Is it?
I actually dropped most groups I was in recently, I kept things like coupon dumpsters and groups I actually frequent, and maybe a few I was too lazy to read up on to see what they were... gets tedious
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I actually tend to get bot spam from using steam forums too, like posting on trade forums or just chatting here and there. I am not sure they find me there, but for example if I got to a game forum and post something, I'm guaranteed to get at least a couple of invites after that
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For me it's ok to hate things or events, but not ok to hate people
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I've hated some people in the past, I think there are more people that hate me though. I do not have anyone I hate right now but I feel like there's a few who hate me, and being the insufferable git that I am it gives me a bit of a warm fuzzy feeling. I would wonder if that was normal had I actually cared >.>
In general I suppose in the worst case it does not bother me, in the best it tickles me
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+1
There are plenty of things in the world to hate (oppression, cruelty, suffering), but hating people isn't good. Carrying hate for a person around inside you poisons your heart and mind, and there is no benefit to it. Generally speaking, hate is love which feels itself spurned and is then poisoned by arrogant indignation.
On a related note, anger should not be confused with righteous indignation. Anger is a "hot" passion, one which clouds the intellect and causes people to exceed the limits of what is right. Righteous indignation, on the other hand, is a "cool" passion, one which clarifies the mind and prompts you to stand up for what is right. Both prompt action, but indignation solidifies your control over yourself, whereas anger burns it to ash.
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So you're saying it's not ok to hate zealots, murderers, child abusers, corrupt government officials, people that dislike anime and other atrocious people?
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I think he's saying it is ok to be indignant about them, and possible use that to do something about them. Whereas hating them hurts you more than it hurts them. Which I fully understand, but the root of this is word definitions. Lets say your definition of Hate is not the same as Khalaq's then the conversation get affected
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Mine was a reply to Pietruszek, not Khalaq.
I consider hate to be strong dislike of something or someone, as such it's not necessarily poison as Khalaq said. However if you spend unhealthy amount of time thinking about things or people you hate and stress over it, then yes you have a problem and you're hurting yourself more than the people or things you direct your hate towards.
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I don't personally know any people like that (besides people disliking anime - it's not a crime in my eyes...) so I don't have a big problem with that - I just dislike these phenomenons. But generally speaking I don't hate anyone and I'm really happy about that
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You don't have to personally know someone to feel a strong dislike toward that person. What if you have a local politician, that doesn't do things the way you want it or a CEO of a company that smiles in board meetings, while his business actively harms other people, or if you love a statue in your town and some guy kicks it over one night, because he thought it was cool?
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I don't think it's not ok to hate people. I do think that like kid that lives in abusive family without ability to leave (no other family or friends to take care of them) has full right to hate their parents.
But in general hating someone when you have ability to walk out and cease contact is bad for you and shouldn't happen.
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Levels are meaningless... Get to that mind set and only be angry for spam...
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I know, past like the minimum levels that you need to do basic steam things like trade, they are pointless, and anyone can reach that just doing the community badge. My levels are from crafting steam badges during the steam sales over the years. My profile page can allow more things on it that there exists as possibilities lol which is just daft
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Not me. I don't use them and don't plan to but I have no issue with them at all. Not my problem if they're illegitimate.
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I haven't used any of them (nor do I especially care to) but it just sounds like trading to me, based on how you explained it. My guess is, they take, say, $0.50 worth of cards/whatevers and give you a set of cards worth maybe $0.40 that you can use to craft a badge. They make $0.10 for their trouble (kind of like a store), you get your badge and didn't have to go through the hassle of finding people to trade with.
My numbers are probably way off and again, not something that I'm looking for but it seems reasonable.
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I originally thought that, I also considered maybe they take cards from say Ruiner and give you a set from Sleengster, but upon looking into it it wasn't like that. So although maybe some of them operate like that, the majority that I saw do not seem to get a profit by taking pricey cards and giving you cheapo stuff. In fact some apparently make a loss??
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Level-up bots are don't really violate steam ToS, it's a gray area. But owners of those bots do withdraw money for steam, selling steam items/games/whatever, and that IS a violation of ToS, and can be illegal in some countries, because they do some kind of business without paying taxes.
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hate, anger, crying, it's all wasted energy that just will never change anything really.
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That is true, that is why I do not waste my energy crying or raging. I am however curious to see if anyone is knowledgeable enough to explain these services. Because even though some people may set up services that net them no profit, when there's hundreds and hundreds of new level bots showing up each week, there must be some sort of benefit to the people operating them. And I wonder what that could be. My theory is that they launder illegitimately gained steam card sets by trading in legitimate stuff, but that is not based on any real data or information - it's speculation.
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I disagree, crying can be cathartic, while hate and anger can be used as fuel to drive you in achieving your goals thus turning them into positives.
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Hate ain't good for your blood pressure mate. Just relax and know you're the better person.
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there is active hate and then just hate. I don't go chasing them and raging at them, that would definitely be a waste of my time and health. But I get invites from them or someone tries to recommend a group etc. I block them without exception, that is what I mean by hate - I have no tolerance for them
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Only your friends can invite you to Steam groups, period.
Every time I get invite to a group, that means one friend less. 99% of time this is nobody I could remotely care about, random people who got there through one way or another, completely meaningless spam generator.
At this point I'm no longer having group invites from anybody. Everybody who did eliminated himself. Having less braindead people on my friendlist is always a good thing.
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you are correct, but bots often try to add me to friends, or someone would add me as a friend for one thing or another before later on trying to invite me to a level up group. Recently I've had a lot fewer unwanted group invites because I've only added people from SG, it happened a lot more in the past when I added people from steam forums and steamtrades
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This is why I have a very simple readme on my profile to comment with the reason why you're adding me. If somebody is too lazy/stupid to read and fulfill, then it means I don't need that person on my FL regardless of reason, he'd only contribute to braindead people I need to remove in the future. Works marvelous - around 90% of friend invites are rejected by ArchiBoT, since I could easily automate this requirement. From remaining 10%, nobody ever makes issues.
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And thanks to ASF declining 100%, only friends can invite me to be friends as well. None of the useless spam <3
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Just clean your friendlist. Whats the point of having ~300 friends if they spam with group inviting?
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I really should do that huh :p
Right now I only delete people when they do something to warrant it, rather than going through my FL and wonder who someone is or when the last time I spoke to them was. It appears to be sufficient for now
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But as an anecdotal incident, I had someone on my FL that had been there for a long while; months. Did nothing weird or off-colour until one day he invited me to a group created as a fandom for a murderer, it had links to very disturbing material. I called the police and gave them the user and group info, they quickly hid themselves and went private, the authorities later contacted me to let me know they found their IP to be in this country and were on the case. There are sick people out there. (chrome thinks I spelled colour incorrectly, it needs to check itself lol)
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I'm more responding to the title, but it goes together with the subject too:
It's always okay to do something... it's just that it's just as okay for people to judge you for it.
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Why would I hate them? They mostly have cards from free or really cheap games. They probably have multiple accounts, they redeem multiple steam keys in each of them, and then they start idling. They're also buying sets of cards, for a cheaper price than the price they're selling them obviously.
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I dislike their moral dubiousness. I also clarified that I do not hate anyone using their services or that thinks they are fine, so it's all good :)
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hate everything ^^
also clean your friend list. if you get invites to groups, they come from them.
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Never used them, I only craft good looking (matter of taste) badges for games that I played and enjoyed at least to some extent, leveling up is merely a cool bonus, not an aim itself.
Trading bots are useful at the other hand.
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Hating only cost you time and energy. In the end, you're the only one suffering for it and whoever you hate just doesn't care.
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From only reading the topic
YES it is, but not good for your health
After reading your text
"the plague of level up bots" = There are more and more only because of one reason... because the owners earn money (or cards/items/keys) with them for not much effort. So easy made money.
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For the philosophy question: it's okay to hate, and ironically those who say it's not usually hate the haters and are very proud about this hate because they feel it's so righteous 👀
For the leveling bot question: it's surprising you get that much spam from them. Even though I never curate my friend list or group list, and I'm in a few groups related to cards trading, I've very, very rarely received spam from level up services / bots. I don't even remember the last time I did, I just remember it occurred maybe a few months ago and I just ignored or blocked it, end of story ^^ I think the best thing you can do, for your own good, is just do the same and not to make a big deal out of these.
But you can hate them if you prefer, after all it's okay to have negative hobbies. For instance, I enjoy posting negative reviews, it's a lot more entertaining than posting the 50,000th positive one... 🙃
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I often learn more from a negative review than I do from 10 positive ones, so keep up the good work :D
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wont lie, i didnt read your post i just clicked yes cuz i think its fine to hate anything you want lol
doesnt make you a bad person, you just dont like something.
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I voted for ambivalent because I know nothing good can came out from hate but I really hate bots, ha!
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Start cleaning your group list :
- groups that offer giveaways
- groups that offer free games in exchange of joining even more groups
- groups that ask you to invite all you friend list
Then insta delete "friends" that invite you to such groups
You are now disconnected from world of spam.
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yeah, my group purge was related to similar parameters
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I'm a huge fan I went to see Radiohead live when I had the chance a few years back
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The only thing you should hate about the level up bots is how they destroyed the card market
before all these bots card sets to key ratio was around 6-7 sets per key
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never used one, but I'd say:
life's too short to waste energy on hate
do what makes you happy
live and let live
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Depends on your relationship with this feeling/emotion/phenomenon. If hate degrades your performance then it's counterproductive and should be avoided. If you, like me can use hate as resource, as extra fuel enabling you to persist, to meet deadlines, etc then you should embrace it.
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I hate level up bots, level up services, level up service groups, being invited to them, spammed by them, and the fact that they appear to not be doing anything wrong.
I just feel sketched out by them. Some just take in cards or other items and give out sets of cards for people to level with for instance, it just feels like laundering dirty crap to me. Because whatever they get is likely legitimate but who knows how they got the sets they have - or at least I cannot be sure how they got them. When I can't trace back things to their origins, or understand someone's motives for providing a "service" I tend to feel like there's something dirty going on.
Am I just paranoid?
If you are someone who used or uses level services, I do not hate you. Nor do I fault you for doing that. But maybe someone who understands them a little better can explain to me this plague of level up bots that seem to outnumber everything else on steam.
p.s. I can't promise I'll stop hating them, but I can promise I still won't use them regardless of the info provided here.
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