suspect are some mixture of cheaters, serial harassers, ddosers etc. but not groomers explicitly. Notably however RGL does consider off-platform evidence with regard to minor safety.

In short I believe that, using the above rationale to justify the inclusion of off-platform evidence, this policy should be extended to include pugs. It is just exceedingly uncomfortable to realize that there is technically nothing prohibiting somebody from hosting newbie pugs with Nursey so long as it doesn't resemble a scrim in any way, and given that this particular population as mentioned already in this thread is particularly vulnerable I believe RGL should put as many safeguards as possible in that regard.

[1/2]

The second main point ties in with what many others have stated in this thread already about league safety. One obvious prerequisite for this ideal is that admins or otherwise league representatives should be upstanding community members (and obviously in this respect etf2l have horrendously fumbled the bag), but outside of just not being groomers themselves I also strongly believe that RGL should not have on its staff any individuals who have strong and willing ties to groomers.

Note that I'm trying to be careful with my wording here because I do not think that simply having a connection to somebody outed for unsavory behavior should mark you for death so to speak for numerous obvious reasons (plenty of people don't know what their teammates are up to); however, I do believe that going out of your way to make contact with these people, and especially if you didn't already have a preexisting connection, is extremely deplorable. I'm mostly alluding to what's probably a very obvious open secret for both tf2 communities: a disturbing number of medic players in both 6's and highlander go to Nursey for mentoring or demo reviews.

This issue is probably large enough to warrant its own discussion, but to keep it brief this practice is absolutely horrendous for basically every reason already stated in this thread. Not only does it completely trivialize the incredibly serious crimes that Nursey and similar individuals have committed (I personally have heard of this practice referred to as "going to the dark side" for demo reviews in a very joking fashion), but holy shit what kind of precedent does this set? I can already see people joking about getting groomed to get into invite; in fact I would probably bet everything somebody has already made that joke.

And of course the kicker here is the following: you can do the above (reach out to pedos), you can be known to do the above, and still remain an RGL admin.

https://i.imgur.com/lZWIeK8.png

Jercer is the head HL admin for reference. Vandeer was on hl staff until last season where I believe they left of their own volition (but importantly was not axed for this). Vandeer started playing in 2021 (two years after Nursey's ban) so they are not an old acquaintance of Nursey, at least competitively. I am not the person in the above screenshot, mostly because I would not be ok with anything less than the removal of vandeer entirely. Though it would not surprise me if the reporter also believed that and simply gave the "make him pinky swear Nursey is gone" option to ensure that at least something positive would occur. After all this response came just 2 weeks after this same admin tried to forfeit a team out of playoffs for being too shit at cp_steel based off nothing but a twitch cast.

https://i.imgur.com/yLeJWVd.png

Here is a screenshot to show the shared logs between vandeer and Nursey. You can check this yourself on logs.tf/dev. As you can see there are quite a few pugs, more than I've personally played in maybe the last 4 years lmao, and notably started just before and continued into vandeer's tenure as rgl staff. This was not an instance of pugging with Nursey before the truth came out; these were numerous, repeated pugs on mains (who knows, maybe more exist on alts!) well after the fact.

I want to make it clear that I have no evidence as concrete as logs to show that vandeer went to Nursey for mentoring (vandeer is an HL med). Perhaps somebody has a discord screenshot lying around, but I have basically no desire to talk to any of these individuals. However, not only have I heard this from people I trust, there is basically no other reason a player would suddenly enter Nursey's clique like that (unless they are a victim). It's just not reasonable to think this especially for an adult. Nursey's circle is (obviously) very enclosed - in fact, many of the players in these pugs are, sadly, the same people mentioned in the thread that brody linked to earlier.

I'm sure I do not have to convince many tftv readers on this particular point but I do want to be very clear here. Any player who has been around for long enough, and you do not really need to be around for that long these days, realizes that Nursey is problematic to say the least. Anybody who goes to them with this knowledge is making a conscious decision to not care about their crimes and contribute to a practice with harmful downstream effects all to get better at fucking highlander medic. I'm sure the astute reader can infer my thoughts as to whether this should disqualify you from representing RGL as a whole.

I have been trying to steelman this decision by Jercer, or anybody else involved, to not immediately let vandeer go. Unfortunately, I feel forced to conclude that this is either one giant miss by them that's totally somehow not indicative of a deeper issue or (more likely) it is a sign of what this thread is exactly about: a sustained, pervasive nonchalance towards an issue that should be treated with the most utmost severity. These actions scream "so what?" or "eh, they said they're not talking anymore so it's no big deal", a reaction that I think is highly disproportionate to the disgusting, but unfortunately all too common, practice of crawling directly to Nursey, a pedo, for video games.

Again, to be abundantly clear, this is only the side of the story I've managed to piece together as an outsider. Maybe there exists some absolutely absolving reason for a new medic player with no prior ties to Nursey to suddenly seek them out and pug with them that also makes it appropriate for them to be RGL staff. You will have to excuse me if I sort of doubt this exists though. But again, I only know what I know.

I want to reiterate I personally have nothing against Jercer. I do not believe that they are pro-groomer in any way or anything even close to that. But as I'm writing this it really is hard to not think about the fact that over the years many highlander players were blacklisted from becoming an admin. Some for good reason. In fact I would not be surprised if I personally find some of those people really fucking annoying. But the fact that such a blacklist exists for people who are abrasive dickheads, for people who have maybe stepped on a few too many toes, but not for people who have in a very obvious fashion gone out of their way to talk to, mingle, and play games with people who are legitimate threats and have induced serious harm on the most vulnerable of community members, it really makes me ashamed to say that I've played in such a league.

Any more on my end would probably just be beating a dead horse. Instead, I will leave off with what are RGL's own words. I implore the RGL admins to read the statement and think about whether people who go out of their way to initiate a new relationship with a pedophile meets this standard. And for any future hires by RGL I seriously beg them, please for the love of god, do not hire anybody who is or has gone out of their way to interact with groomers or people who should not be around minors in any capacity.

[2/2]