EVE General Discussion

Nobody wants a damned pink HUD. And all of your stated reasons for behaviors still do not make them right.

I do not hide who or what I am behind my avatar in any way shape or form. To do so is sad and wrong.

The most rabid gamer I know is an 18 y o girl who can't put down Skyrim and has the vastest anime collection I have ever seen.

I don't disagree, but let's not pretend that this is exclusive to the CFC.

yet another dbl post. Seems to be common today for some reason.

I apologise, but the following is going to be a little bit of a blog post. I suggest that those of you who are willing to learn something about the way females are treated in regards to the internet read it in full, and check out the links. Those who wish to ignore it, however, should refrain from ignorant commentary. I know it's a tl;dr, but it's an important one.

Some people here may or may not have heard about a video project that Anita Sarkeesian proposed for funding via Kickstarter. It's a cool project looking at the tropes of women used in video games. Here is a video introducing the project.

To the surprise of approximately zero educated bloggers and to the horror of a lot of people who only just now realized How Bad It Is™, the reaction by a great swath of self-proclaimed dudes has been abusive and threatening. Sarkeesian hadn't even started the project yet and the push back to silence her was already tremendous. The YouTube video has had threats and harassing comments made on it, her Wikipedia page has been vandalized repeatedly. She has been verbally assaulted on Twitter, Facebook, in email, and via the Feminist Frequency website.

Many people are unfortunately familiar with this sort of abuse, and there is so much more that goes beyond "just gaming" commentary. Those who claim the internet is "consequence free" are really only thinking about themselves and their own safety, via internet anonymity, from punitive action, but they aren't thinking about the consequences that their actions or words have on the internet in regards to the effects on other people.

There were a fair number of people who wrote on what happened with Sarkeesian's project and her subsequent abuse. It's a point raised by John Walker at RockPaperShotgun that I want to look at:



The internet is not consequence free, not by any stretch of the imagination. The consequences may not be immediately apparent to the people they have no effect on, but I assure you they exist, and affect the targets of all kinds of hostility. Especially gender hostility.

While some disgruntled commenters may disagree, heh, here is not a "wretched area". It's not just "the internet's more wretched areas" which are filled with such threats. It's areas--just about any site--that have articles that discuss sexism and (gaming, sports, literature, television, pick-a-topic), especially if it is an article written by a woman.

But, really, I want to build on his point of "imagine it's you". See, I am sitting here typing this post and I'm a real person. Really! Shocking, I know. But I'm here on my chair, in my office, my dogs are basking in the shade outside on one of the hottest days I've experienced this summer in Australia, a real place in the real world where I actually have to exist in order to input the letters needed to write this post. I'm a real person doing every day things. And you! You are a real person too, sitting or standing or laying down whereever you are. Neither one of us becomes unfeeling, non-people by virtue of the computer/phone screen - unless you do because you're a sociopath, which isn't a bad thing, I know a few sociopaths, but knowing it is the first step to getting help for it. "The internet" is not, in fact (or not exclusively), a series of tubes filled with pixels (or 1s and 0s). It is actual people writing, reading, reacting, learning, etc... it is a social environment as much as it is a digital one, a tool for communication as much as a global set of cables and servers. The use of a phone or laptop or desktop computing device to interact with some other real person on the other end doesn't magically render anyone a non-person. Most people seem to know this, as many people these days first connect online and later offline for friendship, romance, jobs, selling stuff, looking for classes/activities--and if not, many people seem to get the concept anyway.

Yet the bullshit phrase "it's just the internet" still exists. Not only exists, it is repeated frequently when the topic of abuse and harassment online is brought up. Just check the comments section of any of the articles linked above discussing the reaction to the project for examples.

It's not, in fact, "just the internet". "It" is "just" a genuine person that has received a message that they should die, as painfully as possible, and hopefully someone will be by soon because we know where you live. Perhaps because they made a comment about how women are portrayed in a video game. It is a genuine person, too, who made that threat. Not some abusive robo-troller program. Perhaps that person is serious or perhaps they think it's "funny" to threaten and abuse another person into silence and fear. It's also the realisation of that, that there is an actual person out there threatening you, even wishing your death, that can be the clincher in finding it all if not outright terrifying, at least emotionally exhausting, to deal with.

[to be continued]

It's affecting me, but not because I'm subject to it at the moment. This thread is horrifying.

I just can't begin to define what's wrong with it, in so many areas.

I'll just go back to the OP and deal with that. Nobody should be surprised that prepubescent males that sit at home playing video games act this way. The fact that Devs and, (wtf is a designer anyway?), ..designers act that way is hard to believe. Some.. sure, but a vast majority of them?

I don't get it. Either they're exaggerating or these people are tools; which is it?

Let's just clarify: This is the domain of prepubescent males and females, (yes.. both), who don't have anything better to do than gossip, brag, play games, and act like twits.

This is why parents should demand more of their kids than sitting in front of a television. Chores, work, school, better grades, physical exercise, etiquette, social activities like family time, reading, eating at the dinner table, doing dishes, taking out the garbage, etc..

Instead, you got kids who go, "yeah, Mom, in a minute," *silently* 'when I finish this game *****.' Or, stuff a pizza pocket in their mouth and go sit in front of the TV wiping their hands on their pants while their Mom cooks a dinner they don't intend to eat. ..or Dad cooks, for those that do.


Not that I'm a parent, but I did grow up once, and not like that thankfully. Nowhere near perfect or properly raised, but not like that. Spoiled rotten little ingrates imo.

This thread is fubar.


..also, I'd just like to note, that the usual, "this thread is now about me and my issues; let me proceed to shove them in your face; give me attention," is still occurring as usual.

It's still just an excuse. It doesn't make the behaviour any less wrong. It doesn't make those that perpetuate the behaviour any less garbage. The medium of communication is not an excuse for poor communication.


"Just pixels" is just another excuse for crappy behaviour. It doesn't matter if you think it's "consequence free", it's still just an excuse, and crappy behaviour on the internet is still crappy behaviour.



Threads like this raise awareness of a problem. It is not the people who try to raise awareness of the problem that perpetuate the problem, it is the people who create the problem that needs to be discussed. The old adage of "don't feed the troll" only applies when the troll is actually harmless - people who create an environment of social exclusivity, even if it's "just the internet", may be getting a rise out of being discussed, but that is not why they are discussed, or why threads like this exist. IMHO, they are sick individuals, more often than not, that need help. Especially if this is what they do for their personal entertainment.



This is the problem - you think the OP is enabling, and therefore causing, people to troll him. You're wrong - the people trolling him are making a conscious choice to do so. They are the problem, not the OP. And all you are doing is perpetuating this myth that the internet suddenly makes what would normally be considered wrong something otherwise. This is absolutely not the case.

Gender equality in gaming, and on the internet, are a problem, and you can ignore it and/or make excuses for it, or you can help fight the problem by, at the very least, not ignoring it or making excuses for it.

I may log in as a character in this game, but there is still a real person sitting on the other side of that character, and assuming that getting on the internet suddenly makes one fair game for any kind of treatment whatsoever is a ridiculous notion perpetuated by ignorant, selfish and possibly emotionally damaged and angry preteens, or even adults, who take it upon themselves to enforce their own misery on everyone else instead of doing something about it.

So I wasn't the only one who noticed that, huh? :p

That's strange, because I don't really see a lot of trolling in this thread, amazingly enough. Issues will remain issues until we stop ignoring them.

There is a difference between "giving up" and "being realistic", and a cause is only lost when people STOP fighting for it.



On the contrary. If people choose to abuse their internet anonymity in order to perpetuate this behaviour, then this behaviour can be criminalised, as it is in reality, and everyone will suffer when our rights to internet anonymity are voided by the few morons who choose to abuse it.



No it's not, it's a lousy excuse. And it's still just an excuse all the same, because there is NO justification for foul behaviour, be it on the internet or elsewhere. RL codes of ethics apply everywhere, because guess what? The internet is just as much real life as everywhere else is. You think that just because it goes through a computer it's somehow some psuedo-life that doesn't matter, where there are no real people on the other side of their computers? This is the kind of delusion that allows such behaviour to exist. And by doing nothing about it, and even trying to justify it, you are just as bad.