Just saw a GAF thread that depresses me (title NSFW)

Just saw this thread from a user at GAF. It's called:

"Stop asking me to show you my tits"

I've been wanting to post on this subject for some time now as it is something that directly affects someone I love.

Last night my wife was playing a multiplayer game (Blops3 zombies) by herself and had to say those exact words in the title, not just once, but multiple times until she was harassed to the point that she just turned off her PS4 in anger. I asked her why she didn't just leave? She said that she didn't think she should have to, especially when she was close to breaking her wave record in that match.

The night before we were playing the same game together and she was explaining how to get the pack a punch open when some fuckwad told her to "Shut up you stupid bitch" for no other reason than she was a girl playing a game and knew what she was talking about. If that person had been in the room with us, I would be posting this from prison.

Then there are the countless friend requests and messages that are either outright harassment or terrible attempts at pick up lines. How fucking pathetic are you tools?

She routinely gets happy messages like:

"Go back to the kitchen whore."

"I'm gonna cum in your ass."

"Friend me. Unless you are fat and ugly."

"DTF?"

and much much worse.

To all the guys out there that treat her just like you treat me. I thank you.

To the rest, well, I'm sorry my wife is good at shooters and often shows you guys up. I am proud of her for not backing down, for not changing her feminine screen name and for continuing to use voice chat even though you treat her like shit. I hope one day your balls drop and realize what a real man actually is because what you are now is sub-human gutter trash.

Why are female gamers so likely to be harassed in this medium? The beauty of escapism that gaming provides often allows too many people to berate females in the medium for no reason other than it's so easy to get away with it. It's infuriating and I fucking hate the thought of introducing my significant other to the multiplayer side of games only for her to be harassed for her gender.

Humanity sucks.

I once heard boys will pick on girls they like the most. They will be mean to those they like. But people love to troll online, its just one of those things. I used to get harassed some also cause i was good at gaming, some people just like to hate. I havnt experienced it in awhile though since ive been gaming on my Wii U and 3DS mainly, but its also not as bad as it use to be on PC. Not sure about Xbox and PS4, but PC use to be super bad back in the day, but not as much now.

A way to fix this is to start holding people accountable for what they say. Make it to where you can post on their profile and call them out or something. If someone harasses me, i would just go on their profile and call them out. Id be like, GG beach!

Thats gamers for you

It does suck but welcome to the internet, although sadly it's not just a female thing (sorry but they aren't the only people to get harassed on the internet), try being a "noob" or someone new in a Moba game (even MMOs have the same problem, just not as much) where you can be called/harassed waaay worse, hell I've even witnessed death threats or the typical "-insert mom- rude comment". Hell when I play games that use mics, the first thing I do is mute every mic cause honestly I don't want to hear a little punk ass 17 year old talking about ******** everyones mom.

That's the crappy thing about the internet, people can hide behind a monitor and be anonymous, while if they said that crap in the real world they would get fired or get their asses handed to them.

@DarthaPerkinjan: that's honestly as lame as a reason there is for explaining why this harassment happens.

Probably because sex is used to sell everything from cologne and beer to cars. Men earn money as statistics go, and thus sexual urges are exploited. Many women kindly play along to make their skrilla. TLDR: Money.

Male sexuality is two things in the modern day. To be exploited, or utterly repugnant. Pick a side and Tumblr away.

Easy to be an asshole online.

This, too.

I guess the only alternative is to have a generic screen name? That they wouldn't know the gender of the player.

It might suck, but best way to fix this is to let us continue to evolve as gamers. I love trolling, i understand some can take it to far, but thats life and the beauty of the internet. Back when gamers started out in the 70s and 80s they were harassed for just being gamers period. And i mean harassed way worst then just being called names anonymously on the internet. But we keep fighting and evolved into what we are today, it made us stronger. And you couldnt just mute kick or signout back then, you had to deal with that shat daily.

No one likes being harassed to the point of it being annoying, thats why i think we should continue to find ways to deal with it. Like mute buttons, ability to kick people out etc. Even Nintendo has good ways to combat online harassment, its not the greatest, but it can work, you can use emotes for basic communication. I also dont like the people who command to much online, they try to tell you every single thing to do, it use to drive me crazy. Like, damn son, just let me play!

Its good to talk about this stuff though, makes it easier to find solutions for everyone to be happy.

It's the internet, it's never going to change, accept this or leave.

@nyadc: terrible, but I didn't expect more from you

Its just immaturity. Trust me if she would bite back with some quick comebacks like "I would but your penis is too small", people would respect it and laugh and stop.

It's easy for these kids to disrespect others online because there aren't any consequences. I don't doubt for 1 sec they wouldn't act like that if the person was sitting in the same room. It's a shame really.

Unacceptable behavior. It all comes from anonymity, plain and simple. I defy any of these pathetic people who are sending messages like these to women, whether over online game networks, or other forms of internet communication, to actually have the guts to say something like that to a woman face to face. They are just taking advantage of the veil of anonymity that the internet provides. Anonymity means you're not going to be held to account. You can get away with anything, because you never did it in the first place.

On the other side of the equation, anonymity also reduces other people to abstractions, to just screen names. Humans gain the ability to empathize via faces, and most of the internet removes that. For a lot of people, the women they are harassing aren't actual people, they're just screennames that they can bully.

The final part of the equation is, of course, the misogyny and sexism inherent in gaming as a hobby. I don't want to get into the how and why of it- the fact of the matter is, it's there. Inherently, the industry is sexist, on every possible front, and this instance is just another example of that.

It's a shame. People are scum.

There are groups of gamers are social rejects that lack basic people skills.

Gamers can be a rough bunch with eachother, and it only gets worse with a female, who they feel does not belong in thier 'masculine' hobby. Also the media likes to portray alot of women today as nothing more then worthless sex objects (see Miley Cyrus, pornstars etc) and those with weak minds have allowed this to affect their treatment of females.

And it depends on the game your playing. If your playing Call of Duty, I wouldnt expect the most mature online crowd., for example.

which pretty much everyone on SW should probably have realized by now

News flash (for some of you) but this behavior isn't relegated to gaming or gamers. Quit playing up a grand social issue as something that is on our shoulders to correct. Plenty of people act like apes freely out in public. So, why wouldn't they online?

I've been told to sell my Xbox because I suck at Halo multiplayer, some people take gaming so seriously, I dread going online because I know I am not that great and feel I will be abused for trying to have a bit of fun. I still play online because I do have fun with it, playing with friends is fun also, unfortunately it seems that most people only like numbers and stats and a poor player can ruin that for them, so they get abusive, a shame really.

@charizard1605: well said. I really wish one of the big three would do something about it

Meh, then just continue to have fun. Or if people act like assholes, just start playing in the most dickish way possible (camping, noob tubes, knifing, etc)

I have witnessed that, but I've also witnessed the opposite where people basically worshiped my friend's gf for being good at H3, or in COD4 where they treated my daughter with respect because they knew shew was young.

Wish we could do what Jay and Silent Bob did at the end of Strike Back. lol.

It's an awful thing and not something that should just be ignored or attributed to being on the internet. Sure, it's reality that people are just pricks online but it's not an excuse; I'm amazed that it's still as frequent as it is today whether it's against gender or ethnicity or whatever else.

I'm not a psychologist so I don't know firmly why people continue to do it. Anonymity is a crazy thing that helps people let go of their insecurities and feel like there's no consequences for their actions. It also makes them feel powerful. You have an accent? I can mock it and there's nothing you can do about it cause I have all the power; if you even try to retaliate or talk to me I'll meme your ass and tell you to cry moar.

Trolls are way too damn predictable and boring, but that doesn't make their actions any less obnoxious and, oftentimes, disgusting.

Or you know, she could have muted them.

Trash talk kind of goes hand in hand with shooters, but yeah she definitely should have if she was getting that upset.

There need to be better moderation policies. Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Valve either pay lip service to the idea of moderation, or are more concerned with cheats and exploits. But there needs to be an infrastructure in place for harsher moderations: I'm not talking just account bans or even IP bans, a five year old can circumvent those with very little effort, just full on ban the console's MAC address, make it impossible for that console to be able to play online at all.

If there were a true deterrent, people might even think twice about acting like this- unfortunately, right now, there is no consequence to their action, and no weight attached to it. Put simply, harsh punishment is necessary to deter this kind of behavior in the future. The sad part is that punishment is necessary to instill what should be basic human decency in the first place, but here we are.

Let's not generalize here and say it is only Females that are harassed. If you let it get to you that much, maybe you should get a WiiU? The worst someone can say to in MarioKart is a canned " I'll beat you next time!"

And you know what? Do we even know if these people identify as gamers or would be identified as such if we met them? How many dudebro twatwaffles come into System Wars waving their "weeaboo" name-calling around just because their mommy got them an XBox 360 back in 2006 with Call of Duty and now think they're a gamer?

How sure are we about this? Why are we thrown under the bus when we know that there is a huge swath of casual bros out there who call themselves gamer simply because it's the cool thing to do? I am sick to death of the harassing D-Bags of the world if not but for the simple fact that people like me will be here long after they have moved on from gaming to some other fad and we all get labled as basement dwelling loser dweebs once more.. Add mysoginist pigs to the litany of things.

If swimming upstream against this makes me the asshole, hey, it's nothing I haven't been called since 1986 anyways.

Why should she have to change what she plays, and what she plays on? Just because she is a woman? Is the best answer to another fellow human being harassed horrifically that a lot of us in this thread can come up with 'shit happens, deal with it, or get out?' Because that's even sadder than something like this happening in the first place.

It's having to put up with that kind of contentiousness that leaves me not to play with headsets most the time in public games. After having touched on the comfort zone of party chatting for years I rarely want to go into public spaces again with the headset to listen to trolls, racists, homophobes, sexists, or general low life scum. People that play the real popular, highly competitive mainstream competitive online MP games are among the worse of them.

Funny, I was watching some video the other day where the people there pretty much said the same thing, after last gen using party chat they see very little desire to want to jump into a pubic in-game chat anymore and just don't bother.

It's this that also makes games like Destiny suck for raid features and certain pre-assembled fireteam missions rather than making missions that can rely on on-the-fly cooperative matchmaking. I really don't want to go making temp friends in games for momentary convenience.

What if I told you that even though I am a white cis-gendered hetero male, I avoid playing games like that with the chat on because I don't want to hear the D-Bags? Just, completely of my own free will.

The Gauls are at the gates of Rome, and have been for some time. It really shouldn't be news to anyone at this point.

Which is fine, you choose to not play those games with voice chat on. She would be forced to not play with voice chat on even if she wants to, because of how abusive the others are behaving. See the difference?

You aren't really anonymous when online gaming, though. Sony and Microsoft have your credit card information, name, and address. These consoles should have a button to record a few seconds of conversation and an easy way of reporting abuse. Abusers should be banned permanently. Nobody would miss them.

Main reason why I don't play games on line. I do not want to deal or hear those kids!

@lamprey263: Some of the trolling is awesome though, like that Obama dude who harasses people on the internet. That dude is funny as shat. Or that dude from Counter Strike who does the therapy and weird science facts on people all the time, he harasses people like crazy. Its a double edge sword, so many different types of people get harassed online. Even kids get harassed and harass a lot.

But its still no where near as bad as it use to be. People are more respectful now, plus we have features that help out more. We will continue to evolve like always and deal with these things better. Censoring people is not the way though, it never has been and it never will be.

Honestly, if you want to know...

I think that it would be cool if someone made a website where users could record a snippet of gameplay where they can show who the user is that is harassing them and their username. Something completely outside the context of the respective online system, because we all know that these accounts affect the companies bottom line and they will not use a heavy hand when it comes to policing this behavior.

So, the answer to me (and has been for quite some time), would be for someone who really cares about this topic to make a gaming-centered social network that puts the douchebags out on blast. The fact that gaming, as a hobby, is one of the LAST facets of online culture to have such a website has frankly been a comical talking point to me when it comes to the subject of social justice warriors and the supposed need for said tools in the first place. That, I suppose, is a topic of conversation for a different day.

Just my take on the issue. Look at me, a complete anti-SJW Sarkeesian hater to the tenth degree, but I seem to have a better and more realistic approach to getting results than half the people who want to reinvent the wheel over this social evil. What I can say, is I believe people should be held accountable for their behavior. I will always be for that.

You're not anonymous to the service provider, but you are to the other users.

I do agree with what you said about banning them, however.

Still waiting for Feminists to vouch for Muslim women in 3rd world countries and talk about what's happening in Sweden.

Feminists are whiny, selfish entitled little fruits. And Male feminists are just irrationally guilty feeling spineless jellyfish.

And yeah, this behavior is nasty. But if a Woman wants a polite conversation, I personally wouldn't look for it in CoD's anonymous chat. I turned off chat when I played Black ops, because of these rejects.

I've grown rather numb to what anyone can say about me online so I'm probably not the best person to give advice on this subject but really part of what make gaming online so entertaining is how awful things can get sometimes.

I realize that sounds entirely absurd but there's beauty in the occasional chaos, so really I'd hate if we had more restrictions on expressing ourselves, even if it's at times misogynistic bullshit. Someone mentioned party chat earlier being a good solution, game with friends I guess because there certainly are a lot of bastards out there.

The issue being some of the people who play video games only know how to play video games, and seem to be oblivious to other factors that culminate into a proper human being.The anonymity doesn't help matters either.

With that said, some people don't deserve to be bunched up into that kind of group. I've had my fair share of online experiences where there's civility regardless of gender. There's just always going to be that bottom-of-the-barrel scumbag.

Solution to what? The internet being pricks? There isn't one, the very nature of the internet makes it difficult for basic harassment, shit most people don't exactly call a cop when they meet a racist **** at a 7-11 or something. Point is you got ass hurt over people pointing out a group of gamers (as in a select group, not the whole) are social rejects, which is a reality, reading comprehension isn't hard. Beyond that the most Sony and Microsoft or any gaming company can do is perma bans if someone reports harassment, which should be a fucking thing. You have license to pay for your product, your service, be a dick to other service holders, should be grounds for suspension of said service and alike. Voice stuff? Can't really manage that.

It's the same thing with things like doxing on the internet, modern law enforcement isn't in a position to do anything with it. You create an actual crime division dedicated to this type of stuff, with some global, they'll learn a trick or two, and you'll have the internet equivalent of a speeding ticket or worse.

Either way you slice it, you pretending "dudebros" aren't gamers is just as bad as those "dudebros" calling people weeaboos. Never mind an actual solution lol. Was that cute enough for you sunshine?

That's the thing, it's so hard to think of especially when your rule, however strict or lenient it is, would mostly affect your main business, 18-40 males.

I had a small wish, Sony just stops PSX for one or two minutes and has a message with Adam Boyes or Kaz Harai talking about not discriminating people, or at least not fucking harassing them (since the former is so hard for many), for their gender.

Like muting people, I get, but that's the @ReadingRainbow4 lazy ass answer. This shit shouldn't happen in the first place.

My wife has had the same treatment but with added racial slurs for good measure, its the main reason i dont bother with online gaming anymore.

It seems to me that most of the abuse comes from internet 'gangstas', people that in real life are scared of even their own shadow but once behind the protection/shadow of a keyboard/controller suddenly become these tough nut assholes because theres no consequences for their cowardly actions.

Out in the real world these are the people that walk around everywhere with their heads down afraid to look anyone square in the eye let alone actually say anything to them.

She isn't being forced to do anything. No one said she has to move to a WiiU, but if this online abuse gets to her, that is an option. I don't think it should be up to Sony or Xbox to protect peoples feelings or censor anyone, You can't control everyone's actions. If you tried you would be a Fascist.

You can only control your actions. So how about put people on mute, ignore messages from randoms and realize the world has plenty of people you won't like? I do this all the time myself.

How random people where ever able to message her in the first place is a problem though. No one is able to message me with Nintendo unless i give them permission. And maybe the game should be set up to not allow trash talking like with Heroes of the Storm. You can talk to your teammates, but not your opponents. This helps prevent trash talking instead of helping promote it.

Is there a report function? If not there really should be.