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JK Rowling, again, and well spoken. I do indeed hope she writes another 10 Cormoran Strike novels, because I am happy to throw money her way. https://www.weltwoche.ch/ausgaben/2021-30/weltwoche-international/wi-jk-rowling-die-weltwoche-ausgabe-30-2021.html?fbclid=IwAR3pCXfwXAmZzXQUtGkl4Ciwxw6lp0n_DkQTRzYpTtoZaXjtQVhuD4Qfhhc
I used to love insulting men who started shit talking me. You lose and you should get back in the kitchen, you win and you’re a fat bitch with no life. How original they are!
Chris Hansen said the anonymity is what the men admitted allowed them to move the conversations to sex and it’s the same with gaming. No one knows you so you’re free to be the piece of shit you are in your heart.
I've never encountered this because I don't play lobby games, just mmorpgs. What's ruined gaming for me (aside from general decline in quality) are TIMs prancing around with female avatars, and the fear of meeting people who may seem nice, but turn out to be TIMs or TRAs.
Honestly, I think one thing you could do for yourself is start recording & posting highlights on youtube. Like this! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jL0aVqVslSE
I can't say anything that'd help. These people are pathetic, and dense. Half of them are human shaped pieces of trash, and the other half lack empathy. Nothing has ever come across their smooth brains that'd cause them to know how it'd feel to be treated the way they treat people like yourself. I think the reason we see so much bad behavior online from men is because they are genuinely stupid af. Irl, maybe they'd realize how shitty they're being, once they see the facial expression of someone they've just hurt. Their tiny brains rationalize their behavior, because their egos make them the center of their own world. Meaning nothing they ever do could ever be wrong.
At least I'd like to believe it's 50/50. I think decent men are probably turned off by nasty behavior and might be less inclined to hang out in games like that... so it might be a shallow pool filled with horrible people. But I really don't know, because I'm aware now that men genuinely hate women, whereas women tend not to hate men, not nearly in the same way.
Gamer men are extremely toxic towards women. I guess it's anonymity + majority men = that behaviour. Men tend to have a mob mentality
I guess the only consolation is to know that they will die alone and unloved. And it's not just my guess, it's actual statistics. Gamer dudes are so alone, depressed, without a purpose. Their lives are waste of oxygen, nobody actually cares about them and they hate themselves. It's sad to see really, keep in mind that the more hateful they are, the more pathetic their lives are.
Yeah most of them are worthless scrotes, I'm sure that they're all porn addicts as well.
I play LoL and have a group of IRL friends I usually play with. Failing that, I play the less competitive game modes and can usually sense when I'm placed with other women; there's a whole bunch of encouragement and rallying that comes out in chat.
I've since learned that pretty much all the girls I've seen on Reddit prefer that mode AND all the girls in my mixed-gender friend group prefer it as well.
Beyond that and non-LoL games, I have no advice, just deepest empathies.
I respect you for being brave enough to play LoL, lol. I've heard legends of the toxicity. My experiences have mostly been with Overwatch. Appreciate your comment!
Thanks, the mode I mentioned is called ARAM, and it's seriously not bad. I'll make occasional bad plays and type out "my b" after dying and will usually get either silence or someone outright typing back "no worries, it's ARAM :)". And when there are flamers, the rest of the team either tells the flamer to chill or supports the victim.
That said, the main game mode can definitely be toxic. Basically, the higher up the "seriousness" pole you go, the worst it is. Like, in order from chill to least chill:
EDIT: Also, LoL uses mostly text chat so I can stay gender anonymous <3
I like to make it clear I'm female when someone's raging at me so they say something reportable. It's rare but when you get that instant feedback report 😚👌 mwuah chef's kiss
Honestly, I'll lean in and say I'm anything to bait the bannable speech. Borderline racism? I'm black. I'm Latino. You hate me? Antisemitism? I'm Jewish. Come on. Say it. Stop tip toeing around and let your shit flag fly. Let's get you off the fucking server.
Haha, that's fantastic. <3
And yeah, I haven't gotten personally raged at in a while (either it's been at someone else or THE ENTIRE TEAM somehow dragging this oh-so-amazing player down), but I play support so I'm usually able to go passive-aggressive and start giving all my heals and buffs to nicer players. :P
I don't play LoL so forgive me if I have no idea what I'm talking about, but does anyone know what it's like to play on the Chinese server vs. international servers? Apparently Chinese server is over 50% female for LoL specifically.
No worries, your question makes total sense. :)
Unfortunately, accounts are bound to a single region and it costs money to switch, so I've only stuck with the North American server. (Also ping time/lag is a big game affector, and I can only imagine how slow it'd be if I chose to be on the Chinese servers full-time while still stateside.) I'm definitely curious about it now that you've mentioned it though.
Yeah I don't play MOBAs but I was really surprised to find out that they're so popular with women in China and I'm so curious if that affects the toxic game dynamics. Some media I've seen suggests no and that women are still treated as 'lesser' players and less likely to play ranked there, but I still feel like it might change the overall game culture if there's such a high saturation of female players.
It's too bad that the 'games are for boys' thing is such an effective self-fulfilling prophecy. Male-dominated online environments are cesspits which drives women/girls away (or makes them maintain anonymity/pretend to be male) which means that games continue to be targeted twd males. I just wonder if once a critical mass of women is reached it can change the dynamics of the culture for the better.
Yep. Like I'd absolutely love to play some ranked games and see how I fall and gradually get better... but I don't want to deal with the abuse, so I stick with casual. :\
It's like I want to be competitive at times... but I'm also fully aware that it's a fucking video game. Key word = GAME
"Why do men in gaming love to pile on when one of them starts verbally abusing a woman? "
Hate to break it to you but the short answer is because they are men, and the long answer is because they are gamer men.
I think people are more likely to say the unpleasant stuff they think when other people are doing it too and if no one calls them out they are more likely to continue... Is there no way of reporting this behavior?
I do not play most games online ( the only exception being some cell phone games like Duel Links ) exactly because I know people like that are a thing and it would be bad for my mental health if I was exposed to them often... I just avoid online spaces where the moderators do not do anything about that stuff...
When I played WoW I only used my mic for friends. But because of male gamers I tend not to play online games.
....that was not helpful.
Male gamers suck. My sympathies.
Edit: I haven't played WoW in at least 12 years.
I haven't played WoW for at least a year now, but I feel like there are a lot more women who play now than before. I was much more into WoW about 4-5 years ago, and I used to voice chat a decent bit when running dungeons and raids and whatnot, and usually didn't get any men harassing me in the voice chat. But many times, there would also be women there, and people would surprisingly be decent. But it really is luck of the draw, and I've had plenty of other horrible experiences with men online in other games and online circles to make up for it, lol.
I find MMOs aren't as bad as the matchmaking type games. You tend to have bigger teams so more chance of there being several women, plus you tend to play in fixed groups.
Same here. The years I played WoW I actually met some really cool people and we remained friends after I stopped playing.
I feel that. I wish companies would permanently ban people who verbally abuse others in-game.
From what I understand, LoL is trying to cut down on that behavior. I'd report and report and report, and keep on reporting.
If I were playing LoL and posting on reddit for it, I'd be seriously tempted to start a list of naming names of those assholes.
Just noticed you were more familiar with overwatch. By all means, take down names and report their sorry asses. Acti-Blizzard is trying to prove they're attempting to clean house.
This is refreshing to hear! I definitely report people liberally. It's hard to know if they're even doing anything about it though. In OW occasionally (like maybe twice in the last 6 mos) I get a "Thank you for reporting" message upon login, and even then, one of those two was definitely from me and 4 teammates all reporting the 6th for racist remarks in text chat. That kind of shit is easy for them to verify and ban for because it's in text; voice chat, which is very necessary for some games is less easy to police.
I will definitely start taking down names in a word doc tho, that's a great idea.
I've heard some people on Reddit say that whenever they report a player on their own, they see the username continue to be unbanned, but if it's 3+ people on the team (LoL is 5v5) reporting, then the ban hammer falls more rapidly.
LoL also has been instituting an "honor" system where you can give teammates rewards for good behavior after the game. The way point are calculated are hidden to keep from gaming the system, but there are a few public knowledge things like "awarding a GG to a randomly-matched stranger counts for more points than someone in your friend group (to avoid toxic gamers awarding themselves)." And if your "honor" is too low then stuff like your chat is disabled until you play friendly enough to regain honor.
It... doesn't always work the best. Because it's only one award per game, occasionally toxic players who play a lot more than others will probably have higher scores than consistently kind players. (And the company who makes League came out a couple months with a report that basically said "it's hard to stop toxicity because 80+% of the players reported for toxic behavior are only toxic in 5% of their games; so it's unfair/impossible to punish them :(".)
Also, apparently players used to be able to "honor" enemy teammembers, but LoL removed it because too many people were honoring the worst players on the other team as a "thank you" for being so bad it let them win. :\
I have faced this as well...the truth is...there are males in gaming that want to kick women out because they are there to groom younger males into their woman hating circle using porn, wit, ridicule, shame etc.. You'd be surprised to learn, some of these men aren't straight either.
Men love anonymity in gaming because they can show their real colors. It's funny when you call it out they go ''b-b-b-but what about minecraft and stardew wholesomeness? UwU'' like shut the fuck up you know what we mean. Gaming is a toxic environment for women and it's been proven time after time.
I play Lord of the Rings Online. The game is 15 years old, so most of the other players are chill and supportive. It might be different with endgame content; I'm not at all a competitive player, so ymmv. It's a little dated for sure, but the landscapes are just lovely and you can either challenge yourself or just take it easy and enjoy the story line. It's still being expanded and updated, and the community is very much alive. It's just not the type of game that attracts the scrotes.
It's never going to change. It's 13 year old boys with anonymity and zero consequences. They're going to yell racial slurs, they're going to lose their minds if they hear the voice of a woman or a girl. This is what they do, this is what they are.
I hate men. Yes, all of them. Sorry, not sorry.
I think it's worth remembering that some are normal functional humans and don't deserve to be grouped with the others. But finding out is which ones they are is like walking up to wild bears and finding out which ones enjoy being petted and which ones bite your arm off. Don't care, don't want to find out.
It just isn't possible for women to play online games normally. You have to turn off voice chat, or you have to find other women to play with. There's no other option, the nature of male gamers is to spew hatred. As long as voice chat in games exists that's what 99% of it will be.
"I think it's worth remembering that some are normal functional humans and don't deserve to be grouped with the others."
These are also the least likely to want to play in toxic male-dominated online games though. I find that decent male behaviour is heavily correlated with having hobbies/passions/skills, high social aptitude and spending most of your life offline. The more online a male is the more likely he is to be the worst kind of male and actually decent men with morals don't enjoy toxic misogynistic environments either.
Except it most definitely isn't just "13 year old boys". These guys are in their 20s and 30s too. I just think game devs need to do more to combat this shit, even if it comes down to somehow "rewarding" reporting abusive behavior. Women make up a decently large chunk of the player base of many online games so you'd think they'd want to make their customers' experiences better. Le sigh
some are normal functional humans
Who don’t do anything to hold their disgusting cur peers accountable and instead start notallmenning when you share your experience. Just as bad.
Hey op I'm in my 50s and have been "gaming" since Pong. I've played fps games and mp online games since their inception, on all formats. So I know the toxicity of which you speak. I currently mostly play cod vanguard and played overwatch for years starting in beta. So ya I know how OW is heavier than some games on voice. My advice, do your thing and just mute anything you don't like. Don't take it personally. One thing is for sure in these types of games, bad players are quick to blame someone else for a loss whereas good players who even if they very clearly carried the game will often defer praise for the win to someone on the team other than themselves (i.e. "great job healers", etc). Point being, and I think there was a study that backed this up, but...the better a guy is at the game, the less toxic he is to other players on the team, but especially to women.
Happy to play with you sometime, dm me for my blizzard id.
One of these days I will make a convincing female to male voice changer to help with this exact issue.
Let me know when you do. This seriously seems like the only answer other than just never using my mic again lol
I learned not to speak in online gaming back when the original xbox came out, keep it on mute and to hell with them......except in Gears of War where I annoyed everyone with my Boomer impersonations which freaked people out, I was good at doing Boomer.
I'm sorry that happens to you. I usually try to avoid ever voice chatting in games, if I can, and type instead. It's worked fine in tbe couple of games I like to play. I know it can be harder for other ones. I've had decent luck with a couple of the ones where I've voice chatted, usually because there are other women at times, and/or we didn't have any problems at that point in the game.
I'm really shy anyways so I never have voice chat on. The few times I actually did talk in voice chat, I luckily never got any abuse, just stuff like "iT's A GirL!!!" + awkward pick-up lines.. I think the only way to really avoid abuse is to not talk, but it makes your performance suffer and even then doesn't completely stop it: My in-game name is kinda feminine sounding so sometimes I have guys just moaning my name 😐 (this is in overwatch btw, which i think is still pretty tame compared to other FPS games)
yeah, I don't do MMO's ever for all the reasons you said..not worth it. Or make sure you know the person IRL and play with them.
I used to play Eve Online and there was a bit of that, but for the most part the boys were ok. I had more of an issue with getting hit on than insulted, and usually the FCs would shut that shit down pretty fast. I stopped playing in 2017 though so maybe the temperature of online gaming has changed a bit since then. Could also be that Eve has had a very male dominated player base and hence they do not find women as threatening. Right now I only do online gaming with someone i met on Eve and he's pretty chill.
If there are enough gamers on Ovarit maybe start a weekly session with just women?
I love video games too. Sadly I learned to not use the mic or a female sounding name in online gaming when I was young.
I think men and boys feel like video games are “theirs” so they hate women and girls imposing in their “space.” But when I sought out female only game groups, guess who wanted to be in those too? TIMs.
Also when TIMs think it’s “validation” to receive sexist abuse in online games, it makes me so annoyed too. It something that shouldn’t happen in the first place.
Omfg don't even get me started on the fucking TIMs. I joined some "Lady Gamer" groups on Facebook and literally in every single group there's some AGP posting pics of their hairy selves in dresses with the caption "am I allowed to be here UwU 👉👈" and it's exhausting.
Like no, please leave. I'm looking to game with women, not gross pervs.
I can't stand the 'Idk if I'm allowed!!' When they know full well that the handmaids will go 'omg of course!! You're a real woman OwO'
They. Always. Do. The women in these groups trip over themselves to virtue signal how welcoming and inclusive they are. It's so over-the-top sometimes I view it as a threat toward any possible TERFs--like, "we dare you to say anything about this stunning and brave woman".
One of the guys has pigtails, a beard, and a dress and always posts pics of himself holding a controller or something vaguely related to gaming, and the handmaidens in the comments are all oooh-ing and ahhh-ing. He never replies to any comments or has any further discussion. It's obvious he just gets off on posting pics of himself as a lay-dee.
These handmaidens are the very same pick-me women who will join males in calling you a bitch if you don't kiss their asses.
I’m really sorry that I don’t remember the name of it as I don’t game myself, but I remember reading about some discord gaming servers that are truly women only, and you have to pass a voice test to get in. I hope you are able to find one of them, or set up one yourself. Otherwise could you game without the mic or use voice distortion?