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On March 09 2015 17:38 hfglgg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 16:49 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:42 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 16:18 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:34 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 15:32 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:23 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 13:49 wei2coolman wrote:On March 09 2015 13:42 levelping wrote:
[quote]
I'd say that the white guys obviously have problems respecting others and two aspects of this come up as misogyny and homophobi, and we can and should tackle both.
now it's white guys? talk about presumptuous Please invest the 30 seconds it would take to read the preceeding quote before climbing back on to your soap box. I wish everyone could just take a step back and look at what the documentary is asking. And most of it is actually stuff everyone can agree on - a more polite, inclusive, and mature gaming community. Can this happen for homosexuals etc too? Yes. So let's have that discussion as well. Can this happen for straight white males too? Sure. Will progress in the area of sexual comments mean that people will now be even ruder to straight and gay males? of course not. The problem generally comes down to two things: One, you're wishing for people not to be mean on the internet. Two, you're wishing for intentionally offensive people on the internet not to use language that's really offensive. And I suppose a third problem would be that "wishing" is an accurate description how those would be achieved. If you feel that this is all a waste of time, then please crawl back into your own hole of defeat while the rest of the community tries to be a bit better. Take a good look at Teamliquid and how the mod team works very hard to keep discussion civil and mature here. Then take a long look at places where no such moderation is in effect. A better community is certainly achievable and not some utopian dream. Teamliquid only has to moderate a few thousand people at any given time of the day, and they still can't stop people from saying offensive things. They can only deal with it after the fact. Same goes for any online game, just with a concurrent population that's upscaled with a lot more zeroes. You can ban mean people after the fact, but you can't stop people from being exposed to mean statements. You realise that in that line of logic, there's no point having real world laws against murder/theft etc because the law only functions ex post? This is obviously faulty thinking since any system of rules have both corrective and prescriptive functions. Moderation obviously works on one hand to ban people, but it also prescribes rules for people to follow to avoid being banned. And after enough people follow, it becomes customary and not so much rule following. Couple this with incentives to be nice like upvoting and so on and you have the beginnings of a move towards better behaviour. As a community that can consider ad nausuem how to balance a unit by tweaking numbers/design/maps/play style, is our collective imagination really so dead to the ways in which we can improve in this area? Yes, laws only work after the fact because they're entirely about punishment after a crime has been committed. But we're not talking about punishing mean people on the internet (which is more than feasible), we're talking about stopping mean people from saying mean things. And an online game does not function like a forum. When you push that "Find Game" button and look for a game, you're basically putting yourself in a chatroom with at least 1 other person selected completely at random. Now, you can disable all chat completely, which works just fine, but there is no magic button for "I'd only like nice chat please". You've missed my point that laws have a prescriptive function. People do not steal things in part because it is the law. The this way the law guides or prescribes behaviour. this is a misconception a lot of people have. people dont do certain things because its socially unaccepted to do so, laws only come second. harsher laws for example dont decrease crime rates, it doesnt matter if you sentence someone to death for murder or send him to that norwegian prison that looks more like a summer camp (and has the lowest reoffender rate if i remember correctly), murder rates are not affected by it. in other cases laws against something can even increase the rate of those things. i.e. the prohibition in america has made alcohol a widespread culture phenomenon while it was mainly something the very rich and very poor consumed before that. there are also more marihuanna consumers in germany compared to the netherlands where it is free to sell and consume. on the other hand there are things which are socially unaccepted but not strictly forbidden. for example in germany it is almost impossible to get someone from your family a job in the company you work for without people calling you out for nepotism (except in bavaria, they are strange people!). its not illegal to do so, but you better dont do it.
The question of whether law guides social behaviour or social behaviour informs the law is a point of jurisprudential debate, and I personally think that it is quite clear that both influence each other. I would just point out that that modern societies are guided by rules both informal (norms) and formal (the law), and in general, the expression of a rule as a law is the clearest expression of the importance of that rule to a particular society. In the gaming context, putting down clear rules against harassment is an expression of that the community (or the gaming company) takes such matters seriously and would rather deal with it via clear rules as opposed to leaving it to community norms. The Esports example is obvious - cheating is generally looked on by the whole community as a community norm, but we still have strict rules against it because we take a very serious view of cheating.
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On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel.
Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post.
As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother.
Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from.
I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone).
Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of.
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On March 09 2015 17:44 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 17:38 hfglgg wrote:On March 09 2015 16:49 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:42 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 16:18 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:34 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 15:32 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:23 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 13:49 wei2coolman wrote:
[quote]
now it's white guys? talk about presumptuous Please invest the 30 seconds it would take to read the preceeding quote before climbing back on to your soap box. I wish everyone could just take a step back and look at what the documentary is asking. And most of it is actually stuff everyone can agree on - a more polite, inclusive, and mature gaming community. Can this happen for homosexuals etc too? Yes. So let's have that discussion as well. Can this happen for straight white males too? Sure. Will progress in the area of sexual comments mean that people will now be even ruder to straight and gay males? of course not. The problem generally comes down to two things: One, you're wishing for people not to be mean on the internet. Two, you're wishing for intentionally offensive people on the internet not to use language that's really offensive. And I suppose a third problem would be that "wishing" is an accurate description how those would be achieved. If you feel that this is all a waste of time, then please crawl back into your own hole of defeat while the rest of the community tries to be a bit better. Take a good look at Teamliquid and how the mod team works very hard to keep discussion civil and mature here. Then take a long look at places where no such moderation is in effect. A better community is certainly achievable and not some utopian dream. Teamliquid only has to moderate a few thousand people at any given time of the day, and they still can't stop people from saying offensive things. They can only deal with it after the fact. Same goes for any online game, just with a concurrent population that's upscaled with a lot more zeroes. You can ban mean people after the fact, but you can't stop people from being exposed to mean statements. You realise that in that line of logic, there's no point having real world laws against murder/theft etc because the law only functions ex post? This is obviously faulty thinking since any system of rules have both corrective and prescriptive functions. Moderation obviously works on one hand to ban people, but it also prescribes rules for people to follow to avoid being banned. And after enough people follow, it becomes customary and not so much rule following. Couple this with incentives to be nice like upvoting and so on and you have the beginnings of a move towards better behaviour. As a community that can consider ad nausuem how to balance a unit by tweaking numbers/design/maps/play style, is our collective imagination really so dead to the ways in which we can improve in this area? Yes, laws only work after the fact because they're entirely about punishment after a crime has been committed. But we're not talking about punishing mean people on the internet (which is more than feasible), we're talking about stopping mean people from saying mean things. And an online game does not function like a forum. When you push that "Find Game" button and look for a game, you're basically putting yourself in a chatroom with at least 1 other person selected completely at random. Now, you can disable all chat completely, which works just fine, but there is no magic button for "I'd only like nice chat please". You've missed my point that laws have a prescriptive function. People do not steal things in part because it is the law. The this way the law guides or prescribes behaviour. this is a misconception a lot of people have. people dont do certain things because its socially unaccepted to do so, laws only come second. harsher laws for example dont decrease crime rates, it doesnt matter if you sentence someone to death for murder or send him to that norwegian prison that looks more like a summer camp (and has the lowest reoffender rate if i remember correctly), murder rates are not affected by it. in other cases laws against something can even increase the rate of those things. i.e. the prohibition in america has made alcohol a widespread culture phenomenon while it was mainly something the very rich and very poor consumed before that. there are also more marihuanna consumers in germany compared to the netherlands where it is free to sell and consume. on the other hand there are things which are socially unaccepted but not strictly forbidden. for example in germany it is almost impossible to get someone from your family a job in the company you work for without people calling you out for nepotism (except in bavaria, they are strange people!). its not illegal to do so, but you better dont do it. The question of whether law guides social behaviour or social behaviour informs the law is a point of jurisprudential debate, and I personally think that it is quite clear that both influence each other. I would just point out that that modern societies are guided by rules both informal (norms) and formal (the law), and in general, the expression of a rule as a law is the clearest expression of the importance of that rule to a particular society. In the gaming context, putting down clear rules against harassment is an expression of that the community (or the gaming company) takes such matters seriously and would rather deal with it via clear rules as opposed to leaving it to community norms. The Esports example is obvious - cheating is generally looked on by the whole community as a community norm, but we still have strict rules against it because we take a very serious view of cheating.
but those rules already exist in almost all online communities, they just dont stop people from being dicks. i dont really get your point here.
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This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone.
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On March 09 2015 17:56 hfglgg wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 17:44 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 17:38 hfglgg wrote:On March 09 2015 16:49 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:42 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 16:18 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:12 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:34 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 15:32 WolfintheSheep wrote:On March 09 2015 15:23 levelping wrote:
[quote]
Please invest the 30 seconds it would take to read the preceeding quote before climbing back on to your soap box.
I wish everyone could just take a step back and look at what the documentary is asking. And most of it is actually stuff everyone can agree on - a more polite, inclusive, and mature gaming community. Can this happen for homosexuals etc too? Yes. So let's have that discussion as well. Can this happen for straight white males too? Sure. Will progress in the area of sexual comments mean that people will now be even ruder to straight and gay males? of course not.
The problem generally comes down to two things: One, you're wishing for people not to be mean on the internet. Two, you're wishing for intentionally offensive people on the internet not to use language that's really offensive. And I suppose a third problem would be that "wishing" is an accurate description how those would be achieved. If you feel that this is all a waste of time, then please crawl back into your own hole of defeat while the rest of the community tries to be a bit better. Take a good look at Teamliquid and how the mod team works very hard to keep discussion civil and mature here. Then take a long look at places where no such moderation is in effect. A better community is certainly achievable and not some utopian dream. Teamliquid only has to moderate a few thousand people at any given time of the day, and they still can't stop people from saying offensive things. They can only deal with it after the fact. Same goes for any online game, just with a concurrent population that's upscaled with a lot more zeroes. You can ban mean people after the fact, but you can't stop people from being exposed to mean statements. You realise that in that line of logic, there's no point having real world laws against murder/theft etc because the law only functions ex post? This is obviously faulty thinking since any system of rules have both corrective and prescriptive functions. Moderation obviously works on one hand to ban people, but it also prescribes rules for people to follow to avoid being banned. And after enough people follow, it becomes customary and not so much rule following. Couple this with incentives to be nice like upvoting and so on and you have the beginnings of a move towards better behaviour. As a community that can consider ad nausuem how to balance a unit by tweaking numbers/design/maps/play style, is our collective imagination really so dead to the ways in which we can improve in this area? Yes, laws only work after the fact because they're entirely about punishment after a crime has been committed. But we're not talking about punishing mean people on the internet (which is more than feasible), we're talking about stopping mean people from saying mean things. And an online game does not function like a forum. When you push that "Find Game" button and look for a game, you're basically putting yourself in a chatroom with at least 1 other person selected completely at random. Now, you can disable all chat completely, which works just fine, but there is no magic button for "I'd only like nice chat please". You've missed my point that laws have a prescriptive function. People do not steal things in part because it is the law. The this way the law guides or prescribes behaviour. this is a misconception a lot of people have. people dont do certain things because its socially unaccepted to do so, laws only come second. harsher laws for example dont decrease crime rates, it doesnt matter if you sentence someone to death for murder or send him to that norwegian prison that looks more like a summer camp (and has the lowest reoffender rate if i remember correctly), murder rates are not affected by it. in other cases laws against something can even increase the rate of those things. i.e. the prohibition in america has made alcohol a widespread culture phenomenon while it was mainly something the very rich and very poor consumed before that. there are also more marihuanna consumers in germany compared to the netherlands where it is free to sell and consume. on the other hand there are things which are socially unaccepted but not strictly forbidden. for example in germany it is almost impossible to get someone from your family a job in the company you work for without people calling you out for nepotism (except in bavaria, they are strange people!). its not illegal to do so, but you better dont do it. The question of whether law guides social behaviour or social behaviour informs the law is a point of jurisprudential debate, and I personally think that it is quite clear that both influence each other. I would just point out that that modern societies are guided by rules both informal (norms) and formal (the law), and in general, the expression of a rule as a law is the clearest expression of the importance of that rule to a particular society. In the gaming context, putting down clear rules against harassment is an expression of that the community (or the gaming company) takes such matters seriously and would rather deal with it via clear rules as opposed to leaving it to community norms. The Esports example is obvious - cheating is generally looked on by the whole community as a community norm, but we still have strict rules against it because we take a very serious view of cheating. but those rules already exist in almost all online communities, they just dont stop people from being dicks. i dont really get your point here.
I'm saying that the rules prescribed by a community and the enforcement of these rules guide social norms. Yes there are rules in place and yes they don't stop all forms of harassment harassment. But they prevent some some, and so the answer is to think of better rules and better enforcement and to reach better behaviour .. Rather than say well we have an imperfect system now so let's give up.
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On March 09 2015 17:38 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 17:23 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:55 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:34 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:18 levelping wrote:
You realise that in that line of logic, there's no point having real world laws against murder/theft etc because the law only functions ex post?
This is obviously faulty thinking since any system of rules have both corrective and prescriptive functions. Moderation obviously works on one hand to ban people, but it also prescribes rules for people to follow to avoid being banned. And after enough people follow, it becomes customary and not so much rule following. Couple this with incentives to be nice like upvoting and so on and you have the beginnings of a move towards better behaviour.
As a community that can consider ad nausuem how to balance a unit by tweaking numbers/design/maps/play style, is our collective imagination really so dead to the ways in which we can improve in this area? Who do you want to be the police of the internet then? Comments like this I think come generally from a misunderstanding of: (a) The notion that the internet is not already policed or regulated. It is, and your conduct on the internet is subject to the same kinds of laws that would guide normal real life conduct. If the internet was truly some sort of lawless anything goes frontier, buying things with credit cards would be impossible. In fact internet regulation goes much deeper than just the conduct of users, but the entire design of the net as a communication system. Please read a little on this wonderful thing called the internet. (b) The notion that you even need an internet police to guide user behvaviour. You do not. Content and service providers on the internet can take a strong stand against things like harassment and make it part and parcel of community moderation. I know how the internet works, sorry for not explaining my position properly and causing you to assume I don't know what I'm talking about. I gave that statement specifically in regard to your suggestion of moderating the internet from harassment. If I misinterpreted your suggestion, I'll apologize. No, the internet is not governed by the same rules as "offline" because of the anonymity principle, as I explained above. You can get away with saying way more online than you can in real life, because other's cant immediately retaliate in any meaningful way, and the resources typically aren't there for sueing such people for harassment or slander like you would somebody who was doing these things to you in real life (you often can't even be certain if it's one person or a collective). It happens occassionally that somebody gets their just deserts for being a dick on the internet, but it's rare (relative to 'offline'). You're giving a lot of freedom away with the whole "say something I don't like and I'll remove your ability to say it" line of reasoning. Even worse when you're suggesting giving a select group of people the power to decide what is right or wrong to say. Freedom of Speech might not mean Freedom to Harass, but it does mean Freedom to Have and Voice Opinions, even if they aren't ones you agree with. This power would inevitably end up being abused, stunting discussions and opening up new issues such as moderating the moderaters, ect. And this isn't even getting into the manpower and resources that would be required to come even close to the amount of moderation you're talking about. It's much better to create an automated system that deters this, as you reasoned later. Not giving a select few power, but creating systems that encourage good behavoir and penalize bad behavior as a collective. Also notice how none of the solution has anything to do with gender, which is what this debate started with. We at least agree on this topic, that the solution isn't to 'encourage trolls and bullies to not sexually harass females'. Yes, we get it, females are harassed and worse than males, so let's start working on solutions that (might) work. Sorry for any typos as this keyboard is sticky. You've brought up a number of issues so I'll just jump in: 1) I am sure you know that the Freedom of Speech as generally understood is a public law right between citizens and their elected governments, and that there is generally no requirement for there to be an equivalent on the internet where the relationships are between private individuals. A game or a forum can be as regulated as the people running the game want it to be. 2) Regulation need not be manual, and the best systems i think would combine automatic systems, community input, as well as human moderation. Regulation by design is actually a very interesting area - since game design effectively creates a world from scratch, you can design your game in a manner which makes harassment much less likely to occur. A very crude example of this is how World of Warcraft has artificial language barriers between Alliance and Horde characters - I find this to be rather primitive (and probably creates some harassment too), but it's an example of regulation by a design restriction. The more draconian example is Hearthstone, where you can't harass at all simply since you have no chat options. 3) We have been talking about the "how" of preventing harassment. Gender comes in at the substance of what is regulated. It along with other areas like racism, and homophobia should be the substance of a system of regulation. 4) And anyway, apart from just regulation, discussion on gender harassment is part of the wider education of the community, and making people more aware that it is generally a shitty thing to tell anyone that you will rape them, and that it is especially terrible to say it to a girl. I mean just looking at this trend there are people who do not even think this is a problem, and are fine with everyone just "dealing with it".
Thanks for taking the time to respond in a meaningful manner (as opposed to deteriorating into insults), it's unfortunately rare these days.
1) I agree, and believe it's still the best method to allow dissenting opinions. In a small community like TL, moderation can work well, but even then we miss out on some debates because they are 'too controversial' as decided by an arbitrary body (not saying this is necessarily bad). Comparatively, by creating a system that encourages constructive, informational posts, we could get past the controversy and into the facts.
2) Agreed, I apparently misunderstood your point then. I still believe moderation is inefficient and will inherently lead to corruption in the system, needing checks and balances and increased manpower as the scene grows. I wouldn't call it (edit: social systems in games) a 'new world' really, but that's mostly semantics. We actually do the same things 'offline' (this is essentially what governments are), games just have the advantage of a very specific intended goal of the user (edit: and we can therefor predict how they will react to punishment / rewards) as opposed to offline where everyone (edit: has different goals and objectives and therefor) will be affected differently by different types of punishment. (edit: And obviously, we'll probably never stop people from harassing others entirely, just like we'll probably never entirely stop murder, rape, ect, but we can at least make steps in the right direction.)
3) I don't think targetting sexism, racism or homophobia specifically would work better than 'bigger' themes such as harassment (and I actually think it's harder to create a system that specifically targets them), but I could be wrong. (Edit: I don't think sexism, racism or homophobia are a bigger problem in games than they are offline, they're just tools used by people who would harass others regardless). Things like upvote / downvote, paywalls, ect, are proven to work (to an extent) for people regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ect, and I think improving upon these ideas is the best way to work.
4) I agree, but the main group we're discussing are not people who act in a rational manner. They're acting the way they are because they're not held accountable for their actions, and they wont change until they are. This doesn't mean I disapprove of spreading awareness, but there are more tactful ways of doing it than shoving it down gamer's throats and telling them to take responsibility.
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On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone.
Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed.
1) this isn't about you
2) men are not abused to the same extent as women
3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently
4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems
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On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems
Forgive him, but he probably (and a lot of other gamers as well) feels like he's being told to take responsibility for the actions of extremists that he doesn't like anymore than female gamers do. We should be working together, not taking sides.
edit: I don't agree with him, but I understand where he's coming from.
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On March 09 2015 18:09 Pursuit_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 17:38 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 17:23 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:55 levelping wrote:On March 09 2015 16:34 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 16:18 levelping wrote:
You realise that in that line of logic, there's no point having real world laws against murder/theft etc because the law only functions ex post?
This is obviously faulty thinking since any system of rules have both corrective and prescriptive functions. Moderation obviously works on one hand to ban people, but it also prescribes rules for people to follow to avoid being banned. And after enough people follow, it becomes customary and not so much rule following. Couple this with incentives to be nice like upvoting and so on and you have the beginnings of a move towards better behaviour.
As a community that can consider ad nausuem how to balance a unit by tweaking numbers/design/maps/play style, is our collective imagination really so dead to the ways in which we can improve in this area? Who do you want to be the police of the internet then? Comments like this I think come generally from a misunderstanding of: (a) The notion that the internet is not already policed or regulated. It is, and your conduct on the internet is subject to the same kinds of laws that would guide normal real life conduct. If the internet was truly some sort of lawless anything goes frontier, buying things with credit cards would be impossible. In fact internet regulation goes much deeper than just the conduct of users, but the entire design of the net as a communication system. Please read a little on this wonderful thing called the internet. (b) The notion that you even need an internet police to guide user behvaviour. You do not. Content and service providers on the internet can take a strong stand against things like harassment and make it part and parcel of community moderation. I know how the internet works, sorry for not explaining my position properly and causing you to assume I don't know what I'm talking about. I gave that statement specifically in regard to your suggestion of moderating the internet from harassment. If I misinterpreted your suggestion, I'll apologize. No, the internet is not governed by the same rules as "offline" because of the anonymity principle, as I explained above. You can get away with saying way more online than you can in real life, because other's cant immediately retaliate in any meaningful way, and the resources typically aren't there for sueing such people for harassment or slander like you would somebody who was doing these things to you in real life (you often can't even be certain if it's one person or a collective). It happens occassionally that somebody gets their just deserts for being a dick on the internet, but it's rare (relative to 'offline'). You're giving a lot of freedom away with the whole "say something I don't like and I'll remove your ability to say it" line of reasoning. Even worse when you're suggesting giving a select group of people the power to decide what is right or wrong to say. Freedom of Speech might not mean Freedom to Harass, but it does mean Freedom to Have and Voice Opinions, even if they aren't ones you agree with. This power would inevitably end up being abused, stunting discussions and opening up new issues such as moderating the moderaters, ect. And this isn't even getting into the manpower and resources that would be required to come even close to the amount of moderation you're talking about. It's much better to create an automated system that deters this, as you reasoned later. Not giving a select few power, but creating systems that encourage good behavoir and penalize bad behavior as a collective. Also notice how none of the solution has anything to do with gender, which is what this debate started with. We at least agree on this topic, that the solution isn't to 'encourage trolls and bullies to not sexually harass females'. Yes, we get it, females are harassed and worse than males, so let's start working on solutions that (might) work. Sorry for any typos as this keyboard is sticky. You've brought up a number of issues so I'll just jump in: 1) I am sure you know that the Freedom of Speech as generally understood is a public law right between citizens and their elected governments, and that there is generally no requirement for there to be an equivalent on the internet where the relationships are between private individuals. A game or a forum can be as regulated as the people running the game want it to be. 2) Regulation need not be manual, and the best systems i think would combine automatic systems, community input, as well as human moderation. Regulation by design is actually a very interesting area - since game design effectively creates a world from scratch, you can design your game in a manner which makes harassment much less likely to occur. A very crude example of this is how World of Warcraft has artificial language barriers between Alliance and Horde characters - I find this to be rather primitive (and probably creates some harassment too), but it's an example of regulation by a design restriction. The more draconian example is Hearthstone, where you can't harass at all simply since you have no chat options. 3) We have been talking about the "how" of preventing harassment. Gender comes in at the substance of what is regulated. It along with other areas like racism, and homophobia should be the substance of a system of regulation. 4) And anyway, apart from just regulation, discussion on gender harassment is part of the wider education of the community, and making people more aware that it is generally a shitty thing to tell anyone that you will rape them, and that it is especially terrible to say it to a girl. I mean just looking at this trend there are people who do not even think this is a problem, and are fine with everyone just "dealing with it". Thanks for taking the time to respond in a meaningful manner (as opposed to deteriorating into insults), it's unfortunately rare these days. 1) I agree, and believe it's still the best method to allow dissenting opinions. In a small community like TL, moderation can work well, but even then we miss out on some debates because they are 'too controversial' as decided by an arbitrary body (not saying this is necessarily bad). Comparatively, by creating a system that encourages constructive, informational posts, we could get past the controversy and into the facts. 2) Agreed, I apparently misunderstood your point then. I still believe moderation is inefficient and will inherently lead to corruption in the system, needing checks and balances and increased manpower as the scene grows. I wouldn't call it a 'new world' really, but that's mostly semantics. We actually do the same things 'offline' (this is essentially what governments are), games just have the advantage of a very specific intended goal of the user as opposed to offline where everyone will be affected differently by different types of punishment. 3) I don't think targetting sexism, racism or homophobia specifically would work better than 'bigger' themes such as harassment (and I actually think it's harder to create a system that specifically targets them), but I could be wrong. Things like upvote / downvote, paywalls, ect, are proven to work (to an extent) for people regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, ect, and I think improving upon these ideas is the best way to work. 4) I agree, but the main group we're discussing are not people who act in a rational manner. They're acting the way they are because they're not held accountable for their actions, and they wont change until they are. This doesn't mean I disapprove of spreading awareness, but there are more tactful ways of doing it than shoving it down gamer's throats and telling them to take responsibility.
Just on your 4) I think that as male gamers we just need to realise that the discussion from such documentaries aren't aimed at us personally. And there is no need to get defensive .. it is perhaps natural because gamers might be used to being somewhat ostracised socially and so when people come along pointing out problems in our community our reaction is to clamp up.
My view is that when you look at the current discussion on female harassment just ask yourself whether you have done anything like telling a girl she will get raped etc and if you haven't then that's great the comments are not being directed to you. personally .. But the wider community ..
Anyway I don't feel like anything is being shoved down my throat but I could imagine that being at the receiving end of online harassment and rape comments is pretty much akin to stuff being shoved down your throat.
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this thread and discussion are accomplishing so much
keep it up guys
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the amount of internalized misogyny in this thread is saddening 
dunno what's worse, that I had expectations about TL or this thread
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I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy.
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On March 09 2015 18:17 levelping wrote:
Just on your 4) I think that as male gamers we just need to realise that the discussion from such documentaries aren't aimed at us personally. And there is no need to get defensive .. it is perhaps natural because gamers might be used to being somewhat ostracised socially and so when people come along pointing out problems in our community our reaction is to clamp up.
My view is that when you look at the current discussion on female harassment just ask yourself whether you have done anything like telling a girl she will get raped etc and if you haven't then that's great the comments are not being directed to you. personally .. But the wider community ..
Anyway I don't feel like anything is being shoved down my throat but I could imagine that being at the receiving end of online harassment and rape comments is pretty much akin to stuff being shoved down your throat.
It's hard not to feel like we're being blamed and looked down upon for our actions. These articles aren't saying 'people get harassed online' or even 'female gamers are often bullied in video games' they're saying 'female gamers are getting abused by male gamers'.
Of course I feel sorry for anyone who gets harassed. I'm not dismissing their complaints at all, nor trying to highlight the problems of a male gamer over a female gamer, or anything like that. We suffer from exactly the same problem, just differing in severity, and even that's debatable. But the point is that we should be working together to solve the problem of online harassment, not highlighting one group and marginalizing the other.
On March 09 2015 18:34 Umpteen wrote:
I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy.
Like 'Get cancer and die', 'I hope you get raped with a tire iron', 'small dick / cant please a lady / ect', 'white trash / trailer park trash', 'effed your mom last night', 'cracker', 'fat', 'ugly', 'pimple-faced', 'can't get a date', 'live in your mother's basement', ect.
I'd say most online / in-game insults are gender / race neutral, and there are a decent amount directed primarily at straight white male stereotypes. But again, that's missing the point. It's not straight white male gamers vs all other gamers, let's see who's suffered worse. The latter group most certainly has, and I think very few people deny it. And there's nothing wrong with highlighting the abuse, and we should be doing something about it.
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It's funny that people want video gaming and esports become mainstream or at least become more widely recognized, yet they are offended when media treat it seriously and start to patronize core issues linked to the gaming phenomena.
On March 09 2015 08:56 Zaragon wrote:
For the people who don’t understand why it’s worse for women:
Sexual, sexist harassment tends to be worse because it has a consistent, real narrative that mirrors what women experience in other contexts. Women have to fear sexual assault, because research suggests as many as 1/3 of women experience it at some point in their lives (variations depending on part of the world, of course, as well as which estimation of unreported cases you believe--likely it's between 70-95% globally, but obviously that's a huge margin). And sexual harassment is something nearly all of them receive often in their real lives.
Trolling directed at males tends to be far less personal, far less real. Even if they are threatened with sexual assault, how many men have to live in fear of sexual assault in their real lives? How many men have limited freedoms because they have to avoid risking sexual assault?
The only harassment which comes close for males is targeted at: gay males; males who have been sexually abused or lived in significant danger of it; males of different race from the majority of the community in question; males with disability or illness which is visible enough that they are targeted for it.
Except for race and sexuality, these are very small minorities, and even when it comes to race, the volume and severity of harassment is notably less than sexual harassment females receive (this is fairly easy to check in the gaming world by spending ten minutes in twitch chats of various streamers).
So, yes, trolls are trying to hurt anyone they can, and this is a big problem. But there are different vulnerabilities in different people, and thus different severity of the problem. The largest group this affects is women.
So, as a male you might hear a lot of “I hope you get cancer” or crap like that, but even if you have cancer, that makes no sense, right? You can dismiss it because it’s pure BS. But if you have cancer, and people know that you have cancer, and all day you get “I hope your cancer spreads”, “I hope you die”, constantly the same crap, then you’re in the realm of how real and hurtful sexual harassment gets for women.
The severity of these things come from repetition and how real and personal the harassment is.
In general, men get harassment which is entirely fantasy and mostly doesn't hurt in the least because it’s nonsensical shit talk. Women get all too familiar, all too personal harassment which makes perfect sense and has significant truth to it (truth as in, whether the person means it or is “troll” joking, a ton of other people have said the same thing, using identical or near identical phrasing, and meant it literally).
Good post. Well explained.
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
On March 09 2015 18:34 Umpteen wrote:
I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy.
Because most of online/in-game insults are made by straight white guys with little brain to speak of, obviously they would reference themselves as perfection point. I mean, i have seen insults made by straight black guys, they are not even insulting in the slightest, no matter the language. Though, insult being offending is a point of discussion, right? Insults that work (and guess what, sexist harassment works for RL reasons) stay in rotation and if anything, become the main weapon, because for whatever reason certain people have hard time grasping that internet is a way to hide your identity unless one works in CIA/NSA/whatever, so almost all threats have no actual meaning behind them.
EDIT: Also, quoted post above hits right on the mark. If you don't want to get salt rubbed right in your wound, don't reveal that wound. And i'll admit, that this is largely a problem not even with online gaming or anything, but just with population that plays those games. I mean, i happened to have some kids following me throwing out insults, much to my entertainment, but hey, it could actually get insulting, granted those kids would have to run away in that case. Internet removes the physical reaction part though.
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On March 09 2015 17:52 Pursuit_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 16:58 ninazerg wrote:On March 09 2015 15:05 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 12:05 ninazerg wrote:
Documentaries like this are always just ass-backwards. Nearly every girl who has played video games that I've known gets special treatment and is welcomed with open arms into communities as long as they aren't completely batshit insane or a psycho. Then again, if they have the looks, then being psycho is acceptable. Additionally, girl gamers with very poor skills in their respective games will get way more viewers than men if they have a webcam on.
I see men getting harassed all the time. "You suck", "Faggot", "Get cancer", "Commit suicide", "I hope you die", and so on, are examples of the awful stuff that male gamers will hear on a regular basis if they gravitate toward the wrong communities within gaming. This tells me that there is a bigger issue here, but it always seems like special interests groups want to hijack the conversation and make it about them. Always interesting to hear input from a female gamer on this. Think it might be worse in other genres (especially those with voice chat) like FPS, MOBA, ect? I kind of think more speech/visual interaction between players is where gaming is headed in general. I haven't really noticed too much difference between the RTS and FPS crowds, to be honest. A vast majority of my interactions with other players have been positive. There have been rare occasions where I've been harassed, and it sucked, but it didn't really have like a long-term effect on me as far as shaping my perception of gamers in general. It is out there, though. If you look at Youtube comments, people are horrible to each other there. I've made personal adjustments for certain things, but not everyone might be dealing with harassment as well as I have in the past. Here's where I start to diverge away from the view that this is a woman-only problem: Some people can take verbal punishment all day and laugh it off, and others crumble. That's not a gender thing. I've talked to men who have really taken some of the stuff said to them really hard. And I'm not marginalizing any woman's experience with harassment, either. I'm saying some people are okay and can deal with it and have a support system of friends they can vent to, and there are other people who are legitimately being hurt by harassment. The best thing for hurting people is to comfort them, not try and solve all their problems. For example, if a friend of yours gets bullied, you want to get revenge on the bully. But getting revenge doesn't build your friend up, it just tears yet another person down. There is a time and a place for getting justice, but being there for your friend and comforting them is best. I feel like documentaries and articles that spin issues with harassment into an "us versus them" debacle encourages hostility towards an opposing 'side'. This is often grossly generalized, and with feminists, the issue is framed as an indictment of men, all men. The problem with that is that most men are not harassing women, it is a very select few who do, and they also harass other men. Additionally, even though women tend to be more passive towards men, I'm certain there are instances where women harass men via video game chat. To take this a step further, I would say a bigger problem in gaming harassment is actually racism. Racism is used more often than sexism. I'm not just talking about some white kids throwing the n-word around. I mean everyone is racist towards everyone else. I know most of it is in jest, and some of it is to get a reaction, but some of it is legitimately nasty and cruel. Thanks for taking the time to give me this well reasoned post. As a straight white male, I often feel like it's not really my place to get into debates like this because I don't face the same level or type of descrimination minorities (female gamers, black gamers, ect) do. I don't feel like it marginalizes my problems to focus on the problems of minorities, but I do agree with you that it feels like these arguments are often missing the point that most gamers aren't like this, only a select few, and they're like this to everybody. Minorities just happen to be jucier targets. We should be working together to figure out a solution, not fighting eachother. Being thick skinned is pretty much essentially to playing games these days, which is unfortunate. I personally have been subjected to a lot of insults (and really who hasn't?), but the only ones that have ever really affected me have been instances where I shared some of my insecurities with somebody I thought I could trust and had them throw it in my face in front of my online friends, or responded to harassment rather than simply ignoring them when it became apparent how they were acting. I've never actually had somebody look up my facebook or anything that personal, thankfully, but I know it happens and it really bugs me. Just wanted to share where I was coming from. I do have to say I think the Sexism and Racism are equivallently prominent in gaming (and I find it interesting that you don't), but this might be skewed by my perception as an RTS gamer where both of these things are both quite rare (I don't know my opponent's ethnicity or gender in probably 99%+ of the games I play and typically get generic insults that could apply to anyone). Overall though I'm glad you at least don't blame gamers as a whole for he acts of a few. TBH this is my biggest problem with things like this documentary or GamerGate, it makes me feel like I'm being held personally responsible for something I'm not a part of.
I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism.
On March 09 2015 18:10 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:01 King David wrote:
This is just another research/article thing about Equality (In the broader sense). Well women I have some info for you: you are not the only ones that gets abused. Men endure it too but because you are women it's "worse". Well I will tell you something. This "Outcries" is getting fucking old.OK. getting respect is not a give and take situation, it's a take situation. Sure there is a few dickheads out there who feels superior to women but they are immature and I bet that most of the time they are in a rage fit. although it is unexcuseable, it happens to everyone. Attitudes like these is precisely why we need documentaries like the one being discussed discussed. 1) this isn't about you 2) men are not abused to the same extent as women 3) these s outcries aren't old actually we haven't really had a serious discussion about harassment against women online until recently 4) g it's great how you presume to know how women should deal with their problems
Are you a woman? Because if you're a man debating other men on what women feel, then maybe you should stop it. Men are, in fact, abused as much as women, although the kind of harassment is often quite different.
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On March 09 2015 18:34 Umpteen wrote:
I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy.
Uhm... All the "your mom" and in General every not fag/whatever Insult?
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On March 09 2015 18:43 Pursuit_ wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:17 levelping wrote:
Just on your 4) I think that as male gamers we just need to realise that the discussion from such documentaries aren't aimed at us personally. And there is no need to get defensive .. it is perhaps natural because gamers might be used to being somewhat ostracised socially and so when people come along pointing out problems in our community our reaction is to clamp up.
My view is that when you look at the current discussion on female harassment just ask yourself whether you have done anything like telling a girl she will get raped etc and if you haven't then that's great the comments are not being directed to you. personally .. But the wider community ..
Anyway I don't feel like anything is being shoved down my throat but I could imagine that being at the receiving end of online harassment and rape comments is pretty much akin to stuff being shoved down your throat. It's hard not to feel like we're being blamed and looked down upon for our actions. These articles aren't saying 'people get harassed online' or even 'female gamers are often bullied in video games' they're saying 'female gamers are getting abused by male gamers'. Of course I feel sorry for anyone who gets harassed. I'm not dismissing their complaints at all, nor trying to highlight the problems of a male gamer over a female gamer, or anything like that. We suffer from exactly the same problem, just differing in severity, and even that's debatable. But the point is that we should be working together to solve the problem of online harassment, not highlighting one group and marginalizing the other. Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:34 Umpteen wrote:
I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy. Like 'Get cancer and die', 'I hope you get raped with a tire iron', 'small dick / cant please a lady / ect', 'white trash / trailer park trash', 'effed your mom last night', 'cracker', 'fat', 'ugly', 'pimple-faced', 'can't get a date', 'live in your mother's basement', ect. I'd say most online / in-game insults are gender / race neutral, and there are a decent amount directed primarily at straight white male stereotypes. But again, that's missing the point. It's not straight white male gamers vs all other gamers, let's see who's suffered worse. The latter group most certainly has, and I think very few people deny it. And there's nothing wrong with highlighting the abuse, and we should be doing something about it.
That's an interesting list. I don't disagree with where you are generally come from. I just think it is interesting to note that a large number of those seemingly "gender neutral" insults actually are implications of a loss of maleness (small penis, sexually useless, other men having their way with your women).
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On March 09 2015 18:58 levelping wrote:Show nested quote +On March 09 2015 18:43 Pursuit_ wrote:On March 09 2015 18:17 levelping wrote:
Just on your 4) I think that as male gamers we just need to realise that the discussion from such documentaries aren't aimed at us personally. And there is no need to get defensive .. it is perhaps natural because gamers might be used to being somewhat ostracised socially and so when people come along pointing out problems in our community our reaction is to clamp up.
My view is that when you look at the current discussion on female harassment just ask yourself whether you have done anything like telling a girl she will get raped etc and if you haven't then that's great the comments are not being directed to you. personally .. But the wider community ..
Anyway I don't feel like anything is being shoved down my throat but I could imagine that being at the receiving end of online harassment and rape comments is pretty much akin to stuff being shoved down your throat. It's hard not to feel like we're being blamed and looked down upon for our actions. These articles aren't saying 'people get harassed online' or even 'female gamers are often bullied in video games' they're saying 'female gamers are getting abused by male gamers'. Of course I feel sorry for anyone who gets harassed. I'm not dismissing their complaints at all, nor trying to highlight the problems of a male gamer over a female gamer, or anything like that. We suffer from exactly the same problem, just differing in severity, and even that's debatable. But the point is that we should be working together to solve the problem of online harassment, not highlighting one group and marginalizing the other. On March 09 2015 18:34 Umpteen wrote:
I think the 'trolls just like to troll' argument fails to adequately explain why pretty much all online/in-game insults amount to an accusation of not being a straight white guy. Like 'Get cancer and die', 'I hope you get raped with a tire iron', 'small dick / cant please a lady / ect', 'white trash / trailer park trash', 'effed your mom last night', 'cracker', 'fat', 'ugly', 'pimple-faced', 'can't get a date', 'live in your mother's basement', ect. I'd say most online / in-game insults are gender / race neutral, and there are a decent amount directed primarily at straight white male stereotypes. But again, that's missing the point. It's not straight white male gamers vs all other gamers, let's see who's suffered worse. The latter group most certainly has, and I think very few people deny it. And there's nothing wrong with highlighting the abuse, and we should be doing something about it. That's an interesting list. I don't disagree with where you are generally come from. I just think it is interesting to note that a large number of those seemingly "gender neutral" insults actually are implications of a loss of maleness (small penis, sexually useless, other men having their way with your women).
I didn't say everything in my list was gender neutral.
On March 09 2015 18:58 ninazerg wrote:
I have to say, there really isn't much variance in the amount of vitriol in RTS/FPS games as far as I can tell. I think every gaming community has their very own Clan X17 though. It's difficult to quantify the amount of harassment or types of harassment being exhibited, so I would say that I personally feel racism is a bigger issue than sexism.
I feel very lucky to have mostly been a part of small, respectful communities then.
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