Holding It for a Friend, Part 3

Previously, on MinerBumping... The New Order's superbly orchestrated gank of a Mackinaw piloted by devinebish resulted in a rant about newbies and player retention. The miner wasn't a newbie himself; the rant was made on behalf of stunning rockchewer, allegedly the true owner of the Mackinaw. Agent Lament von Gankenheim heard the sorry tale while in a convo with devinebish. But rockchewer had yet to tell her side of the story.

When rockchewer finally spoke up in local, she directed her anger at Agent Kalorned, who had been identified as the ringleader of the gank operation.

Miners aren't very good at insulting New Order Agents. They don't understand our values.

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rockchewer was somewhat new to the game and still had a lot to learn (e.g., the Code). Despite her young age, she'd already absorbed the typical carebear arguments against ganking.

In addition to claiming that gankers were lowering player retention, rockchewer pulled the "Without miners, you'd have no ships!" card.

Carebear arguments are designed to be simple and easily distributed to an ignorant and lazy population. The downside: All those arguments are effectively countered by a well-trained Agent. And Kalorned was a well-trained Agent.

The disturbance in local chat attracted the attention of curious onlookers. Would rockchewer get their sympathy or their scorn?

Amamake is a notorious lowsec system known for its gate camps. For a bot-aspirant, though, every highsec system is an Amamake.

It's not uncommon to see anti-Code folks saying that the New Order used to be worthwhile, but now it's bad. (Of course, we never heard from those people back in those halcyon days.) Actually, this is a positive thing: It means that a few years from now, people will say the CODE. of 2016 was good. Agents of the New Order, whatever you're doing right now, people will approve of it later.

Another internal contradiction of the carebear philosophy: The Code has no value because it's player-made, but miners have value because they help make ships. To borrow from carebear logic, ore mined by other players is worthless; I only care about ore mined by CCP.

To rockchewer's surprise, local opinion turned against her.

The miner announced her intention to find safe haven in Gallente space, which she somehow already knew to be ganker-free. Maybe she should've gone there in the first place?

Just before her departure, rockchewer indulged in fantasies about a carebear utopia in which "older players" sit around in highsec and protect the miners from gankers. The guy who lost her Mackinaw was an older player, so maybe rockchewer shouldn't rely on them so much.

In the end, rockchewer and her patron were both left unsatisfied. They had excuses, anger, lies, and delusions--but they lacked the Code.