By David Futrelle
If you ever wonder why online gaming culture is such a complete shitshow, it’s not because it’s dominated by angry teenagers who think it’s fun to call other players “f*ggots” and possibly even send SWAT teams to their houses. These people could easily be banned, No, the real problem is that so many adult gamers either don’t give a shit about the rampant harassment or think it’s actually pretty cool.
Consider, for example, the reaction of Reddit’s KotakuInAction to a report from the Anti-Defamation League suggesting that the overwhelming majority of online game players faced harassment, much of it severe and prolonged abuse that went beyond name calling to violent threats, stalking and even doxing.
You might have expected that even in the KotakuInAction subreddit — which still identifies itself as “the main hub for GamerGate on Reddit” — there would be some small number of commenters who would find this at least a teensy bit disturbing. But when I looked in on a thread devoted to the topic today, there were 56 comments up and not a single one of them suggested that all this harassment might be, you know, a bad thing. In other words, according to my completely unscientific survey, 100 percent of them don’t give a shit.
Instead, some commenters minimized and misrepresented the study’s results; others mocked the victims of harassment; still others more or less reveled in the toxic culture portrayed. A few posted neutral comments and jokes. But no one stood up to take issue with the culture of harassment.
The ADL’s findings are genuinely distressing:
Seventy-four percent of adults who play online multiplayer games in the US experience some form of harassment while playing games online. Sixty-five percent of players experience some form of severe harassment, including physical threats, stalking, and sustained harassment. Alarmingly, nearly a third of online multiplayer gamers (29%) have been doxed.
Much of this harassment seems to have been motivated by some form of bigotry — from misogyny to racism.
Fifty-three percent of online multiplayer gamers who experience harassment believe they were targeted because of their race/ethnicity, religion, ability, gender or sexual orientation. Thirty-eight percent of women and 35 percent of LGBTQ+ players reported harassment on the basis of their gender and sexual orientation, respectively. Approximately a quarter to a third of players who are black or African American (31%), Hispanic/Latinx (24%) and Asian-American (23%) experienced harassment because of their race or ethnicity in an online multiplayer game. Online multiplayer gamers were also targeted because of their religion: 19 percent of Jews and Muslims also reported being harassed.3
So how did KiA commenters respond?
By dismissing those complaining of harassment as wimps:
They are privileged coddled children in adult bodies who need to spend extended time in the wild without help or support.
By telling victims to suck it up:
Be adult. Get called f*ggot by online stranger.
Mute.
Thats being an adult.
By suggesting that getting harassed was actually a badge of honor:
You’re not online gaming right if you’re not getting called a f*ggot.
By suggesting that the whole point of online gaming is to make others miserable:
If the person I’m playing against online is having fun, I’m not having fun.
By encouraging those who get harassed to harass back:
Get called f*ggot by online stranger.
Call him the same.
By dismissing harassment as little more than meaningless “name calling.”
I don’t even think they know what harassment is. Calling someone a name and not making a continuous campaign of it is not harassment. It’s just being rude. Now what some of bluechecks do to Trump is harassment.
By literally declaring that “boys will be boys.”
its not harassment, its called smack talk and its just what guys do to each other to stop our egos getting out of control.
Or “kids will be kids.”
74% of adults get harassed by 12 year olds who like to smack-talk because that shit’s funny when you’re 12.
This is kids being kids. If anything it’s a parenting problem, not a society problem.
The game industry could take steps to significantly reduce the amount of harassment in online gaming. But they won’t, not so long as there is such a loud and vociferous pro-harassment lobby out there, on Reddit and elsewhere.
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OK, I’ma step out and say, this is what white conservative males are socialized to do. I believe the single most important thing trump offered to the bigot base was(is) the promise of making it again socially acceptable for white people to publicly abuse those whom they hold as “other”
Seems like white males of every stripe are socialized to do this. 🙁
[Not saying that white males can’t or won’t resist it, but the socialization seems to be everywhere.]
When faced with a problem, ignore it and send it off to be someone else’s problem.
That’s being an adult. Apparently.
I always love the “It’s just kids being kids” argument.
Yes, it is. Point is, kids are monsters. The whole point of child-rearing is to break them of the habit of being monsters.
“Kids being kids” is not a good thing.
(Obviously, I’m exaggerating for rhetoric’s sake. #NotAllKids.)
… Are they trying to claim that parenting isn’t part of society?
So…it’s adult to accept being called f****t without comment; and to actually call people names like this? Is that adult as well?
Yet another reminder that “the cruelty is the point”.
It’s always projection and double standards with Trump and his people. Always.
Based on the evidence, it’s not working.
The authoritarian mindset at work. By his position, Trump is one of the most powerful people in the world. So, how dare those with less power be rude to him! That’s an inversion of the natural order! Don’t they know their place?
Shouldn’t there be measures to report doxxing incidents? It’s a breach of privacy laws.
Just curious: Does anyone know the name of the robot getting a shoulder rub from the cat in the OP pic?
It once again comes back to the question of why one would spend so much of their time on a hobby that does not make them happy, and waste so much of their life on something that does not earn them money, does not provide enjoyment, does not make them more secure in any way, shape or form, and does not have any obvious tangential benefit to them. Like, why do these guys play video games at all? If it’s just about the harassment of others, wouldn’t it be easier and more cost effective to just lean out their window and yell stuff at passers-by?
@Crip Dyke
I’m pretty sure that’s one of the game controllers with two joysticks.
@AcidTrial
Actually, many video games are specifically made to trigger adrenaline responses and engage the dopamine reward cycle, and that shit can be very addictive. When I moved across the country to Florida way back in the late 90s, I got rid all of my video game consoles and games because I knew full well that being in a new environment with no friends and no job was a recipe for me to essentially descend into the games and ignore the real world completely.
@CripDyke:
I think the cat is “playing” with a video game console. Sorry, I don’t know which one.
@AcidTrial:
Don’t give them ideas. 😉 But seriously, I wouldn’t be surprised if some of them were doing this already.
EDIT: Ninja’d by Gaebolga and Tessa.
AcidTrial
1) It’s anonymous, so fewer social consequences.
2) They band together to further insulate them even more from social consequences.
3) They don’t have to see the person they’re attacking so it’s easier to dehumanize, or dismiss as not real.
Looks like a PS4 controller, you can tell by the thumbstick placement and light strip on the back.
@rv97
Which privacy laws? I am unaware of any that apply to this situation.
@AcidTrial
If you harass people outside of your window, soon a) you may face judicial or possibly extrajudicial consequences, and b) people will start to avoid your window. If you harass people in video games, you are unlikely to face any consequences and it will be hard for people to avoid you short of quitting gaming. Knowing that, if you were a harasser who wanted to reach a large audience with your bullshit, which would you pick? I doubt GamerGaters would have gotten any notable attention if they just stood in their windows shouting about Anita Sarkeesian.
This toxic culture is part of why I never really got into games in the first place. The games I did play were mostly offline single player games.
This is why I do not play games online.
It is also why videos games are barred from being art.
At least a few gaming communities refer to people who get their fun by denying other players fun as “griefers”. I don’t know if that term exists among video gamers; I’m lumping all kinds of gaming together here.
I would speculate that, even if it was practical to do so, heavy policing of griefing would be a bad idea. The griefers would just find ways of perverting the system, such as getting random people banned for griefing. This may not be anything we can expect game designers to do much about.
@Snowberry
Yep, they’re called griefers in video games, too.
However, you’re wrong that nothing can be done about it. Game designers do consider these things and do what they can to make griefing difficult or impossible. Sometimes community managers will ban people from online play. It depends on the company, the game, and what kind of environment the development team wants to create, as well as what resources they have available, what priorities they have, etc.
Basically, we don’t need to throw our hands up in the air and assume itsa lost cause Also, as a community, gamers can refuse to play with abusive assholes. If yelling slurs in the lobby doesn’t get you booted by the community managers, it can still get you booted by other players. We should hold ourselves to higher standards, and when xXxCuCk1488xXx yells racist garbage while waiting in the lobby for the game to start, if we see his handle in game it could be an insta-boot by the host.
@kupo
I so wish we had that feature in League of Legends, my favorite online game. I get so much harassment that I literally just started muting everyone the instant I get in game. But you can’t mute them in the lobby and you can’t kick them either, you can only leave yourself which results in a points penalty.
You can report assholes after a game, but then you have to unmute them long enough to gather the quotes that would result in a moderator stepping in. Incidentally, for Riot Games, obvious racial slurs such as n***** will result in a ban 9 times out of 10, but homophobic slurs such as f***** or misogyny such as calling people c*** will never result in a ban. 0 times out of 1000. Even when they are clearly abusing someone (usually me) for being a woman. This is not surprising to me given the kotaku article on the culture at Riot, but it is hella aggravating every time I report one and nothing happens.
@Big Titty Demon
That’s really unfortunate. But yeah, not surprising, either. I wish more games gave us those kinds of tools.
Mr. Harpy works at a major game studio, and on those occasions when I’m with his coworkers and the gamergate shit comes up (OK, when I bring it up, because they don’t want to even think about it) they all just kind of roll their eyes and shrug, and talk about what a bunch of assholes gamergaters are. They hate these assholes but don’t feel like there’s anything they can do to stop them — “boys will be boys,” basically. Or maybe “if you ignore it, it’ll go away.”
It’s a big company, I’m confident they have people who genuinely care about harassment in their game and work to limit it, but I suspect it’s quite the uphill battle, both within the user base and within the company.
FTR: I did know that it was a video game controller.
I was just engaging in some amusing pareidolia. I thought people would have fun with it, I didn’t mean to turn it into a boring conversation educating me about video games, sorry.
Tale as old as time…
Also, direct, speedy competition that offers rewards with consistent playtime and engagement on a what is “supposed” (which I mean is lopsided due to the failure of any sort of competitive balancing anywhere, in any game) to be a level playing field breeds a distinct subset of people that really invest heavily at being good (which usually translates to people finding ways to exploit the system) at transient systems. This counts for double if the video game was captured on recording and was posted to a site like Youtube. If the game has access to a player stats and leaderboards through a menu, then you know that a game community can become toxic as players attempt to move up the ranks. Read the comments on any game patch notes and count the number of comments about now how the game is RUINED FOREVER AND THAT THEY’LL NEVER PLAY AGAIN!
Or don’t, person reading my comment. You probably have more important things to do in your life.