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 Melissia wrote:
You failed to make your point. To use another example, Calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them an [N-Bomb]. No matter the intent.

Who me or the guy above me?

 Melissia wrote:
You failed to make your point. To use another example, Calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them an [N-Bomb]. No matter the intent.

Not really. Once again you're leaving out context. There are different contexts and different situations where either word could be appropriate.

 illuknisaa wrote:
They derive this from the real world meaning of the word (either sexual assault or ownership as in slavery)

I am pretty sure “I will own you” does not come from reference to slavery.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owned

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Melissia wrote:
You failed to make your point. To use another example, Calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them an [N-Bomb]. No matter the intent.

Not really. Once again you're leaving out context. There are different contexts and different situations where either word could be appropriate.

What about “In the context of an e-sport tournament, calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them a [offensive racial slur]. No matter the intent.”? See, I added the context now. It magically change everything with the mystic powers of the rainbow, does it not .

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
What about “In the context of an e-sport tournament, calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them a [offensive racial slur]. No matter the intent.”? See, I added the context now. It magically change everything with the mystic powers of the rainbow, does it not .

1. Now you're being a jerk.
2. There's nothing "magical" about context. It's a common and necessary function of communication and comprehension.

So yes, by adding context to the line above, you can clearly identify what would be appropriate and what would not be. In fact, by demonstrating how adding context gives something meaning you've effectively proven my point on why context is king. Whether that was your aim or not, well done.

Not to condone the comments listed by the OP, but I've heard things said by gamers that make them seem tame by comparison. I think its more the culture involved, and i don't mean 'gamers' themselves. With everything getting mainstreamed and more accessible, you get more representation of the groups that you'd probably rather not know about. Phrases like 'going to rape someone' in this instance are not statements of real-life intent, but cultural metaphors for the level of humiliation and degradation intended upon the other person. Its not pleasant, but until you've seen/heard it for yourself you've got no idea just how common and entrenched this style of behaviour is in online gaming.

And communities tend to form their own language, their own colloquialisms, and, yes, their own context.

 Hybrid Son Of Oxayotl wrote:
What about “In the context of an e-sport tournament, calling someone a jerk is not the same as calling them a [offensive racial slur]. No matter the intent.”? See, I added the context now. It magically change everything with the mystic powers of the rainbow, does it not .

How about this?

"I'm going to murder my wife!"

Now lacking context that sounds like I am planning to end my wife's life.

If I said this in secret, to my best friend, who has just informed me she's cheating on me, that context would reinforce the narrative of first degree murder.

But if I said this aloud, to a room full of people after learning my wife has just nailed me with a (very unwanted) surprise birthday party the context makes the exact same sentence entirely different.

Claiming he threatened/intended to sexually assault someone when we all know full well that wasn't the intention, nor the meaning in which the term was used stretches intellectual honesty. It's still a poor choice of word, it's still low brow and I'd still prefer not to see it. But this is not a threat of sexual assault any more than my birthday surprise is a declaration to commit serious bodily harm. To call me homicidal at my surprise party would be just as inaccurate.

 Kojiro wrote:
Nomotog, I completely agree. Again I don't advocate this kind of language. But your post could substitute in 'murder' or 'decimation' or 'destroy' or a host of others that are also negative. But we wouldn't see the same backlash.

Either trash talk allows negative words- in the context of different ways to solidly beat your opponent- or you prohibit it. If someone says 'I'm going to murder them!' it should be treated exactly the same as 'I'm going to rape them!'.

In this case though, rape is a special case, particularly in relation to women, simply because it's statistically more likely that the person you're using the word in relation to in the supposedly inoffensive "I will beat you thoroughly" context has actually been a victim of rape/sexual assault - the chance the person you're jokingly predicting you will "murder" has actually been murdered is zero, the chance they have been the victim of an attempted murder scarcely larger than zero, and I seriously doubt you're going to run into many gamers, or indeed many people full-stop, who have in their lifetimes served in a military unit/been part of a community subject to decimation.

Yes, using any term for a serious and negative event is technically trivialising that event in general, but a lot of people in this thread who're keen to dismiss this kind of behaviour are extremely keen on the idea of "context"; well the context is that large parts of western developed societies have serious problems with the prevalence of rape, and in general while everyone is quick to roundly condemn the act and its perpetrators when discussing rape in the abstract, when you get down to the nitty gritty of individual specific instances of actual rape a lot of troubling attitudes emerge. The article linked earlier talking about the university and fraternities is a prime example; everyone talks a good game, "rape bad" etc etc, but the realities on the ground are cover-ups, victim-blaming, and "humorous" songs about spiking drinks to get anal sex - you simply can't say the same thing about murder - what are the chances, for example, a university would present "report it to the police" and "allow us to run a private inquiry possibly resulting in temporary suspension and/or arbitration" as equivalently valid options to a student who had been the victim of an attempted murder? People don't get to use "context" in the sense of "it was meant as a joke" without also acknowledging that the supposed-joke exists in a societal "context" of its own in which rape is routinely downplayed, trivialised, and brushed under the carpet, and in that context regardless of whether you mean it as a joke or as an actual statement of intent it's a bloody reprehensible thing to say and it is absolutely something that should be singled out and challenged on its own.

 Kojiro wrote:
How about this?

"I'm going to murder my wife!"

Now lacking context that sounds like I am planning to end my wife's life.

If I said this in secret, to my best friend, who has just informed me she's cheating on me, that context would reinforce the narrative of first degree murder.

But if I said this aloud, to a room full of people after learning my wife has just nailed me with a (very unwanted) surprise birthday party the context makes the exact same sentence entirely different.

Normally I'd say "That's a perfect example! No way Hybrid could fail to understand that.", but Hybrid has shown an uncanny ability to miss the bleedingly obvious almost to the point where I'm sure Hybrid is just trolling. Nevertheless, valiant effort.

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
Nomotog, I completely agree. Again I don't advocate this kind of language. But your post could substitute in 'murder' or 'decimation' or 'destroy' or a host of others that are also negative. But we wouldn't see the same backlash.

Either trash talk allows negative words- in the context of different ways to solidly beat your opponent- or you prohibit it. If someone says 'I'm going to murder them!' it should be treated exactly the same as 'I'm going to rape them!'.

In this case though, rape is a special case, particularly in relation to women, simply because it's statistically more likely that the person you're using the word in relation to in the supposedly inoffensive "I will beat you thoroughly" context has actually been a victim of rape/sexual assault - the chance the person you're jokingly predicting you will "murder" has actually been murdered is zero, the chance they have been the victim of an attempted murder scarcely larger than zero, and I seriously doubt you're going to run into many gamers, or indeed many people full-stop, who have in their lifetimes served in a military unit/been part of a community subject to decimation.

Yes, using any term for a serious and negative event is technically trivialising that event in general, but a lot of people in this thread who're keen to dismiss this kind of behaviour are extremely keen on the idea of "context"; well the context is that large parts of western developed societies have serious problems with the prevalence of rape, and in general while everyone is quick to roundly condemn the act and its perpetrators when discussing rape in the abstract, when you get down to the nitty gritty of individual specific instances of actual rape a lot of troubling attitudes emerge. The article linked earlier talking about the university and fraternities is a prime example; everyone talks a good game, "rape bad" etc etc, but the realities on the ground are cover-ups, victim-blaming, and "humorous" songs about spiking drinks to get anal sex - you simply can't say the same thing about murder - what are the chances, for example, a university would present "report it to the police" and "allow us to run a private inquiry possibly resulting in temporary suspension and/or arbitration" as equivalently valid options to a student who had been the victim of an attempted murder? People don't get to use "context" in the sense of "it was meant as a joke" without also acknowledging that the supposed-joke exists in a societal "context" of its own in which rape is routinely downplayed, trivialised, and brushed under the carpet, and in that context regardless of whether you mean it as a joke or as an actual statement of intent it's a bloody reprehensible thing to say and it is absolutely something that should be singled out and challenged on its own.

And people saying 'owned' in computer games is a special cased in relation to the descendants of slaves. These are all negative words used to describe negative feelings and negative actions. Note that its not confined to players - mobs (computer controlled npcs) can do these things and have them done to them in the same vocabulary (eg i was raped by nagafen). Context comes into play when you need to consider the limitations and extents of the phrase/saying. With my example, people don't assume that a computer character (a big dragon) came to life and sexually assaulted me. They tend to assume that it did bad things to me ingame and in the context of 'dying' in a computer game, it is a bad thing.

Whether its right or wrong is largely irrelevant to my point: it exists in a very significant proportion of online gamers, enough to have formed a culture. If people want to dismiss the culture out of hand and automatically decry it as being something else, that's fine. But you're more likely to enable and support that culture than you are to take it apart. Thats why understanding what is being said and the context it is being said in is *important*. Saying the phrases and behaviors are unacceptable is all well and good, saying they are intended as something other than what they are is disingenuous and will not strengthen that position/cause. The factors leading to this type of culture in online gaming start in the real world, and lead to a lot of problems in real world (such as actual rape). Attacking the symptom won't cure the disease. And if you want to cure the disease, you first need to understand it.

A good example of this is when in the last year or so and american teenager posted on his facebook that he'd taken his gun (rifle? bazooka?) and killed his neighbour's pet dinosaur. The police swooped in and found neither weapon nor dinosaur corpse (absolutely nothing in the way of either, no dead pets, nothing resembling his post) and yet he was charged and convicted over it *despite not having committed or attempted or planned it*. That's the danger of going to far down the 'other' path and treating things out of context - you kill free speech and impose punishments for non-existant crimes.

My personal opinion on the situation: it was a tournament, and his disqualification was legit. If you're going to compete for big bucks and public attention, then you'll have higher levels of scrutiny and morality applied. My personal opinion on the phrase itself: its too complicated to pass judgement so easily. These are virtual 'games' that impose a player-vs-player environment on the said players - the idea is almost always to 'kill' the other player, which is bad in real life. But this is not in real life, the intent to actually kill someone in real life isn't there. Its a grey and slippery slope. Its not so easy to paint it as black and white, and i'd suspect the people who try to do so as not fully understanding it, which leads to credibility issues on their positions.

 Torga_DW wrote:
My personal opinion on the situation: it was a tournament, and his disqualification was legit. If you're going to compete for big bucks and public attention, then you'll have higher levels of scrutiny and morality applied. My personal opinion on the phrase itself: its too complicated to pass judgement so easily. These are virtual 'games' that impose a player-vs-player environment on the said players - the idea is almost always to 'kill' the other player, which is bad in real life. But this is not in real life, the intent to actually kill someone in real life isn't there. Its a grey and slippery slope. Its not so easy to paint it as black and white, and i'd suspect the people who try to do so as not fully understanding it, which leads to credibility issues on their positions.

I don't really know how much more this can be stressed. This. A thousand times this.

All I have to say is this. A sportsman of high caliber, even an E-sportsman, should always apply professionalism to his game, Regardless of context, morality and "athlete" worship will still apply. How many kids would watch something like that, and if they see a tweet like that from their role model, then think that saying that stuff is OK?

Basically boils down to making an example for all those who actually watch the matches that being derogatory is not a good thing.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
How about this?

"I'm going to murder my wife!"

Now lacking context that sounds like I am planning to end my wife's life.

If I said this in secret, to my best friend, who has just informed me she's cheating on me, that context would reinforce the narrative of first degree murder.

But if I said this aloud, to a room full of people after learning my wife has just nailed me with a (very unwanted) surprise birthday party the context makes the exact same sentence entirely different.

Normally I'd say "That's a perfect example! No way Hybrid could fail to understand that.", but Hybrid has shown an uncanny ability to miss the bleedingly obvious almost to the point where I'm sure Hybrid is just trolling. Nevertheless, valiant effort.

H.B.M.C. wrote:1. Now you're being a jerk.

Double standards are super fun. (:

Also, yes, context is important... and I fail to think of any public context whatsoever in which saying 'I'm going to rape this girl tomorrow' would be appropriate. Zero. Null. Nada.

 Torga_DW wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

 Kojiro wrote:
Nomotog, I completely agree. Again I don't advocate this kind of language. But your post could substitute in 'murder' or 'decimation' or 'destroy' or a host of others that are also negative. But we wouldn't see the same backlash.

Either trash talk allows negative words- in the context of different ways to solidly beat your opponent- or you prohibit it. If someone says 'I'm going to murder them!' it should be treated exactly the same as 'I'm going to rape them!'.

In this case though, rape is a special case, particularly in relation to women, simply because it's statistically more likely that the person you're using the word in relation to in the supposedly inoffensive "I will beat you thoroughly" context has actually been a victim of rape/sexual assault - the chance the person you're jokingly predicting you will "murder" has actually been murdered is zero, the chance they have been the victim of an attempted murder scarcely larger than zero, and I seriously doubt you're going to run into many gamers, or indeed many people full-stop, who have in their lifetimes served in a military unit/been part of a community subject to decimation.

Yes, using any term for a serious and negative event is technically trivialising that event in general, but a lot of people in this thread who're keen to dismiss this kind of behaviour are extremely keen on the idea of "context"; well the context is that large parts of western developed societies have serious problems with the prevalence of rape, and in general while everyone is quick to roundly condemn the act and its perpetrators when discussing rape in the abstract, when you get down to the nitty gritty of individual specific instances of actual rape a lot of troubling attitudes emerge. The article linked earlier talking about the university and fraternities is a prime example; everyone talks a good game, "rape bad" etc etc, but the realities on the ground are cover-ups, victim-blaming, and "humorous" songs about spiking drinks to get anal sex - you simply can't say the same thing about murder - what are the chances, for example, a university would present "report it to the police" and "allow us to run a private inquiry possibly resulting in temporary suspension and/or arbitration" as equivalently valid options to a student who had been the victim of an attempted murder? People don't get to use "context" in the sense of "it was meant as a joke" without also acknowledging that the supposed-joke exists in a societal "context" of its own in which rape is routinely downplayed, trivialised, and brushed under the carpet, and in that context regardless of whether you mean it as a joke or as an actual statement of intent it's a bloody reprehensible thing to say and it is absolutely something that should be singled out and challenged on its own.

And people saying 'owned' in computer games is a special cased in relation to the descendants of slaves. These are all negative words used to describe negative feelings and negative actions. Note that its not confined to players - mobs (computer controlled npcs) can do these things and have them done to them in the same vocabulary (eg i was raped by nagafen). Context comes into play when you need to consider the limitations and extents of the phrase/saying. With my example, people don't assume that a computer character (a big dragon) came to life and sexually assaulted me. They tend to assume that it did bad things to me ingame and in the context of 'dying' in a computer game, it is a bad thing.

Whether its right or wrong is largely irrelevant to my point: it exists in a very significant proportion of online gamers, enough to have formed a culture. If people want to dismiss the culture out of hand and automatically decry it as being something else, that's fine. But you're more likely to enable and support that culture than you are to take it apart. Thats why understanding what is being said and the context it is being said in is *important*. Saying the phrases and behaviors are unacceptable is all well and good, saying they are intended as something other than what they are is disingenuous and will not strengthen that position/cause. The factors leading to this type of culture in online gaming start in the real world, and lead to a lot of problems in real world (such as actual rape). Attacking the symptom won't cure the disease. And if you want to cure the disease, you first need to understand it.

A good example of this is when in the last year or so and american teenager posted on his facebook that he'd taken his gun (rifle? bazooka?) and killed his neighbour's pet dinosaur. The police swooped in and found neither weapon nor dinosaur corpse (absolutely nothing in the way of either, no dead pets, nothing resembling his post) and yet he was charged and convicted over it *despite not having committed or attempted or planned it*. That's the danger of going to far down the 'other' path and treating things out of context - you kill free speech and impose punishments for non-existant crimes.

My personal opinion on the situation: it was a tournament, and his disqualification was legit. If you're going to compete for big bucks and public attention, then you'll have higher levels of scrutiny and morality applied. My personal opinion on the phrase itself: its too complicated to pass judgement so easily. These are virtual 'games' that impose a player-vs-player environment on the said players - the idea is almost always to 'kill' the other player, which is bad in real life. But this is not in real life, the intent to actually kill someone in real life isn't there. Its a grey and slippery slope. Its not so easy to paint it as black and white, and i'd suspect the people who try to do so as not fully understanding it, which leads to credibility issues on their positions.

That's very interesting and all, but would you care to point out where in my post I actually made the argument you're addressing? Hint; I didn't.

One person in this thread on the "take this kind of gak seriously" side of the discussion has perhaps taken the line of argument a bit too far(frankly I think you're just talking past each other; they say "it CAN mean an actual threat of rape so should be unacceptable regardless of intended meaning", you guys say "it wasn't meant as a threat of rape, context is important", but you seem to be understanding each other as "this person literally threatened to rape another person" and "because people have used the anonymity of the internet to be donkey-caves for a long time, that tradition is now at least partial justification for them continuing to be donkey-caves"), but nobody else myself included has even implied that the context of the phrase is irrelevant or that an actual threat of rape was intended.

I simply disagree with the idea that context in the sense of understanding the intended meaning in this specific instance should take precedence over context in the wider sense of using such a charged phrase in a society in which rape is under-reported, trivialised, and leaves a disturbing number of people(some of whom will be gamers and thus subject to this kind of unjustifiably aggressive rhetoric) with lifelong physical and/or psychological damage.

And considering how often you and HBMC bring up the importance of "context", is it not a bit disingenuous to continue arguing that all negative words are equivalently bad? You bring up the term "owned", and you're correct that there is a specific group to whom it may cause grievous offence, but once again you focus on one specific context and ignore the wider one; slavery is not widespread in developed society, anyone arrested for enslaving another human being will not have defence lawyers or media columnists arguing that they did nothing wrong because the slave brought their enslavement on themselves by looking too much like a good worker with a strong back, there are no nationwide higher education societies with tens of thousands of members "jokingly" planning "enslavement vacations", and the chances that you will interact with an actual victim of enslavement or a close friend of theirs/member of their immediate family is infinitesimally small and gets smaller still in the context of online gaming. Rape is widespread, there is a fairly large portion of the general populace and plenty of "establishment" legal, media, and political figures who do blame victims of rape for what they were subjected to, there are large organisations in many developed countries which trivialise or even outright encourage rape, and there is a good chance that you know well or are acquainted with at least one person who has been raped and I'd wager that chance does not significantly decrease if you were to consider only online acquaintances.

Out of context, and in extremely specific contexts, yes, all negative words are equivalently bad, but considered in a broader and more relevant societal context it is entirely possible and entirely logically consistent to have a "hierarchy of dickery" and treat different levels of negativity with different levels of condemnation.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Double standards are super fun. (:

What double standards? I'm mocking him in one post, and then mocking him in the either. That's not a double standard. That's consistency.

 Ashiraya wrote:
Also, yes, context is important... and I fail to think of any public context whatsoever in which saying 'I'm going to rape this girl tomorrow' would be appropriate. Zero. Null. Nada.

Then you need to re-read the thread.

Funny how the original people in question resolved things between them.
The organization hosting the competition determined the comment was not befitting of a competitor and disqualify the individual.
Then a bunch of us on the net get all excited over this and make it more than it was.

I suspect those who are rather fond of alternative uses for the word "rape" are trying to justify it's casual use.
There may be some fear of consequences and many are mistakenly thinking the "victim" has pushed for the punishment (which would still be justified!).

Funny how these public exchanges can be hijacked for personal agendas.

 Talizvar wrote:
Funny how the original people in question resolved things between them.
The organization hosting the competition determined the comment was not befitting of a competitor and disqualify the individual.

Which is exactly what they should have done. I see very few people disagreeing with the actions the organisers took.

 Talizvar wrote:
Funny how these public exchanges can be hijacked for personal agendas.

Any more than people claiming that this examples proves "inherent misogyny" in gaming culture, when it actually does nothing of the sort? That's what we're railing against; people immediately jumping to ideological conclusions devoid of context (or even critical thought).

I see plenty of people, including at least one in this thread, saying that they were in the wrong to ban the player. And yes, saying "she shouldn't have reported him" is the same as saying "he shouldn't have been banned", as far as the end result goes.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Any more than people claiming that this examples proves "inherent misogyny" in gaming culture, when it actually does nothing of the sort? That's what we're railing against; people immediately jumping to ideological conclusions devoid of context (or even critical thought).

This is pretty much the crux of when I get upset.
A moment of thoughtlessness turned into another item of evidence to condemn gaming culture as a bastion of bigotry and misogyny.

I even dislike the word "misogyny" it is like a way to corner the market for being prejudiced against: why assign a gender to it?
It seems to allow the argument that if you are male you would not understand.
We have ALL experienced prejudice against us at some point, I do not care who you are.
There, now I am getting on my high horse...

This individual case was handled in a reasonable fashion and proportionate to the "intent" that went into that thoughtless comment: a professional competitor must conduct themselves to a higher standard since they are an example to others and are answerable for their actions.

Adding any more hysteria or spin to this event will only feed the trolls.

 Talizvar wrote:
This is pretty much the crux of when I get upset.
A moment of thoughtlessness turned into another item of evidence to condemn gaming culture as a bastion of bigotry and misogyny.

It's not "a moment of thoughtlessness". It's many, many "moments of thoughtlessness" adding up in to one big gak-fest, of which this is merely the most recent public example.

edit: whoops, didn't intend to slip that past the forum's censor.

 Torga_DW wrote:
Not to condone the comments listed by the OP, but I've heard things said by gamers that make them seem tame by comparison. I think its more the culture involved, and i don't mean 'gamers' themselves. With everything getting mainstreamed and more accessible, you get more representation of the groups that you'd probably rather not know about. Phrases like 'going to rape someone' in this instance are not statements of real-life intent, but cultural metaphors for the level of humiliation and degradation intended upon the other person. Its not pleasant, but until you've seen/heard it for yourself you've got no idea just how common and entrenched this style of behaviour is in online gaming.

As entrenched as it may be, it's still not acceptable. And until we, that is, gamer culture in general, start shutting down people who insist on using language like that, then gamers are going to be viewed as a bastion of misogyny and bigotry. It's that simple, basically.

Talizvar wrote:A moment of thoughtlessness turned into another item of evidence to condemn gaming culture as a bastion of bigotry and misogyny.

Maybe you should re-read the OP:

"Everything could have stopped with this conclusion that would have been the best possible for the incident… if gamer culture was not so full of fething idiotic waste of life. Because immediately people that are most certainly not linked to GamerGate in any way started to harass Maddelisk for, well, they do not really know. Yes, the tournament organizers decided to exclude Kas without Maddelisk having said anything. No, the angry hordes of idiots did not decide to harass them, and instead directly went for Maddelisk."

This thread is less about the tweet itself, it was meant to discuss the phenomena of a bunch of people immediately starting to harass the "victim" because the perpetrator got banhammer'd.

And then, thanks to dakka's own posters, this thread turned into a debate about whether using the word "rape" in this context is really a bad thing or should be okay.

If that doesn't make you pause and think, I don't know what would.

Talizvar wrote:I even dislike the word "misogyny" it is like a way to corner the market for being prejudiced against: why assign a gender to it?
It seems to allow the argument that if you are male you would not understand.
We have ALL experienced prejudice against us at some point, I do not care who you are.

You realise that there is a male equivalent to this word? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misandry

I'm male, and I am perfectly capable of understanding misogyny simply because of what I have seen and an innate ability to mentally put myself into other peoples' shoes (part of my job, actually).
Besides, the "you're not me, you don't understand" is an argument that could, in theory, be applied anywhere regardless of whether or not it has its own term. Even if "misogyny" and "misandry" would not exist and people would only debate "sexism", it would be brought up by men or women who feel misunderstood by the opposite gender.

And as i said in my first post on this topic: this isn't about 'gamer' culture. Its about negative cultures of which some gamers are a part of, and which is becoming more noticeable as mainstream whatever (in this case, computer games) attract higher percentages of the various demographics.

Again, it comes back to attacking the symptom and not the disease. Its like that simpsons episode where they burn down the observatory so that they can never be hit by a meteorite again.

Using rape in that matter is not very common outside of gamer culture, so... no.

Perhaps not in the cultures you're familiar with. I just have to look at that new eminem song where he 'rapes' iggy izalea (sp) to know thats not true.

edit: typos

One could posit that "gamer culture" took contemporary cultural issues and, due to internet anonymity and group dynamics, gradually worsened/deepened them simply because nobody spoke up for so long that it has become accepted behaviour to some (as this thread shows).

I mean, such attitudes are obviously not unique to gamer culture, and neither did it invent these problems. In essence, "gamer culture" - or at least that which is commonly understood as such - is just yet another club house where groups of people have the opportunity to show their worst sides without perceived fear of actual consequences and receive applause for it. Exactly like the aforementioned university frats, and other such assemblies.

I'd say its more the anonymity factor, which games are one way of providing, that is involved. But like a university frat, that sort of behaviour takes place regardless. Look at situations where people post stuff on their facebook (or whatever the latest trendy site is) - they get caught for committing crimes doing that. Anonymity is part of the problem but again its more of a symptom. I can't say what causes these problems, although i strongly suspect parenting (or lack thereof) and/or early influences are involved, but nonetheless the problem exists with or without computer games.

Something should be done, but the problem has become institutionalized to the point that its a representative culture with its own powers and rights. The people who sent the harassing messages would surely fall under cyberstalking, cyber harassment or cyber bullying but i'd bet dollars to donuts that nothing will be attempted to be done about them because the problem is too big at this point.

 Torga_DW wrote:
I'd say its more the anonymity factor, which games are one way of providing, that is involved. But like a university frat, that sort of behaviour takes place regardless. Look at situations where people post stuff on their facebook (or whatever the latest trendy site is) - they get caught for committing crimes doing that. Anonymity is part of the problem but again its more of a symptom. I can't say what causes these problems, although i strongly suspect parenting (or lack thereof) and/or early influences are involved, but nonetheless the problem exists with or without computer games.

Something should be done, but the problem has become institutionalized to the point that its a representative culture with its own powers and rights. The people who sent the harassing messages would surely fall under cyberstalking, cyber harassment or cyber bullying but i'd bet dollars to donuts that nothing will be attempted to be done about them because the problem is too big at this point.

I don't really believe the problem stems from anonymity. I think it kind of comes from the culture and some viewpoints not being challenged (or weren't challenged before). Anonymity isn't bullet prof. You do have an identity on the internet and people can keep track of you. You have more anonymity on a public street then you would on a public forum. There are more controls of bad behavior online. I think it's more that the culture doesn't always call out the bad behavior or even consider it bad behavior.

That is kind of my observation.

nomotog wrote:

 Torga_DW wrote:
I'd say its more the anonymity factor, which games are one way of providing, that is involved. But like a university frat, that sort of behaviour takes place regardless. Look at situations where people post stuff on their facebook (or whatever the latest trendy site is) - they get caught for committing crimes doing that. Anonymity is part of the problem but again its more of a symptom. I can't say what causes these problems, although i strongly suspect parenting (or lack thereof) and/or early influences are involved, but nonetheless the problem exists with or without computer games.

Something should be done, but the problem has become institutionalized to the point that its a representative culture with its own powers and rights. The people who sent the harassing messages would surely fall under cyberstalking, cyber harassment or cyber bullying but i'd bet dollars to donuts that nothing will be attempted to be done about them because the problem is too big at this point.

I don't really believe the problem stems from anonymity. I think it kind of comes from the culture and some viewpoints not being challenged (or weren't challenged before). Anonymity isn't bullet prof. You do have an identity on the internet and people can keep track of you. You have more anonymity on a public street then you would on a public forum. There are more controls of bad behavior online. I think it's more that the culture doesn't always call out the bad behavior or even consider it bad behavior.

That is kind of my observation.

Agreed and we'll said. A lack of consequences or challenges breeds such an environment.

I would agree with Nomotog's observation . Mostly, gamers usually just don't speak up when other gamers say stupid, offensive gak, out of some misplaced sense of solidarity. I'm a bit guilty of that myself.