Gamergate controversary | Page 2 | INFJ Forum

Gamergate controversary

- Adolf Hitler, When talking about the jews as a tribe being all like

4ba76e0e56.jpg

Why would hitler say that? That doesn't make any sense

The 'goy' are people who aren't of khazari origin
 
Also there's a whole subculture to this subculture which is racist against Brazilians.

Just look up something like 'huehuehue br'. Exclusive gamer speak which describes stereotypical Brazilian MMO players. It's so much of a culture it has its own words to slam other cultures.
 
[MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION]
The thing is, most players aren't actually toxic. Even in the games where the largest amount of toxic behavior happens, like dota 2 and league of legends, there's a vocal minority of genuine unironic asshats and people who troll without provocation. What has been done in the media, and by you, is to talk like they are the majority and somehow define "gamer culture", which again stigmatizes everyone who plays video games.

Then you see prejudice overflowing like meer using terms such as "basement dweller" misogyny, blissfully unaware of much of a hypocrite he is for stereotyping "basement dwellers" (also known as neckbeards, nolife video gamers, etc) in a similar way to how he imagines many "basement dwellers" stereotype women and the category of people who refer to themselves as feminists in particular.

I've seen way more shit and bad behavior in video games than you probably ever will, but I've found multiples more genuinely nice and cool unhateful people, and that's not counting those who simply say nothing.

Stop referring to toxic behavior within video games as "video game culture", and people won't rightly feel wrongfully targeted by your hatespeech.
 
@sprinkles
The thing is, most players aren't actually toxic. Even in the games where the largest amount of toxic behavior happens, like dota 2 and league of legends, there's a vocal minority of genuine unironic asshats and people who troll without provocation. What has been done in the media, and by you, is to talk like they are the majority and somehow define "gamer culture", which again stigmatizes everyone who plays video games.

Then you see prejudice overflowing like muur using terms such as "basement dweller" misogyny, blissfully unaware of much of a hypocrite he is for stereotyping "basement dwellers" (also known as neckbeards, nolife video gamers, etc) in a similar way to how he imagines many "basement dwellers" stereotype women and the category of people who refer to themselves as feminists in particular.

I've seen way more shit and bad behavior in video games than you probably ever will, but I've found multiples more genuinely nice and cool unhateful people, and that's not counting those who simply say nothing.

Stop referring to toxic behavior within video games as "video game culture", and people won't rightly feel wrongfully targeted by your hatespeech.

Who is 'muur'?
 
Also there's a whole subculture to this subculture which is racist against Brazilians.

Just look up something like 'huehuehue br'. Exclusive gamer speak which describes stereotypical Brazilian MMO players. It's so much of a culture it has its own words to slam other cultures.

Would you say they are misrepresenting brazilian video game culture in a joking manner that hurts people's feelings?

I would agree with that. I wonder if there's any irony to be found here.
 
[MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION]
The thing is, most players aren't actually toxic. Even in the games where the largest amount of toxic behavior happens, like dota 2 and league of legends, there's a vocal minority of genuine unironic asshats and people who troll without provocation. What has been done in the media, and by you, is to talk like they are the majority and somehow define "gamer culture", which again stigmatizes everyone who plays video games.

Then you see prejudice overflowing like muur using terms such as "basement dweller" misogyny, blissfully unaware of much of a hypocrite he is for stereotyping "basement dwellers" (also known as neckbeards, nolife video gamers, etc) in a similar way to how he imagines many "basement dwellers" stereotype women and the category of people who refer to themselves as feminists in particular.

I've seen way more shit and bad behavior in video games than you probably ever will, but I've found multiples more genuinely nice and cool unhateful people, and that's not counting those who simply say nothing.

Stop referring to toxic behavior within video games as "video game culture", and people won't rightly feel wrongfully targeted by your hatespeech.

It is the culture. The nice people don't need a culture and they don't need to define themselves. There's no point in identifying like I'm talking about you. You won't see it as much if you mainstream but try Combat Arms, Soldier Front, Crossfire, etc. where the assholes are very much the majority.

The fact is there are not a small number of multiplayer games which have been quite ruined by an asshole majority, to such a point that community managers for the game some times have to resort to extreme sanctions such as having times of the year when all they do is ban players by the hundreds.

I wouldn't go making claims that you have seen more than me because you don't actually know that.
 
Would you say they are misrepresenting brazilian video game culture in a joking manner that hurts people's feelings?

I would agree with that. I wonder if there's any irony to be found here.

No it's serious. Don't you know about it? They're not joking.

It started with free MMORPGs such as Tibia where for some unknown reason a lot of Brazilians flock to the game and some of them had some habits which annoyed a lot of people such as always asking "BR?" and saying HUAHEUEHUEHUE. That was something that they really did and you would see it a LOT in some places - you'd log in and there'd be a flock of these people all doing that. Then some of them started griefing and begging for free items and just being dickish in general and since they have these odd traits in common a stereotype developed which led to a lot of hate for Brazilian gamers even though not all of them do it.

Some people non-ironically go as far as to say Brazilians ruin games and the country should be IP blocked.
 
I know about it. It's not as huge as you think in the way that you think.

You can't judge video game playerbases like you'd judge a social circle or a workplace environment, because individuals can't exclude each other from playing a game. They can only exclude each other from being in the same player-circle. This is why pretty much no one even bothers to reacting to someone repeating the "hue huehue BR" maymay in a chat other than reporting the person for spam or someone else also wanting to sing along. There's no benefit to get into an argument with a stranger that is trolling unless one wants to outtroll the person. The same applies to relatively unmoderated places like how 4chan used to be and how 8chan is now. People can't control each other there, and that's why to some it might appear more toxic than elsewhere (besides probably taking things and reading intentions too seriously).

This realization is behind memes such "pubs are cancer". "If you play and there's only room for one pub, the pub will always be a feeding troll who will flame the team, no exceptions".

If you want to never be bothered by these oh my god so outrageous and hurtful people who say things to strangers some might find hurtful, then yes, avoid pubs. To do this though, unless you already have friends you play games with, to find suitable people for you, you might have to actually *gasp* tolerate that at some point someone might think it's funny to say something in a chat that another person could find hurtful, and the only thing you can do about it personally is to out-troll or out-make-fun of the person to reduce the person's inclination to do it again.

Whining about "gamer culture" does nothing but stigmatize and drive video game players who actually aren't Hitler to be disgusted with your position, as it's nothing but a declaration that "gamers are largely shit and I dislike them".

If you have propositions on how to discourage annoying strangers in video games, like valve's "commend" system in dota 2, but more effective, please go ahead and throw it out there. But don't be a judgmental overgeneralizing asshole.

Also, generic military shooters (that is, not stuff like Red Orchestra 2, which actually has an amazing nontoxic community for a game where people can switch names as they want) are about as close to "normal culture" and as far away from "basement dweller / chan culture" one can get. What you'll see there is largely a reflection of the mainstream culture of the society you live in. Those are largely people who use steam, facebook, [insert console] and that's it in regards to social involvement outside of in-game chats. A game launched, they bought it / downloaded it, they went on it, and some of them shittalk to players they'll never see again in their lives while giggling at home because they find it funny. Time to vilify 'the gamer community'.

The last time I saw someone genuinely say brazilians are toxic in a game forum, he got collectively laughed at by everyone involved in the thread. In non-casual guilds I have been in in mmorpgs, and guilds I weren't in but were at the same general dedication level, and in fast paced fps communities I have been in, racism and sexism has never been tolerated. Those are, however, social spaces where people can recognize and remember each other, and are relatively isolated from mainstream society. As such, they should be the ideal examples of what "gamer culture" is compared to just how some normal people behave when they aren't socially invested in something, but no.
 
Last edited:

Cross-region MMR problems is actually a thing.

Playing vs europeans who are ranked 4000 in dota is harder than playing against americans who are ranked 4000 in dota. This is not controversial. It happens because of the way mmr works results in people being semi-regionally rated relative to each other, but not strongly so against other regions, because there is lower inter-region interaction.

Yet a 4k NA player will still be matched with a 4k EU player.

If there is a similar or higher schism between what SA server and NA server mmr's indicate in terms of objective skill levels, then this could result in the experience of that person without him necessarily being a racist moron who only see what he wants to see.

In Dota 2, one also specifically searches by language in addition to server via settings on the search page, so I would have to agree with him that it was discourteous of them to search for english servers without being proficient in english, or without being willing to speak it.

That thread is not a strong example of pervasive racism.

Edit: Reading comments. There is cultural overgeneralization in that thread, yes. The worst against russians by one guy. Probably due to a "judging the whole by a vocal minority" mindset similar to that displayed in this thread.

gamefaqs... *puke*
 
Last edited:
Cross-region MMR problems is actually a thing.

Playing vs europeans who are ranked 4000 in dota is harder than playing against americans who are ranked 4000 in dota. This is not controversial. It happens because of the way mmr works results in people being semi-regionally rated relative to each other, but not strongly so against other regions, because there is lower inter-region interaction.

Yet a 4k NA player will still be matched with a 4k EU player.

If there is a similar or higher schism between what SA server and NA server mmr's indicate in terms of objective skill levels, then this could result in the experience of that person without him necessarily being a racist moron who only see what he wants to see.

In Dota 2, one also specifically searches by language in addition to server via settings on the search page, so I would have to agree with him that it was discourteous of them to search for english servers without being proficient in english, or without being willing to speak it.

That thread is not a strong example of pervasive racism.

Edit: Reading comments. There is cultural overgeneralization in that thread, yes. The worst against russians by one guy. Probably due to a "judging the whole by a vocal minority" mindset similar to that displayed in this thread.

gamefaqs... *puke*

That's how it is everywhere if you're actually in the community is what I'm trying to tell you. The fact that you disavow Gamefaqs with "gamefaqs... *puke*" tells me that you simply look at the situation through rose colored goggles and downplay the negative elements because for some reason you want to place yourself as "one of them".

Why are you so quick to polarize yourself when it isn't even necessary? Especially at the cost of throwing out a good chunk of the actual active community such as Gamefaqs.

Edit:
Also the fact that you don't seem to get the meta sense tells me that you're not actually in the community at large in the first place. You'd at least know something about this if you were.

Edit edit:
Additionally, the people in that thread are just plain biased against Brazilians. Your interpretation is naive and doesn't consider the cross-game meta politics which has been going on for many years. It might look like it's down to a difference in region ratings and language barrier but I assure you it isn't just that.
 
Last edited:
[MENTION=5525]latte[/MENTION]

I have to agree with [MENTION=6917]sprinkles[/MENTION]. Your commentary reads for me that you are insecure with being a gamer and are overly sensitive with how others might perceive you as a gamer based on a generalized view of the culture.

I'm a lifelong gamer, but I'm not a competitive gamer. I tend towards RPGs and single player experiences with only the occasional social gaming.

This sort of toxic behavior is inherent in other social areas such as sports though. I believe it to be a manifestation of unmet emotional needs in daily life (an impotence rage) in competitive environments in order for it to find redress. I simply don't find much fulfillment in competitive success.
 
I don't tend to frequent places like gamefaqs, no. I find communities and groups of players that match with me. I don't tend to actively discuss things like politics on open groups in facebook either, because there's always some people who will just.. you know. The solution insofar as one's personal life goes to this isn't to say that online discussion culture is bad and we should be outraged. The solution is to create, support or join social spaces that are suitable to one's tastes, and actively exclude or ostracize individuals who insist on repetitively behaving in ways not conducive to how one wants that social space to be. Most people who don't like interacting with a sizeable portion of people on gamefaqs simply don't discuss on gamefaqs.

If one would want to deal with hurtful and unwarranted over generalization in the general populace, within which differentiation ability is low and differentiation in expression is even lower, there are ways to deal with it through highlighting it as a cognitive error phenomena and popularizing that committing this error is an embarrassing or undesirable thing that has negative personal and macro social consequences. Not by committing the same kind of error by homing in on the idea that "gaming culture" is a big bad boogieman in regards to this. It's not.

If you can't see the difference between, for example, the poster that tries to explain the experience of the OP through highlighting brazilian socioeconomical problems and suggesting there's a different, less serious approach to games there on average, and the poster who said
brazilian people are like this in other games and real life as well. they only speak portugeese but can speak english perfectly and act like we were in their country when not. Just deal with it or walk away from them, theyre not worth it.
Then there's something wrong. The second one has distaste and possibly also hate for brazilians and sees them through overgeneralizing eyes. The first one thinks statistically, doesn't seem to have any ill feelings, and doesn't de-individualize them into a monolithic blob.
 
[MENTION=5525]latte[/MENTION]
You pretty much admitted you're not part of it though so how would you even know?

By your own admission you're selective about who you associate with which is definitely going to lead to a bias on your part. You seem to fail to realize that by conveniently shedding away all the things that don't sit well with you you're actually tossing out all the extant specimens of culture that are actually relevant to the discussion.

In other words of course you're not going to think there's anything wrong with gaming culture if you limit yourself to the good parts. That is an obviously flawed argument because when you shave things away like that it always looks like no institution ever has a problem because you pare it down to the good bits.

Moreover, the larger problem is that it's not merely harmful generalization, but active perpetuation of it and maintaining a climate that is suitable for such practices to flourish and the ones who actually get ostracized are the ones who try to do as you say. In a meta sense communities end up that way because that is what they perpetuate. It's more than people being assholes. They get other people to be assholes too and they think it's ok.

It is more than the sum of the individual parts.
 
Last edited:
[MENTION=5525]latte[/MENTION]
Also I'll have you know there's good people on Gamefaqs too so by saying things about Gamefaqs you're also generalizing in the same way.

I don't like interacting with a sizeable portion of gamers. Take what you said about not discussing on Gamefaqs, upsize it, and there you go. Same deal.
 
Furthermore, now that I give it more thought, your proposal is naive, ineffective and entirely too PC. You cannot beat this with the avoidance strategy, nor the
"don't be like them" strategy, and certainly not the "disapprove of what they do and ostracize them" strategy.

In fact this is a thing because of the ability for anyone to make and join spaces that are suited to their taste. They go where they're the least challenged and there they effectively breed. And when the better people retreat, who do you think fills the gap??

You see, you don't ostracize and correct them. Not in places they own. They do that to you. And pretty soon you retreat and they take over your share of the social space.

They can use all the same strategies you describe, and frankly I would argue it is even more effective when they do it.
 
I... I just wanna play my games :/
 
The good parts are huge though. Like, play any mmorpg. It will be a world of difference compared to the average highly ego-tripping compatible generic military shooters. Or play more cooperatively minded FPS, or FPS that requires more intelligence to be decent at, or one where community is actually a thing rather than random people facing off against each other repeatedly through a match making system. Or take SC2 or just RTS in general. People are for the most part very polite, random people one meets too.

I never touched gamefaqs beyond the occasional hit via search engines when looking for specific information, nor IGN. Not because I assume most people there aren't PC or because I find them offensive (I browse chans), but because whenever I chance to touch upon them, they seem like the kind of forums that are highly likely to contain more (to me) uninteresting people who express thoughts that are uninteresting/non-clever than I want to allocate energy for.

My approaches actually do work. "Gamer culture" just isn't what you think it is. It takes very little effort for me to dodge social environments I dislike, and when I do, it is rare that they are environments that tend to have a high amount of people with terrible behavior, just more than I can stomach or want to go through the hassle of personally changing or getting excluded. I don't go out of my way for this. It might sound cliched, but this dark gloomy impression of gamer culture is actually a case of bad apples spoiling the batch in game social spaces that are non-exclusionist, and most people are biased towards overplaying and intuitive-statistically over-representing what hit them the most in the feels.

If you woke up tomorrow and played video games and 25% of video game players actually acted in the ways gamer culture is accused of, then it would be a stark and extremely noticeable difference.


People who act in shitty ways exist, and yes, some kids do absorb shitty behavior and perpetuate it, even far into adulthood, and they are enough to give a bad experience in a notable amount of cases, but don't call it gamer culture, that's all. Just address it as toxic video game players or something.

Just anything that doesn't stigmatize video game players in general and paint a picture of us as being largely just short of being shit posting-troll-murder-threats tier human beings, like Manzanita Snarkeesian does.
 
There is a lot of toxic gaming communities, just there are also a lot of toxic LGBT communities and a lot of toxic techie communities. No matter what interest you have you'll find that it's impossible to avoid assholes in that community. That said, video games are one of the worst for crude, trollish behavior. There's a great deal of misogyny, homophobia and even racism in gaming today.

However, this attitude seems to be changing (very slowly, I admit) and there's a lot more people pushing for diversity in video games. Horribly misogynistic games like GTA V are called out for their behavior and the pathetic excuses for lack of any non-cisexual characters are being attacked more and more.

A large amount of gamers and developers (or at least mainstream ones) are insecure young males and oppose these changes. They're the most outspoken ones who look at any attempt to diversify as an attack on their hobby. While I'm uncertain about the future of the industry, I believe that as this medium matures, those who decry "SJW bullshit" over every little change or who resort to death threats to get their way will become less and less relevant.