Okay I talk about this every so often but I don’t have it bookmarked so here’s me again talking about Trust. Because the ttrpg space is enormous, and none of us know each other actually, and we’re all just twitters to most of the world who sees us.

Who is it okay to trust?

Do you trust the person with 50k followers, or 5m, or 500?

Does having more followers make someone more trustworthy? Less? What’s the magic number of followers where it’s okay to trust someone?

What about politics? If they talk a lot about politics is it okay to trust them then?

What if they never talk about politics at all?

What’s the right amount of politics y’all where it’s okay to trust someone?

Maybe it’s the stuff they make! If someone made a thing I liked, is it okay to trust them?

What if they made something I didn’t like?

What’s the right amount of having made things I didn’t like or liked where it’s okay to trust someone?

If someone writes a lot of thoughtful threads, is it okay to trust them then?

What if all they do is shitpost, what then?

What’s the right kind of twitter content where it’s okay to trust someone?

If someone is white, cis, male, is it okay to trust them then?

What if they’re queer? Black? Disabled? Jewish?

What’s the right set of marginalization a where it’s okay to trust someone?

If someone has their real photo on their profile is it okay to trust them then?

What if their profile is a cartoon? A picture of an animal? A cartoon fursona?

What’s the right profile picture where it’s okay to trust someone?

Can I trust someone if they have a blue check mark?

Can I trust someone if they don’t?

Who is it okay to trust?

It’s the wrong question. But most of us use it anyway because it’s easier than the truth.

And the truth is this:

You won’t find the answer to whether someone is trustworthy by looking around to see if everyone else in the room trusts them.

Because they’re all looking around too.

We have to figure this out on our own. It sucks, but it’s what we have to do.

You don’t know me. You don’t know what I’m like when I’m not on this site. You might know my games, you might have played them with me at a convention, but unless we’ve talked, unless we’ve had a real conversation? You don’t know me at all.

And it’s scary to think “I might be following the advice of someone I don’t know”, so we latch onto the infrastructure of other people’s opinions about a person and whether they’re Safe, whether they’re Trustworthy, whether they’re a Good Person.

How do you hold in your head the complete complex humanities of a thousand people you’ve never met, constantly scrolling past you in your feed, living their lives and choosing which thoughts to share?

You can’t do it. You’ll burn out if you try.

All you can do is trust that everyone is living a life that goes beyond the 280 characters we see, that everyone has good days and bad days, and that everyone has a motive with what they post.

You can’t Trust anyone on here. Not by default. Not out of the box.

Once you accept that, you can start to widen your circle of people you do know. People you can talk to about things away from the timeline of discourses and retweets. You can start trying to pay attention to the people you want to find out more about. To build Trust, slowly.

Who is it okay to trust?

It’s the wrong question.

Who DO you trust? Really think about it.

And curate your receiving of ideas accordingly.

(Retweets okay. )