Keeping your insults on theme
...or why I lose interest in your character.

Alpha / Beta: INT-dependent, sure, based on your character's understanding. This comes from the whole concept of alpha/beta wolf social mentality, and it has been disproven. It's false. It's not real. This behavior only arises with wolves who are in captivity or are alone and separated from the pack. An "alpha" is a lonely wolf who has failed to integrate emotionally into society and cannot function properly any more. Calling yourself an alpha (or by association, another character a beta) is an embarrassment to yourself and it shows a strong failing on your character's ability to understand the emotional capacity social strata.

To spin it into an insult: You can base it on the concept of your character losing touch with the dome and hiding out in their apartment -- that would be on theme. Someone so mentally wracked and incapable of ever reentering normal mix or topside society? You're a poor, poor alpha, separated from the pack. An outlier, an outcast.

Incel: Not INT-dependent, but you really want to hurl this as an insult? These folks (men and ladies) have serious emotional and image problems IRL and need therapy and support to undo the anxiety of unhealthily obsessing over things like bone structure, sexual conquest, acting aggressively towards rejection, or being driven to suicide for feeling like nothing more than a cumrag. Using incel as an insult really does a disservice to those who suffer IRL.

Does it make your character sound flash? Not in the least. It makes your character come off as someone who validates the obsessions listed above as legitimate goals to succeed at. It's shallow, and it betrays your character's long-term worth as nil.

Soyboy: Extremely INT-dependent. Soy interferes with women's endocrine systems, not men's. Like, just to break down how impossible it is for soy to affect a man, here's just a few good reasons:

- Phytoestrogens are incredibly weak compared to bioidentical estrogens

- There's a pitiful amount of phytoestrogens in soy

- Oral bioavailability of phytoestrogens is horrendous

- Testosterone blocks any surviving estrogens anyway

- You'd kill your liver before you made any progress

Phytoestrogens do affect women, however. The surviving phytoestrogens bond to estrogen receptors and provide a worse quality estrogen, reducing overall available bioestrogens. Women would have to make it our entire diet to have even a barely noticeable effect, though, due to the reasons above.

Soyboy is not on theme, but soywoman? Maybe.

Cuck: This one is just dumb and petulant IMO, but whatever.

If you want to dig deeper, it comes with racist and conservative connotations. Topside doesn't care about race, and the mix is already oppressed through conservative measures, so it doesn't feel themely for either location.

But personally I just think it sounds dumb.

Autistic, Retarded, Cancer: Not on theme. We have baka, blank, and a whole plethora of words to describe "a foolish person." Pull from a thesaurus if you're desperate. Resorting to words used IRL as ableist slurs just reflects poorly on the coolness of your character.

That's about all I can think of right now. I'm not trying to police anyone's RP. I'm just sharing how I feel.

Thanks for listening.

I do like the idea of the alternate usage for soyboy, but again, hard to separate it from it's real world connotations. It does sound pretty ridiculous though, and I don't know if I can imagine a corpie actually saying that.

Honestly, a hundred years ago from -now-, we spoke entirely differently, and it stands to reason we would in the future too, beyond insults. As long as people aren't being extremely overt or at least putting a little twist on it? Let it ride. I think this is so case by case and person to person, that it's going to boil down to personal preference and bias, which is an uphill battle.

I explained above why cuck (or cuckold) is technically fine, because it's already centuries old. Alpha/beta works but it works better in the bedroom rather than public insults.

From help SIC.

"Messages on the SIC, both public and private, appear as something akin to thoughts in your head. You assign them a voice and a gender based on the context of the message and your perception of the person messaging you. If you believe you know the person (keeping in mind SIC aliases are not locked and can be taken over by someone else) your mind may assign the message a voice and tone consistent with how that person sounds in the real (IC) world. It's your mind though, and you are in control."

This means that you do not hear the insults as text, you are not reading these, these are essentially telepathy. So the grammar, or lack there of, is not something you should really ever critique unless it's an incredibly obvious accent being posted. Word choice sure, but if someone is dyslexic, or otherwise screws up in a way that wouldn't be noticeable speaking, it's probably not gonna be obvious in SIC.

Some other things, SIC alias hopping, has been said a couple times, that there's no reason to "know" or really even guess with alias hoppers, unless you are able to pick something out, a tell of somesort, like them using a key you know is limited, or you use a SIC tracker to figure out who is behind the hop. As there are 77 million voices constantly bleeting in a background buzz, and SIC chatter is basically just what comes to the surface.

Retard is an insult that is a purely modern form of the word rooted in modern medical science and you are already seeing its decline in our world. Idiot might be a better one, as it's more classic. Or possible addled, slow, just pull out a thesaurus. Retard is relatively unthemely, and offensive to some players OOCly.

I've never seen someone call a Femmeboy or some of the legitimate transgendered characters I know of, tranny, and I'm happy about that. This is something we're going well, in a future where you can get gene-augments relatively cheaply becoming a man, Or becoming a chick is gonna be relatively an easy process for the rich, and there would probably be grants for the poor to do it too.

Soyboy is utterly off theme, just stop it.

Soyboy is utterly off theme, just stop it.

Pick one.

I got quoted in a positive way! Yay. :)

Glad it got noticed, but it's essentially what @JMo is saying, as well.

None of these insults are inherently unthemely because they can be contextualized to themely concepts.

The only exception would be the autistic/retard/cancer terms. In a world where mass cloning is easily available, these are issues of the past. Cancer is curable so is other previously deadly and/or permanent ailments. The only exception would be if you were a poor Mixer unable to afford treatment. In which case you can spin that into a cool insult referring more to your social class and lack of money.

https://www.sindome.org/bgbb/open-discussion/theme/cyberpunk-slang-100/

Unless you were being sarcastic, in which case I look like a bit of a twat now.

If you expect more from SIC, lead by example. A lot of the slang present in Sindome started as just one person using it...and it isn't just slang - the entire game culture is player led. If you all take a moment to stop complaining and simply focus on doing better - we will all prosper.

Alternatively, you can always turn SIC off as well.

As for feeling personally targeted by insults, I think we should adopt an escalation of force doctrine. Do you need to lay into a day old Immy with some repugnant nonsense? Probably not. Do you want to shatter the heart and soul of that asshole who doesn't seem to know when to shut up? Seems legit.

If you take your queue's from others, listen to what they have to say, and then return in stride - that's a solid baseline. For instance, I've been playing with Grizzly for a very very long time. He's hilariously cruel at times. I love it and will be hilariously cruel back. Would I do that to a newbie or another player unwarranted? No.

SIC really makes or breaks the ambience of Sindome. It's also the first impression people get of our game. If we all just quietly agree to aspire to get more out of it - we will.

I'd just say I wish people would use creative terms they come up with on their own rather than relying on slurs that are actively in use and target people today based on who and what they are. i usually see the standard 'it's a game' pushback in some form or the other for that request, so I'll try to explain my case.

This is a game, yes. People use games as a method of escapism from tiring, exhausting, troubling stuff that happens in the real world. Whether roleplaying games, shooting games, card games, you get the point. We all want to experience the ability to escape from reality from time to time. So not only are some insults not current with the theme necessarily, but they also steal the ability to experience escapism for people who hear certain slurs/insults based on who they are as a person.

Being cruel and insulting is super fun in-game, wouldn't it be more fun if you went all out and came up with your own new insults and string of words to crush someone? Or at least stuff in @slang?

People play games to have fun. You don't need to be angry or upset to want to have fun. Nevertheless, regardless of what kind of mood you're in, having someone randomly pop out a current day slur, and isn't really themely, instead of coming up with something more appropriate for 2104 or their own actual newly created insult is rather jarring and pulls people out of escapism.

That's the point.

The only ones I've seen (with any frequency) have been cuck and autistic. The former being used when people have fit the bill. And the latter? Well... Bit more of the same. Horribly fitting and horribly specific wordage for behaviors that are ingrained in the zeitgeist.

Incel I've seen sparsely recently, and again, rather fitting cases. I'll concede that it's a very modern term, having been born from the internet. But I'd implore players to find better motivations and better targets for their conflicts than "someone wouldn't fuck me" for fear of looking like a cyberpunk Elliot Rodgers.

As far as any actual -hard- slurs, I haven't seen a one in recent times and I'm actually quite proud of the community for it. The most honest and well worded posts against certain words being used having come from people like Evie, citing how it effects them, and I'll be adjusting my RP accordingly. If anyone wishes to do the same, I invite them to, but I understand that laying that kind of emotional baggage out there isn't cozy, so please don't feel there's an ultimatum coming from me.

I just think we can all agree that a bit of pathos and empathy can go further than trying to argue and nitpick soft science and opinion.

In many ways my post is similar to explaining how one can be affected by seeing modern day slurs. It isn't a fun or rewarding experience to suddenly, for example, to see a random f*g thrown out in the game. If you're someone who is part of the community in which that slurs is targeted frequently by a lot of hateful people, seeing this out of nowhere can be a jarring situation a lot of times. For people whose characters use it, it isn't for me to assign reasons as to why their character is choosing this word. I've my own thoughts, but those are assumptions. I'm not going to tell those people not to use those words, I won't address it via local ooc. I will use moments like these to ask people to think over why their character uses those kinds of modern day slurs, though, and if they as a player realise how that might impact a person who unfortunately has to endure real life hate associated with those terms.

Ultimately though it's a decision in those players' hands, all I can do is paint a picture about how modern day slur usage of many sorts is something some players probably experience frequently outside of the game too; so, encouraging creating new and original insults is a great opportunity potentially. I'm not interested at all in dictating to people how to play their characters, and it's easy enough for me, or any of us, to limit my character's RP with characters who do stuff that is jarring in the ways described.

So please don't take my post as a condemnation, a dictation, a demand or even filled with anger or being upset. Merely it's me taking an opportunity to address a matter and hopefully see a few people think about a perspective maybe they didn't consider beforehand because it simply doesn't affect them.

Also I totally agree with you, HolyChrome, re: incel and conflict motivation on the topic of rejected sex, but that's likely another topic entirely and I wouldn't want to derail this conversation. (but if you started one I'd totally give a lot of thoughts)

It was pretty obviously a reference to transgender suicide, and it came across as poor taste and crazy immersion breaking since it was immediately obvious what the person was going for.

It's not the first time I've noticed this either, people will kinda slide OOC stuff in by acting as if it's an IC issue. It's sorta whatever I guess most of the time since a lot of the arguments would cross over, but in the case of the splicer example I just referenced, there's no IC reason why that would be the case, so it sorta makes it obvious that it's just someone trying to dank meme.

Biomodding is one of the ultimate overt symbols of status and wealth, it doesn't make sense at all that you would get salarymen complaining about animal biomods -- that ought to be the telltales of transhumanist hyperwealth. They should aspire to such distinctions!

Whereas it makes complete sense for the mix to be hostile to the symbols of class which are denied to them, just as you have an undercurrent of anti-clonism in the classes which cannot afford them. However would the mix care that some 'pure' element of humanity was being tampered with? In a place where half the population is more metal than meat? Maybe with a small minority, but the practical in-game issue has always been that these characters are necessarily marked as corporate, which I think is the most appropriate way for such discrimination to manifest.

Basically, don’t just lazily drag current day RL prejudice into the game. It’s not themely in the slightest. It’s just cheap, and more often than not immersion breaking.

Exceptions to generalized statements aside, I think the key point everyone is making here is not directly mirroring modern issues because they're divisive and there's no way of knowing if people are going to share your sense of humor on it. Satire is subtle and always includes a wink, which many of these examples don't have.

I inject a lot of prejudice into my character, but always try to make it a bit cartoonish and silly. That wink I mentioned. I highly doubt anyone thinks me, as a player, shares those sort of views IRL. Which is the issue people are trying to highlight. Those thinly veiled, targeted OOC views.

Hate on splicers, but don't make it a parallel with anti-trans jargon.

Hate on Mixers, but don't mirror modern racist rhetoric.

Hate on corpies, but--- Actually, just hate on corpies.

I however agree with Rangerkrauser on one matter, that is you can't say every sense of bigotry is gone a hundred years in the future. There's -always- going to be prejudice, the more different something is to you, the more prejudice there is. There's still religions that dictate things about certain people or certain sexualities, and there's still cultures that have prejudice toward 'less pure' genetics (New Prussian Empire has pride over their genetical and cultural heritage, mentioned under 'Timeline'). I've also seen characters in-game be somewhat insultive toward Russian culture, or Japanese, et cetera. It's totally legitimate, it's just different. And a lot less commonplace. Also, I guess when people are bigots, it's usually on a much milder scale, and more for jokes than anything.

@BeepBoop I'm glad you agree! The word doesn't really have to mean anything bad, especially when it's literally implemented in the game as a 'shortdesc'. I personally like the word, and most of my gay friends use it personally.