Torn City – This Game Needs a Seat Item

In Torn City, as the advertising goes, you can be anything.

Except both female and unharassed.

Yet to address that statement, I need to fill anyone reading this in on a bit of backstory:

I have been playing Torn for a few years at this point. I have terrible stat growth (I’m level 99 and yet only have about 5M stats total, which means lower level people are attacking me all the time.) I offset this by having stats where it matters (an ever-improving karma score; 32 weapons at 100% and counting.)

None of those stats seem to matter more than my Gender stat, which is currently female.

But, I hear many of you state, much like those chicks Spliffy posts in Natural Selection’s NSFW channel, you’re a dude. What gives?

When I first started playing, I was arranged into a Torn marriage to another guy. In Torn, marriages are less “til death to us part” sort of deals and more a “hey, wanna be roommates for a while and get some merits for it?” In this case, my Torn-spouse has a Private Island, and I pay for the upkeep. This was a great arrangement: he gets the upkeep for his Private Island paid for, I get access to a Private Island, and it gave my ex-wife another reason to be glad she left me. Win-win-win all around.

Except, at the time, I joked “I guess one of us has to be the woman.” So romantic and heteronormative of me. I changed my name and gender that day.

The sexual harassment from other Torn players hasn’t stopped since.

But this article isn’t about all the harassment up to this point because Torn thinks I’m a girl. It’s about all the harassment I received when I put up this personal ad:

So what gives? Every year around Valentine’s Day, Natural Selection encourages its members to search for love via the personals. Why? I don’t know, it’s just a thing they do. Top prize is $100M Torn dollars, plus bragging rights.

And in the past, I’ve tried scaring people off by telling them I’m 16, but this time I lowered the bar. Surely no one would be interested in a 13 year old. Surely the majority of Torn’s fine citizens recognized that I was just baiting them for a few good laughs, and no one would actually want to…

haha no. Just like To Catch a Predator continued to catch people for years despite being a show that caught predators for years, I had some SPICY responses. Most of them were just mildly irritating, and a few lead to a few good laughs. A couple were… VERY CONCERNING. I’ll be sharing many of them with readers now.

It’s worth noting, Torn’s staff handles these chats in a way that requires me to encourage anyone reading NOT to harass these individuals. The people who replied to me get the benefit of the doubt. You see, I’m not actually 13, so no crime has been committed. Also, maybe these people just thought I was looking for roleplay, and as such this sort of contact and harassment is totally 100% within game allowances. So please, don’t bounty or attack any of my unsuspecting roleplay partners please, because if you do I might face punishment and not them. Thanks, Torn Staff.

Without further ado…

Most of these low-effort attempts to contact me resulted in an easy mug, although not for a whole lot of money.

You’re see this joke pop up a lot. The China Lake is a grenade launcher that can actually be found in the real world; it gets its name after Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake in California where this specific modification of the M79 was developed. In Torn, it’s an unusual weapon. It has fantastic stats compared to other Heavy Artillery weapons, especially in regards to accuracy, but this comes at the cost of being unable to use special ammunition. As such, it will never be able to do the fantastical damage that, say, a Type 98 Anti Tank weapon can put out if a player has the right stats and gets lucky. If a faction has one of these in its armory, it is likely there less to actually be used in wars and more to help players get 100 final blows with an artillery weapon for the merit. Heavy artillery as a general rule are garbage anyways, in no small part because of the smaller clip sizes and the inability to use most mods with them.

Anyways, Natural Selection IV has one with the special ability of giving a 5% chance to paralyze an opponent (where 50% of their attacks don’t happen). This is not a great perk. However, my intent is to get this weapon to 100%, so I really don’t care.

Even faction higher ups were trying to get in on this. No. Just… no. Do better. Be better.

I had quite a few responses that were clearly meant to be humorous, and this one was one of them.

I blocked this guy and he took the time to message me. Seriously, telling a 13 year old who they should be dating is hella creepy. At least they recognized they were “too old.”

O.0;;

This is exactly what the sort of person who shouldn’t be trusted would say.

At any rate, this is where the fun stops and the REAL creepiness begins.

This player finally got the hint. Wish I could say the same about the next one…

It’s okay, I’m sure there won’t be any… oh no there’s more.

This player was later banned from the game because they were someone’s multi.

Anyways, the way I see it, every moment one of these people were harassing me is a moment they weren’t harassing someone else. Last year, the harassment was about as bad, but I didn’t save any of the comments, so I guess those posters get off free.

Unless they are Zsnake. Fuck you, Zsnake. You know what you did.

And a bonus one, just as a palate cleanser…