Another thing I noticed is getting more common among RPG Horror Stories. When once it was common to see entitled players complaining the GM is not running the game like Matt Mercer runs on Critical Role, I have lately seen quite few stories where problem GM tries to use that to deflect criticism. It’s usually the type to be acting creepily towards women, both in and out of game, enjoying juvenile, overtly edgy humor and/or insisting of all kinds of bigotry for “historical accurracy”. And when the players confront him (as it’s almost always a guy) about it, he’s going to say something like “Stop sucking Mercer off, this is real D&D!” or “Go play at Matt Mercer’s table, if you don’t like it!”.
While, as usual, there is possibility these stories are fake, I can see these being true - the kind to engage in those specific behaviors is also the kind to grab on buzzwords or try to twist real problems to deflect criticism.
“like a good person in the pre-civil war era” is so darkly hialrious to me. I run in old setting, Mystara, where two biggest empires have legal slavery and are also bittere rivals. One, Thyatis, is based off Roman Empire and biggest hurdle to ending slavery is that whenever you try to argue against it, Thyatians point at other empire, Alphatia, and it’s “pre civil-war south style slavery” and argue that next to this their (a.k.a. Roman) style of slavery is very humane.
And I still made it very clear that if any of my players try buying slaves, no god will save them from my wrath.