Greedy Goblin

Friday, June 7, 2013

Pixel war on sexism, racism and other bad -isms?

It would be an understatement to call the video gamer community sexist, racist and various other -ist. Even on heavily moderated games the voice chat is less than welcoming to anyone who isn't a white, male, heterosexual, young adult. In less moderated games like EVE, hearing things like "we raped the nigger faggot cunts" is more or less normal.

Well, it shouldn't be, and from time to time someone go to the forum or a blogpost and say it's not. And then nothing happens, everything goes on as it always was: the worst example of a gym locker room culture.

Currently there isn't a single authority figure or opinion leader who would openly support sexism, racism and the rest of the isms. You can tell to the camera that "there is no proof for global warming" but you can't tell "women aren't smart enough to get a high-level job". There isn't a sexist literature to read, there aren't sexist parties to join or clubs to attend. The ism-s live not as an ideology, just as a self-entitlement: "I'm worthy because I'm a male" for example. People of low performance love ideas that value people according to other things than their merit. Hell, they even created a class "PvP-er" which gives them self-esteem, despite the bar of joining is trivial (lose frigates).

I believe the easiest way of defeating them is to objectively prove that they are less successful than the groups they despise. I can't imagine better humiliation for a sexist than being beaten by a girl in something he fancies himself great. So theoretically it's easy to cleanse EVE Online or any other game which has competition included: beat them soundly in the game. Just imagine the tears of the "big strong guys with the big balls" after they are "raped" by "cunts", "niggers" and "faggots" (as "obviously" anyone who has a problem with hate speech must be a woman, black, jew or homosexual, he can't be a majority member who is just disgusted by hate speech).

How to implement it: simple! Create a corporation where supporters of the cause place PvP alts, funded by out-of-corp PvE mains who act as "free mercenary" in wars on the side which is less disgusting. If your region is under attack, just ban hate-speech from your forums and your coms and we bring hundreds of pilots to your aid, for free.

Except there is no "we". The above scheme is completely altruistic. The selfish protection from disgusting people is avoiding them. I did not meet a single racist or sexist slur in EVE in the last month because I don't chat with anyone who is doing such. You are only exposed to their disgusting behavior if you choose to. Also, your progression in the game does not depend on joining any group, so you can avoid talking to anyone with no in-game consequences.

This is the reason why disgusting stereotypes are alive in the primitive circles: fighting them isn't self-rewarding. Of course women fought for their right to vote. Or their right to contraceptives. Or blacks to be able to sit on a bus. But why would anyone bother to fight to moderate strangers behave badly to each other somewhere else?

This is a standard ghetto-problem. If you have a pre-existing professional/financial status, you don't need to care. I mean the "you don't need to talk anyone in EVE to progress" is true if you know basic economy, have the skills of looking up theorycrafting on external sites, aware of how game economies work in general. I could earn L4-equal income on my first days in EVE by hauling on my Badger II. But if someone "born into" the getto, he is locked into this mud. I mean if you don't know these, the only way to survive in EVE is joining players who help you get the knowledge. There you have to suffer not only the abusive behavior of the dwellers, but soon you'll be identified with them by those who aren't living inside.

So while the idea of the "Anti-Filthspeak Legion" is terrific, it's also pretty unlikely to rise as it would demand people who are otherwise fine and successful to spend their own resources protecting other people. The only reward for this activity would be the tears of the defeated filth-speakers and that would fade pretty quickly. So if you are looking at someone to organize the Anti-Filthspeak Legion, I'm not your guy. I'm way too selfish for that. Though I'd consider joining.

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Online corps/guilds/chat channels get the culture that they enforce. It only takes a few people to stand up and say no before a new standard is set.

Offensive members are about power. They are showing that they can get away with it because they are more important to your group than all the people that they offend.

Anonymous said...

"Currently there isn't a single authority figure or opinion leader who would openly support sexism, racism and the rest of the isms. You can tell to the camera that "there is no proof for global warming" but you can't tell "women aren't smart enough to get a high-level job". There isn't a sexist literature to read, there aren't sexist parties to join or clubs to attend. "

maybe look outside your little bubble of Western liberalism?

there are plenty of opinion leaders who support sexism, racism, ...

just because they aren't the opinion leaders you happen to follow doesn't prevent hundreds of millions of other people following them.

Gevlon said...

@Dobablo: no, the official narrative is that they are joking and just "having fun" and the offended groups are welcomed, just need to have a "sense of humor"

@Anonymous: I think the MMO playerbase is mostly not from Saudi Arabia and co.

Anonymous said...

The other reason that the war on scum would't work is that they'll drop everything else they are doing to wipe you out, and they outnumber you.

One of the few things they can agree on is that people who challenge their sexism/racism/ etc are public enemy no 1

Gevlon said...

@Spinks: you are greatly overestimate them. They are just punks. While they would wish to eradicate us, they'd fail. Just like they failed in real life when all the racist and sexist laws were abolished and their beliefs were forced back to trucker pubs and anonymous internet forums.

They are weak. That's why they create a false pride in being white males, something that is not their doing.

Tikktokk Tokkzikk said...

I honestly don't see the problem. I recruit for my corporation and I make sure all our members are well behaved human beings by talking to them for an hour or two before recruiting them, and so should/could everyone do. Hate speech is also against the EULA, so you easily silence anyone using offensive terms. The only problem I can think of is terms like "jewing" (mainly by nullsec alliance as a term for moneymaking), which I can't find an easy solution for.

I also dislike your usage of PvP-er. I consider myself a PvP-er because I mainly do PvP, not because it makes me feel above other players. Just as I call someone cutting down trees a logger and someone putting out fires a firefighter, I call someone PvPing a PvP-er and someone mining a miner.

Anonymous said...

sexism, hate speech, declaring war and where does exploiting M&S fit in there?

Older mmos: "pve to support pvp" anyone? I don't know about WoW but for some older games this was true. So where does this EVE "PvP-er" concept come from? It was BS back then and still is, maybe not GW2 and maybe not other new games where the activity pvp does support itself. No further pve or trading needed to pvp. Or did EVE change, so that pvp only is enough now?

folgsam said...

Thats actually an Idea behind a corp/alliance/out of game organized accumulation of players I could get behind.
The mintchip thread and its aftermath on the forums for example, that was an disgusting and loathsome little insight into the entitled and fearsome selfs of a large group of players. It's really a shame to let this go on unopposed.

Von Keigai said...

Gevlon, there are no openly sexist leaders because of democracy. Staying politically correct is helpful for getting votes. But of course all leaders are sexist just like everyone else. The only non sexist people alive, if there are any at all, are autistic. You cannot escape your biology just by wishing upon a star. (Did you know that animals are sexist too? It seems that male mates with female even among animals with no minds at all.)

There isn't a sexist literature to read? I suppose you are unfamiliar with romance novels? Scifi? All of Western literature until 1970? All of good Western literature?

Your "Anti-Filthspeak Legion" would be pitiful in combat because it would be manned by men like you. Carebears mostly can't fight because they don't fight and don't value fighting. And you'd have some PC-whipped losers who think that they'll get pussy if they can only tell a woman that they've fought for PC speech in a video game. (That is clueless in five different ways.) The AFL would also fail because, being full of the worst sort of politically correct fanatics, it would be incredibly thin-skinned. It would be incredibly easy to bait for people who wanted to pound religious nuts. Its tears would be immense any time anyone said "women are shorter than men". And it would also be incredibly fractive. Just imagine what happens when someone in the your Legion admits that, say, men are stronger than women. OMG, hate speech, kick him!

The "Anti-Filthspeak Legion" would also be hilariously easy to use. "Gevlon called me a nigger cunt in a private convo!" It is a terrible idea.

Gevlon, please get back to your selfish objectivist roots and forget about pushing your post-Christian religion of equality. It makes you look like a weak mind incapable of independent thought. People are not equal.

Anonymous said...

I am guessing you have completely missed the Republicans in the US lately? Or the whole Australian mess last year?

Or maybe moves which only affect women are not sexist, and statements like " 'But what if men are by philosophy or temperament more adapted to exercise authority or to issue command?'" are not seen as sexist.

*shrugs*

Druur Monakh said...

@VonKaigai : I am unsure about your stance (which may have been your intention).

But let's turn the situation around. It is fact that on average men are taller than women. It is also fact that shorter people make better fighter pilots. But if the Air Forces now issued a ruling that only women can become fighter jocks, there'd be a loud outcry and accusations of sexism, and rightly so.

Because in the end we are all created unequal /individually/. A short man is as good a fighter pilot as a short woman; and a tall woman will have to train as hard as a tall man to withstand the g-forces.

Chaos Engineer said...

I don't see how this can work. The problem is that trolls want to harass normal human beings, but normal human beings don't want to harass trolls. They just want the trolls to leave them alone.

So if you set up any kind of unmoderated on-line space, it's inevitable that the trolls and the spammers will drive off everyone else. The only way to keep this from happening is to set up some kind of moderation system.

In an MMORPG context: If I run into a racist nitwit, I'm not going to waste hours of my life corpse-camping him in hopes that he'll learn a lesson. (I might do that for the first racist nitwit I see, or even the second, but after a while it'll get old.) On the other hand, right-clicking the chat window and doing "Report->Racist Nitwittery" only takes a second and I'll be happy to do that any number of times, if there's evidence that it's working.

Unknown said...

@Von Keigal
>> ...of course all leaders are sexist just like everyone else
>> .. people are not equal

Internal contradiction detected.
Not to mention some pretty heavy stereotyping about how leaders think.