Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

There are tons of people on ILX that love video games but no one wants to claim the poisoned fruit of "gamer" other than you. Does that mean nothing?

Look, I work in an industry that has at least partially pulled itself out of this cesspool in the last 20 years, if somebody wants to write an article about the death of the "guitar dude" despite being technically a prime specimen of guitar dude I am all for it.

I don't know what that means. It's bizarre. SPECULATION: I think we have a bunch of people who probably until very recently thought of themselves of "gamers" and as this clusterfuck has blown up they've stopped identifying w/ the term bc they've started to believe it means something they hadn't thought they had signed onto. I think they believe that bc the discourse has been very effectively hijacked by so-called "gamers" and the /gaming media/. xp

Like "gamer" is a shit term, it's like claiming people who like food are foodies. I eat and enjoy food and enjoy cooking it, which is a normal pursuit and it's fine if someone thinks of me as a foodie or w/e but self-identification would be weird because it's something I do, not my identity

These dudes think they're Ryan Gosling in Drive as "the driver" when in fact their defining characteristic isn't playing games, it is being dickholes.

Yo Mordy how many gaming conventions have you been to

0

I have met gamers my friend, and you are no gamer

the hours i've spent in my life playing video games beg to differ

Wait hold up, now gaming media is to blame?

well duh - gaming media has been creating bro gamer culture forever. i remember reading the most sexist shit in gaming magazines when i was growing up. they taught that culture to their readership.

i wish i could remember the magazine i once bought in a train station that was literally Maxim for video games. i think the rating system was on a scale from zero to having a beer and a woman sitting on your lap. odious shit. like i know they didn't invent Duke Nukem, but there's no reason they had to identify so hard w/ the most juvenile part of the industry when franchises like civilization + sim city has spanned the history of video games.

That is

A - uncomfortably close to the shade these assholes are throwing
B - weirdly analogous to the Fox News "lamestream media" approach

These dudes use the term like a banner, how is gaming media to blame for that? Should they be inventing a new name for them?

Like you can read a shitload of books but until you join book club or write book reviews you are not part of "reader culture"

btw I bought every issue of "Video Games & Computer Entertainment" religiously and then subscribed to GamePro and later was all over some FPS websites circa 2000, which is where I am coming from

yes - they should call them bro gamers

The term is fucked, Mordy. You standing for "gamer" will change nothing.

i disagree - it'll be rehabilitated in a minute. ppl who play lots of games will want to call themselves gamers. they always have.

Gaming media has changed. Dramatically. These gamers of the modern day don't like that. It's part of their dumb as balls platform where everyone is a social justice warrior because they acknowledge that non Cheeto fingered white hetero dudes play games now. Blaming the media of now for that is fucking ridiculous.

I don't want to call myself a gamer

Like there was a period of time, probably over a hundred years ago, where "Zionist" was a pretty chill, homeland for a people term (history probably would show me otherwise, but run with it). Due to the timescale of the internet and video games, you are showing up in 2014 and saying "what do you have against zionists" when the popular North American perception is fucked up Christian evangelicals wanting to bring on the apocalypse

lol

And honestly I never have. That's why this "don't steal my identification!!!" approach makes literally no sense to me.

Xposts apparently

And you saying it will be rehabilitated completely undermines your point that it is a neutral term!

well obv it's not a neutral term in this conversation! i'm not an idiot.

It's not a neutral term in any other conversation at the moment either, just FYI

first they came for the gamer bros, and I laughed my ass off

i bet u if i go out into my world of non-gamers and ask them what a gamer is 99% will tell me someone who plays games.

Even if that is true, so what?

of that 99%, 80% will add "who live in their mother's basement"

Haha yes

Your entire argument has been that it is not a loaded term that most video game consumers don't really relate to

btw most video game consumers are women over 30 or w/e, who just play some games

do I do not think your world is representative, and the question you should ask is "are you a gamer, as in a term of self-identification"

DJP also otm

Go ahead and take a sec and look at the first 50 image search results for "gamer" and get back to me about your thoughts about how the public sees the term.

now i'm worried i'm going to find out i'm also not a stoner bc i've never been to a cannabis convention

apparently the public views 'stoner' very different than i do according to GIS

I prefer the term "hardcore gamer" myself. sounds so cool.

i wish i could find that picture of joyce carol oates playing n64

this weekend i'm gonna ask my DS-addicted mum if she's a gamer, might get in trouble tho

mordy is actually right here guys and this - "Like you can read a shitload of books but until you join book club or write book reviews you are not part of "reader culture"" - makes a v dodgy active/passive distinction but even if you take it, it wld be enough to prove mordy's point, as there are obv all sorts of oddball heterodox games being made, funded & reviewed

mb we can talk about small g-gamers so that ppl can keep their handy pejoratives. I think underlying mordy's point is that the current dominant mainstream culture is younger than the term it's claiming & will be outlived by it, so it's questionable to cede it temporarily

this all seems strange to me because I don't play (and have never played) first person shooters, which is where I think the sexist/racist bullshit resides mostly? like there is this parallel world of video games where people care about war shooters and the like, and I can tell from tv ads that those games are really crazy popular and cash cows...but then I read one of the "the end of gamers" linked here & was confused.

& I play a lot of video games! & have for like 30+ years.

I dunno I watch my kids play tons of games too & it's all minecraft & puzzle games & it's not just my influence there, that's what the kids at school play. maybe when my boy hits 14-16 he'll want to play call of duty or whatever but I dunno, that just seems like a dumb subculture to me.

I have an idea

Why don't we call all the non-FPS playing, mechanical keyboard not-having, daily showering, plaid-wearing gamers "indie gamers"

Not only could you separate yourself from the bad gamers but you could also reclaim and rehabilitate the word 'indie'

yeah I mean I get that fps gaming, especially online fps, is a cesspool, and that it's a cash thing, not trying to be coy here

but indie? I guess nowadays that's right, but I was in high school when Wolfenstein came out so I'd already been gaming a long time, and that shit was new. and then I never got a playstation or playstation 2 so I missed when that stuff became mainstream. this is just me being old I get this.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

pretty much

maybe there are sexxxay minecraft mods, I don't want to know

I don't want to call myself a gamer

― you must have me confused with my stacked as fuck and imposing friend (jjjusten), Friday, September 5, 2014 12:02 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Your entire argument has been that it is not a loaded term that most video game consumers don't really relate to

btw most video game consumers are women over 30 or w/e, who just play some games

do I do not think your world is representative, and the question you should ask is "are you a gamer, as in a term of self-identification"

― ⌘-B (mh), Friday, September 5, 2014 12:10 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yuuup most people just play some games but its not their lifestyle

very indicative of modern life when people strongly identify with their chosen form of entertainment

this all seems strange to me because I don't play (and have never played) first person shooters, which is where I think the sexist/racist bullshit resides mostly?

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/29/meet-the-sexist-racist-pigs-o.html

Perhaps weirdly, I'm on Mordy's side here. I don't think he's arguing that the "gamer" misogynistwhitemen demographic doesn't exist, or isn't a vocal and visible problem. I read his argument more that people who play games passionately, and spend craploads of money and time on them, are already diverse. This shifts the viewpoint from "gamers (for whom read misogynist white men) are under attack from evil outside forces" to "gamers (for whom read everyone who cares about games) are sick of being represented by misogynist white men and are attempting to represent themselves more fairly, in both games and the surrounding culture". It's positioning Sarkeesian et al as an immanent critique rather than an extrinsic critic.

oh yeah, fighting games, I played those now & then, and yeah, they're also sexist racist shitpits

but yeah, video game playing as a ~~lifestyle~~ is so weird to me

Also my WoW guild split in half because the players recruited to push us through content chased most of the women out of the guild via unending harassment, culminating in a bunch of horrible shit said to one of the founding members including the accusation that the only reason she was in the guild in the first place was because her boyfriend was our main tank. (Note: the accusation was not put nearly this nicely.)

Just constant belittling, n-bombs, insults, unwanted advances... raids became interminable and I was on the verge of quitting when the ppl I liked broke off and invited me into their own smaller guild. AND, the guys behind this were nowhere near the worst people on the server.