I have a lot of thoughts on this topic as somebody who spent many, many years on Fig Hunter.
I'll say ahead of time that I almost certainly contributed to the seemingly toxic atmosphere of the place. But I personally never saw it that way for most of my time there, and it's one of the most memorable times of my life.
It was a very argumentative place, however at least the impression I got (which could be completely wrong) was that although everybody was arguing all the time, it wasn't aggressive and people were friendly to one another.
In a sense a lot of it was discussion about various things that a lot of people might not agree on and hearing alternative views. Things were usually fairly respectful despite the nature of the place, to me at least. I never felt attacked and I did not intend to attack others.
Looking back and now having more experience with these things from the outsider perspective and not from the insider perspective, I realise that it's not very enticing, and it sounds very strange.
Seeing people you don't know arguing about things you don't care about is quite annoying, but on the inside as a close-knit group of friends it seemed quite normal.
It wasn't until the very later end of Fig Hunter that I felt things switched from a group of people having fun arguing about things with one another to a fairly uncomfortable one, long after you had left.
A lot of people had stopped frequenting the place by this point, and what few people did remain were usually further driven away by the more unpleasant individuals (most of which had not been around long, either).
By the time the place was shut down it was a ghost town, the chat was almost exclusively people entering and leaving. It really bothered me that the place I had spent all of my teenage years up to that point in just faded away.
I deal with a lot of similar frustrations that I assume you did in the Discord server dedicated to the game I work on. I have stepped away from it many times as I just do not mesh with a lot of the people in it.
I unfortunately don't have any advice since the problems I experience in my own Discord have never gone away. At a certain point I had to accept that the community built around it was not meant to be a place for me to enjoy as much as it was for everyone else.
3
Tobias 1104~4Y
There's an enormous difference between being one of the members, and being the admin in charge of it all. It's like the difference between a teacher and a class of children; each of those children might have somewhat anarchic but generally amicable friend groups within the class, but might just generally disregard the others. If there's ever some serious disruption, it'd be something they'd watch with curiosity or amusement from afar.
For the teacher, though, they're essentially on the receiving end of all the disruptions in some way or another, and they have to manage all of the class at once, while never being a part of them because they have a role to fill, a duty.
So when I think of the site's toxicity, mostly what I'm remembering are people who digged away into the site's code, who specifically targetted me with trolling because I was the one in charge, etc. Each one beat me down a bit further until it became unbearable, but I remember my reactions seeming like overreactions to people because all they were seeing was that one event.
If you're in an admin sort of role in that Discord for the game you work on, you'd get a better feel for what I mean by this than the average member. It's tough!
3
Refurin24~4Y
I do remember a number of those people who specifically targeted you and most people really didn't like them because of it. Sadly there's not much that we could do about it other than tell them to leave or ignore them, since getting them banned didn't work either, they'd just make alts!
They're mostly what I mean when I say that the unpleasant people at the end of things drove everyone away. It was these people, who seemed to have a bizarre vendetta and refused to leave. They dragged everyone down for no reason and were very selfish.
There was one user who I had a decent relationship with (and I was collaborating on a game with them) until eventually I found that they were privately attacking you and trying to find ways to break the site and just I cut ties with them after that.
It always frustrated me that there would be people who found it okay to spend their time on Fig Hunter having fun while simultaneously attacking the person who created it. It's nonsense!
I'll say ahead of time that I almost certainly contributed to the seemingly toxic atmosphere of the place. But I personally never saw it that way for most of my time there, and it's one of the most memorable times of my life.
It was a very argumentative place, however at least the impression I got (which could be completely wrong) was that although everybody was arguing all the time, it wasn't aggressive and people were friendly to one another.
In a sense a lot of it was discussion about various things that a lot of people might not agree on and hearing alternative views. Things were usually fairly respectful despite the nature of the place, to me at least. I never felt attacked and I did not intend to attack others.
Looking back and now having more experience with these things from the outsider perspective and not from the insider perspective, I realise that it's not very enticing, and it sounds very strange.
Seeing people you don't know arguing about things you don't care about is quite annoying, but on the inside as a close-knit group of friends it seemed quite normal.
It wasn't until the very later end of Fig Hunter that I felt things switched from a group of people having fun arguing about things with one another to a fairly uncomfortable one, long after you had left.
A lot of people had stopped frequenting the place by this point, and what few people did remain were usually further driven away by the more unpleasant individuals (most of which had not been around long, either).
By the time the place was shut down it was a ghost town, the chat was almost exclusively people entering and leaving. It really bothered me that the place I had spent all of my teenage years up to that point in just faded away.
I deal with a lot of similar frustrations that I assume you did in the Discord server dedicated to the game I work on. I have stepped away from it many times as I just do not mesh with a lot of the people in it.
I unfortunately don't have any advice since the problems I experience in my own Discord have never gone away. At a certain point I had to accept that the community built around it was not meant to be a place for me to enjoy as much as it was for everyone else.
For the teacher, though, they're essentially on the receiving end of all the disruptions in some way or another, and they have to manage all of the class at once, while never being a part of them because they have a role to fill, a duty.
So when I think of the site's toxicity, mostly what I'm remembering are people who digged away into the site's code, who specifically targetted me with trolling because I was the one in charge, etc. Each one beat me down a bit further until it became unbearable, but I remember my reactions seeming like overreactions to people because all they were seeing was that one event.
If you're in an admin sort of role in that Discord for the game you work on, you'd get a better feel for what I mean by this than the average member. It's tough!
They're mostly what I mean when I say that the unpleasant people at the end of things drove everyone away. It was these people, who seemed to have a bizarre vendetta and refused to leave. They dragged everyone down for no reason and were very selfish.
There was one user who I had a decent relationship with (and I was collaborating on a game with them) until eventually I found that they were privately attacking you and trying to find ways to break the site and just I cut ties with them after that.
It always frustrated me that there would be people who found it okay to spend their time on Fig Hunter having fun while simultaneously attacking the person who created it. It's nonsense!