Manipulation, Bleed, Player-Characters, and the Purpose of Mafia

[Dannflor]

im so gonna regret egoing this

the problem is that the term gaslighting has inherently abusive connotations

like, the term's roots are in domestic violence

i don't think trying to fabricate your own reality as either alignment in a mafia game is gaslighting, nor does it need to be called that. it is a game, and a game about deception, playing to your win condition by making people doubt themselves is not abusive.

just say it's lying, or misrepping, or whatever people did before gaslighting was a term that got overused

[Dannflor]

what i am saying is that to say someone is gaslighting is to say someone is being abusive given its connotations

and i don't think people should be able to call people abusive if the only thing that is happening is playing the game, that just breaks into the realm of out of game influence and is horrible for game integrity

obviously if there is actually abuse happening in a mafia game it's a different story but i think that's pretty rare and far between at least in current site culture

[Dannflor]

what i am saying is that to say someone is gaslighting is to say someone is being abusive given its connotations

I’m not sure if that’s a fully accurate statement. The meaning of the word seems much more subjective than your statement would imply.

I fundamentally disagree so I'll just leave it at that

[Dannflor]

i think you'll find that historically people use the word to mean people are being abusive, and i refer to incidents on this website

you can want the word to mean something else but that's not how it's generally used. if someone tells calls someone a gaslighter i think it's very reasonable to assume that they are calling that person an abuser

and personally i don't really think we *need* the term gaslighting to be more general and descriptive. like, i lean towards descriptivism, but words also mean things, and there is value in keeping/honoring the definitions of some words as referring to Very Bad Things like abuse