OOC Entry 81 - Sanity Prevails

With great joy I have found out, that Xander Phoena has picked up where he left off with his interview series of CSM candidates. Also Alekseyev Karrde and Ninja Turtle have continued with their 1v1 candidate discussions.

Both of them featured a man I have never heard of before - Psychotic Monk. Turns out he is one of those highsec griefer types.

Actually for someone who is engaged in an activity which I generally have very little affinity with, I found that the guy sounded pretty nice. He comes across as refreshingly unpretentious. Clearly not a professional "space politician" or a veteran metagamer. He makes good points speaking for his playstyle and those who engage in it. Actually, I almost found myself sympathizing with his platform. The man manages to talk about antagonizing players in highsec and doesn't even use the term carebear once.

What I also heard for the first time in the interview with him was, that James315 has withdrawn his bid for CSM candidacy. I couldn't help but chuckle sarcastically when I read this post of his and the reactions to it. In his usual style, James writes a huge wall of text to justify himself and of course a lot of crazy speculation ensues about what his real reasons might have been. Accusations of disappointed supporters, stubborn statements of denial and smug gloating are added as well and soon we have more than 100 posts.

James must be happy about all the attention he is getting again.

I, for my part, wont speculate or gloat. I have had my say about what I thought of James' platform. I do have to say honestly that I feel relieved that James315 has now become replaced with Psychotic Monk. The latter sounds like a person who can actually sit down at a table and have a reasonable and constructive discussion about the issues he stands for. James315, on the other hand, would have had the votes to actually get a seat because there are people who are either crazy enough to really support his ideas or just consider it a funny trolling action to vote for someone like him, but that would very likely have been a waste of a CSM seat.

The thing is, James315 had painted himself into a corner with his extreme and unrealistic stance.

On being elected he would have had a few options, neither of which would have resulted in a good outcome: He could have dropped his trolling/roleplaying mask as soon as he would have gained a seat, but then he would have had to make compromises and find a common ground with other CSM members and CCP. The chance is high, though, that many of his supporters would not forgive him for going soft and "betraying" them. His credibility and reputation would suffer in the wake. They have already suffered due to his withdrawal.Without that credibility and support among the constituency, CCP could easily ignore him.

Another option would have been to maintain his position, but my guess is, that Xenuria would have had a better chance to see his vision of gender bending fetish avatars become reality or Riverini to get his wish and have all the female avatars be stripperific masturbation material. The end result would have been an effectively empty seat on the CSM. In addition to that he might actually expose himself to real-life spillover from in-game nerd rage which could have resulted in annoying harassment.

The last possibility would have been for him to turn around and laugh at everyone involved, declare it all one big trolling action and resign from his seat as soon as he got it. That - again - would mean a lost seat and damage to his reputation. The latter is his own problem, but the former would be a lost opportunity to influence the direction of the game development in a positive way.

In the end, I am happy that sanity has prevailed and the "competetive highsec players" have a possibility to get representation on the CSM through a person who does not act like a total nutter.

Who knows, maybe they will even get one thing or the other included into the game which makes their playstyle more enjoyable for them.