Probably the only thread like this you'll ever see from me. @.@

So, I have this one member. Great member. Very loyal. Very good writer. Very active. Has various forum friends. She gets stuff done.

However.

She is easily angered. I didn't even know people with such short fuses like this existed outside of TV/books/etc.

So, you know, I said, "Hey, I'll just become friends with her. We'll be friends, and I can at least use that respect to keep her a little more calm and a little less hostile."

I cannot tell if me building up a friendship has made things better or worse.

Besides her temper, she is a really cool person. Everyone realizes that. Because of this, I have tried real hard to keep our friendship. We've been through various arguments and I've managed to hold onto our friendship.

And then, by a string of insane coincidences while I was diffusing an argument in the cbox, I said a few things that were sensitive topics for her. Because I value her as a member and a friend, I spent effin 2 hours apologizing her. She accepted my apology finally, and I thought everything was okay.

After that, I go off for a week of vacation. Upon returning, I see that my forum that was struggling already was resorting to "what would you like to see to keep the forum alive" topics. The spitfire member calls me out in those threads about my activity (I was on vacation @.@) and some things I admittedly hadn't gotten finished.

So, whatever. One of the things I like about her is that she isn't afraid to keep me in check. I respect that and want that from my members.

Then, the spitfire leaves the forum for a few weeks, because she is moving.

Despite her being away and since she called me out on it, I accepted the challenge and fulfilled that challenge with flying colors.

Now, she has come back online, but refuses to come back to my forum, because she is mad at me. Basically, this is me: WTF?! ><

No, she didn't come back to the forum to tell me she was mad at me. She came onto MSN, blocked me, and had a friend tell me she was mad at me.

So, basically, she is mad at me for a reason that probably isn't valid (because, as shown, I've done everything to make this girl happy), and is refusing to return to the forum because of it, and is thus LYING to her friends on the forum who are still assuming that she is in the moving process as they await her patiently.

Now, our mutual friend will probably solve it soon (and I'll be sure to tell you guys why she was mad >.>). But, like, I'm kinda tired of apologizing to her, though I probably will again, because I still consider her a friend.

So, what would you do in my situation? How do you deal with members that you can't seem to please? How do you deal with members that are so quick to anger that it makes you want to pull your hair out?

(Sorry for the long read.)

Greyscale,

you seem like such a sweet person. I used to be like you when I was rping. There was this one person who I considered a friend. She was way over sensitive, getting irritable when I rped with other people (she never posted and made plans for storylines but never started anything: of course I had to rp with other people if I wanted to write at all!)

You sound from your post that you are thinking about this A LOT. That' s okay of course if you really consider her a friend, but to be honest. My impression as a school teacher is that she sounds like one of my five year old kindergarden kids. "Tell Joey I'm not playing with him, he's not my friend..yadayada". Seriously, give yourself a break G! That kind of person is actually exhausting and the more you bend over backwards to help them, the worse it will get. It is very selfish behaviour, she seems very immature and if she was really your friend, she would have accepted your apology first time around and the whole situation would be done and behind you both. As for the vacation thing? I don't see where she could possibly get annoyed there. She is perhaps just a trouble maker.

You talk of her keeping you in check? It's great to have other staff members do that. I'm a meek admin to be honest but I'm more than happy to get a reality check from other staff if I need it. But is she a staff member? Maybe its not helping you, maybe she's just being bossy and rude.....


Apologies for my longwinded reply. I have met players like her a lot is all. The answer to your questions is simple:


WALK AWAY! Let her go find someone else to harass. Delete her from your msn and any other details you have and forget about her. You've wasted too much of your valuable energy and time on her as it is and she doesn't seem to be deserving of it.

Just my humble opinion.

I am in your same position. Well, mostly, this particular person is very similar, easily angered, pinning me out to everyone else for minor slip ups, etc. She very much reminds me of my five year old brother... But you see this person is older than me, in her mid-twenties and I am seventeen. So it so very much confuses me when she suddenly posts message (admittedly via Yahoo) I really hate you. :/ WTF?

I'll tell you how I dealt with her, and still do. She is still my friend, kind of. We are talking now and as I type this I am going between arguments with her.

Firstly, she likes to make sure people know I have done something wrong or stupid by bringing up publicly in the cbox. So then of course I do it back because it upsets her. She HATES to be corrected, so I correct her continuously, for every time she makes a comment, be it on my graphics, wording in a rp or even for something I have said/done or not said/done. I know it seems childish to go back at her, but it works because she'll be quiet (Doesn't last long but she does get the message)

Since that was a long ramble. I'll give you an example because I am not even sure I understand what I just said.
She asked me to make a graphic for her, I did, and posted it on my request board under her. She didn't like it. Now fair enough she doesn't have to like it, does have to use it... But pulling it to shreds and posting everything that is wrong with it and in the rudest way possible.
No, I don't like that picture; you have f---ing stupid taste in pictures!

And the likes; I gave her a warning then she wanted an opinion on her own work, despite the rest of the board said they liked mine better she still wanted to make it clear mine was horrible and again returned to the thread to trash me. So I did the exact same back, nicer though. I was admin and still had to be nice, so when she asked for my opinion I picked out things that were wrong with it. The pictures were stretched; the cuttings were rough, etc. It worked because she went back and edited her post under my sig and so I returned the favour. I guess the old saying an eye for an eye and all, and you aren't supposed to play into them like that but I found it worked.

She said she keeps you in line? Well... I thought the same too, she'd tell me if she thought something was off, she challenged me and I loved it (When it was on yahoo and not disrupting everyone else, unless it was an on board debate), she told me if she thought something should be different. I let her get away with everything because I considered her a friend, she was always active and she got on with people and if she didn't hid it perfectly well. I thought she was great, but you see... The more I let her get away with it, the more she thought she had a hold on me, even asked if she could be admin, to which I politely refused, (Good idea too, she made a site soon after and it went within a week, and to think she continuously tells me I am a failure as an admin because my own site is no longer up). You have to put her in line, which is my point.

YOU are admin, it is your site. Don't let her bully you into thinking you have to be all obliging. It is not your job to go around apologising to her, making her see sense. There are plenty of loyal, active members out there and they won't be quite so immature and stupid such as the member you are describing. I mentioned my brother and Ise mentioned the kids in her playgroup, school… Little children anyway. She is very right there; you expect a five year old to make another person tell someone they aren't friends anymore. But just tell her to grow up and get lost. You don't need a member like that.

The sad fact is that she probably doesn't think of you as a friend. When she's on the internet, she's got a screen between herself and the world. She can do anything she likes to you and it does't matter, because you're not a real person for her. The internet is a very distancing medium. And if, in the real world, she feels repressed by someone, then taking out her frustrations on you is going to be like therapy.

If I were you, I'd either ban her, or make it clear that it's your forum, and you're not going to put up with these sort of antics. But definitely stop being friendly to her, because she won't stop upsetting you like this if you're friends outside the game.

I think you should set her straight. You have to control your temper in real life, and I see no reason why that same rule shouldn't apply on the internet. We all learned manners from our parents (hopefully), and we need to use them.

I had this one internet "friend", who could be really awesome. She was funny, friendly a lot of the time, she had great ideas and everything, but you wouldn't want to get on her bad side. Sadly, she had an explosive temper, and it was not hard to tick her off. At all. And every time she was angry, she went and did something stupid, which, in a lot of cases, served to suck the fun out of RP'ing because in the end, the game was more about kow-towing to her than it was about roleplaying.

Plus, if you're always kow-towing to this person, other people might see it as favoritism, and few people feeling like they are less important than someone who regularly acts outrageously.

My personal advice is to never get personal with people who are like this. It's alright to chat with them when they're in a good mood and be friendly, but using personal topics to make them upset or angry is just going to eventually fuel fire.

If they start to bring things up in the c-box. Just announce quite emotionlessly, "Not in the c-box. If you want to discuss this farther PM or IM me." The last thing you want to do is poison the community.

An example, this is what happened to a Original HP RP I am on. Late last year a member came on that had very poor grammer and spelling. It was to the point that no one would RP with this member because they just couldn't understand her. The admin, a personal friend of mine, PMed her on several occasions about her grammar and even offered to help; she kept it completely private, and didn't make fun of her on the c-box. Unfortunately, she was not able to comply, not because she couldn't (when she would be PMed about the issue she would post quite well, but about a week later her quality would go back to where it had been), but because she wouldn't. The member was quite politely asked to leave because she refused to comply with our rules. Needless to say she decided to take it out on the admin. She got very personal and started to throw insults left an right on the c-box. A few members that were quite loyal to the admin tried to defend her, including me, by getting personal. The entire ordeal just poisoned the site. No one wanted to be on it anymore, and no one was posting.

After a long descussion about it, the site closed and was to be reopened in a month. A few rules were added to make things run a little more smoothly. Like a said before, there was to be no arguing in the c-box or in public forum. If there was a problem it would be handled privately. If someone was to start something publicly they would be ignored or referred to one of the admins for assistance, and any posts that were hostile would be deleted.

Ok, I sort of need to get back on topic. The girl that you're dealing with seems quite poisoning, not only to the site, but also to you.The last thing that you want is to feel jaded because of this bad experience with this one person. Let her go. She obviously doesn't view you as a friend. You need to stop apologizing for doing nothing wrong. I have a feeling that just doing that makes her feel like she has the power.

One of my mods has a tendency to get a little bit heated because of a few things that players sometimes do and I just tell him that there really is no point. "You are the admin/mod. You have the power. It is your site. What you say goes." As long as you don't let power into your head, this is a great way to just remember to not let people who think they can push you around, bully, or run the site their way; do what they want.

One last piece of advice. When you're dealing with drama like this turn your emotions off. A real friend won't feel slighted if you treat them like all your other members when it comes to rules and application. Always be nice, even when you're pissed off or frustrated. ^^

So, three things to remember. You are the admin; you are in charge. Don't get personal; it will posion the site. And be emotionless when you deal with drama. I know it's hard; but it's definately doable.

Oh, god this post is way too long. ^^ /bow Apologies.

Erk, this sounds familiar. I had to deal with someone like this years in the past--and me and my game suffered for it because I was dumb and hadn't yet grown a backbone. I've known people who can be AWESOME RPers and people--and then just go KABOOM at the most random things. It sucks, it hurts, and in the end you feel like you have to constantly walk on eggshells to make sure you don't trigger the EBIL version of Awesome Person. xD;;

My advice, no matter how hard it may be?

Walk away.

When it comes to people like this, in the end you find out that it's all about them and they learn that by throwing a tantrum, they can get their way. It's not healthy in real life and it's not good in the online life, either. By giving into them, you get taken advantage of and, again, the entire game may suffer, too. These kinds of people can essentially hold an entire game hostage if you don't put your foot down because, once they get away with it...again, everyone's gonna feel like they have to tip-toe around the person rather than risk another explosion. No one likes to feel like they have to constantly worry about what they say because it could potentially upset the other person.

It's stressful. And it's manipulative on the other person's part, too. Friends do not behave that way.

This person may be an awesome person when she isn't going asplodey, but you shouldn't have to constantly fret about setting her off and no one is awesome enough that you should have to perpetually dread saying the wrong thing all the time. So yeah, my advice? It isn't a friendship worth maintaining. Just let her go.

If she's willing to walk away over stuff like that, if she's willing to treat you like that, then she obviously doesn't value the friendship nearly as much as you do. It'll be hard at first, but you and your game will feel much better for it in the end.

This is probably going to sound like really irritating advice. But in the future, just be careful about who you befriend online. You can never be sure what they're like, and to be honest, everything is better kept at arm's length you know? It's not fair she was pulling you out, and if it's your own forum, I'd cast an ultimatum. You know, sort yourself out, or leave the board, because to be honest, behaviour like that is unacceptable.

Good luck (: