Keanus Articles

Calm Communication

We are all humans. Humans have faults, differences in they´re thoughts and opinions or behaviours. That is perfectly fine, but sometimes those might clash with other peoples perspective.

,,You said A but I think you´re completly wrong and B is the only choice one should make!" ,,What? You are forcing your opinion on me. I will tell someone about you!"

I think you know this kind of situation from school/work/home or wherever. When I still went to school I learnt how to deal with situations that required mediation over the span of a 3 year training. ,,He blackmouthed me!" ,,He stole my cola and drank it!" ,,He punched me!" All to familiar so everything I tell here, I tell as a mediator and NOT as Keanu. Please keep that in mind!

What I about to tell could maybe also help you, who is reading this right now.

As mediator I always encouraged to first calm down over the span of a night. A good sleep could help you clear your mind from a clouded vision.

Let´s make an example here so you could see what I mean:

A: ,,I´m sorry that I made you wait so long. I know it´s late for you. Are you still sure you wanna hang out?"

B: ,,Don´t make me reconsider myself."

A: ,,Uhm..."

If you´re not fluent in a language you might say something that you think is correct but in reality was a rude thing to say to someone else. What could A do now?

1: A could just ask ,,Can you tell me what you where trying to say?" and that problem could be solved then and there or A could let it slide and ask sometime later and say ,,BTW you said something rude. Let me tell you the meaning of you sentence."

2: A could go to someone else and drag other people into something small because of a misunderstanding. That could make B angry and vent to the mediator ,,Why didn´t A come to me?" resulting in a broken trust between A and B.

Maybe you guessed it: Yep, that happend to me before I joined the Mondocommunity, but thankfully A decided to ask me directly what I wanted to say. Let´s put us in a event situation:

It can be any event, it doesn´t matter. You´re not a person that want to get touched/close to people if not necassary but someone else constantly is in your face. You don´t feel so good about it.

First thing you can do is to get yourself out of the situation by just saying ,,My head starts to hurt. Need to head off. See ya later!" Nobody will suspect a thing and you don´t spoil the fun.

Second thing you should do is to sleep over it instead of instantly running to a mod or the tell us a thing channel in discord. I understand that there are instances where the mods/event leaders need to be notified asap, but those are very rare.

Third step is to figure out if what happend was really so critical to you that you NEED to tell a mod or if it might be better to tell that person in question per dm. You could go like ,,Excuse me. I hope I don´t sound mean but you came a little to close to me throughout the entire event and it made me a little uncomfortable. Can I ask you to not come closere until we know each other better?"

That is a friendly way of saying how you felt last time. We´re (almost) all adults and very respecting, so mostly the people will answer to you on equal terms. You also don´t take up the time from the mods to look into your case, blowing something up that didn´t need to blow up in the first place.

Asking someone to tell that person is ok, but it could potentially backfire like I explained earlier.

Always make sure to stay calm when in a tough spot. If you or the other person are fired up then the discussion will only be a very destructive one maybe even in resulting in hate and someone leaving the community.

Don´t let anger or angstyness cloud your own judgement. Sleep a night and ask you ,,Do I really need to involve someone else?"

That was a long read I know, but thanks for reading anyways. I hope my little mediatortext could help you out, even if it just a bit^^.

Staying Neutral & Listen to your instincts / Experience at school

,,Working" as a mediator is not easy. During my time I got into many, many cases. Because I was pretty much friendless I could take on almost any case without stepping outside the ,,You always need to stay neutral" zone.

Most cases was ,,You stole my rubber/pen/cola you dingus!" I always tried to find out the truth. Most often it was through listening closely and taking many, many notes ,,Person A, Bathroombreak at 12:30." (Person A says a little later he went to the teachers office at 12:30) That would be a contradiction and a place to start finding out more and more details, getting witnesses etc. Take notes while listening to people.

Taking notes might seem tedious at first but trust me when I say that those will come in handy, not only in discussions but all sorts of things you encounter in life. Groceryshopping, homework, videoedeting etc.

The next story happend to me shortly after I got my mediator license and almost make me lose it.

I had many cases where I went to discussions with someone more experienced. When it was time to get my own case, it couldn´t gotten any worse. It was a ,,You stole my cola and drank it" thing. The talk went as usual. Both partys explained there stuff and when it seemed as B was the culprit he said ,,Can´t be. I got diabetes and can´t drink that." I completly blanked because I never encountered anything like that before. And he even was ready to show a certificate as proof.

Now I was at a tough spot. I accused someone now without solid proof anymore of thivery. The proof I had early just went poof. I needed to gather my thoughts so I just said the we would talk again next day.

When I was at home, I took many looks through my notes. And then something hit me: The cola was stolen at that exact day. He conviniently had those papers with him. I of course couldn´t proof (just yet) that those might be forged but I had another Idea. The next day I went to the classteacher and ask them as a mediator to do me a favor.

During the first lunchbreak I continued where we left of by retelling the first disussion (just to buy sometime). After a while I mentioned that I thought that those papers are fake. Of course B wanted to know why I thought of that but I just answered that the teacher told me that he is a troublemaker and did fake some papers already to show of to his parents/teachers. I got that information earlier. Of course that wouldn´t proof much. The nail in the coffin was what the teacher told me next:

On my request they phoned the parents and they told the teacher that B was perfectly fine. B got into harsh trouble again. Can´t remeber how it ended exactly but I think the police got involved afterwords.

As you can see with this kinda extrem example: taking a break, calm your mind and reflect on notes you took earlier can help getting a way more clearer picture on difficult stuff. If my plan and my instincts would have failed me, I would have been the one to be punished. I took a risky gamble and my advice is: do NEVER accuse someone without any kind of proof. I (almost) learnt that lesson the hard way.

Listening to you instincts can be good and all BUT don´t put it over actual facts. If your instincts tell you to take a dip into lava, do it. But facts will tell you ,,You a big dumb dumb. You get burny burny".

Fails at the mondoserver

In the beginning I was a very shy but also cuddly person. I never really experienced such a nice VRchat community before. I wanted to cuddle all the time but got called out for it eventually because people didn´t want to get up close. Completly understandable. Since then I try to give out headpats at max, only cuddling people who explicit said ,,Sure Keanu, comeover you dumb dumb." Consent is not just a word.

Remember when I mentioned that language barriers can lead to misunderstandings? That applys also to phrasing. We once played a game during an EU event and I said something that I did not like about a game. I misphrased it so people misunderstood me. They thought I would hate the game so I dragged down the mood without realizing it. What I really meant was ,,I don´t like the gamemode of that game and that we have to reset the world to change it. That gamemode is highly unbalanced." Missphrasing is the key to missunderstanding.

The sentence ,,I´m in trouble" can lead to other people wanting to help you, even you didn´t want help. For others you inderectly send out a help signal. Wanna take a guess again who send out those signals unintentionally? If you guess me, you´re correct.

Sometimes a mouth is faster then the brain. There is just no exception. But if you hear someone saying something that you didn´t like, give them maybe the benefit of a doubt like A did in my ,,reconsider" example. Not only might you save a friendship but you might also teach someone a better way of phrasing stuff.

It is never a shame to admit that you done something wrong, it´s the contrary. People will admire you for your honesty and bravery to step out and say ,,I did something dumb. I´m so very sorry. I hope you can forgive me eventually while I try to work on improving myself. Are you willing to help me?" People will most certainly come and help you.

Self Improvement, Love, and Acceptance

,,I´m a bad person and I deserve nothing." Oh boy, how often did I say those things. I hated myself for many, many years because of many different factors. Beeing told that I´m worthless as a child, beeing treated as dirt by other children, just beeing an errandboy for girls, tricked into stealing in a toystore. All those things made me very bitter person.

At one point I dropped out of school because I couldn´t be there anymore. After that I tried to help other getting over there problems just to get a little bit of good karma. Did I really care what happend to them after I tried to help? Sometimes yes and sometimes no. I guess it depended on the person and the situation.

Because of all of that I saw myself as evil, not worthy of love of any form. But this community wasn´t having any of it. They said ,,You´re awesome!" ,,You´re a cutie!" At first I didn´t really belive it. Why should I. But someday, out of nowhere I bursted out ,,I know I´m cute. No need to tell me that!"

I didn´t know why I said that but I think something just spontanously decided to switch in my brain to just say ,,Let it go. The past is the past. What matters now is the present and future. Improve now to give your future a headstart."

Do I despise my past? No, I just use what I learned to my adventage while closing one book to write another one.

If you ever think something like ,,I did stuff that other will hate me for!" aren´t you a little unfair to the other people? What makes you so sure that we will hate you? Did you hear them saying that without them even knowing what happend? Aren´t the others people who can make they´re own judgements of what they hate or love?

You might never know I you don´t try to find it out. I think that it is better to do something to regret it later if it fails instead of not even trying in the first place and then missing out on what could become one of the best things that ever happend to you. Yes, you might fail but you could use that experience like I explained earlier to get help from other parties.