Notion: Working for corporations makes you a cain.
This seems to be the general belief among vocal characters in the mix, and is one that's been fostered by characters that played to it as a theme, and had some ability to spread it around in the last 1-2 years. I bring this up because mine was one of those characters. At the time I was doing this rp, it was very fun and very wild and very much me wondering if I'd be rerolling before each time I logged out. That said, Ratchet the player, had the ooc mentality that this was the theme at the time. Now that I've got more Withmore time under my belt, and my character has moved away from that kind of loud, youthful, idealist rp, I found myself falling victim to this shift in theme I feel I helped perpetuate. OOCly, I was wary of initiating any biz with topside assets because of the consequences that I knew would come with being caught. Consequences I actively unleashed on players in the past. Worse than outside forces acting on my character, I was fighting with myself over who he would be. Private thought experiments while I was logged in - conversations in his own head about if he'd still be a mixer if he crossed this line or that. Etc.
And I realized with great rp comes great responsibility. We have the ability to shape cultural and public perception in the game space - especially for newer players. This issue is a clear example. Anyway, here's a query.
Q. Does working for a corporation necessarily make you a cain?
A. Hard no.
Characters like to use rat and cain to label anyone found to, or thought to be working with any topside entity, regardless of the work's nature. Furthermore, in my experience, when a character is found to be working with topside in any way, or Anor forbid, goes up to work themselves, very frequently their chums left in the mix get handed the bag of shit for working with a 'cain'.
Am I saying we shouldn't lynch cains? No. What I 'am' saying is that I don't want to lynch bakas unless I got some kind of data or notion that they 'are' a cain other than, "NLM gave him a job, and he botched it or talked to the wrong loud mouthed chum, and now I know he did some job for NLM so he must be a cain."
There are people hustling for flash with topsiders, and there are cains. I think this is a good angle to look at if you're staring into the mix/corporate dichotomy as a black and white canvas. You don't have to hate mixers who get themselves a slice of the pie. Hate them for getting a slice of the pie at another mixer's expense.
But wait, not even at ANOTHER mixer's expense. YOUR expense. Your CHUM'S expense. Cause what do you care about Joe Baka getting ratted on when life over here is good for you and yours? Unless you have a cause/manifesto/ideal/movement etc. that dictates you should, why is it your business as a mixer, and why should your character care or waste their precarious assets dealing with something you shouldn't necessarily focus on thematically as a player?
Look at it from another angle. Keeping cyberpunk theme in mind, why would any...any ONE. True or not, why would ANYONE go out of their way to hunt down an alleged cain or topside 'helper' unless there was a. something personal about it, or b. something to be gained?
Now, I know I'm making some assumptions about what theme should be, and I've grabbed that partially from last weekend's TH log. I'm not trying to tell you what YOUR theme should be within the scope of cyberpunk/withmore/blue,green,gold,red. What I AM trying to do, is implore us as players to ask ourselves what reason we have for hunting alleged cains or mixside corporate help other than, "Someone said this person did a bad thing to the mix, and I love the mix so I'm going to do something about it just for the sake of it." You aren't being paid? Your chum wasn't arrested? You didn't lose flash over it? Anything?
Two thoughts pop into my head if I gather that notion from someone in game. You (the character) sound like you're trying to be a white knight, or a mix Jake. Maybe you are, and that's cool. I've been in both of those places across the few characters I've played. It's just good to ask why you're making a decision, because just like in real life, people can fall into the herd mentality of listening to a few relatively influential voices, and get pulled into a theme they never intended or wanted to play, and that's where I feel we are right now in the Dome.
Life is shades of grey. So is Withmore. It's only black and white if you want it to be, but I think we all agree that we'll get richer, more diverse rp if we weren't all color blind.