So the #GamerGaters are mad about a new study that suggests that some of the most dickishly misogynistic male gamers are quite literally losers. That is, men playing video games like Halo and Call of Duty online tend to lash out at women players when they’re doing their worst.
Looking at the behavior of a number of men and women over the course of 163 games of Halo 3, researchers Michael Kasumovic and Jeffrey Kuznekoff from the University of New South Wales and Miami University found that
lower-skilled players were more hostile towards a female-voiced teammate, especially when performing poorly. In contrast, lower-skilled players behaved submissively towards a male-voiced player in the identical scenario. This difference in gender-directed behaviour became more extreme with poorer focal-player performance.
In other words, the more of a video game loser they were, the more of a misogynistic loser they became.
We suggest that low-status males increase female-directed hostility to minimize the loss of status as a consequence of hierarchical reconfiguration resulting from the entrance of a woman into the competitive arena.
In other words, they hate losing … to a girl.
The researchers argue that the entrance of larger numbers of women into the dude-heavy world of video games is especially threatening to “[l]ow-status and low-performing males,” who
have the most to lose as a consequence of the hierarchical reconfiguration due to the entry of a competitive woman. As men often rely on aggression to maintain their dominant social status, the increase in hostility towards a woman by lower-status males may be an attempt to disregard a female’s performance and suppress her disturbance on the hierarchy to retain their social rank.
If this all sounds to you like a plausible explanation for a lot of the anger driving #GamerGaters, you’re not the only one to see the connection.
A recent article on the study on Yahoo News suggests that,
[a]s gaming has traditionally been a male-dominated pastime, these findings could go some way to explain 2014′s Gamergate furore. Several high profile female game developers were targeted with a torrent of misogynistic abuse, including rape and death threats, coordinated by factions of male gamers using sites like 4Chan and Reddit.
And this is what has the #GamerGaters on Reddit’s KotakuInAction subreddit pig-biting mad. In a thread complaining about the Yahoo News piece, the regulars show just what losers they really are by lashing out at … women.
Evidently forgetting that the study in question was conducted by two men, a Redditor called Katastic_Voyage won more than 130 upvotes with a lovely rant declaring that
There’s a huge freaking difference between shit talking, and bullying.
But most of these articles and “papers” are written by women, who live in a woman’s world, and don’t understand the first thing about what it’s really like to be a man. The others are by men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it–they were likely forced to grow up in a woman dominated, catty, passive-aggressive world.
Ok, my bad. The researchers might appear to be men, but are probably “men who are basically women but doesn’t realize it.”
And somehow this all has something to do with metal music:
Woman call all men “dumb” because that’s what they call anything they don’t understand. It’d be like someone who likes classical music calling metal dumb. Even if they’re actually related. Even though there’s plenty of beauty and complexity in metal… they don’t ever dive into it so they deride and dismiss it.
It IS real music, mom! (Sound of bedroom door slamming, followed by the muffled intro to “Enter Sandman.”)
So they take things like:
The need to compete? They think it’s violence.
The need to shit talk? They think it’s bullying.
The fact that men can look at other women and not cheat? It blows their minds that men can actually feel pleasure just seeing a woman of beauty… and that’s it.
Uh, I thought we were talking about video games. Did some mean lady just break up with you?
A fellow called Zakamaru, replying to Katastic_Voyage, decided to show how not mad he was about women invading “male spaces” by getting mad about women invading “male spaces.”
It’s what happens when a bunch of women get into male spaces and some fail to understand it.
Gaming has always been competitive. I can’t even begin to count the amount of times I was called various names and derogatory remarks, but it doesn’t fucking matter. You get insulted all the time, and it takes a special type of person to actually take offense to that. …
It’s not that we hate women. With gaming being a predominantly male hobby, it’s going to have elements of masculinity, competitiveness, and testosterone floating about. When people shit talk, they will use any sort of “weakness” that you have and attack it. If you’re unskilled, you’re a noob/scrub. If you’re an obvious underaged child, you get called a kid. If someone needs a quick all-purpose insult, you’re now a faggot.
When some women see this, they immediately think that it needs to change to fit their worldview. To them, these insults are simply unacceptable, and are “x-phobic” or whatever tumblr buzzword they feel like using today. Never mind the fact that gaming was born from a bunch of socially awkward men who carved out their own space with their own culture and lingo. No, now you have to cater to ME, because I’m a GIRL.
Boy, you guys really put those dumb lady researchers (who aren’t ladies, but who maybe sort of really are) in their place.
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@Falconer Usually that’s a browser issue, what are you running?
Firefox.
@Falconer:
I am, on a couple sites. It’s the latest and greatest in obnoxious ad technology as far as I can tell. I hope whoever invented it gets a virus that makes their browser scroll and zoom to every ad on a page for 15 seconds every time they reload.
@kirbywarp: May their smartphones serve them up ads on apps they paid for.
Annnnd the blockquote mammoth trampled me, too.
It’s on a roll today.
@kirby
@Falconer
My current pet peeve is video ads that take a while to load and THEN start, making me jump and leaving me frantically searching for where the fuck that noise is coming from on the several tabs I have open. It’s dumb as hell, because not only does it piss off the user but they’ll likely just do what I do and just mute my laptop volume.
I’m sure this has been said, and probably better than I will/could, but they miss that THERE WERE MEN WHO WERE WINNING, TOO.
So the whole “this is just how we bros talk” is tossed right out the window, cause, No, you don’t apparently talk to a ‘superior’ male the way you talk to a ‘superior’ female. You need to make her inferior, so you do. Or you try. Basically the same script was given to men and women “better players”, and since the game was rigged, the same actual player manipulated the game play. the only change is that the player’s voice was voiced by a woman or man.
and the bros accept the man, and become submissive. but cut down, deride, and abuse the female.
but that’s “just how boys play”.
This is why I don’t play competitive games. Well, that and the fact that I completely suck at them. Fortunately, people have never had a go at me for it. It must be my Y chromosome.
One of the few games I’m good at is Guns of Icarus (haven’t played for a year or so though.) It’s a team-based multiplayer game where your team is crewing a steampunk airship and you fight other airships. It’s awesome and I cannot recommend it highly enough.
I used to teach a lot of newbies how to play, and really liked the thrill of assembling a crew out of brand new players and going into battle. Even if you lose you still go down fighting, and the thrill of occasional victory against the odds is really inspiring. An experienced team with good teamwork can do surprisingly well because they can cover one another; likewise a team of prima donnas who don’t cooperate well will be completely wrecked regardless of skill level.
I have noticed that many male new players will entirely disregard teamwork, ignore my attempts to teach, verbally abuse people and then ragequit when they’re losing. By contrast, most of those I’ve taught who later go on to be really good will listen, cooperate and never abuse each other.
Female players, by contrast, tend to be much happier to cooperate with others and less likely to sulk or grandstand, meaning that having women on your airship is a very desirable thing.
This is why a lot of Guns of Icarus lobbies will check that people are willing to communicate, work as a team, etc, and will kick players from their teams who are being assholes. Even if they don’t care about assholism, they usually want to win and having an asshole means you don’t win.
As such, yeah. This study correlates closely with my experience.
*just mute THEIR laptop volume. Stay in the correct tense, sunny.
Now I have a powerful urge to play Guns of Icarus again. If anyone here (be you lurker or commenter) plays regularly in a European timezone and has space for a level 9 Engineer, let me know.
It sounds like a great game but I don’t even have it downloaded. How much does it cost and what specs does it need to run on?
Seconding previous comments about their reading comprehension (assuming that they read anything at all).
Other than that…
“It blows their minds that men can actually feel pleasure just seeing a woman of beauty… and that’s it.”
Get your story straight, people. Women’s sexiness, their butts and make-up are the pinnacle of men’s oppression, remember?
Male idiots are always far worse than female idiots… especially male idiots still going through puberty. Male idiots going through puberty become even worse when they express their failed social attempts at courting woman through online “gamer boner rage”.
#GamerGaters deserve all this backlash and their attempts at defending themselves are only making them sound more like idiots.
Gaming isn’t something that is NEW, let alone specifically competitive or male focused. Check out the first 3 definitions of “Gaming” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/gaming
1. gambling.
2. the playing of games developed to teach something or to help solve a problem, as in a military or business situation.
3. the playing of computer or video games.
The keywords here are “play” and “teach”. It is clear that these idiots are no longing playing and have taken it way to seriously by the fact that they continue their “shit talking” through their gaming boner rage. Also, someone needs to TEACH these #GamerGaterIdiots some respect.
I have played video games with female friends, female cousins, my mother, my sisters, my nieces, my girlfriend and even my Grandma, God rest her soul. They never once took it beyond anything more that “having fun”. I would game with a female over a male gamer any day of the week.
@Falconer I definitely see where you’re coming from with the ‘Second place being the first of the losers’ argument being silly. I rarely play competitive games anymore, but when I do it’s usually with people I know pretty well who agree that the most important thing is that everyone has fun even if they don’t win. Though don’t get me wrong on the occasions that I do win I do feel a certain pride in that, just not at the expense of anyone elses enjoyment.
I stopped gaming when games became too social for my taste. I always thought of them as an alone activity. But when I did play with friends face to face, no abusive shit talking happened. These guys are just assholes.
@falconer I think everyone else already covered what’s going on pretty well. I’d suggest adblock if you’re running firefox, it usually works pretty well. Can cut down on malware too.
I’ve moved away from competitive games myself these days if it doesn’t have a solid single player campaign I’m probably not going to buy it. Usually if I want the social interaction I’ll stick to tabletop dice throwing thank you very much.
Of course not. It’s just a coincidence that “girl/woman” is always the go-to derogatory putdown.
It’s just a coincidence that that insult carries so much potency among insecure guys.
It’s just a coincidence that femininity is so radioactive, being associated with it in any way is instant social death.
But no, they certainly don’t hate women.
It isn’t just videogames where men behave like this. Some of the worst abuse/invective I’ve ever gotten has been during coed softball, volleyball, and hockey games, where I behaved in a non-ladylike fashion and tried to take away a base hit, block a shot, or steal a puck from men. They don’t mind if a woman gets a hit or scores a goal on her own, but God forbid a woman trips them up, outwits them, or makes them look bad in front of the others. When a man has the ball, I think we’re supposed to step aside, giggle, and lick our lollipops.
If anyone is more likely to say “ha ha, you lost to a girl”, it’s men, not women. Yay toxic masculinity.
@WWTH, Anarchonist, EJ
That’s pretty much me. I’m not a fan of competitive play so I generally just played co-op if it was multiplayer (when that was actually an option) and I vastly prefer to be able to see the person I’m playing against, and even then there are usually other things I’d rather do than play video games. It’s (one of the) reasons I quit playing Magic, too (this was more than 10 years ago now) – I got tired of how relentlessly competitive it was and how difficult it was to enjoy yourself without spending huge amounts of time agonizing over the meta and making sure your deck was competitive. I’ve been playing a ton of the LoTR LCG lately because it avoids those issues incredibly well (and it’s just as playable solo, and the expansions aren’t randomized so you know exactly what you are getting …).
When it comes to social games it’s pretty much exclusively party-style games (CaH, AtA, etc.) where my nigh-uncontrollable preference for picking the silliest move rather than the “best” one doesn’t result in having a bad time.
These guys wouldn’t even recognize the way that my friends and family play games. I couldn’t even tell you how many times my younger sister has schooled me at the original Super Smash Bros., or that my other sister obliterated me in Dr. Mario. Even when I’m gaming with my male friends, games end in a “oh, good game. How about another?”, no trash-talking about who is a n00b or whatever other word the kids are using these days.
Frankly, you should play games because you like the process of playing the game. Games are supposed to be fun. If you’re only playing because you want to win all the time and are going to be a pissy, bigoted ass when you lose, you have the wrong hobby.
Use chrome and in the address bar enter
chrome://flags/#enable-tab-audio-muting
Change it to enabled. Restart chrome and you’ll see a new icon on the tab.
It will allow you to mute individual tabs
@AcidTrial They’d recognize it, they’d probably just call you a filthy casual though. Because if you play games like they aren’t “serious business” it means you’re doing it wrong.
@sunnysombrera:
I just checked the website; Guns of Icarus is £11 on Steam and needs a machine capable of running DirectX 9 and Windows 7. Nowadays it’s hard to get any machine which doesn’t meet those specs; I don’t know how well it handles older machines. It’s by no means top of the line graphical stuff.
Not to big it up any further, but it also has the nice thing that voice chat is restricted to the airship you’re on, with the captains able to talk to one another but not the crews. It means if you’re on a good crew you can voice chat safely.
(Okay. Done enthusing about Guns of Icarus now.)
@WWTH:
I went through the same phase, and then slowly got back into gaming in gentle ways. Still mostly singleplayer.
@maistrechat:
Oh man, I remember the LotR LCG. I really like it but was disappointed at the extent to which new cards made the old ones useless and the extent to which mechanics kept on getting added and making the game more complex. I felt that the original 3 sets for Fellowship block were the best.
I love how gamergaters cry about women being selfish but then they turn around crying that video games is a male space. Video games are for everyone it always has been and it always will be.
Anyway here’s a metal song.
http://youtu.be/C9XXh9EcEIQ
I just want to say that I play games a lot, like it interferes with my life in a negative way sometimes. I also kind of suck at them for whatever reason. I use console controls to be better in single player and I get help a lot in WoW. This doesn’t cause me to go into a massive rage. Maybe being raised as a woman I wasn’t always taught that winning was everything and that it had anything to do with my value as a human. I dunno. Just throwing that
out there.