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Gaming Fat, Ugly or Slutty?

Discussion in 'Article Discussion' started by arcticstoat, 20 Jun 2011.

  1. Boogle

    Boogle What's a Dremel?

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    I don't play video games with a headset because of this. I've never actually been victimized (I stay silent 99% of the time anyway), but just hearing all of the phlegm firing around is very tiring.

    Stick with PC games and a keyboard and generally speaking it's civil or a laugh. L4D is particularly civil with people thanking you for saves, and vice versa.
     
  2. XXAOSICXX

    XXAOSICXX Minimodder

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    Joe is right on the money here. Just because you can't stop it doesn't mean you shouldn't strive for better. It's easy to write off the position of "victim" when you aren't one. Like saying the girl deserved to get raped because her skirt was short....it's nonsense. People shouldn't have to hide themselves because that's the way the system "just is".

    I applaud BT for raising these issues - it's more than the rest of the tech/gaming press do - and frankly, with enough exposure, companies like M$ or Sony might one day put in measures to ensure this doesn't happen. If nobody raises the issue you can pretty much guarantee nothing with happen.

    "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." [Edmund Burke]
     
  3. spiderm0nkey

    spiderm0nkey I'm a rare breed... A female!

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    I've taken a significant amount of abuse over the years for being a female gamer, but these days I either ignore them or feed their pathetic abuse straight back to them. I've been gaming for about 4yrs now and have made many good friends in a lot of servers. When the young kids trying to be cool come in and abuse me, the older members tend to back me up and the abuse usually stops pretty quick.

    Makes me sad that some girls would give up gaming because of the jerks though. :(
     
  4. XXAOSICXX

    XXAOSICXX Minimodder

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    No. That's pretty much the complete opposite of what Joe meant.
     
  5. madmike32

    madmike32 What's a Dremel?

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    It saddens me to see such poor behaviour from men and well most of them boys.I run a games server which we have played bf2 and now on bfbc2,yes we have seen and heard all sorts of comments on type talk and voice chat but we strive to remove such idiots from our servers as we do not tollerate any sort of bullying or abusive behaviour one bit and think that all clans that run games servers should strive to be like ours and stop such behaviour from happening as we think it is great to have women gamers and have had a couple of female members and still have and also if we see female gamers then we make sure that they are happy and try to keep our code of conduct as we expect it,that is no insults at all.I have had all sorts of insults thrown at me by stupid gamers intent of trying to be rude when confronted with being banned,I was called a 200lb brainless retard by a group of players.. I stood to correct them that I most likely had more IQ than all of them put together and then promptly banned them all from our server.I don't understand why people will resort to any such behaviour and I will not tollerate any kind of insults on our servers and neither will our other mature admins..and one of them is a woman too ;-).It is about time that clans and people who run game servers remove such insulting people from servers..and I do beleive it is good to see women playing games and would like to see even more playing games and to keep our servers running in such a manner that anyone playing on our severs can play safely and feel at home playing on our servers and free from idiots with no manners are kept off our severs and that all servers should be run like ours,then anyone can play as insult free as possible and that should be on type talk or voice chat.Online gaming is meant to be fun and should be kept so.
     
  6. Kingsley813

    Kingsley813 What's a Dremel?

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    The only game I play online is FIFA, nothing else, really. But even there, it's more than a joke when you're playing football and the Russians on there (and believe me, there are a LOT of them on there) start spewing out adoration for Hitler, Stalin and begging for the return of Communism. Really, WTF?
     
  7. cypressgroove

    cypressgroove What's a Dremel?

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    I completely sympathise with female gamers, and recognise many of the copperplate abuse mentioned in the article (can't bring myself to actually go to the site, I find unnecessary rudeness particularly irksome in any circumstance whether it's directed at me or anyone else, so setting up my Monday by browsing a whole site full of it in the morning is probably not the best idea for my blood pressure)...

    I play Champions Online with my best friend, who happens to be female, and whilst I will give it credit as having by far the most proportion of players who behave maturely of any MMO I've ever played, I have also to say I have played female toons on there and received everything from skin-crawlingly creepy come-ons to out right misogyny first hand when playing those female toons as well witnessing my friend receiving the same when she plays hers.

    I think what makes this worse is the herd mentality (or to put it another way, outright cowardice) of many of the other males who witness this sort of thing and say or do nothing about it. If you saw someone go up to a female, especially one you knew, in the street and start spouting aggressive or suggestive or misogynistic bull at her it's pretty likely you'd either stand up for her (assuming she doesn't tell you specifically to back off and let her handle it) or be seen as a collaborator or coward by her and any other witnesses. The result is that in general people are far more likely to 'stand up and be counted' in real life and knowing this the bullies who have an impulse to behave in that sort of way - don't (knowing full well they aren't just picking on the female, but them and anyone else who overhears).

    The thing is, I think I do have some understanding of why more people aren't doing this online. It's a combination of factors I think:

    1) People see game time as 'fun time' and there's an inherent reticence to 'bring down the mood' by getting involved with a potential conflict.
    2) The same anonymity that makes it easy for the bullies to be 'brave' (although I question the bravery of picking on what you perceive to be an easy target, but I digress) is also the anonymity that makes it easy for everyone else to be 'cowardly' and not want to get involved.
    3) Due to the dogma that online gaming is the traditional domain of the male - and males, when together in *any* competitive situation are hard-wired into the dick-swinging 'locker-room' mentality of 'friendly' insults and aggression there's an implied expectation for any females (perhaps perceived as an 'invading minority') to either 'step up or step off'. Females, who tend to (although obviously not always by any means) be much more conciliatory and, you know, 'social' when in competitive situations are apparently expected to change their behaviour to 'fit in with the boys'.
    4) It's much much easier to do nothing than to decide to do something. That's true in real life just as much as in games. (For instance, 99% online game ToS explicitly state sexist or aggressive remarks are against the rules, they also have 'report' buttons, but the number of people I know who excuse themselves from using it by claiming 'nothing ever gets done' or 'someone else will have already pressed it' or any other number of ways to justify their inaction is simply staggering)

    The problem is, as the article makes a very good point of I thought, that this collective apathy is genuinely hurting our collective gameplay experience. It's become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

    We're not going to stop bullies and arseholes playing online games any more than we can stop walking past them in the street. What we can do, collectively as gamers, is grow a pair and refuse to stand for it. When you see this sort of behaviour online, imagine it's someone you are overhearing in the street - step in (unless you're asked not to) step up and let these people know we consider the behaviour unacceptable. That might be by reporting them *every time*, adding them to blocklists and explaining to the victim how to do so also if they aren't sure, refusing to play on the same server as them or hell, if it's an FPS or another game where PvP is concerned do whatever you can to make their gameplay experience at that time as miserable as you can until they grow up, apologise or leave.

    Things won't change because we talk about them on messageboards, they'll change when we collectively make it clear that we find that behaviour just as unacceptable in a virtual setting as we would in a real one.

    </soapbox>

    Just my, err, £0.02p >.<
     
    cjmUK and NeilJM like this.
  8. r3loaded

    r3loaded Minimodder

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    I've never played online on a console, but I'm getting the feeling it's a bigger problem with consoles than PCs. With PC games like TF2, you play on server that are typically run by communities, with watchful admins who ban morons who start spouting abuse.
     
  9. Unknownsock

    Unknownsock What's a Dremel?

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    Might be slightly true but from my experience i just get randomly kicked for no problem.
     
  10. DbD

    DbD Minimodder

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    Play on properly admin'd servers and it's not a problem, which I suppose means you should play on a PC and not xbox.
     
  11. kzinti1

    kzinti1 What's a Dremel?

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    Disgusting foul-mouthed, illeterate creeps are only one component of why I despise wasting my money on any game with an on-line component.
    I imagine, but will never know, that Duke Nukem Forever will bring out the most base, crass morons to ever play on-line. I feel quite slimy just playing the single-player mode. The older 'Duke' games were much more enjoyable before it became completely uncensored.
     
  12. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    Painfully typical (ongoing) example of fear of the unknown manifesting itself in caustic discrimination by people who should know better. The sad thing is, we "should" be past all this by now; with the internet having more-or-less created borderless nations, you'd hope that by now people would have embraced the idea.

    Unfortunately it's not the case.

    Hell, long gone are the days when computers were considered an elitist undertaking by zealots who think themselves "entitled" by their ability to "use the magical box of numbers", and yet what we have in it's place are the seething masses of those who believe it is their right is to admonish anything they are too painfully ignorant to understand.

    Fear the future of the race, because at this rate we're breeding ourselves out of existence through sheer ignorance.

    I stopped playing online games a LONG time ago because I simply couldn't be arsed dealing with repetitive gaming mechanics (read: MMO's), combined with being tired of all the "smack-talk" around (MMO's / FPS / Any other online game).

    I mean, seriously, what is the point? Someone sitting behind a screen spewing away poorly written obscenities; to what end? It achieves absolutely nothing except to highlight the fundamental failure in that persons social ineptitude. All it actually does is bolster the arguments against the (again ignorant public, though for different reasons) that "gaming is bad"; Gaming will destroy us! Gaming will lead to the end of days! *sigh*

    And that's even BEFORE we reach gender, racial, sexual, religious, caste or nationalistic discrimination.

    Back in the day, and I mean a long, long time ago, I used to run a couple of prevalent guilds in the MMO Anarchy Online (kudo's to anyone who remembers that). We had quite a few girl-gamers in the guild, and within the guild they were categorically equal, didn't have to be anonymous; they were treated with respect. Not only because if the slightest hint of discrimination appeared, they'd be booted from the guild, but also because I was simultaneously one of the "Arks", or in other MMO terms, a (voluntary) GM. That latter part helped with external discrimination, but sadly as has been echoed here already, more often than not they chose to keep their identities hidden rather than risk the torrent of abuse.

    Now here's the thing; discrimination, sexism, abuse; it all runs wild in every aspect of life. Sadly (read: pathetically) it's generally tolerated more in some situations than others. But this is the internet. "WE" are supposed to be better than that. Enlightened, if you will. We have all this knowledge, all this history, all this information at our fingertips. We have no borders, no walls, no colour, no creed. I say we "should" be above all this, that people shouldn't have to suffer with, at best harassment, at worse, fear. We "should" be equal, each playing their part in the collective consciousness of the "Net", the global community.

    What a truly depressingly pathetic state of affairs it is that a site like FUoS is even REQUIRED.

    I, for one, utterly support its message.
     
    Last edited: 20 Jun 2011
  13. Subv3rse

    Subv3rse What's a Dremel?

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    .
     
    Last edited: 20 Jun 2011
  14. SlowMotionSuicide

    SlowMotionSuicide Come Hell or High Water

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    QFT. In online multiplayer gaming, everyone gets abused.

    Also, most people don't go around the intertubes whining about it, either. Blocklist Cheesecake.

    Site was good for lols though.
     
  15. leslie

    leslie Just me!

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    It's amazing how bad it gets sometimes.
    Some of the things said to me and friends are not fit for print in the dirtiest of mens magazines.


    I have had games where the game essentially stopped because of guys either drooling or simply won't shut up. This just from seeing my name, I don't even have to type and god forbid I use voice. The sh*t talk is one thing, I can ignore it, and watch them get worked over because they aren't paying attention (often the rest will kick the person), but when the game comes to a complete standstill because of it, I have to leave. There is no point staying when you can't play or know that if I do stay things will get so bad we both get kicked, which has happened. I've been kicked just to stop something from even starting.


    A lot of the time I won't even play Left4Dead2 (which is better and about the only thing I tend to play online anymore) unless there is at least one (preferably male) friend in game with me. I also don't play during peak internet times. Many women I know follow similar tactics. Based on what I'm hearing, I won't bother with consoles now either.


    Could I just hide? Yes, but how good is your friendship when you have to lie, besides, it's better having friends who will help. I'm not going to fake being a guy, I will either go overboard or get torn apart, either way it's no fun. I would rather grab some friends and play at my own pace, my own way.
     
  16. Cei

    Cei pew pew pew

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    Shame, I play L4D2 regularly with friends - and there's 4 girls in the group, and they're just as capable of plugging a Hunter with a headshot at 200 paces. Admittedly, we play friends-only games, but it's horrible to think what happens on public servers.
     
  17. cypressgroove

    cypressgroove What's a Dremel?

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    *slow applause*

    Congratulations on being the very embodiment of my third point:


    :duh:#facepalm:duh:
     
  18. SlowMotionSuicide

    SlowMotionSuicide Come Hell or High Water

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    You get a free cookie now?

    World of online gaming is one filled with asswipes, you deal them or get yourself another hobby. Posting about it on the internet is about as effective as taking a leak into sea.
     
  19. Psy-UK

    Psy-UK What's a Dremel?

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    Isn't the internet wonderful?... :(
     
  20. cypressgroove

    cypressgroove What's a Dremel?

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    Agreed - which actually was exactly my point. Complaining about it is ineffective. People such as you and I collectively manning up and not standing for it despite not being the target of it is what will make things change.

    We can choose to throw our hands up and accept nothing will change because we're afraid like little boys or we can refuse to accept it and make a stand against the behaviour wherever we see it and affect a change like men.

    To paraphrase the goonies: the little boy's room is that way if you want it - I'm off to the men's room. ;p
     
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