r/Games is closed today to “shed some light” on hate speech in gaming
151 replies, posted
Is that a haunted phrase or something? Will I get cursed if I say "GamerGate started out with a good premise"
Also I feel bad for you guys. I only ever ran into really bad communication cancer when I played Red Orchestra 2 and Overwatch. Guess I'm pretty lucky.
So why did gamer become such a dirty word?
I find it fascinating that you've invented such an elaborate mythos about me.
"gamers are over" articles came out from gaming blogs, a whole bunch around the same time, and there was backlash to them, and some of that backlash inspired misogyny and harassment, and some people, completely lacking nuance or critical thought, decided that since the misogynists and harassers were wrong, that must mean that the "gamers are over" articles must have been right, and therefore the term "gamer" was now poison.
That's the gist of my understanding.
Ignore. Goddamn mobile
You are Poe's Law incarnate
Hmmmmmmmm. You really are a character, you know that, right?
In a SH thread couple months back you made a wild claim stating your news sources we're reporting the same claim. When someone asked what were your news sources, you literally said it was from your Tumblr follows.
I've made literally two posts that actually mention tumblr, not counting the times I posted images in lmao pics and the gun thread that were hosted on tumblr:
https://files.facepunch.com/forum/upload/266286/921ac07b-c39c-4ff4-97fd-f4a842eb35fa/tryagain.PNG
As of now I've made three posts that mention tumblr, this being the third.
You realize how empty and unsupported this really is right?
No?
If you get hung up over such a broad and almost meaningless term what are you doing with your life
This thread is still going 9 days after it happened?
Look, I have a line on my twitter bio that says I consider "SJW" a compliment, and even I know that you're wrong about this. The only significant part of the gaming community that rejects the term gamer due to supposed negative associations is the fucking Resetera memberbase. And even they're split on the issue, because a lot of them do not buy other members' arguments - like that that gamers shouldn't call themselves gamers because no other hobbyists dedicated to a particular kind of media use specific terms to describe themselves. Because their arguments are fucking bullshit. Lovers of movies call themselves "cinemaphiles," or "movie buffs"; lovers of high quality music call themselves "audiophiles," etc. And that's just one example of this stupidity.
must be convenient to have an old permabanned account to neglect whenever you need to point to your post history to claim you didn't say something dumb
Now I came from an era that was before all the gamergate stuff happened in the old servers of games there used to be a lot of stuff that went on. Servers of games used to be community managed and if people went really out of control then it was the jackhammer for them.
What changed over the years was how people formed friendships around games and how they connected with each other. Where you used to joke around on some games you have to be a bit more understanding nowadays.
What really has set some people apart from the word gamer is that more people have grown up and some have looked back negatively on their experiences. This is bounced onto the point where some don't want a word to define them and they change it to what they see as those negative conatations.
Coming to now there are a lot more people playing video games and there are different communities within the gaming sphere which have differing viewpoints.
I think we have to remember that subjective opinion is a matter if perspective and where one may see oppression others can see balance in terms of how the gaming community has changed. I am not trying trying to use the old trope that the other side is bad etc.
From what I have seen for the majority of gamers growing up with gaming have found it to be a positive experience and overall there hasn't been too many peasntp spin the broth.
Gaming will always have people that are toxic and will troll or do something to get a reaction. Still it should be down to developers and community managers of server to find ways to mitagate bad users unless that is their target audience.
The internet is a place where people can be who they want to be but if you have the wrong people on the right place then jorualnists and others of influence may make decisions for us.
Okay here's my take on the definition of gamer. Gamer, as a label applied to a person or group of people means just the pretty basic "just plays video games". However, self-identifying as a gamer carries a different meaning to me, as you're actively choosing to identify yourself as part of a community and you choose to make that part of your identity. Obviously many people do this without carring the weight, but often is someone say they're a gamer it's because they're carrying these further identitarian connotations with it. It's like the difference between someone saying "You're an American" and "I'm an American". The power of self-identification over the application of an identity upon you is a lot stronger, in my view.
Apparently post boxes can hold infinite irony.
I'm pretty sure someone saying "I'm a gamer" is saying "Playing games is one of my primary past times."
Who the fuck claims to not be an American despite living in and being a citizen of America just because they don't like the current state of the country?
That seems like a bad example. I think America is in a horrible state right now and I'm often ashamed to be an American. I'm still an American though.
People like you, who I feel are almost literally creating shit whole cloth, are why I don't really tell people who I am. You're just going to assume a bunch of asinine shit off of a label because apparently, when we were in high school and were taught the lesson don't judge a book by it's cover, you just went to using the label as your primary judgement.
I think you're blowing what I said completely out of proportion, it's not that deep. My point is essentially this - to self-identify as a gamer carries stronger connotations than to be identified as part of a group as you actively have to go out of your way to include yourself as a group. I play games but I wouldn't go around telling people I was a gamer because I don't consider it to be part of my identity. And at no point did I say that I'd judge anyone off of a single label. It's completely reasonable to think someone is pretty deeply into gaming if they actively identify as a gamer - clearly to self-identify as a gamer it has to be a big part of their life. You completely overreacted to my point in that little breakdown you just had - it's not about assuming an entire image of someone based on something or any single element. Also, ironic that you started off a point about how bad it is to assume stuff about people with the phrase "people like you".
You don't want people to think you're a gamer, because you view "gamers" as the people who the media treats as a boogieman, and you in turn, keep that bullshit going.
It's a self fulfilling issue.
I wish people like you didn't make these assumptions, and didn't think a single label was that big of a deal, because if it wasn't, you'd be okay with it being part of your shared identity. But people like you are why I'm a notoriously private person in my real life. Because people like you give me severe trust and anxiety issues because I literally can't expect you to read a "label" and not exacerbate it. You won't even associate yourself with it due to the perceived negative connotations you've learned to place on the term.
I don't see how you aren't using a single word as a reference point for what type of person they are, you yourself are avoiding being associated with the term because of the aforementioned things.
And sure, it's ironic that I generalized you, in your generalization of literally anyone who uses the term "gamer".
I don't identify that way because there are people out there who will react in the same way you have, that is assumptive and without a purpose.
You're being such a huge hypocrite. You rag on me for supposedly assuming so much about people who self-identify as gamers (I don't, I understand that there's more depth to people than that), and then you constantly, on several occasions, refer to me as "people like me". You are building up this big boogeyman image of me in the exact same way you accuse of doing it to you. You expect people to see the depth and nuance in yourself but clearly you're so prepared to be victimised by those around you're grouping them into the big bad "people like you" enemy. I'm not saying that people that identify as gamers are bad people or that they should be fearful of doing it - in fact, it'd be nice to see the the term ammeliorate into something better so that everyone can feel happy to identify as one. But the fact is that the image of "gamer" isn't a good one. The public image is one of sexists, racists, and homophobes. Obviously this isn't a reflection of the truth but you have to ask yourself who is screaming the loudest. You have to ask yourself who is going to start yelling racial and homophobic slurs as soon as you enter any sort of lobby?. Gaming communities have been historically hostile to women and haven't shied away from constanly using abusive language at the expense of societal groups, and the raging response to this board closing for one day is a strong testament to that.
Except "people like you" refers entirely to your beliefs and not your label(s)...
It doesn't mean "you're part of 'people like you' so you believe {X}" but rather "People who believe {X} -- like you"
Do you not see the difference between saying "People who believe what you believe" vs "People with a specific label believe the following"
These are exactly the same thing. Both of these things actively group people into a single enemy - all that's change is the sentence structure and semantics.
"the only people who yell racial and homophobic slurs when you join a lobby for a video game are people who play video games. No wonder gamers have such a bad reputation!"
The implication being that this is anywhere near as prevalent anywhere else?
I'm only grouping you as "people like you" based on demonstrable behaviours here.
you can't group me into the "gamers" that you're dismissive of because I'm not identifying as one, nor am I displaying the behaviours you're distasteful of.
If the "fact" is that gamers aren't possessing a good image, then how are you doing anything but feeding that myth based on your own activities and behaviours? I don't harrass people, I don't treat people poorly for any of the reasons that "gamers" are viewed negatively, but the behaviour you demonstrate still makes me anxious about identifying that way because, for all intents and purposes, you do seem to be contributing to the negative view of "gamers" with this.
There also wasn't nearly as much of a "raging response" to the board closing, so much as there was to the "virtue signaling" of the mods. As Geel has repeatedly pointed out, these posts were highly downvoted by the community of gamers you are describing as racist, sexist and homophobic, countering the very view you hold. Yet, even when discussing this group, you do so in hollow generalizations that don't respect the reality of the situation.
How can gamers ever not be those things if we don't have any control over that narrative? If the loudest mouths are the only ones that determine who we are, why are "Sports fans" an acceptable class of people, when they objectively have caused mutliple riots, billions of dollars in damages depending on the sporting event in question(I remember when the Canucks lost the Playoffs, and my city literally tore itself apart)? Oh, it's because a narrative is being written, and you, and "People like you" are reluctant to let that change by your own adherence to these assumptions.
Can you name any other scenarios where completely random people are grouped together in voice chat, in a competitive environment, in a place where no moderation exists, and where those people are not likely to ever meet each other again?
No, they're not.
"People like you" isn't a label and he isn't ascribing ludicrous beliefs onto a label.
He's arguing against your argument and talking about people who make the argument you're making.
Do you genuinely believe you're the only person to ever make the argument you're making, and therefore, it's impossible to legitimately say "people like you"?
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