This Is Why I Speak Out

[theotherbaldwin]

There are some people that rail against the idea that there might be a culture of dismissive-ness about rape, or the use of rape to silence. The following anonymous comments left on my last article are a clear example of these attitudes, and why speaking out is necessary:

Trigger warning: What following under the cut are dismissive attitudes about

Comments

[nbda1997]

Jeez... I know there's no law against disagreeing with people, but it really is a rude awakening to see how ignorant and belligerent people can be.

This is not what gamers were like when we were growing up; I'm positive of that.

[erf_]

Custer's Revenge, Street Fighter 2 no-throw arcade bullies, the runaway success of Mortal Kombat, Usenet trolls, John Romero's entire career, SomethingAwful's Portal of Evil, Postal fandom, the casual misuse of the word "rape" in Starcraft and Counter-Strike tournaments, GTA3, Illusion's entire catalog (trigger warning), the Angry German Keyboard Kid, Halo "teabagging," rude teenagers screaming into their headsets in every Modern Warfare 2 match.

Sadly, gamers have been assholes, and have continued to be assholes, since the 1970s.

We're way past time for a subculture-wide change in attitude.

[nbda1997]

You have to admit, the assholes, have certainly increased in numbers over the years. Case-in-point "Custer's Revenge" was hardly a runaway hit, but GTA3 certainly was.

[turandot]

I think the problem is that to hang out with the people who are into gaming, you sort of have to become as assholish as they are. At some point, people who can't keep up with the culture of misogyny and the overall "screw you" attitude just drop out.

My own experience of the culture is that I happily dropped out of frequenting gaming sites and their associates messageboards not so much because people were assholes to me per se, but because I didn't like the persona I had to project to fit in. I wouldn't like her IRL so why would I want to spend time being that person online? I'd rather find other things to do with my time, both online and off. That's my mileage anyway.

[erf_]

That's only because the gaming community itself has grown so quickly over the years. The home version of Mortal Kombat in 1993 broke sales records. Which wasn't a big deal to me at the time (and I still think Lieberman et al. never played it), but looking back, this was a fighting game with little depth and broken, paper-thin game mechanics that would have not sold a single copy were it not for the grisly fatalities. And it outsold Street Fighter 2 at the arcades.

There are certainly more jerks in gaming than there were when I was a kid, and thanks to Ventrilo and VoIP they're a lot more difficult to ignore, but I'm not convinced the proportion of jerks to decent people is any different.

[nbda1997]

You definitely have a point. The Genesis version of MK sold several times more copies than the SNES port, which was superior in every conceivable way sans missing the blood. It's definitely a sad commentary about gamers.