Smile and Nod: RealID and Why Hate Speech is the Least of Our Worries

[JakobBloch]

"I reserve my pity for those loveless, senseless blights on the soul of mankind. My pity and my hate."

Funny how bile brings out the poet.

Anyway I agree. While many people don't have a problem with using their real names on the internet in any kind of forum some people do. We have no right to call out these people. It may not seem it but it is similar to making people wear stars on their clothes if they are of a specific faith (yeah I went there) or maybe more correctly making people register as, say homosexual. In the latter case there is a good chance that a lot of homosexuals will not have a problem with it but a lot will because of the social stigma of it.

And as for the social aspect. Some people need anonymity to feel comfortable in social situations. For many people, maybe even most, social interaction is easy and while it might be uncomfortable some times it is nothing to fear. To some however it is terrifying. The very thought of speaking to someone new binds the gut in knots. The pulse starts to race and it becomes harder to breath. While it may turn out that there was nothing to fear doesn't make the fear any less real. For these people anonymity is a gods sent. It becomes easier to interact and even be decisive. It often turns out that these people do very well in social interaction when they can get the veil of anonymity. They are funny, engaging and supportive. Who are we to steal that away?

As for love and friendship found over the net. Love and even friendship is hard to find even in the real world. Again some people have it easy but some don't. Some people have lots of friends, others have only a few and still others have none. I am not talking just someone you added to your friends-list but real friends. These are rare and I endorse any contact that lets you develop them. Same goes for love. A teacher of mine once said something clever: "The One does not exist. She becomes it." Love takes work and courage. If a screen and 200 miles gives you that courage then more power to you. At least you found a way. Others are not so lucky.

 

[captain_magpie]

Russ, please do not use the terms "tranny" or "trannies" in the future- it's almost only ever used to belittle and insult trans people and it was a bit jarring to come across it this morning.

Thanks!
Alex

 

[CitySquirrel]

I think too many people see the GIFW as fact. I think Yahtzee's own version of the theory is far more accurate, in that person = fuckwad. Removing anonymity isn't going to change that.

This... think about how many people are assholes in real life (anyone remember high school?) and then ask yourselves if being anonymous is REALLY the key to all this. Not only that, but most "trolls" are actually people who are belligerently opinionated.

Russ, however, does not seem to think highly of gamers. Does he really believe we all game to hide from our shame and failure?

Edit:

Russ, please do not use the terms "tranny" or "trannies" in the future- it's almost only ever used to belittle and insult trans people and it was a bit jarring to come across it this morning.

Yeah, also his use of the phrase "the way fat girls crave cake". Shouldn't that be "fat people"? Or, really, should he be digging at fat people at all? This article has not left me with a good impression of Mr. Pitts.

 

[gamer_parent]

This article has not left me with a good impression of Mr. Pitts.

Yeah, me too. This is the first article of Russ Pitts that I've read. (or maybe just the first where I noted the name of the author) And quite frankly, I find the tone to be a little offensive and mildly condescending. It's not a good combination for someone in the position of editor-and-chief.

 

[More Fun To Compute]

"The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind. There is no play in them for this comes after work. But it is a characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things." - Henry David Thoreau

I think that a good mission for a games company is to make games that let people forget about their work, or whatever, if they want to. It is right to look at games from that perspective and occasionally think of things like achievements and gamer cards as a bad thing. If you, for example, feel the need to share your id with people at work and compete with them in your free time. That's before we go into social networking games or whatever.

 

[Serenegoose]

Well, really, the only thing this article has proven is that knowing a troll's real names won't do squat to stop them trolling, eh, Russ?

Closet trannies? Really? Way to be a welcoming environment, Escapist. Us trans people really love to be talked to like that. It's not at all dehumanising or anything like that. However, I did notice a lack of racist derogatory remarks. Maybe you should work on it for your next article, because I imagine people are feeling left out now.

 

[Darks63]

Other than unmasking trolls which would be funny, It sounds overall like a bad idea that could lead to violence and internet crime increases.

 

[Sewblon]

That was more vitriol and pretentiousness than I was expecting. It was a valiant effort, but you are not Yahtzee, trying to steal his thunder won't end well for anyone.

 

[Superfluffyfish]

I think real ID is a terrible thing for two reasons.

Reason one: I am a woman that plays WOW. I like to keep this to myself, for the simple reason that some creeps in the game will start stalking you and bothering you. I can handle them with ease thanks to Blizzard. Even worse though is when they will try to give you stuff for free and "help" you all the time. No gentlemen, I am perfectly capable of fighting of this level 58 monster by myself, thank you. And no, I'm not afraid I'll break a nail.
Trust me, I do nothing to start this behavior other than announcing I am a girl. Thankfully most guys really don't care whether I am male or female, it really makes no difference to them. But there are a minority of creeps and "helpful" types out there. Avoiding them is very important to me because they ruin my fun. The stalking speaks for itself , it's annoying but also easy to stop. I just report it to blizzard and it stops (I've had to do that twice so far and I had to help one friend do this for herself). The helpful stuff is worse. You can't report to blizzard that "This guy keeps offering to help me and gives me stuff". I guess that's why I find that way more annoying than the stalking in-game. Off course I tell them I don't want help and in most cases that stops it (after a lot of explaining why not). Sometimes there are guys, who still need to show you how gallant they are, who do continue. Getting rid of them requires me to be rude which is something I don't enjoy doing. All of this together has made me more likely to choose male characters in game then female ones.

Reason two: In response to mainly the first part of your article. Anonymity is very important to public discourse. It's all about freedom of speech and the things that come out of that. If we are ready to give up our anonymity on the Internet many of the amazing things that come out of that will be lost. Not just LOLCATS but also countless blogs by people who left Islam, people reporting on human rights violations and WikiLeaks. Unfortunately the flip side is rude forum trolls. But if that is the price to pay for freedom of speech then i gladly accept it. As Voltaire said "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it". An anonymous person can say all the things that are not socially acceptable, including the ones that have to be said. Anonymous people have had a great impact on many of the freedoms we take for granted today. For instance writers that used pseudonymous are largely responsible for the awareness in the public about the horrors that black slaves everywhere faced daily. And off course the ending of colonialism in the west (just Google Multatuli). Freedom of speech has always included anonymity as an integral part and you can't just say it should disappear, even in WOW, without seriously considering the consequences. If WOW can have real ID then how long will it be until more forums require it. If anonymity on the Internet disappears a lot of opinions will be lost. Especially the ones you don't agree with and those are the truly important ones. Because how are your ideas ever going to be challenged, if you only ever hear things you agree with?

 

[Superfluffyfish]

@tautologico

Are you a girl? 'Cause i am. And this has happened to me in WOW itself and the forums. Don't tell me this doesn't happen. It does and it is really annoying. Even if it happens only once. But that is the problem isn't it, it doesn't happen only once, it happens more often then you want to know. When this is the response you get to anything you say, at first you'll think it's stupid and hope it won't happen again. But then it does and you get annoyed about it. It turns funny for a while only to be highly irritating right afterwards. Do me a favor and go into some forums posting you are a girl right after stating a serious opinion. Then imagine that instead of saying "SHOW US YOUR TITS" they are saying "SHOW US YOUR DICK". If that happens less then twice a month you are lucky. And let's face it no one wants to be or should ever be harassed like that, period.

 

[Archaeology Hat]

So the basic point is: Blizzards RealID system would have made it harder for human failures who spend too much of their time in a fantasy world with no bearing whatsoever on reality to keep up their pathetic escapism and might have forced them to consider some important (if difficult) life choices instead of shrinking back into their filth covered holes and this is in some way a bad thing?

Oh and it might have made it easier for people to call out people who are Jerks.

 

[Captain Pancake]

I'm happy with the compromise of only letting actual friends see you through Battlenet. Otherwise, I'm not completely opposed to the idea, I just think I would only reveal my identity to people I trust, like those in my guild.

 

[Alex Cowan]

I'm perfectly open about using my real name on the Internet, and - I tried - it takes about 3 clicks to get to my Facebook page from google. But I avoid this by trying not to piss people off, and not feeding the trolls. Also I feel far more comfortable having a conversation using my real name than an assumed ID, and I find that people are generally nicer when I use an account with my real name than an assumed one. I think Blizzard did the right thing with this.

 

[mattaui]

I was initially very much in favor of the concept, until I realized that Blizzard has absolutely no reason to reveal their customer's information to other customers. Blizzard already knows everything about you, and they can take steps to ban your account or even notify the authorities if you're making terroristic threats online. If they want to voluntarily allow people to reveal their names, that's just fine, but making it mandatory just doesn't make any sense.

Also, upon reflection, I find the tone of this article surprisingly patronizing and insulting. Of course, Mr. Pitts does actually say 'the way fat girls love cake', and that tells me a whole lot about him right there. Not even fat people, but fat girls, so I assume we've got some pretty good insight into how he thinks about women in general, and overweight ones in particular. This might also explain why in his derisive remarks about 'closet trannies' and children that he doesn't mention that a number of the most outspoken critics were women who didn't want it known to the WoW world at large that they were female. Anyone who has spent any time in the online world and interacts with women at all would know that online harassment is a constant threat.

Mr. Pitts then assumes that the only people who wouldn't want their names shared with the world at large are people who just couldn't handle it, either that they hide their hobby or that they're so socially backwards that they couldn't deal with the stress of people knowing who they were. He then continues to heap scorn on such people by saying that anyone who really were bothered about it would just find another hobby. I assume you mean people like Felicia Day? She's famous to a lot of people, but far more people in the public at large haven't ever heard of her. Yet when she accidentally outed her WoW toon on a podcast the other day, she immediately made sure to change her toon's name to prevent issues. If she were forced to post as Felicia Day, or you could somehow find out who she was in game, she'd never be able to play.

Earlier someone mentioned how Mr. Pitts isn't as funny as Yahtzee, and I think the significant difference there is that Yahtzee is an equal opportunity offender as well as hugely self-deprecating, and it's a lot harder to do than it might look, which is why we all love him so much. Mr. Pitts comes across an an elitist outsider looking in on this silly little world of people who are making such a big deal about something that he really couldn't care less about, but he's sure to hurl insults at those who do have skin in the game, essentially relegating those people who are against it to a category of helpless whiners. He might be against it too, though he's too far up on his high horse and talking down to everyone for that to matter.

I felt the need to post such a long reply because I felt this article really brought the tone of the discussion down and was needlessly insulting to a whole swath of people.

 

[rembrandtqeinstein]

The thing about real life trolls is most of them are trolls because they are untouchable by "norms". They have a badge, they have a gang, they have trust funds and lawyers to get them out of anything they start.

So you can always fantasize about finding Studdood69 and punching him out when he calls your Mom a whore you don't even get that satisfaction against the bullies in meatspace. Any action you take would result in dire consequences for yourself or those you care about.

 

[The Big Eye]

For those of you who don't seem to get it, this is how RealID would (ideally) stop trolling:
Compare the sort of conversation you might hear riding on the subway to what you'd read scribbled on the inside of a public bathroom stall. That's what we're talking about here. When a troll jumps on a forum board and starts spitting bile, he can do that knowing that the hatred he cultivates cannot possibly trace his way back to him. He has anonymity.

However, imagine if writing on a bathroom wall required you to sign with your name. Now, there's always that risk that what you write will be traced back to you ("Hey, Frank, was that you soliciting marsupial sex in Northampton Station?"). Now, instead of harrassing some forummer who has accidentally revealed that she is female, you will have to step up on the podium, so to speak, and say, "I, John Haversack, want you to show me your tits." Sure, it's highly unlikely that some bereaved troll victim will enact vigilante justice on you, but the point is that your real self is now accountable for his/her actions online.

The problem arises, of course, when you consider that there are much, much worse people online than trolls, protected by that same anonymity. Trolls are a nuisance; but the really bad characters, the stalkers and pedophiles and what-have-you, will now have an easier time finding targets. And if they play their cards right, they can easily get into a conversation with a potential victim without ever revealing their real name. The real reason RealID would not work is because the anonymity that protects the trolls also protects innocent people trying to survive in what is, in reality, a very dangerous place: the online world.

Russ, I think you were grappling with shadows for most of your column. Your arguments are framed as though there are only two types of people on the internet: "ordinary people" and "trolls." But I think we both know it doesn't work that way. Morally, particular actions may be black and white, but people are shades of grey. The perfectly decent fellow with whom you had coffee last morning could easily be the same person who went online and told a homosexual to, I dunno, punch himself in the stomach or something. And the difficult truth is that there are both good and bad people on either side of any given fence of opinion.

The problem of trolls cannot be solved by aiming one's guns at any particular group. It cannot be solved, as long as there are evil thoughts, evil actions, or general differences of opinion among members of the human race. And if you can't come to terms with that, Mr. Pitts, you probably shouldn't be on the internet.

 

[Eclectic Dreck]

For one thing, the big issue with RealID is not this. It's the fact that it will encourage MORE hate speech and horrible behaviour. At the moment, when I post, I'm Elfin McPallyface, prot paladin, and as such my opinions and thoughts on paladins, tanking, etc have merit. With RealID, I would be GIRL MCGIRLGIRL and any attempt at rational dialogue would be met with SHOW US YOUR TITS and R U HOT?

I cannot speak to having to deal with such things, but is it not downright shameful that one has to go to great lengths to conceal their gender from the masses? That one's game experience can be completely changed by the choice of virtual tits or not on an avatar? It seems to me that this is precisely the sort of problem RealID was designed to confront and yet it actually serves to remove the layer of protective anonymity that protected those who actually need such protection.

Secondly, I find it interesting that you envision the emphasis on dividing real life and virtual life as trying to prevent the "failures" of real life tainting the perfect virtual world. In my opinion, the truth is vastly the opposite; it is that people are trying to prevent *virtual life* from flowing into their real life.

For me, the division between my action and personality and meatspace and cyberspace are slim at best. I will not espouse a position or idea on the internet I would not support in person. I can recognize the reason such a division exists for some but in many cases it seems as though what you have identified is a very real problem of the modern age. Simply put, for those who lead a different life online and go to great lengths to keep their online life separate from their real life for reasons other than legal considerations (the internet will satisfy any deprivation), social considerations (not everyone is surrounded by people friendly to the various baggage inherent to heavy social investment in a virtual space) or simply because they don't like a perception in either space being colored by one's status in the other (your noted problems inherent to race, gender or alternate life choices) the problem we face is shockingly similar to the "drug problem" authorities of every nation grapple with. In both, the people who engage in such activity often seek to escape from the crushing reality of their mundane existence. The problem is, simply throwing back the veil so to speak does nothing to resolve the problem. Imparting harsh penalties does little to curtail the issue. The problem will exist so long as people find the benefit of engaging in such activity outweighs the potential downsides. In both, the only solution is, unfortunately, for the ramifications of such activity to be so great that the benefits of escapism are mitigated. The problem is, the course required to enact such a change in general are painful. Destructive might be a better word for it.

Also, PLEASE tell me I'm not the only one who noticed the irony of the writer decrying hate speech and general dickishness on the Internet, then writing the following:

"a company that's created an empire off the sweat and tears of a very active and vocal community of obsessives who crave the shadows of online anonymity *****the way fat girls crave cake.****"

While I can recognize the fact that the observation is hateful, I cannot think of any suitable sweeping generalization that would serve as a simile that is not. That tends to be a problem with sweeping generalizations. Of course, I would have simply used a different device to draw the connection.

 

[LeZhizzle]

*raises a glass*

The OP is pure win, and I can't thank you enough for writing this.