Comment by muse900 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by muse900 | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

As a kid I grew up playing video games. Around the age of 13 I switched on to online video games. I spent too much time on games like w3/wow etc. As a kid being exposed to such an environment wasn't good at all.

After years, now being in my 30's I can totally understand how online gaming changed me and my interactions vs people that haven't played online games etc are completely different. I used to have a complete disregard about anything in life, I wouldn't mind saying to someone 'get cancer', which is quite awful. Only now that I grew up and reduced my online presence by a lot, also understood that life is life and games are games, I understand how awful of a thing is to wish cancer to someone or even joke about that. People losing families and friends over that thing and I used to just have it as a word.

I can't blame it on my parents either. They tried their best and they gave me everything they could. If it wasn't for them I would be a total loss I guess. Its just that they couldn't stop me from playing videogames or convert my life into videogames. That thing was like a junk during my teens.

That said online games definitely helped me mature as well, I mean its not all bad, I definitely got some good values out of interacting in online video games, and some bad.

Just wanted to bring my personal experience on the matter and what you commented.

Honestly, I feel like you might be overestimating the degree to which this is specific to video games.

I certainly recognize the sort of behavior you're describing, and it makes intuitive sense that online gaming would worsen it with anonymity and dehumanized opponents.

But in practice? As a teenager I watched people say "I hope you get cancer" or worse on the field, in the locker room, or even in the cafeteria. Or jump straight to knowingly personal mockery, or just beat somebody up because it was fun to hurt them. And it doesn't necessarily go away when people get out of school. "That guy likes a different sports team than me, let me tell him how he should die painfully" is something people think and act on every day.

It's still quite possible that online gaming sparks this behavior from times and moments it would happen otherwise. I certainly don't mean to presume anything about you personally - you know your own story better than any generalization.

But as a social pattern? I worry that we're mostly upset about online gaming and cyberbullying because they're new and different. We tolerate an amount of cruelty and violence outside of those settings that I think we're very slow to acknowledge that maybe the digital harm has just made more visible something we've been dealing with for a long time.

I think a plurality of kids in middle and high school go through this phase whether they play video games or not. It's a normal part of growing up. You've got lots of new hormones and frustrations in life. It's a time of testing all sorts of social boundaries. I wonder to what extent gaming increases this phenomenon from the norm, or whether it's just a different avenue through which these things are expressed.

I have a rather vivid memory from age 15 of someone tossing off a "your mom" joke to someone whose mother had just died. It was, obviously, a terrible moment.

And it was far from the only thing of that sort that happened. I remember really upsetting people on a couple of occasions because I thought about the likely, harmless consequence of what I was saying, and didn't consider whether it could cut some people much deeper.

None of us were taught to do this by gaming online. Honestly, I'm doubtful that gaming teaches cruelty any more than team sports or school cafeterias do. I get that it's depersonalizing and people say cruel things, but it feels like a boogeyman given how much actual violence gets ignored at that age.

It's worth noting that all of this behavior is normal and healthy. It's part of socialization to learn how far you can push. Some back and forth teasing will be better for you and enjoyable for everyone, too much will make you an outcast. Additionally, this is a part of establishing or figuring out your position in the social dominance hierarchy.

I believe this comment is turning an issue of sexism into an issue of impoliteness that's developed around the culture of gaming, and I think that's a particularly toxic viewpoint.

Rather than addressing the real fact that women are treated as sexual objects by men generally, whether in thought or anonymous action in message chat boxes, this sort of comment turns it into an issue of "polite conversation". To me it seems as an (although it seems inadvertent) attempt to divert the attention from the real issue towards a non issue of "poor taste in jokes".

I still like particularly dark, demented, and a "punching down humor".

I've always felt a certain level of dishonesty amongst individuals who use polite discourse as a means of communication. There also seems to be a hint of classism in maintaining polite discourse.

I really dislike comments like this because all it’s doing is counting “isms” that are subjective and vaguely detectable, in response to someone sharing their personal story. It adds nothing to the conversation other than to shame and make people clam up and not share anymore, which doesn’t help anyone. It’s bullying.

I wasn’t counting isms, the article is about the treatment of people in anonymous chats based on gender, where women and particularly good looking women are treated more poorly. This Is about sexism, not about gamers learning to be mean to all people online.

I’m accurately identifying what the article’s subject is, how the commenter’s comment is only tangentially related, distracting and really missing the point. It’s a valid critique of the comment. Critiques can’t be expected to be padded, because it might make someone feel bad that they were wrong. This is illogical and anti-science.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com