Two Minutes Hate

[Dog Pants]

This is an interesting article on defending our medium in general and conversely incorrectly defending that which shouldn't in gaming. That Hitman trailer in specific. Personally I'm not convinced - I judge things a lot more on gut feeling than analysis, and I find myself not giving a shit about that trailer.

[FatherJack]

This is an interesting article on defending our medium in general and conversely incorrectly defending that which shouldn't in gaming. That Hitman trailer in specific. Personally I'm not convinced - I judge things a lot more on gut feeling than analysis, and I find myself not giving a shit about that trailer.

Me neither, people seem to getting hung up on what the symbolism represents, or how it makes gamers look bad as if we universally get off on such imagery.

It's a bit of cartoon violence with people in ludicrous costumes, that's all.

[HereComesPete]

Whore nuns with rocket launchers? I do hope there's more stealth and less sexy ridiculousnesslessness in the next hitman installment, because if this is how it plays then it's no longer hitman.

[Dog Pants]

This is an interesting article that kind of relates to the last one I posted. Don't let the title (Rape Culture in Gaming) throw you, it's more about the hyper-misogynistic culture which pervades almost every aspect of gaming, which in the real world would lead to a culture conducive to rape. As with the last article, it's easy to immediately jump to the defence of our favourite hobby, but reading it properly shows that actually gamers are quite often hideous, sexist, abusive creatures. We've all seen it (and if you haven't have a look here or here), and if gaming is to mature and be taken seriously we need to oust these idiots from our midsts.

[FatherJack]

I don't think it's just gaming, it's prevalent in YouTube comments and other social media and it's present in the way groups of boys discuss girls from the school playground onwards. The only difference is the scope of the audience, which instead of a locker-room is now world-viewable. Males are quite often hideous, sexist, abusive creatures.

It's probably not even just males, although that's the focus of this particular article, but I know of a few girls who like to trash-talk and post nasty messages when they think it's anonymous. I don't think there's anything wrong with a robust exchange of insults between two willing parties, but when it comes to personal attacks, incitement or hate campaigns against the uninitiated while faceless onlookers guffaw I welcome the new cases we're seeing brought to court where trolls are convicted as they would be if they perpetrated their vitriol in any other medium. Receiving a custodial sentence could end up in delicious irony.

What stands out most about the article in particular though is what a damning indictment of one's insecurity and lack of imagination it is for one's first recourse in an insult to a girl is to threathen rape.

[Mr. Johnson]

Misogyny is something that really, really pisses me off. When I was still doing the welding thing most of the other guys in my course were offenders of this to the point where it was downright ridiculous. In the end literally every girl and woman under 40 that walked into the cafeteria (which was right next to the entry desk so we could see everyone that entered the building) garnered whispered invitations for sex and rude comments. Most of the comments were pretty harmless but some of them were particularly vile and in the end I seriously considered pretending to be faaabulous just to make them feel uncomfortable for a change. Admittedly I'm usually the first to make "get back in the kitchen" jokes, but at least I do it to their face and afterwards make sure they understood I was joking. Sometimes I just like to confuse people on purpose though.

Also, now I feel pretty bad about asking emerald if she was hot. It was in jest, but still in poor taste.

[Legoshoes]

Actually, yeah, I remember saying a few things to Emerald, I hope she knew I was joking too...

The Extra Credits video on this matter raised some good ways of dealing with the kind of abuse women seem to get online. A simple reputation system would mean that people who were abusive often would start a game muted or not be able to message people not on their friends list. It's going to be hard to get to the root of this problem though. We've got people who have known the smack-talking world of xbox live for, what, six years. People who think this kind of behaviour is acceptable because they've been desensitized to it and literally don't know any better. It's gonna take a lot of work to get this shit sorted.

Speaking as a full-time member of the faaabulous club, I've actually encountered fairly little abuse online since coming out. If the term "gɑy" is used in a pejorative sense while I'm playing, informing them I am faaabulous either illicits them shutting the fuck up or trolling; and I'm too much of a seasoned internet veteran to let trolling come across as anything but attention seeking so it's fairly easy to ignore.

I don't think it's wholly fair to draw parallels between the general misogynistic nature of online games at the moment and my anecdotal evidence, though, as a) I don't dirty myself by entering the wretched hive of scum and villany that is Xbox Live and b) I have never been called even half the stuff that women seem to get thrown at them, judging by sites like fatuglyorslutty.com

I think ultimately, saying nothing is the same as joining in with sexist behaviour. The best we can do is call people out on it and explain to them that it's not okay. That, at least, sound vaguely achievable.

[Joose]

Its interesting to note that everything on both of those sites seems to come from xbox live. I'm sure it happens on the PC too, but it doesn't seem to be as bad. Certainly, more often than not when I hear or read a story about this kind of bullshit behaviour its on the consoles.

I was thinking its probably just an age difference thing, as the average age of console gamers is way less than PC, but I listened to some of those recordings and most of them don't exactly have the squeaky voice of a prepubescent. Maybe it something to do with the average console game attracting a different kind of person to the average PC game? Or actually, it might just be because on the PC you don't tend to get thrown in to voice chat with a bunch of randoms all the time.

[Legoshoes]

It's probably due to the sheer number of people who play consoles. While arsebags might be a small percentage, they're also a vocal percentage.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

I suspect it's because consoles are cheap as fuck and (compared to PCs) a half decent investment. you buy one and they last until a new one comes out.

End result is that they make great Christmas presents and get given to kids with minimal parental supervision.

Angry kids ENGAGE.

[Roman Totale]

To try and even out some of the misogyny, I only threaten to rape male gamers.

[Roman Totale]

Holy Shit

I'm sure many of you are familiar with The Oatmeal. You may also be aware that recently he was sued for $20k for, rightly, pointing out that another website was stealing his stuff. In response he decided to try and raise $20k to go to charity, specifically the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society. Read all about it here - Bear Love Good, Cancer Bad.

In an incredibly impressive turn of events, not only was the $20k raised in around 20 minutes, but in total he managed to raise $220k in donations from the internet public. A heart warming story - so why the hate?

The lawyer who issued the original $20k demand is now not only suing The Oatmeal for the money, but he's also suing the National Wildlife Federation and the American Cancer Society, and the Indiegogo site that was used as a donation portal, for stealing his money. What a lowlife scumbag. I'm sure this will all come back to bite him on the arse, but just read this article if you want to get an idea of just how batshit insane this guy (and his wife) are.

[Dog Pants]

America seems to have more than its share of publicity hunting lawyers. Luckily there are just enough sane people there to disbar them. Like Jack Thompson.

[emeraldsub]

For the record, i dont remember anyone saying anything that was even remotely offensive.

Besides, i did actually spend quite a lot of time in the kitchen.

[Dog Pants]

I should hope not. Well, not intended as personally offensive at any rate. Fortunately we tend to repel trolls and other assorted internet idiots, they just don't seem interested in being here and that's fine. Even those people tend to be less gobby in person anyway.

[Dog Pants]

This has fallen off the first page. Time for another thing.

EA stop selling real MoH weapons.

This is a bit surprising that EA thought it was a good idea. "That thing you can use to kill people in the game? Lets sell real ones!" Admittedly the chances of someone using one to kill someone is fairly small. It's all a bit ridiculous though. So it's not really surprising at all how many people told EA it was a stupid idea, or that they stopped after a media backlash. It is quite surprising that, since they were donating proceeds to a charity, they effectively said "well now it's your fault all those people aren't going to get any help." The mind boggles. However, what was very surprising was the outpouring of grief and horror on the comments thread of that article by people who are aghast that they should be denied the right to buy game-branded weapons. I can only imagine what an awful place the EA forums are right now.

[Jimmington]

I think my biggest concern with this would be that if i actually went out to job someone with an EA branded tomahawk, the chances are that the head would fall off before any damage was done and I would have to wait for it to be patched.

[Dog Pants]

Daily Mail again. This time making (and by which I mean creating) a very tenuous link between Call of Duty and the suicide of a 13-year-old boy (he played it sometimes). John Walker decries that it's not good enough to simply tut and blame the Mail for being the Mail. I agree, but what can we do John? Eventually normal adults will treat this kind of opinion with the same disdain we do to the idea that heavy metal makes people worship the devil, but until then I think the best we can do is crusade against the stereotype they're trying desperately to build. Also not buy the Mail, but I assume none of us do that anyway.

[Thompy]

More Daily Mail drivel. Ugh

[Dog Pants]

Mindpiss