(This is an essay that was written by Perri a while ago about Erik Mouse which I have decided to include here as a page)
Today I need to address an issue that is somewhat complicated and difficult to explain on the fly. So I'm exploring it in an essay rather than at a meeting. If anyone wants to have a meeting about the essay we can do that, but I'm hopeful I can just say what needs to be said and folks will get the point without need for further discussion.
This topic concerns land renter and club owner Erik Mouse who can't seem to pop his nose out of his hole without certain people going into drama mode; even though he's not doing anything even remotely worth taking note of, or unusual for anyone else working with clubs to do. But by the time it gets back to me it's some crime worthy of disciplinary action, and I have to tell the complainer, “Sure, I can lecture him about that, but first I have to lecture you about it, because you've been doing the same dang thing as long as I've known you. I never talked to you about it before because I didn't see a problem with it, but apparently you want to make it a problem.”
SL is, for myself and many others, a place where a large number of people come in an attempt to find functionality that is denied to them in the real world. I find it a good practice to assume no one in SL is perfect, and to try to get to know what their hang ups are and just how much perfection they're capable of, so that they will not be faulted for not accomplishing things that are beyond them.
I do not regard SL as a place where people are held up to real world standards of perfection. At best we are a platform for therapy, at worst we're a video game of no Earth shattering consequences. So it is a good thing to respect those attempting to use SL for therapy, and thus not impose strict rules that would exclude people with unique social handicaps from sharing in the benefits of our virtual world.
Rather, it behooves us to employ as much sympathy and understanding as we are capable of towards folks with unique problems and shortcomings, as long as these people are not malicious of nature, particularly if we expect the same tolerance and assistance with our own shortcomings, and everyone has some, whether they know it or not. In fact, if someone is reading this and thinking they are perfect, that's a social problem right there. People who assume they are perfect are usually the most obnoxious characters you will ever encounter.
Of course, some people will have problems more severe than others, making understanding and tolerance more difficult. Erik is such a case. He does not seem malicious in any way. In fact, he seems eager to share the gift of his creativity with the community. But his autism causes him to communicate in a way that lacks the polite nuances most people look for to indicate friendliness.
He says what he's thinking without buffering. And this can easily be mistaken for being antagonistic or deliberately hurtful. But it's not intentional, and he has no way to know that he's offending someone. To be functional with such a problem he must be around people who know him, whom he can depend on to let their experience with him translate his manner of speech into what he intends.
The way to translate Erik's speech is to hear it in a monotone, without reading anything into it which is not there. Unlike most of us he doesn't leave anything between the lines to be assumed. He just says flat out what he means and that's all there is to it. And of course if you go reading things into it like we all do without even realizing we're doing it most of the time, he may say some things that hit you like a sock in the gut. But when this happens I go back and look at it and see that, “Yeah, hearing it bluntly like that hurt like hell, but I can't fault the dude for being right.”
Now, Erik has been here a very long time. I can't possibly be the only one who has noticed his habitual speech patterns, his tendency to worry about being misunderstood, his fretting and obsessing over people accusing him of malicious behavior, when as far as he knows he's just doing his best to get along, be an upstanding member of the community and get his projects completed, just like everybody else.
It may also have been noted that things that make him insecure about his status in the community effect his real world health, his anxiety manifesting in physical illnesses. And since I have that problem myself I'll bunny slap anyone who thinks that's funny.
Just in the last month or so Erik has come running to me about drama being created over issues like him going afk on a public road, his attempting to get information about how he'd get his money back from a sploder if he put it in after the countdown started, his right to use his own dance pole, calling for an emergency DJ replacement when his regular DJ didn't show up, having a no theme event when another club just happened to be having a no themed event the same day, and vore RP being forced on him after he made it plain that sort of thing upsets him.
Every incident, without exception, is something innocuously innocent that should have been dealt with in seconds, if it required any dealing with at all. These things would never have made a blip on the radar if anyone else was doing them. But just because it's Erik, all he has to do is stand in one place on public property, and someone will use that as an excuse to make drama.
Take special note of that last sentence. Erik does not make drama; at least none that I've seen. Other people use him to make drama, because the nature of his disability makes him vulnerable to be used that way, while leaving him no means to effectively defend himself against it. He can not argue his own defense in a way anyone will accept as legitimate, because he can not project emotions into chat. All he can do is sit there and say he didn't do such and such or he had no such intentions as he's being accused of, in a totally unconvincing way.
Meanwhile, when I turn around and say a mountain of evidence is accumulating that certain people in this community have it in for the mouse and are deliberately going behind the backs of the people who could settle things quickly in order to instigate drama, they argue with equal ineffectiveness, “We're not doing that.” And I'm beginning to wonder if some of these people aren't just as autistic (or otherwise afflicted) as Erik, being unaware that they too have issues that make them unusually sensitive, suspicious, obsessive, repetitive, paranoid, delusional, and hypocritical when it comes to saying Erik has to learn to fix his communication problem, which he can't do, while they don't even have to acknowledge they're anything but perfect.
“I fixed my social problems,” I was told. “That means Erik is obligated to fix his.” And I was like, “If you'd fixed your problems you wouldn't be sitting here harping incessantly on a molehill you've blown up into a mountain. You wouldn't be freaking out on the assumption that the mouse is trying to steal your money just because he asked you how the damned sploder works.”
Obviously they're not perfect. They've all got issues. The main one amplifying all this trouble has social disorders just as bad as Erik's, and we all bend over backwards to help her deal with them, because we love her and value her. And when you love and value someone sympathy and understanding is easy for them to get. But, unfortunately, Erik doesn't have her assets (if you take my meaning) so love and understanding are much more difficult for him to acquire.
In fact, psychologically, I dare say most people hardly notice that someone who goes around constantly in a Tiny asexual avatar is even there. It imbues him with an aura of childish innocence that sets him apart from the very adult virtual world the rest of us perceive, while at the same time giving him a creative validity that is worthy of being admired.
I absolutely do not want to be put in the position of having to jump all over my friends for letting their problems become an unfair detriment to Erik's continued participation in this community. I want to be able to continue giving the same sympathy, understanding and tolerance to my friends that I treat Erik with. But there's a big difference between Erik and the people who've dedicated themselves to undermining his sense of security. Erik isn't hurting anyone. The worst he's capable of is being an annoyance due to obsessive dwelling on subjects that have already been settled to everyone else's satisfaction, but which somebody is making damn sure he knows are still open in somebody's book and may come back to haunt him at any time.
But the people working to undermine Erik's sense of security are indeed hurting somebody. Mainly they're hurting Erik, but they're also hurting Rita, who stands to lose badly needed rent money if Erik is driven out, and they're also hurting me, by forcing me to deal with ridiculously unnecessary drama, rather than getting some joy and stress relief out of SL while my real life is falling to pieces.
While at the same time they are totally ignoring what an asset Erik is to the sim. He builds beautiful places. And he does it for the benefit of the very people who seem to get some kind of satisfaction out of making him feel insecure, which probably in turn contributes to his illness in real life.
What happened the other day was my fault. I was the DJ that didn't show up, because my 90 year old RL father fell and broke his shoulder, leaving him a total invalid that I was having a desperate time tending to with totally inadequate resources. And the last thing on my mind was SL. I didn't realize I had forgotten Erik's event until after it was over, and that just added misery on top of my misery. But I was astonished to get there and not only find a DJ playing, but the place filled with avatars, because Erik had put out a call for help and saved the event himself.
I thought that was just miraculous. I didn't know he was capable of it. And so I suddenly had something to feel good about . . . for about an hour before the drama started. And so I had to spend the rest of the night before I had to send my father out of this house, probably for the last time, telling the drama addicts what ass-holes they were for dragging both Erik and myself down like that, when Erik hadn't done anything he hadn't seen me, Sky, Bixyl, Jenni and others do any time an emergency DJ was needed to save an event.
I just want these screwballs to know that they ruined my night for nothing – a night I could have been using to take comfort in the company of the friends I was with, a night when I seriously didn't need the extra depression. And it's doubly depressing because none of these people seem to have the capacity to realize they're doing anything uncouth or harmful. They're broken just like Erik, and they can't be fixed, at least not by me.
But still I love them and tolerate them to death. I try with everything I've got not to hold their social ineptitudes against them, but because I'm actually being hurt by them, I have to expend a lot more tolerance on their part than I do on Erik's. And if they insist that no tolerance is to be extended for Erik's problems, they will see in short order how much tolerance has been extended to them, when by fairness it will have to be withdrawn from them as well.
I don't own the community or set its standards. I just live here and attempt to do all I can to make it as pleasant a place to live as possible for everyone else who lives here, and hopefully I'm not the only one doing that.
It's the people who live here who set the standard for how pleasant, tolerant and sympathetic a community it will be. They have complete freedom to elect that this should be a place of intolerance where a socially challenged mouse with can't catch a break. And, as I'm fond of saying in the real world, “If voting to make life hard on people you don't like ends up making things hard on you as well, maybe next time you'll get your priorities straight and vote the golden rule.”
As far as is plain for me to observe, innocence is the only thing Erik is guilty of, and I would really appreciate it if those who have nothing nice to say when Erik sends out a perfectly normal call for help would just refer him to me, or say nothing at all. But if anyone is inclined to help him, please do. I'm extremely grateful to those who covered for my absent tail by coming to his aid last night. That is the kind of neighborly concern that makes me feel good about SL, Furry Fandom and the human race in general. Here's to seeing much more of that in the future.
Perri Prinz,
Ex-President, FCA
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