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

[DragonEater70]

regardless of anything else, this discussion is making it clear to me that I completely lack a working definition of gaslighting that aligns to any degree of faithfulness to what seems to be the consensus.

Can someone give me a definition? I'm honestly quite confused tbh. Because really to me just making someone doubt their reads or though process shouldn't be called gaslighting simply for the same reason that a spade shouldn't be called a sword

So here's the thing. Like many other English language words (and words in other languages, I'm sure), the word gaslighting has several definitions. Here are both definitions I found on Merriam-Webster:

1. psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.

2. the act or practice of grossly misleading someone especially for one's own advantage.

Obviously, the first definition is a form of abuse that is obviously not acceptable and completely outside the scope of the game. The second really has nothing to do with abuse and is just about misleading. However I'm not sure if it gives an accurate representation of how it's used here. I think here it's used to mean "the action of stating untrue facts as true in an attempt to convince someone who

knows

they aren't true that they are true anyway". It's different from simply lying. Lying would be, for instance, claiming a cop guilty when you are not a cop. Gaslighting is used for instance to describe the following sequence: A mafioso softclaims a guilty, gets their target eliminated, and then insists that they weren't softing a guilty at all and were misrepresented and that they thought somebody else was actually softing a guilty, and then even though you KNOW they did soft a guilty, you let yourself be convinced and eliminate the other person instead. Or another example is if mech doesn't clear someone, but they insisit that it does clear them, and they continue arguing to the point where you're questioning yourself and decide that you know what, maybe the mech does clear them. Both of these would probably be referred to as gaslighting by players who use the term colloquially (IMO). If someone else sees it differently or has something to add, go ahead.

[DragonEater70]

Just to be clear, nobody is banning the actions described above, or even any action, per se. The mod team had set up a policy which discourages players from using the term to describe the actions of other players, on the grounds that said other players would not want to be accused of abuse (it is my personal opinion that the word gaslighting when used in the context of mafia doesn't refer to abuse, but the rationale behind the policy is that the primary definition of gaslighting does refer to actual abuse).

As further clarification, per my understanding this thread isn't even about this policy, but just includes a general discussion of the relationship between manipulation in a game and the emotional state of the players playing the game.

[DragonEater70]

I see, I don’t understand banning words that aren’t slurs or slur-adjacent. It’s a descriptive term for one particular manipulative behaviour. If I get called out for gaslighting somebody in the context of a game I should assume they believe I am gaslighting them or they’re trying to manipulate me or others about me. If anybody is saying it in a way that incites toxicity or referring in a way that insinuates the person is actually abusive that should be brought to the mods regardless and no word ban would stop somebody from doing that, just makes it harder for the good ppl to articulate themselves and makes a transition to the site harder from other communities (the L word I still am catching myself almost saying for instance)

I totally agree with you.

[DragonEater70]

1. psychological manipulation of a person usually over an extended period of time that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories and typically leads to confusion, loss of confidence and self-esteem, uncertainty of one's emotional or mental stability, and a dependency on the perpetrator.

Obviously, the first definition is a form of abuse that is obviously not acceptable and completely outside the scope of the game.

Hot take: That's a legitimate strategy that should be allowed as long as everyone playing agrees to it beforehand (i.e. it should be allowable on the ruleset level) since it introduces the additional skill ceiling of gaslighting, resisting gaslighting, and helping other townies resist gaslighting/helping your scumteam gaslight townies

I have two things to say to this:

First, from a personal viewpoint, I play mafia because I want to have fun with other people, and I happen to enjoy deduction, especially of the social kind. Obviously it can be stressful but at the end of the day I do it for fun. Now, being manipulated into thinking that I am insane, or incompetent or stupid, and having others question my sanity is so far removed from my idea of fun that I'd rather not play at all. It's just a violation of the purpose for which I am playing. It's also just not something I'd ever do to somebody else. If this ever becomes a thing, I sincerely hope it is opt-in and limited to a small number of games.

I do, however, get the appeal for people who really like to play scum to try for something like that, in a twisted sort of way. And I guess there's technically not much harm done if all parties consent before the game starts. But I don't think what you presumably want (being able to influence the player's IRL mindset and toy with their esteem and cause them to trust you over themselves) could work very well unless you play it with secret alts, just because things happening in other ongoing games or even casual interactions will very probably undermine this, unless you actually decide to manipulate the person out of the game thread which I think you see why that would be problematic.

[DragonEater70]

Say, you correctly accuse someone of being scum? What do you expect them to do in turn? Convincing you that you're "insane" may be pushing it, but convincing you that you didn't see what you think you saw and that even if you did it didn't mean what you think it meant, well... that's kind of what they have to do isn't it? If you're particularly good at catching scum, then scum have to attempt to convince you that you're incompetent. Perhaps even over an extended period of time, as a game can last quite a while.

The alternative is ignoring you completely while trying to convince everyone else you're incompetent instead, which is incredibly conspicuous and personally I find even more frustrating, or to just go "Damn, you got me!" which is... obviously not advisable.

There are of course limits here, like. After a game is over, continuing to try to hammer home the bullshit is taking it too far, and if you can see that you're adversely impacting another player's IRL mental health, it's time to back off regardless of wincon. But the general concept of manipulating others into doubting themselves and distorting their "reality" (within the context of the game) is just how the game has to be played as scum, especially with strong Town players or PRs. To me, signing up to a game of Mafia IS consenting to that.

I don't think you understand my point at all. I already said that I think that manipulation and trying to convince people that they are wrong or that they didn't see what they saw is IMO a legitimate part of the game. I specifically mentioned that I think distorting

ingame

perception of reality is fine. I don't think that emotional abuse is, though. Surely you can see that these are different things?

[DragonEater70]

this is where, again, player-character separation may be a good thing

if you're attacking another player directly (ad hominem, etc. against the rules already) as opposed to attacking the character they're playing (there's no separation because mafia isn't as distinctly a roleplay as, say, pathfinder is), those are two different things

i think manipulation extends in a similar way. it'd be bad to manipulate someone out of a mafia game, but the contract is that within the game you're allowed to lie towards the goal of achieving your win condition. so you shouldn't gaslight users onsite. but you can 'gaslight' (a subset of manipulation and deception, which are
licit things to do inside the confines of a mafia game) characters in a game.

so if we're friends playing a mafia game and we act as somewhat trusting friends within the game, and i then talk to you outside the game and manipulate you outside the game to try to get you to act differently in the game, that is bad and not allowed. but if we're friends outside the game and then you manipulate me inside the game to try to get me to act differently in the game, that's fine and allowed.

this is why i argue for that separation of player and character. without them, we have a contradictory reality where it's sometimes allowable to lie and manipulate a person and sometimes isn't. if we're players who are friends and our characters are lying bastards towards each other, we are still friends and have always been friends. this is something we're agreeing to act out.

I agree with the whole of this.

[DragonEater70]

Personally, I think it's hard to divorce its meaning from psychological abuse. Gaslighting is usually a holistic long-term psychological manipulation used to undermine someone's sense of reality and replace it with a dependence on the abuser. That's very hard to do in a mafia context, and (while possible) is exceptionally rare compared to cases of misrepresentation or just plain old lying.

I think letting the term become commonplace, and decoupling it from its meaning, actually kind of becomes a kind of situation no win. If we agree collectively on its decoupling from psychological abuse, I worry that we're actually devaluing the act of gaslighting itself. It's pretty important fmpov that it's something that's named and that we can talk about and that people who experience gaslighting have the resources and support to move past it because it's fuuucked.

The flipside, if we allow it to drift into common parlance as a reduced sin (basically, using gaslighting tactics as a form of social manipulation), but we haven't universally agreed on its decoupling from psychological abuse, it gets awkward. We need to make sure gaslighting is taken seriously and that abuse victims have resources. We also have people calling other people gaslighters in the middle of a mafia game, and the target isn't meant to feel like they're being accused of abuse.

I'm not a monolith, each report will be different & we have a wide team, so really just philosophising. But I'd love to see this become a site culture shift, rather than a consistently punitive situation. I think the ideal here is that we remind people of the austerity of the accusation, check in to determine whether there is something going on, and then (hopefully usually) move past it.

This perspective does make a lot of sense to me. I will refrain from using gaslighting colloquially.