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Comment by kook_throwaway | Hacker News Reader

>It's still common for men to talk down to women on video games, to the point where the overwhelming majority of women do not use voice comms or make their gender known.

Gamers talk down to everyone on video games and have since they have been invented. This sounds like a new group of people entering an existing space and not understanding the dynamic (namely incessant shittalking). I can't even count how many strangers have not so kindly informed me of their sexual adventures with my parents. Am I missing something here?

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Sorry, should've been more specific.

It's not trash talk. I can handle trash talk. It's stuff like "Ah, a f_cking girl. Cool guys, now we are going to lose", before the round even starts, or "Get back to the kitchen, B_TCH" or just harassing me until I leave the game, either through team-killing or preventing me from playing.

And if everyone is "behaving", I get treated differently in PUGs than just another team member. I don't want that. I don't want special attention or treatment. And then you get harassed for your social media or phone number or get incessant in-game messages or get asked if you're hot or some other variation of thing that isn't "Yo, you, we are doing X, Y, Z. Sound good?" like you are just part of the team.

Just wanted to say, as a male, I had this exact experience. I was playing Pavlov VR using my wife's account. Steam profile avatars float next to people in that game, so people assumed I was female. I didn't have a mic, so I couldn't correct them. A group of people started repeatedly asking whether I was female, not for any purpose other than "hurr durr female," and then ultimately hunted me down. I forget exactly what the game was (there are custom games, so it changes from map to map) but it was exactly the feeling you describe here, of "this is totally unrelated to anything in the game."

It was eye-opening, and I'm sorry you have to deal with it.

This should be a "challenge" (if those are still a thing), to be performed by anybody who believes that the issue doesn't exist. Create a female account for some online game and see how much fun you will be allowed to have with it.

There are meme "speedrun any%" videos on YouTube for this sort of thing, so there are probably some real ones out there.

FWIW I made a female character on FFXIV (partly to see if this sort of thing would happen) and never encountered this. Maybe I put out a male vibe with how I move and play (I heard we jump around a lot more). But in my experience that game's populace skews far more heavily female than normal, and a lot of the guys I met also play as female characters so maybe that's why.

Thanks for the perspective.

> Am I missing something here?

The trash talk isn't the issue. When I, a male, join a multiplayer session I'm largely ignored. If I'm talked to, yes it's usually to trash talk me.

But when a female joins a session, they become the center of attention. They can't simply play the game; everyone is watching them and wanting to interact with them. In addition to that, the conversations from other players isn't just trash talk, it usually includes a heavy mix of flirting and sexual advances. Not funny, trolly, trash talk sexual advances. But intentional advances.

Not to mention the stalking outside of that session that females can experience.

The vast majority of people joining a multiplayer session are there to relax and have fun. Not get hit on by strangers on the internet, be the center of attention, or be open to harassment even after the session.

It's a qualitatively different experience.

But that applies to anywhere though. As a man you can sit alone in a bar and nobody will bother you, as a woman lots of people will come up and start to speak with you and possibly get angry if you don't want to speak with them. The fact that the same happens in games isn't evidence that there is something particularly wrong about gamers, rather it is the exact same social game that happens in all leisure spaces.

Of course it would be better if women didn't have to deal with it, but you can't just blame this on gamers since men everywhere does the same thing.

This doesn't match tho, atleast in my various experiences in MMOs. The stuff female friends had to deal with for being female is pretty big.

Unwanted dick pics and other unwated advances, stalking, people masturbating in voicechat. Comments like "do you really want to listen to females"/"she's sleeping with xyz to get a raidspot".

I never had to deal with that. I get a generic idiot/retard/kys comment every now and then and that's it. No stalking, no dick pics.

yes.

He really isn't.

yeah, you're missing the potential on-paper profits to be made from making video games more accessible to a wider audience by sanitizing them and their communities. whether this change is is a good idea in the long run or not can be debated, but that's where the last decade or so of rhetoric against "toxic gamer culture" is coming from, regardless of what is said.

could any of the downvoters please tell me how I'm wrong?

Having been a gamer for over 30 years now I can assure you that "toxic gamer culture" is very much a thing. You think swatting people is something a healthy culture of good-natured ribbing does?

I didn't say it wasn't a thing, and taking things to that extreme isn't really having a good-faith discussion. I said that "toxic gamer culture" has always been a thing, until these large corporations realized that sanitizing it could, in theory, lead to more people playing their AAA games, thus resulting in higher profits. what's controversial about this statement?

The way you start by questioning weather or not making things less toxic is a good idea and put quotes around "toxic gaming culture" sure makes your post read like you were brushing off the whole thing as some kind of overly-woke-brigade cancel-fest or something.

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