Huge shocker: People who identify as “gamers” are more likely to be racist, sexist dickweasels

I hope you’re sitting down, because this news could rock you to your very core: a new study shows that people who identify as “gamers” are more likely to act in racist and sexist ways.

I kid, of course, because this is not a new finding: a stack of studies in recent years have found that gamers tend to be more racist and sexist; that women are more likely to endure abuse during online gaming than men; that some games can actually make you more racist; and that online gaming can be a world of festering toxicity all around.

The problem is not the games in themselves — violent games don’t make you more violent in real life, for example. No, the problem is with those who play them; like Soylent Green, online gaming toxicity is people — you know, the ones shouting slurs and abuse in voice chat on Xbox Live and sexually harassing anyone who’s identifiably female. Hell, you don’t need to conduct any studies to know this; all you have to do is spend a few minutes listening to the voice chat in Call of Duty.

And so it’s alarming but hardly surprising that an assortment of studies and investigations have found that white supremacists and other extremists use the online video gaming community as a recruiting ground. Indeed, it’s not far-fetched to say that the rise of the far right in the United States in the past few years was initially kick-started by the toxic Gamergate campaign against women in video games.

What is new in this most recent study is its emphasis on the identity of “gamer.” Not everyone who games calls themselves a gamer, and those who do are rather snobby about who gets to claim the label — those who play on easy mode or who are addicted to puzzle games on their phones need not apply, and in many cases don’t want to because they see themselves a much more than simply gamers.

As Rachel Kowert, research director at gaming mental health nonprofit Take This, told Vice News:

When the gamer identity is very core to who you are as a person, that seems to reflect what we call toxic gamer culture, tends to reflect more exclusion than inclusion—so things like racism and sexism and misogyny. … All these things that we know exist in gaming spaces seem to be internalized by those who very closely identify as being part of that community.

Kowert did the research with Bill Swann, a University of Texas at Austin psych professor, and grad student Alex Martel, for publication in the journal Frontiers in Communication.

Among other things, the research contrasted the online communities surrounding Call of Duty and Minecraft. And guess what? The Minecrafters were much less racist and sexist.

“This can vary across communities depending on what kind of people that you are spending a lot of your time with,” Kowert explained to Vice. “I don’t think it’s necessarily about content but about the community in which you’re being immersed.” 

In their paper, Kowert and her colleagues described gamer communities as a “double-edged sword.” They can provide

a sense of connection and purpose for individuals who suffer from loneliness and insecurity. On the other hand, they may expose gamers to hateful speech and social toxicity that can increase their susceptibility to extremist propaganda.

The gamers aren’t alright.

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