How to meme without getting modkilled
Have you ever wanted to make memey posts in a game of mafia but were too worried that posting them would make everyone in the game hate you, force the moderator to modkill you, cause the other players to hunt you down in real life to kidnap your family and smash your windows, and just generally ruin your life? I can’t do anything to stop people breaking your windows, but I can at least give you a bit of guidance on how to meme without getting modkilled. That’s why I made this thread entitled ‘How to meme without getting modkilled’ to serve as a guide to how you can meme without getting modkilled.
Why do people get modkilled? Is it because the mods don’t like them, bad luck, or just natural causes? For years people didn't know. Most games ended with an unfortunate modkill in Lylo (what they called Lelo in the old days) leaving most of the players confused and unsatisfied. Fortunately, the admins decided to take pity on us and provide some guidance. I've examined this guidance, along with common warnings present in standard rulesets, and provided a thorough explanation of how these rules might affect your memery. If you get modkilled now, you'll know there’s a reason for it in addition to the mod not liking you. Please note, I deny any culpability for people misinterpreting any of my suggestions.
The cannier reader will have already noticed that rule doesn’t actually prevent threats, blackmail, and vaguely menacing statements made while wielding sharp implements, it just redirects those threats to the mod. Sure, they might modkill you, but if your blackmail is good enough then you can probably persuade them otherwise. In practice, this rule basically means if you want to threaten another player you just need to threaten the mod as well.Do not bring outside influences into the game - this includes threats, bribes, wagers, promises, "trust tells", alliances, etc. Using knowledge from previous games is perfectly acceptable, but try not to carry grudges from one game to another.
Trust tells are a bit trickier to deal with. Sometimes the quality of your memeing might be influenced by your alignment. If you repeatedly mention that you don’t meme as scum then don’t meme then you’re at danger of being modkilled for trust tells, even if what you said was all part of a meta-meme where the commentary on your memeing was itself the meme and you would have done it even if you rolled town too. I recommend dumping around fifty memes in the first ten pages to make sure you’re safe.
Carrying over grudges from previous games is entirely naturally and you shouldn’t feel bad to admit to those urges. If you intent to post a series of high quality memes and you spot someone in the game who doesn’t find your memeing funny then you might want to consider faking a guilty cop check on them. Best case scenario, they flip scum and you reap in the towncred. Best case scenario, they flip scum and everyone assumes you were just memeing and they’ll probably just townlock you for it since they’re afraid to admit they didn’t get it. I said best case twice there because there’s literally no downside. You got rid of someone who wouldn’t enjoy your memery in favour of keeping someone who does in the game; you probably even solved the game at the same time. You’re pretty great you know that?
Personally, I’m a little disappointed at how little this rule is actually enforced in practice. You see it in pretty much every game and yet I’ve never actually seen someone modkilled because the mod didn’t think they were having enough fun. It’s enough to make you wonder if your mod really wants you to have fun or is just putting that one in there because it’s expected. I don’t know about you, but if I got modkilled halfway through a nice little heated toxic 1v1 because the mod thought I wasn’t enjoying it then I’d feel touched to see how much they cared.This is a game. Have fun, and keep the game fun for other people. This might be the most important rule.
Sometimes we all get that urge to edit our posts to add some encoded burns we enjoyed hearing in our quicktopics, but did you know this might put you at danger of getting modkilled? These four are normally grouped together, so realistically as long as we’re only breaking one of them at once we should probably get off with just a warning. Like I always say, make sure you’re only breaking one law at a time, and make sure that law isn’t tax evasion.The following is a list of outlawed shenanigans:
Using invisible text, codes, cryptography, etc.
Editing your posts (if you have the power to do so)
Insulting other players
Quoting any PTs you may have access to
If you want to do any coordinated memery then find someone else to do it with. Not only do you avoid the modkill and siteban that comes from breaking this rule, you’ll probably make some amazing friends who’ll stick with you until they realize a lifelong vendetta would be ‘hilarious’ and ‘good memes’.Do not attempt to play the same game under more than one name.
‘But Hopkirk’ you might be saying, ‘everyone on the site hates me because I’ve been following your advice and now I can’t find anyone who’ll associate with me, let alone agree to coordinate memes with me.’ First off, fuck you. My advice is amazing. You just interpreted it wrong. That’s why you got sitebanned, not because my advice was ‘deeply questionable’ and ‘a reason we want to have a talk with you about what’s appropriate to post in mafia discussion’. I even specifically denied any culpability for people misinterpreting my advice. Maybe you should have read it more carefully. Yeah, I put some effort into this guide, and you didn’t even bother to read it? Wow. Maybe you’re the bad guy here.
Pretty clear cut. Coordinate any memeing within the thread or your scum QT. Try to avoid exclusively coordinating memes when you have a scum QT to coordinate them in as otherwise people will start catching on and voting you off before you can finish coordinating your memes.Do not talk outside the game thread about an ongoing game except where explicitly allowed to do so by your role/moderator.
As a side note, it’s always worth jokingly asking your mod something like ‘you don’t mind if I talk about the thread with my stepsister right lol?’ The mod will probably assume you’re memeing, especially if you have a reputation as a memer. Remember, it’s not that hard to make a strong town player your stepsister if you’re willing to ruin a couple of marriages and/or partially an orphan. Getting adopting is technically an option, but arguably going too far just for a mafia game. I’d probably stick to just making a couple of people’s parents disappear, then making the survivors into a couple (of people). That’s far more reasonable.
This is one you absolutely don’t want to do because, presumably, the mod knows what they’ve said to you. It’s really hard to sell the standard defence of ‘I didn’t actually read those communications; I just typed the exact same thing independently of you word for word. We are vibing so hard we must be soul mates! Please never leave me.’ This is really the only viable defence, and it basically never works, so I’d generally recommend you avoid quoting your role pm wherever possible.Do not quote communications with the moderator (in particular, your role PM). Paraphrasing is usually ok.
You may have noticed that this doesn’t carry the exception, ‘except where explicitly allowed to by your role’. If your moderator tells you that you’ve become a ‘tree stump’ thenDo not post in the game after you are dead or replaced. Some moderators do allow contentless "Bah!" posts, but you should never reveal information once you are dead.
don’t fall for it.
Yes, you can still get modkilled after you die. That's why you should never do wacky rulebreaking stuff after you die then sarcastically ask 'what are you gonna do, modkill me?' The answer to this of course is 'yes', they can modkill you and you'll look ridiculous.This rule also cleverly covers the scenario where you have the perfect idea for a hilariously appropriate alt halfway through the game. If you want to sub out to sub in under that different account, you should make sure that you don’t tell anyone. I recommend making up an excuse such as ‘I accidently quoted my role pm in person to three people who weren’t the game mod, and I only do that as town who isn’t having fun.’
Over my first five games on the site my winrate dipped below 50% and I was terrified someone was going to notice. Obviously at that point I was arguably bad enough at the game that I was signing up to games where I couldn’t in good faith say that my presence would increase my presence would be a benefit to my alignment. Fortunately in my sixth game on site somebody told me to ‘git gud’ and it motivated me to improve enough that I’m no longer in danger. If you’re bad enough that mods have started modkilling you just for signing up please consider this me telling you to ‘get good’ (I’ve updated the somewhat antiquated grammar of the original advice). I hope it can do the same things for you that it did for me.Play to win the game.
As a side note, this can be a fairly difficult rule to deal with if you legitimately
aren’t playing to win the game
. I recommend claiming that you wouldn’t be having fun if you weren’t acting the way you were, you were concerned about getting modkilled for not having fun if you weren’t having fun and pointing out that getting modkilled would give worse EVs than whatever wacky strategy you were going with. If you’re still reading then you’re now pretty much immune to modkills or can at least stretch out and proposed modkill into a decades long legal battle, by the end of which the game will be a distant memory.
I hope the guide’s been interesting thusfar, but in case it hasn’t I’ll end it with an interesting thought. Sometimes it’s worth considering if you really should be weaseling your way out of the consequences of your actions. Sure, you can avoid the modkill and meme as much as you want, but at what cost? Maybe it could make the game less fun for other players if you repeatedly violate the rules for your own, presumably sick, satisfaction. Is that something you really want to do? After all, per the standard rules, if you stop them from having fun they’re in danger of getting modkilled.