StarCraft 2 Tournament Boots Player for Rape Comment

[JimB]

I missed this post earlier.

I don't recall any of these so-called "threats" actually carried out unlike what JimB seems to think.

I neither said nor implied that. Since I do not know if your misrepresentation of me is unknowing or deliberate, I will ask that you either go to the trouble of reading every word I wrote or that you stop misrepresenting me for the sake of making rhetorical points defending poor, mistreated gamers' right to announce on Twitter that they're going to rape someone.

 

[Ishigami]

Woman notices male player violating the conditions of participation in a tournament as well as announcing an intention to commit a violent crime, when his statement is interpreted literally.

That is just beyond stupid. I can't take you serious.

What a crybaby

Indeed.

 

[JimB]

That is just beyond stupid.

It is what happened, when stripped of the rather creepy narrative attempting to paint the guy who said on global social media, "Hang on, I have to rape this chick real quick" (or whatever his specific phrasing actually was) as the victim of a sore loser rather than as someone who got called out for saying on global social media, "Hang on, I have to rape this chick real quick" (or, again, whatever his specific phrasing actually was).

I can't take you seriously.

While I would normally live or die by the approval of people I've never met whose personal view I disagree with, I shall nevertheless reach deep inside myself for the strength to overcome this grievous blow to my self-esteem.

 

[DaViller]

You pay your dues like the rest of us had during the arcades and old tournaments.

This is the biggest issue non-competitive gamers don't realize. We had to go through the same exact shit. Pay your dues like the rest of us. We had to go through fake death threats, harassment's, severe toxic trash talking, rape comments, and even real life events like cars being vandalized etc. That all comes with the territory. They're plenty of competitive girl gamers that successfully adapted and became well respected in fighting game communities and shooters.

They earned it from hard work and years of dedication. Then and ONLY THEN will you earn our respect as a player and as a gamer.

First of all spare me the "your an outsider and don't get our culture" stuff, I have played in wc3 and counterstrike clans in the past and I know the community has it's fair share of assholes but I was under the impression that thats a bad thing.
Now please ask yourself, at wich point did you develop some kind of stockholm syndrome towards all the fucked up things you just described? Your argument goes something like this "I know our culture is completly fucked up in certain ways, but we shouldn't condemn that because I have gone through that shit wich means erveryone else should". At this point you sound like that aris dude from cross assault, trying to legitimize reprehensible behavior in the name of some vague "culture" as if your part of some ancient tribe thats suddenly under attack. What you call culture is part of a bigger culture and a society and if aspects of it suck then it should change accordingly. Just because some clique has decided for themselves that x or y shitty is cool doesn't give them right to not be called out for that shit by everyone else.

Lastly I'm fairly certain that a lot of respected and influential people in the competetive community would disagree with this general sentiment of "we are allowed to be assholes because culture and stuff". I'm pretty sure that If I asked, lets say, Seth Killian on wether or not this behavior was cool, he would be on the not cool side.

 

[Falling_v1legacy]

Towards the whole "if he said it to a guy it would've been cool" aspect. This is something you don't say to a woman(much less tweet about it) unless you know her very and know shes cool with it, thats just common fucking sense. This is like making a holocaust joke infront of a random jewish dude, yeah some might be cool with it but this is just some shit you don't do.

I realy wonder how fucking alienated from normal human interaction this guy must be to think this behavior is cool.

When you try to enter a culture, you adapt to it and this includes competitive gaming. The culture no matter what should not have to adapt to your special wants/needs. If you as a man or woman are expecting to be treated well entering a culture very well known for it's toxic behavior in regards to anyone that is worse than them when it comes to skill... then your barking at the wrong tree. Competitive gamers only respect one thing and that's skill. Either your good and deserve respect or your bad and deserve none. You earn respect, it's not given to you because your a human being. You pay your dues like the rest of us had during the arcades and old tournaments.

This is the biggest issue non-competitive gamers don't realize. We had to go through the same exact shit. Pay your dues like the rest of us. We had to go through fake death threats, harassment's, severe toxic trash talking, rape comments, and even real life events like cars being vandalized etc. That all comes with the territory. They're plenty of competitive girl gamers that successfully adapted and became well respected in fighting game communities and shooters.

They earned it from hard work and years of dedication. Then and ONLY THEN will you earn our respect as a player and as a gamer.

Please. Enough with the 'earn your dues' and this false protection of a made-up Starcraft culture. Starcraft culture was generally very different from Arcade or Fighting Game culture. As a whole, we were highly influenced by Korean Starcraft, which valued good manners. Yes, there was what was called 'ceremony'- Firebathero was the best example of ceremony, but still within a very manner environment. glhf at the beginning of games and gg at the end of games. There are certainly bad manner sections with in Starcraft- the old US East server and certain scenes in Europe. The switch from BW to SC2 might have brought in a few bad manner people (there was always Idra) but Starcraft culture was never centred around the ability to claim you are raping your opponent. That just really is not that highly valued in our circles.

edit
Looking at our own thread on Team Liquid, the general consensus amongst forum veterans- those that have actually been a part of Starcraft for a long time is that 1) Kas was dumb to make that tweet 2) the tourney was well within their right to ban, particularly because that tweet hashtagged their tourney. 3) Kas was right to apologize 4) Maddelisk handled the situation well 4) Nightend made a fool of himself. There were a handful of newbs that tried to defend Kas, but because they are dumb, they wrecked the quality of the thread causing us to lock it.

 

[FalloutJack]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

 

[Kopikatsu]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

Rape has more than one meaning. Telling an opponent 'I'm going to rape you/them/her/him/it' in a video game without referring to the act of sexual assault is a valid use of the word. Unless you think the Rape of Nanking is referring to a person (it is not).

Kas has said many questionable things in the past. This is not one of them.

 

[FalloutJack]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

Rape has more than one meaning. Telling an opponent 'I'm going to rape you/them/her/him/it' in a video game without referring to the act of sexual assault is a valid use of the word. Unless you think the Rape of Nanking is referring to a person (it is not).

Kas has said many questionable things in the past. This is not one of them.

I wouldn't want that one flung at me in any context. I can understand your reasoning, but it would've been simpler to leave it out than try to justify.

 

[JimB]

How hard can it be not to talk about rape?

I was about to post something ironic about how first they came for my rape jokes and I didn't say anything, but I'm afraid that if I did, someone would take it seriously.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

Rape has more than one meaning. Telling an opponent 'I'm going to rape you/them/her/him/it' in a video game without referring to the act of sexual assault is a valid use of the word. Unless you think the Rape of Nanking is referring to a person (it is not).

Kas has said many questionable things in the past. This is not one of them.

You mean the historical happening in which the Japanese army committed mass rape and mass murder in Nanjing? Yes, if you call it the Rape of Nanking you are explicitly referring to the sexual assaults on thousands of Chinese women by the Japanese Army.

Rape may be a colloquial slang for totally dominating someone in a game, but that only tells us how immature gaming culture still is. It doesn't necessarily make this "lighthearted" use of the word alright.

 

[Kopikatsu]

Rape has more than one meaning. Telling an opponent 'I'm going to rape you/them/her/him/it' in a video game without referring to the act of sexual assault is a valid use of the word. Unless you think the Rape of Nanking is referring to a person (it is not).

Kas has said many questionable things in the past. This is not one of them.

You mean the historical happening in which the Japanese army committed mass rape and mass murder in Nanjing? Yes, if you call it the Rape of Nanking you are explicitly referring to the sexual assaults on thousands of Chinese women by the Japanese Army.

Rape may be a colloquial slang for totally dominating someone in a game, but that only tells us how immature gaming culture still is. It doesn't necessarily make this "lighthearted" use of the word alright.

What's immature is that people are pretending to take offense at the English language because feminism, I guess.

Rape
1.
the unlawful compelling of a person through physical force or duress to have sexual intercourse.
2.
any act of sexual intercourse that is forced upon a person.
3.
statutory rape.
4.
an act of plunder, violent seizure, or abuse; despoliation; violation:
the rape of the countryside.

 

[FalloutJack]

How hard can it be not to talk about rape?

I was about to post something ironic about how first they came for my rape jokes and I didn't say anything, but I'm afraid that if I did, someone would take it seriously.

Around here, you never know. I almost got docked for 'Silly' once. Explained that one down, though.

 

[one squirrel]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

You can make jokes about child molestion, jokes about murder, racist jokes, you can even make jokes about the holocaust. Now, of course there is an appropriate time and place for such dark humor, and a E-sports tournament probably isn't. But I don't buy the notion that, for some reason, you CANNOT MAKE RAPE JOKES at any circumstance. You are not the arbiter of which topics are allowed in humor and which aren't. There is a difference between joking about something and trivializing or even condoning it. In this particular case, the joke was a bit tasteless, but does not in any way justify the outrage that we are seeing.

 

[FalloutJack]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

You can make jokes about child molestion, jokes about murder, racist jokes, you can even make jokes about the holocaust. Now, of course there is an appropriate time and place for such dark humor, and a E-sports tournament probably isn't. But I don't buy the notion that, for some reason, you CANNOT MAKE RAPE JOKES at any circumstance. You are not the arbiter of which topics are allowed in humor and which aren't. There is a difference between joking about something and trivializing or even condoning it. In this particular case, the joke was a bit tasteless, but does not in any way justify the outrage that we are seeing.

You seem to be making this an all-or-nothing with your other examples, yet all of them are funny in a context by which nobody would mistake the context. (In this case, I would say Hellsing Abridged.) I was talking about frigging polite company. If you want to go try justifying the faux pas, go nuts. Or you tell a different joke and not have to explain it, because explaining jokes will often kill the joke. Now, I'm not sure of the context of your post, but you appear to be talking about things I didn't refer to.

 

[one squirrel]

Yes, let's create a culture where one stupid joke can ruin your career and you have to choose your words most carefully at all times because otherwise some milksope could feel offended. That will surely be a healthy environment and fun for everybody involved.

How hard can it be not to talk about rape? The very tone of my first post, though jokingly taking the piss out of it all, was essentially this. I'm not saying you have to be PC. PG-13 would've been fine. Even something like "I'm gonna kick all your asses" would've been less-impacting. How hard can it be to not mention rape?

You can make jokes about child molestion, jokes about murder, racist jokes, you can even make jokes about the holocaust. Now, of course there is an appropriate time and place for such dark humor, and a E-sports tournament probably isn't. But I don't buy the notion that, for some reason, you CANNOT MAKE RAPE JOKES at any circumstance. You are not the arbiter of which topics are allowed in humor and which aren't. There is a difference between joking about something and trivializing or even condoning it. In this particular case, the joke was a bit tasteless, but does not in any way justify the outrage that we are seeing.

You seem to be making this an all-or-nothing with your other examples, yet all of them are funny in a context by which nobody would mistake the context. (In this case, I would say Hellsing Abridged.) I was talking about frigging polite company. If you want to go try justifying the faux pas, go nuts. Or you tell a different joke and not have to explain it, because explaining jokes will often kill the joke. Now, I'm not sure of the context of your post, but you appear to be talking about things I didn't refer to.

Agreed but in this case, the context was as clear as it gets. I already stated that I think that the joke was out of place, but it's context is clear. Everybody knows that he was talking about how he was going to dominate the match and not about how he had the intention of physically raping his opponent.

 

[the_maestro_sartori]

How has this thread become a debate? I'm confused. Surely it should just be "raep jokes among friends is fine but publicly posting a "joke" about raping your opponent, regardless of their gender, is so massively unprofessional that this dumb kid deserved to lose his spot in a professional tournament."

I can't take you seriously.

While I would normally live or die by the approval of people I've never met whose personal view I disagree with, I shall nevertheless reach deep inside myself for the strength to overcome this grievous blow to my self-esteem.

I think I love you a bit

 

[FalloutJack]

Agreed but in this case, the context was as clear as it gets. I already stated that I think that the joke was out of place, but it's context is clear. Everybody knows that he was talking about how he was going to dominate the match and not about how he had the intention of physically raping his opponent.

Well, the problem about humor is that even when they understand where you're coming from, it doesn't automatically prevent the joke from going over like a lead balloon. Comedy is a fickle subject. Trust me, I am not only a joker, but I actually took a course in college on this.

 

[CrystalShadow]

Maybe women are less visible because there are fewer female competitors.

^ this
in before i get a warning/ban
This was an incredibly dumb guy making a dumb statement about raping his opponent. The problem i have with this is the following:Had this been a guy saying the same about another guy and the consequences would've been the same i would've been all for this. But now the mindset is oh it's a girl better fire the guy right away. I have no problem with him being fired over this but hate the double standard. The mindset of oh you can joke about anything but rape is pretty dumb. Comedy and jokes (no matter how bad you are at it) can be about anything. Murder is a worse crime but you can joke about that. There should be more girls in e-sports, and there's definitely immature people in the e-sports scene (like the guy that got fired) But if you let smack talk get to you so bad that it actually makes you play worse. Maybe you shouldn't be trying to get into any competitive (e-)sport regardless of your gender.
/rant

Yeah, well the whole thing of using 'rape' in that kind of way is stupid anyway, and more people should be banned for saying it in general, because it's just stupid...

Also not remotely funny if it's ever happened to you.

Now, I know gamers well enough to know this is probably just trash-talk, but it's not amusing that we trivialise stuff like this so much.
Besides which, while it is usually trash-talk, there are some guys that just give off a creepy kind of vibe, where you're not really sure anymore if it's just something they say or if there's more to it than that...

Well, whatever. I can deal with it, but I wish it wasn't something I'd have to expect to deal with.

Off-topic, I was walking somewhere last night - Yeah, I walk around at night by myself, because stuff that paranoid bs. and a car pulled over with a creepy-looking guy asking me if I needed a lift home... Um, yeah. no. I may be fine with walking around at night by myself, but I'm not stupid. I wasn't on my way home anyway, he looked pretty creepy, and getting into a car with some random person is a known way to get yourself raped and murdered... Um... Anyway, having to think about this kind of stuff so often really kind of sucks... You never know who you can trust...

Not that any of that is directly relevant...

But basically, if you're one of those people that makes 'rape threats', even if you're using them just to get at your opponent in a game, please stop. It's not amusing. It doesn't do much to intimidate anyone, it's just annoying, and just a little pathetic. Actually all trash-talk is kind of pathetic really. How about you show me how good you are at the game, rather than wasting your time with dubious insults?

 

[CrystalShadow]

[spoiler ="previous stuff."]

Maybe women are less visible because there are fewer female competitors.

^ this
in before i get a warning/ban
This was an incredibly dumb guy making a dumb statement about raping his opponent. The problem i have with this is the following:Had this been a guy saying the same about another guy and the consequences would've been the same i would've been all for this. But now the mindset is oh it's a girl better fire the guy right away. I have no problem with him being fired over this but hate the double standard. The mindset of oh you can joke about anything but rape is pretty dumb. Comedy and jokes (no matter how bad you are at it) can be about anything. Murder is a worse crime but you can joke about that. There should be more girls in e-sports, and there's definitely immature people in the e-sports scene (like the guy that got fired) But if you let smack talk get to you so bad that it actually makes you play worse. Maybe you shouldn't be trying to get into any competitive (e-)sport regardless of your gender.
/rant

Yeah, well the whole thing of using 'rape' in that kind of way is stupid anyway, and more people should be banned for saying it in general, because it's just stupid...

Also not remotely funny if it's ever happened to you.

Now, I know gamers well enough to know this is probably just trash-talk, but it's not amusing that we trivialise stuff like this so much.
Besides which, while it is usually trash-talk, there are some guys that just give off a creepy kind of vibe, where you're not really sure anymore if it's just something they say or if there's more to it than that...

Well, whatever. I can deal with it, but I wish it wasn't something I'd have to expect to deal with.

Off-topic, I was walking somewhere last night - Yeah, I walk around at night by myself, because stuff that paranoid bs. and a car pulled over with a creepy-looking guy asking me if I needed a lift home... Um, yeah. no. I may be fine with walking around at night by myself, but I'm not stupid. I wasn't on my way home anyway, he looked pretty creepy, and getting into a car with some random person is a known way to get yourself raped and murdered... Um... Anyway, having to think about this kind of stuff so often really kind of sucks... You never know who you can trust...

Not that any of that is directly relevant...

But basically, if you're one of those people that makes 'rape threats', even if you're using them just to get at your opponent in a game, please stop. It's not amusing. It doesn't do much to intimidate anyone, it's just annoying, and just a little pathetic. Actually all trash-talk is kind of pathetic really. How about you show me how good you are at the game, rather than wasting your time with dubious insults?

[/spoiler]

He didn't actually insult her directly though is the thing. He just posted it on his twitter, for his twitter followers to see. I don't see how that's suppose to intimidate her, when she can't even see it directly, since i very much doubt she'd be following his twitter feed during the match, tweeting during a match itself is bizarre and counterproductive, much less checking the twitter feed of your opponent, so i'm not sure it was intended to intimidate her at all, I doubt it was more than just his attempt at hyping up his twitter followers i guess.

I mean it's still not appropriate, but the way he did it really doesn't point to him trying to intimidate her whatsoever. It doesn't even point to him trying to communicate her at all. I doubt he thought she'd ever see or hear about it. She certainly wouldn't hear about it until after the match, since it was tweeted during the match, so there's really no realistic way she'd know about the comment until long after the match was over.

Well that's even more confusing. ... Eh. I don't even know with that one. It's a very stupid thing to say, but I have no idea at this point what to do with it.

Personally I'd ignore it. Not that it doesn't annoy me, but it's just... Whatever.

But as a thing to tell your fans... I have no idea...

 

[jayzz911]

Maybe women are less visible because there are fewer female competitors.

^ this
in before i get a warning/ban
This was an incredibly dumb guy making a dumb statement about raping his opponent. The problem i have with this is the following:Had this been a guy saying the same about another guy and the consequences would've been the same i would've been all for this. But now the mindset is oh it's a girl better fire the guy right away. I have no problem with him being fired over this but hate the double standard. The mindset of oh you can joke about anything but rape is pretty dumb. Comedy and jokes (no matter how bad you are at it) can be about anything. Murder is a worse crime but you can joke about that. There should be more girls in e-sports, and there's definitely immature people in the e-sports scene (like the guy that got fired) But if you let smack talk get to you so bad that it actually makes you play worse. Maybe you shouldn't be trying to get into any competitive (e-)sport regardless of your gender.
/rant

Yeah, well the whole thing of using 'rape' in that kind of way is stupid anyway, and more people should be banned for saying it in general, because it's just stupid...

Also not remotely funny if it's ever happened to you.

Now, I know gamers well enough to know this is probably just trash-talk, but it's not amusing that we trivialise stuff like this so much.
Besides which, while it is usually trash-talk, there are some guys that just give off a creepy kind of vibe, where you're not really sure anymore if it's just something they say or if there's more to it than that...

Well, whatever. I can deal with it, but I wish it wasn't something I'd have to expect to deal with.

Off-topic, I was walking somewhere last night - Yeah, I walk around at night by myself, because stuff that paranoid bs. and a car pulled over with a creepy-looking guy asking me if I needed a lift home... Um, yeah. no. I may be fine with walking around at night by myself, but I'm not stupid. I wasn't on my way home anyway, he looked pretty creepy, and getting into a car with some random person is a known way to get yourself raped and murdered... Um... Anyway, having to think about this kind of stuff so often really kind of sucks... You never know who you can trust...

Not that any of that is directly relevant...

But basically, if you're one of those people that makes 'rape threats', even if you're using them just to get at your opponent in a game, please stop. It's not amusing. It doesn't do much to intimidate anyone, it's just annoying, and just a little pathetic. Actually all trash-talk is kind of pathetic really. How about you show me how good you are at the game, rather than wasting your time with dubious insults?

He didn't actually insult her directly though is the thing. He just posted it on his twitter, for his twitter followers to see. I don't see how that's suppose to intimidate her, when she can't even see it directly, since i very much doubt she'd be following his twitter feed during the match, tweeting during a match itself is bizarre and counterproductive, much less checking the twitter feed of your opponent, so i'm not sure it was intended to intimidate her at all, I doubt it was more than just his attempt at hyping up his twitter followers i guess.

I mean it's still not appropriate, but the way he did it really doesn't point to him trying to intimidate her whatsoever. It doesn't even point to him trying to communicate her at all. I doubt he thought she'd ever see or hear about it. She certainly wouldn't hear about it until after the match, since it was tweeted during the match, so there's really no realistic way she'd know about the comment until long after the match was over.

yeah... I dont get into stranger's cars either. That's not a girl exclusive thing >.>.You also said creepy-looking guy, if it was a handsome guy would you have just gotten in the car no questions asked? otherwise what does it matter how he looked? And you know what's also not funny when it happened to you? jokes about guns,murder (if it happened to a loved one), disease,handicaps and this list could go on for years. They are not of limits that's just not the way it works. My right to speak and express myself however stupid you may find the way of me doing so, does not end when you feel offended.
And about me being a person making "rape threats", im going to assume you mean trash talking and using the word rape there? Yes i do occaisionally, regardless of the gender of my opponent. THEY ARE HOWEVER NOT RAPE THREATS, seriously. You can't call something without any hostile intent a threat, the only thing you are doing is trivializing the word threat. I'd comment on the victim society but I don't feel like getting hit with the banhammer and posting in this thread is already close enough to the edge of the hammer.

Edit: oops quoted the wrong person