Imp Emissary said:
Legion said:
Although to be honest like a lot of these sorts of things I can never tell whether or not the people who originally made the comments are just stupid or trolling.
Question about this specifically.
Why does it matter?
If a person is acting like an ass (to the point were you can't tell if they are acting, or just really an ass) how does that make them much different from a real A-hole?
I apologize, but the whole "oh they're just trolls/trolling" thing just kind of sounds like it's saying we shouldn't care about the bad behavior. Kind of like the old saying "Oh, boys will be boys", ya know?
If they talk like a jerk, act like a jerk, and sound like a jerk. What's the difference really between them and a jerk?
Sorry to bug ya about it. It's just been there for a bit like a bad itch.
May you have a good day, and a better week.
For the sake of whether or not we should care, it makes no difference whatsoever. A person being racist/sexist etc. because they are, or simply to wind people up makes absolutely no difference to the way people should think of them. The fact is they are deliberately being an unpleasant person, so whether or not they "mean it" doesn't matter.
The difference it
does make is for discussing problems and how to fix them. People on the internet are frequently unpleasant. For example at the recent Wimbledon tournament (Britain's largest Tennis tournament for those who don't know) one of the commentators said something about one of the female players not being a "looker". The response as we might expect was not a good one, the guy was criticised everywhere for the comment and rightly so. However some comments seemed to go even further than what he said. Some people said she was so unattractive that she wouldn't even be raped.
So are tennis fans sexist? Is there an underlying problem with sexist behaviour amongst the tennis community? Or were those people behaving that way due to anonymity and because they can get away with it?
The reason for why the difference between being one of those things and pretending is relevant, is that any attempt to "fix" them isn't going to work if they are not actually racist, sexist, homophobic and so on. If a person is saying nasty things because they gain enjoyment out of hurting peoples feelings rather than because they are racist (and so on), then trying to educate them about why racism is bad isn't going to do anything.
It's an example I have used before, but in work places they sometimes have courses designed to teach people about appropriate behaviour. For example years back when I applied to work in a supermarket they had a section dedicated to educating people about the correct ways of interacting with disabled people.
If a person in a work place was being nasty to a disabled person, but just because they were nasty,
not because the person was disabled, then sending them on a course to educate them about the correct treatment isn't going to help in the slightest, because the problem isn't that they are bigoted against the disabled, the problem is with their treatment of other people in general.
Simply put, we shouldn't be looking at "fixing sexism in the gaming community". We should be fixing the need some people have of making others lives less pleasant. Gaming doesn't have a problem with sexist attitudes. People with anonymity have an outlet for their sadism with no repercussions and are taking full advantage of it.
If we want to fix these problems, we need to look deeper than a handful of guys making idiotic comments. We need to deal with the cause, not the symptom, and to be honest, that's never going to happen. Because the fact of the matter is that not all people are nice, they never have been and they never will be. That's not to say we shouldn't deal with it as and when we can, but people need to be realistic about this kind of thing.
I apologise in advance for any rambling and/or terrible grammar, punctuation and so on. I am enjoying a week off of work and a part of that involves going through my small collection of spirits.
Vegosiux said:
My main problem is that I simply haven't seen anything like what he talks int he video actually happen. Giving the benefit of doubt, this is either a geographical thing and much more prevalent elsewhere, or he's just plain fucking wrong. Still, I'm totally willing to believe it's a geographical thing.
Maybe because Slovenia, or the Balkans specifically still lives in the past. You're still an outcast if you're a gamer around here. No matter what your gender is. No matter what your job is. I mean what the fuck is wrong with you, you should be out there either making mad money or fucking everything that moves (or making mad money so you can throw it around so that everything that moves will want to fuck you). That's still the mentality here.
You could also be describing England. Although gaming is accepted in the sense that people on television and radio will admit to doing it, there is still that "Oh, I am such a loser for admitting it" kind of attitude around it.
It was a very funny affair.
