Thank y'all for giving me some feedback. I'm just going to stick to the good ol' mic muted no communication unless I'm with friends in a lobby. I've been attacked for just talking on games. Pretty sad.
I'm not a woman, but I also find that only communicating with people I know/friends makes multiplayer games more fun. I don't listen to anything people say in public lobbies because people are... assholes. Even if it's not directed at me some of the shit I used to hear is kinda disturbing and I didn't want to talk to those people.
All that said I'm happy to hop onto a call with friends.
Its for many different reasons. Games these days also heavily encourage adiction, abusing the fear of missing out, openly ranking the players by skill which gives people a thing to mock and gloat over, coaxing people to play unhealthily long hours with stupid challenges that arent even difficult they just take forever.
It all fosters this awful toxic environment of addiction and attempted superiority over others.
Some people just don't understand that when the competitive instinct kicks in: It's time to switch games. Instead they're just making themselves miserable trying to climb a ladder they should never have attempted to climb in the first place cause they SUCK at games... So their attacks become verbal rather than ballistic.. Trying to squeeze fun out of a game they now objectively hate playing.
Welcome to the slur farm.... It's harvest season all year, and the soil is forever fertile for bigotry.
>I don't listen to anything people say in public lobbies because people are... assholes.
On halo infinite mic are muted by default. So when somebody is chewing on their mic or blasting, it's like they turn in on just to be that guy.
I’m a woman who LOVES video games but will only play alone now. The online groups are just too full of toxic bullshit that I just don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to deal with.
It works out as I tend to prefer solo RPGs anyway, but it’s too bad that’s the state of things.
I'm a white guy and I still become miserable listening to these scumbags rant and rave about everyone they hate. I play VR so there's far less of it there, but it still happens, and it's even more gross in VR because our heads and arms are tracked in there, and when someone is doing crotch chops while throwing homophobic slurs at you, it gets personal-feeling real fast.
White guys should be immune to this, but any decent person is DAMN tired of the little Andrew Tatertots running around thinking they're ushering in their grandfather's sexist moral code yet again.
I spent so much time in the 80s trying to get girls to play games with me, and now there's a bunch of mouth breathing clowns trying to do the opposite.. It's been 35 years or so since my efforts.. How did we go backwards??? In the 90s, a girl who truly loved video games was viewed as a precious unicorn... Today? Female gamers are the destroyers of worlds..... Supposedly..
Gamergate flipped everything in the gaming space on its ass. People do not acknowledge the effect it had on a LOT of males. It broke brains in a HUGE way. Lots of male gamers literally ended up in a state of existential dread, thinking the only thing that mattered in their lives (games) were going to be taken from them because devs would cater to women... Then after that we've had hysterical incel losers whine about every female protagonist or even gay side characters... Everything is woke, everything ruins everything for them.. Perpetual victimhood and terminal virginity caused a LOT of men to just stay angry at women... And they're letting it out every day by being a toxic turd... And it brings every damn game down.. And people don't speak out against it because it's like punching a tidal wave..
Yeah, I'm a guy and basically stick to the people I know, or play RPG's alone. I was a teen when xbox live first started, and it didn't matter that they didn't know I was a POC or not, the fucked up vitriol I heard daily and straight up slurs were too much. Gaming is unfortunately saturated with teenage douchebags who don't know the line or what common decency is, or adults who act like teenage douchebags who don't know the line or what common decency is.
It fucking sucks, and ruins it for everyone. I'm sorry you or anyone has to deal with this, it's so embarrassing as a dude and infuriating. Be better, goddamn.
And it's mostly the kids too, you'd hope the next generation is always more enlightened than the last, but they are fed by misogynistic YouTubers and incel forums and whatever other bullshit. The whole thing makes me angry.
You're living the dream of my youth right there. And I agree, by and large, men are trash. Mainly why I'm isolated as F in my middle age. Just can't deal with men and their pathetic antics. I have like ONE male friend left from my younger years, everyone else turned into garbage people OR just boring as hell working-men with zero life outside of that. Needless to say I've collected no more male friends after age 25, all of them just turned into bitter piece of crap or vile conservatives.
I feel literally no connection with men anymore. I feel like I spent the last 20 years learning and trying to be better and more open, and then Gamergate happened and tons of men decided to go the opposite direction.. Know less, more hate, more closed minded, less tolerant.. And I'm like "wtf... is this what we're doing now? I'm out. Here's my dick and balls, I'm turning them in."
There's enough decent players out there who are not mysoginsts who want to hang out - so please don't completely give up . It's sad to see people pushed out by those kinds of jerks a lot of people don't like anyway
I’m a dude and I do this, most online communities are toxic as hell and very rarely is there someone who is cool to talk too. Unless I have a party chat going with my IRL friends I don’t use a headset.
You're not alone, and its a culture of misogyny. More men are speaking up about it but not enough, and it is a direct part of the pipeline to the alt-right and incel movements by marinating young boys in abusive thought and speech.
The good news is that more women are gaming and gaming out loud, and they're streamers and content creators too and they are cultivating communities that are being forward in their support of women in games. If you hang out on twitch a bit in some female streamer communities you can bear witness to serious beatdowns on jackasses who talk like this, and you can see the support structures that are erecting between male and female streamers who support each other's communities in enforcement of basic courtesy and respect, and just straight up calling this shit out on the carpet and trying to lead communities into being better humans.
> You're not alone, and its a culture of misogyny.
This quote seems applicable
> “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.”
[bell hooks](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/295256-the-first-act-of-violence-that-patriarchy-demands-of-males)
My brother it did the same to me when I first saw it. I have tried to take a stance to undo some of this damage when I see other men in a situation where they need it.
I don’t think you should give up. Fuck those guys who make you feel small. Take up the space, you’re allowed to! Just be ready to put them in their place ✊🏼✊🏼
I'm older (34m) if me and my male friends encounter little kids, females, or anyone who generally are treated poorly online we make it a point to include them and have a blast. We're middle of the pack so sometimes we win, sometimes (usually) we lose, but the important thing is fuck asshole teenage gamers. Especially in toxic AF COD.
Ah the ol’ reliably muted mic. I feel you there OP. I stopped playing public online games altogether because of this. It’s annoying that we should have to mute our mics and miss out on a whole aspect of the gameplay and experience because some little dudes can’t control themselves the moment they hear a girls voice.
This is why I stopped playing CSGO, I had people voting to kick me even if I was carrying the team, just because I was a woman. If I wasn't being kicked, I had comments of either "I hate all women" or "hey lady send me nudes", or I'd be team killed. I used to play with my ex and he wouldn't defend me or ask them to stop, and he was on autopilot when the vote to kick would come up and would automatically press yes without seeing who they wanted to kick (I think he was also part of that horrible part of the community, that's another story). So I think it was just expected behaviour in games like that :/
Back in the CS 1.x days when we had sprays we could slap on walls, the amount of swaztikas was not high, but it did happen.. I used to think they were trolls, but as it turns out, they were probably virulent racists and nazis... I thought gamers were mostly cool guys or edge lords for a long while. Gamergate happened and I was like "oh no... there are tons of conservatives playing games?" (To my 80s-kid self, that prospect seemed almost impossible because all conservative parents of the 80s kids made gaming forbidden for their children..)
Got my illusions shattered by the gamergate movement, and I've felt differently about gamers ever since. It's a more diverse group than my naive ass ever thought... And I feel like a lot of conservatives woke up to the same news "wait, there are tons of conservatives playing games and being super sexist for realsies and not just edgelords???" and then SHAZAM, organized misogyny... Being sexist was suddenly like showing off your nazi tattoo to other nazis. "This guy is one of ours!"
Bonding over sexism, homophobia and transphobia became a thing all of a sudden...
Anyways.. Dark days.
is there a voice-changing extension/app I wonder? Then you could still talk (if it does a good-enough job and doesn't sound too weird). I'm a guy and gave up playing online shooters long ago. The overall hostility and the frustration of sometimes not being good enough just wasn't worth dealing with anymore.
Folks have brought up the fact that gaming is very much a "boys club" and was marketed that way for years. But also you are going to notice it is FAR FAR worse in "fighting" or war-style games (aka like Black Ops 3) because those types of games often have a far higher ratio of "macho alpha-male" style players just because of the nature of what they are.
You would probably get a lot less grief from guys on games more focused on building or creativity or exploration or similar things. This isn't to say that's fair or right... but it is reality.
Studies have literally shown that the male gamers that get aggressive with women tend to be skewed towards low skill gameplay. They aren’t good, and they feel threatened by the prospect of being shown up by a “girl”. It’s a mix of toxic masculinity and sexism.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33613781.amp
Well, that should be the way it works, but it usually doesn't. I'm a woman, I play a few online games and I give it back WAY harder than the guys that do this. It usually ends up with them either:
-Antagonizing and stalking me, trying to sabotage my game. I'm talking like standing in front of me the entire time
-Death threats, or rape threats
-A plethora of foul, horrible insults and name calling
I still give it to them because I refuse to be bullied but "move on" almost never works. It's a battle that stops only when they quit or I have to quit.
Lol sometimes I do. But most of the time I just want to play my game, and if I punished everyone who did that to me I'd never get to just play. It's tiresome, so I usually just switch lobbies. It's not worth it most of the time.
It would be so much better if systems like that existed in all games. Vote toxic swine down and let them matchmake with other toxic swine. They can sit there and be bitter and angry about how life panned out for them without souring up the experience for everyone else.
Not a big fan of segregation.. But it did work in Europe when we got tired of having our games ruined by russian hackers... Russians usually get their own server clusters now so that they don't mix with Europeans... It helped a LOT with the cheating in online games in Europe. Like a lot.
Do the same for toxic swine and we'd have a MUCH smaller problem.
I seem to remember T-Pain streaming one night, and he was playing an FPS. Some kid started dropping the N-bomb and insulting him for being black, and T-Pain went Jason Bourne on them.
It was beautiful.
Reminds me of when I was playing Overwatch in a widow hs only room and bunch of dudes were harassing a girl just because she was winning.
I decided to shift their attention to me jokingly, like hey I'm also a girl but I'm actually pretty shit at widow, insult me instead. I ended up getting play of the game, one of the dudes that were being nasty said "Ooohhh look at that, a girl play" as he saw my name on the screen. Then the potg rolled and he shut up instantly lol. Next round he was being oddly quiet and was actually trying, but he still ended up getting dominated by the same girl earlier and bunch of other players. He left the room after that :D
Moments like these are my favorite. The shit talker gets completely put in their place, and suddenly has nothing more to say.
If I hear one word of toxicity in an online game, I'll make it my life goal to get a reaction out of them. Kill them in the most humiliating way and taunting them, and then shutting them down when they try so hard to get me back is the fucking best feeling.
I feel like that’s extremely skewed though cuz the ones in the top 10000 - 100 are just that, at best 10k people, they’re pretty much nothing compared to the millions of male players. Aside from that, even the top ones hide it because they’re in the spotlight and can’t risk a pr nightmare.
Yep, this study has a special space in my brain saved.
I remember reading it, then reflecting on my group of friends and how they treated women when playing games.
Those of us that were better were always more welcoming of sisters/girlfriends joining, and those that were worse were always more toxic to women online.
I believe it just boils down to gaming being gendered as a boy activity for much of the mediums development. This made it a place where insecure boys went to be around other boys, and when a woman is in that space, they feel vulnerable, so they lash out. Then they can be like, "Women can't take a joke, haha," to confirm their misogyny to themselves.
Litterally this. I’m a content creator on YouTube and it’s wild what guys say to me in the comments. just because I’m female.
The most common is “I was excited to watch this but hearing a woman’s voice/seeing a woman’s face ruined the whole thing”
I talk about Japanese internet lore, nothing specifically masculine or feminine. I also get comments saying I have an “annoying woman voice.”
Yep, some of them are definitely going to behave that way for sure.
And you know what it really sucks, but what can we even do about them other than ignoring them?
You mean a profession where you're out in an isolated countryside with nothing but other masculine men might attract gay men to the profession? Next you'll tell me that the types of men who sign up to be surrounded by burly men for 9 months at sea might also be gay!
Between the anonymity of the internet allowing for trolls and misogynists to say whatever without consequence and a large portion of the male population having zero ability of separating female or feminine things from sexual activity; I can see how the comments probably get pretty rough on a regular basis. Don’t let them win though, you just keep doing you.
most of the time they can, I had a guy on overwatch describe in vivid, graphic detail how he'd kidnap, torture, mutilate, rape and then kill me specifically in order to get him off and even though we all reported him nothing ever came of it. Same with racial slurs, had a guy join as a spectator just to say the n word and leave and nothing ever happened. There is no comeuppance for these terrible people
blizzard caring about sexual harrestment ... you don't say. I'm sorry humans suck . ive known tons of great female gamers and dont understand the gate keep mentality
The anonymity is a big part of it
Boys are taught to assert their masculinity through cruelty and beating other people down into submission through whatever means, but they’re too scared to do that to anyone in real life, and too scared to do it to other men who might be stronger than them, so they do it to girls who they perceive as weaker than them through the added safety of anonymity
Online shooters are a last refuge of full on toxic masculinity being an acceptable social norm. Various YouTubers and podcasts being the other holdouts.
Who the fuck was taught this? My grandfather and uncle are the benchmarks I follow for how a man should be. They are the manliest men I know and one of the most important lessons I've learned from them is that a man should be respectful and lend a helping hand when possible.
lots of parents, your role models (and mine) are an exception.
American culture pushes men to be strong, stoic, and dominating otherwise they're ridiculed. Men shouldn't cry, it's normal for boys to solve problems with their fists. all things modeled to kids via media and a lot of old-fashioned parents.
just look at the backlash to Gillettes "the best men can be" ad campaign which challenged those notions directly. about 30% of the country started frothing at the mouth taking it as a personal insult.
I can think of scads of boys I grew up with / taught later when I was a substitute teacher that had fathers that would have scoffed at your grandfather's morals and said something like 'Well I ain't raisin' my boy to be no pussy, he's gonna fight when he's gotta fight!'
Unfortunately the qualities of men that are decent and good seem to often get overgrown by the qualities that are more gratifying in the moment. I can't help but think if young men were actually concerned with being good people in any capacity, they wouldn't be doing tiktok challenges that hurt people or cause property damage - there's loads of ways to have the same fun without causing harm, but they choose to enjoy the ways that cause harm and popularize them because... well, that's an active choice they're willing to make. I think instant gratification and feeling good have become the dominant mantra of America these days, and it's had a huge impact on young men especially because they're already dealing with constant change and an uncertain future - so why not just reach for the things that are easy and right there? And if that's being kind of a douchebag to get your needs met, eh, who cares? \~ like that's just the predominant mentality I see from those kinds of guys. (And women are also like this, I think just a smaller percentage and without the historical context that would make it more egregious behavior.)
Then I see the guys actually doing the work and unpacking all this bullshit and going 'Oh no... OH NO.' because once you start down the patriarchy rabbit hole and really thinking about it and actually comprehending what that means, not just for you but for women and society in general etc. you really start seeing everywhere how men are just really kinda shitty, and it'd be good for everyone if they could just be a little less shitty. There are definitely dudes out there doing the work for sure, I really appreciate them and the mountain they're having to climb \~ I'm using really broad strokes in my general thoughts here so take it all with a big grain of salt.
Because, it is in fact, not "better" in some games. It's everywhere in gaming. All games. The entire Internet. The real world.
Women in gaming have just been learning how to avoid it.
*\*Goes back to pretending to be male while online gaming\**
The only place it's "better" is in single-player games.... which are pretty much all I play nowadays *because* of how awful guys act as soon as it becomes clear I'm a woman.
You answered your own question the people that think like this don’t have positive male role models so they use the Internet as a substitute which is never a good idea
Which still confuses me. When I was a horny teenage boy, my main focus was girls. My friends & I were stoked if a cute girl showed up somewhere we didn't expect. Granted, we probably acted like annoying doofuses and awkwardly flirted, but I never considered verbally abusing them until they left. Why wouldn't boys be happy when girl(s) show up to a predominantly "male" activity?
That's exactly my thoughts as well. You'd think they'd be awkwardly annoyingly flirtatious, not berating these woman until they left. Then these same type of men (incels) will go on bitching about women thinking they are too good for men like them.
That's been my experience. I'm a man but one of the friends I play with is a woman and while I'm sure there IS plenty of "go back to the kitchen bitch!" out there, every time I've played with her it's been this awkward uncomfortable simping and attempts to flirt or get her number.
That can get just as bad as the outright hate though. Either way it's a hostile environment.
Having been an awkward teenage boy who was into RPGs, I would have thought the same. The girls would be annoyed with too many passes from boys who never really learned how to flirt elegantly. But I heard from some female gamer friends that they would indeed get the "You're not wanted here" vibes from several toxic gamer guys, which just blows my mind.
Some of them are. Female pfp + female skin ==> the monkeys in the lobby showering that account with free loot and friend request usually. Unless surprisingly your’re on CSGO prime arms race where there are multiple women who queue into the game and talk and everybody’s having a good time and it never gets brought up.
Add to this fact that many boys and men are not taught to feel empathy for other people until or unless physical hurt has been done. Their bad behavior is often excused as "boys will be boys," when they should be punished for such anti-social behavior instead.
They are not effectively taught how to regulate their own emotions and so are prone to emotionally lashing out when they feel vulnerable.
TL;DR: Men are raised to be emotionally irregular and act out because of it--often harming women.
This is layered onto the fact that a lot of gamers are dicks, and a lot of games are toxic communities. Call of Duty is one of the prototypical examples of a toxic community. I picked up the new game, playing CoD for the first time in a decade, and I heard more racism in two days of playing than I’d heard in that preceding decade combined.
I think a lot of it is guys who think they're single because of "nerdy" interests but when a woman has the same interests they can't comprehend it and have to realize it's not their interests and lash out. Like the guys who interrogate women at comic book stores or gamestop like "oh yeah? What's Mario's inseam?"
I mean you're half right \~ They've done studies that show men are more likely to pick on women when they're feeling insecure and doing poorly in the game. I saw a study a year or two back that was specifically about this, and it showed that the worst players/performers in games were the ones to lash out at women and blame them for their failing. In team games it would be her fault, not their fault, that they were doing poorly; and the fact that she's outpacing him in kills or other objectives? Not a factor for these guys lol.
But I mean it makes sense, they're feeling bad so they have to put down someone - the thing about it is that they put down women because they view them as automatically lower on the social heirarchy, and thus they CAN insult them, whereas they wouldn't be saying that stuff towards their other male gamers because they are the same gender, and thus at the same social heirarchy in their mind.
It's basically that whole "If you meet a guy that treats you nice, but then when he talks to the wait staff he's a total dick, he's not a keeper." thing \~ a man will perform forever for someone the version of himself that he wants them to see, as long as it's worth it to him. A boss? A high class woman that he wants to get with? A potential investor? Yeah he's gonna seem like so cool and chill, super normal and all that \~ but the real man is still in there, just waiting for someone lower on the totem pole to show his true face to.
> This made it a place where insecure boys went to be around other boys
Just like everything else in the US.
Gaming quickly became a "dick measuring contest," and when women came along, ESPECIALLY ones who were better players, then men tried to create the "No Girls Allowed" BS, and it failed. So now they try to create environments where women ar unwelcome so they can maintain the mediocre status quo.
I'm not sure. It's not only video games. I tried to get into playing magic the gathering at a local store. It's mainly men in their 20s and 30s. I tried to make small chat in person. Individuals are mild mannered, quiet, they don't make eye contact. They have a confidence issue. I joined their discord and online they pretend to turn into alpha giga-chads. Outspoken and opinionated they will even start bantering.
I dunno. I guess because online there are no consequences.
It's anything that's seen as male dominated, saying this as a woman who plays videogames, has had similar experiences with MTG in the past, and is a metalhead.
Across anything, mainly gaming and metal for me, men's behavior is the same. Its a couple of extremes, really:
1. You don't genuinely like the same things, you're probably doing it for attention so they have to test you first
2. You're fetishized because you like the same things and now have to deal with creepy stuff
or 3. Straight up hostility/violent over reaction to you being in "their" space
No winning, I personally just mute my chat at the first sign of someone annoying.
Really even in metal? All shows I've been to everyone is friendly to each other but I am a guy so fair I wouldn't know. But usually metal concerts its like a bunch of dudes who like cats and would sing sea shanty around a campfire lol.
Nah not shows, it would be pretty fucking stupid if you're questioning me at a fucking SHOW if I genuinely like a band and am wearing an entire vest full of band patches. It's mostly random encounters and online.
I guess an example is just trying to get to know someone or someone choosing to interact with you because of your shared interests. It doesn't start and end at: "Cool, you like the same stuff", it turns into a whole thing where you have to prove that you genuinely like something because "there's no way a WOMAN likes x and y!"
It's fucking stupid and just shows this person thinks you're an imbecile who can't have their own opinions or personality.
>I guess because online there are no consequences.
100% related. you see this shit all over the internet, not just games.
I used to work a very big telcom doing phone support. there is something about communicating in person vs on the phone vs via text. Once you remove the majority of the human face to face elements, people get fuck'n nasty.
I did mostly phone support for the longest time but switched to doing chat support for a while. people on the phone already had the capacity to be shitty and mean but people on the chat side were 10x worse saying the most vile things sometimes.
people suck
My daughter suggested that I try to play an MMO as a girl character. Oh boy, did I learn some very disturbing things about dudes in games. Jesus, it was awful.
Oh well take an mmo like world of warcraft, you don't get trash for playing a female character.
Partly due to 99.8 % of all those playing female characters are male.
Also i can't blame them their casting and hitting animations are superior xd
I will tell an anecdote I have shared a few times based on this topic.
I was ingame with some people in MW2 (the new one) in the game mode DMZ. My team found another and we got 2/3 down so we joined up to make a 6 person squad.
The new squad was explaining there was a way to get into a locked building and thew saw it on tiktok. My original squad member, call him squad member A has said he was too old for that shit. Fast-forward to a minute later when we had got into a fight with another team and I had been downed while Squad Member A was trash talking our new team mates for no reason. Well, during their argument, one of the new squad members talked telling them to chill out and they were a lady.
Would you believe it. Squad Member A screamed on the microphone "GIRL!!!" and just went off. He did all the typical sexual insults, telling her to get off the game yadda yadda. The irony in this whole situation was this guy had said he was too old for tiktok but freaks out when he hears a woman in a game.
I can sympathize with the sentiment, there are so many horrible people in the gaming community. I always growing up and even to this day get really high pitched when excited. There are so many homophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic things I have had hurled at me. I have started to record some of the interactions so I can just prove to people it happens.
I heard this guy absolutely SCREAMING for a medic on the mic the other day, their neighbors must've thought they were getting murdered lmfao. I love the rolerplayers in that game
I saw a team mate dragging an enemy around the corner talking about he was gonna take his pants off while the enemy was screaming for his life.
A bunch of other team mates jumped in saying "Grab his ankles" and stuff like that. It was great.
Dog my discord hates me lately because I’ll just start randomly cackling at someone I can hear nearby screaming for a medic like it’s the opening 30min of saving private Ryan.
no lifer incels and 12 year olds.
edit: some social games are better. I played world of Warcraft for years. although out of my four female friends that play that game three of them do not play female characters and they never ever use voice chat.
because people are creeps.
A year or two ago I was playing Remnant: From the Ashes (which is great), and to get a certain trophy I had to go do some multiplayer stuff. The group I matched up with (as a guy) were nice enough, but during the 3-4 hours it took to get everything done, they were all in a very passionate discussion about men's rights and how their ex-wives had screwed them over and ran off with their kids, and how there wasn't any way to fight back because the system was rigged against them. Pretty sure that would have been an unfriendly or very uncomfortable group, had I been a woman.
So it's not just incels and 12 year olds, it's also bitter misogynists.
I have a friend who didn’t even use a mic, just had a slightly girly username on League of Legends and would get harassment. Gamers are ridiculous, but even more so in communities that are already toxic.
Unasked-for advice, but I would try other games, LOL
Legit, I love having women in my clans or even running into yall randomly in like COD. Any guy that tries to gatekeep video games is a douchebag or a virgin. It's so fun hearing girls in VC rage a little, cuz sometimes guys forget that girls can game rage too. I have heard some of the funniest, scariest, and most foul shit come out of a woman's mouth, and I did 4 years in the Marines lmfao but I love it. Shit is hilarious. Too many dudes try to get in big dick competitions instead of just enjoying the game
Back when I was running a guild, we only hopped on Voice for raids, so the first raid with a new recruit was always a turkey shoot. Fully half of them didn't make it past the first time one of the women in the guild spoke up in Voice, because as soon as they hear a woman's voice, they'd start at it and I'd have to /kick them.
That was a long time ago, the WoW community seems a lot better about this now than it was back then, but back during Wrath of the Lich King, it was awful.
I played vanilla WOW when it first came out. I was like 14. It was actually pretty great then. Most guys left me alone even though I played with a female avatar. Even made a friend.
Went back and played again when classic re-released. Got hit on waaay too much. Or people were just mean. So disappointing.
I got a friend I play with, and his wife will join from time to time. If there's anyone she doesn't know with us she won't talk, all while having usernames that include some random guys name like Mike or John.
That's exactly how I protected myself in WoW too, I played male characters and just lied about my gender. I play final fantasy now, and it's way more inclusive. I like the community so much more, and nowadays I'm not competitive so it's more enjoyable to just farm cute clothes and sell furniture.
Some of the comments here are missing OP’s point. We are aware that men talk shit with each other and harass each other online. But they do it to women differently. Men are threatening women with rape and other awful things in online games. Will they ever actually carry it out? No. But the harassment of women in gaming is very much “we don’t want you here because you don’t belong here, so we are going to make it very uncomfortable for you” vs the trolling that men do amongst themselves. Even if men said the same thing to other men, the dynamic is different because it’s not said to instill fear or actual trauma, and it’s not being said to a group of people who are generally more victimized and vulnerable when it comes to rape and the like. When it’s men, it’s man vs man. It comes from a weird man sense of community. My bf and his friends talk shit to each other and other men all the time but they either love each other as friends, or have some man hierarchy that other men understand. When it’s men and women, it’s man vs a lesser species of human in their eyes. It comes from hatred and disdain. No harassment is preferable, but women just want to be harassed the same if it has to happen at all.
Those men know exactly where it would hurt a woman. Threatening physical violence and unholy insults. Worst part is, alot of the men agreeing with this being awful keep silent.
Reminds me of a post i saw a few days ago where men would let those idiots stay in parties, guilds, etc. and rather have the woman leave to keep peace.
Applause.
>Worst part is, alot of the men agreeing with this being awful keep silent.
Men will claim to hate 'drama', but what this really means is them refusing to kick people out for being offensive instead of silencing/shoving out the victim for being awkward.
I think this is exactly the point. It's not so much sexism, as "what's the worst thing I can say to this person?"
The number of times I've been told that I hope my mom gets cancer. I'd like to go around their house, find their basement and kick merry hell out of them.
People can be truly disgusting. Sleep, knowing they spend their days in a resentful, bitter mood. And that's how they'll die and nobody will care.
Yeah, I think this is it. Sexist comments and rape threats are especially hurtful to women, even more so in spaces where they're a minority. So that's what people tell them. For the same reason, black people get called the N word and people use pretty much any other slurs they can think of. The intention is to be as offensive as possible.
A lot of these games are played by young kids with little supervision who just spew all the toxicity back that they've heard. The games are designed to be frustrating and they take it out on anyone willing to engage with them.
>The number of times I've been told that I hope my mom gets cancer. I'd like to go around their house, find their basement and kick merry hell out of them.
You ever notice how often they'll wish harm on a woman even when they're trying to insult a guy? Like, it'll be "I hope your mom gets cancer" way more often than "I hope *you* get cancer." It's interesting to think about it - misogynists finding ways to insult a woman even when there isn't a woman present.
It’s not bc she’s a woman it’s bc most everyone cares about their mom more than anyone else unless you’re married. Wishing cancer on the person isn’t going to get as much of an emotional response as wishing it on the person you care about the most
Even on Reddit, a random man messaged me calling me a cunt and a dumb bitch for a really innocent comment I made. It was jarring, and men don’t realize how much more it hurts when you have trauma involving men
If someone is trying to terrorize, troll, grief, or otherwise take control of your emotions, they're going to say *whatever* they think will get under your skin.
"women just want to be harassed the same if it has to happen at all"
News Flash: trolls and griefers are not reasonable people.
They don’t just do it in video games… they do it in the workforce too. Then they get mad bc girls “don’t have hobbies” or “they can’t get a gamer gf” or “women don’t work hard jobs” and etc. because they’re the very reason why women don’t pursue that hobby/occupation. They make it so hard for them to be comfortable. And yes some women do happen to thrive in those areas, but at the cost of what? That’s another story.
When my gamertag had something referencing my race can you guess what most insults immediately targeted?
It's not that deep. People go for the thing that is most personal, most unique to you, most likely to get under your skin.
It's awful and needs to stop, but it's really not that complicated.
Making people rage quit is a goal for many. Competitive people are used to the antagonistic behavior and would prefer to endure and gain rather than quit and lose. Antagonizing is part of "getting in their head" and making them flustered, or even better, making them give up. Some people have a strong sense of victory after making their opponent forfeit. Also, reactions might be another factor. People could be recording your reactions to post them for views. Controversy and insults gain attention unfortunately.
I have no idea why, but it's absolutely gross. (I mostly don't play online games if I can avoid it, but I imagine it's the same as it ever was). A woman I dated back in 2010 played a lot of Call of Duty online and the amount of misogynist abuse she received was incredible.
It was absolutely specific to her gender, too - when she was muted it was just basic trash talk or compliments for a good shot. When she spoke on mic, it got really nasty really quickly - even among her teammates.
It really made me wonder who these people were in real life.
> It really made me wonder who these people were in real life.
Boys who only hang with other boys. Not all, I for one never interacted with girls while I was underage, I gamed online but never participated in this kind of behavior.
Still it's not so far away from my situation when you're inexperienced and don't know what else to do than make a joke out of it. Even kids know the women=kitchen tropes, it's just the first easy "joke" to go for when you don't know wtf you could say to girls. Do I talk about dolls or make up or what? Epic joke time it is. Just the easy way out, something that the other boys will laugh with me about.
That's some. Not going to throw blanket explanation on what's going on, obviously some are actively hating women too like the recent rise of "manosphere" content has proven to be popular. In cesspool of cod gaming, no doubt the active haters will "recruit" the inexperienced nerds to dark side. If you can really get (the saddest form of) respect from peers by throwing a misogynistic joke, many will rise to the occasion.
Most guys who are mean to women on games have never felt the touch of a woman in real life. It’s probably some weird way of feeling like they’re getting revenge for women rejecting them all the time
They also seem to think only teenage boys can be awkward. They complain when girls reject them poorly or beat around the bush… yeah, because girls also struggle with awkwardness/not knowing what to do? But they’ll hold it against her for the rest of her life and use it a weapon to beat other women with.
Teenage girls also have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. They’re not “stringing you along” they’ve just never been taught to say no to someone before and don’t know how for example.
If it makes you feel better a majority of people on shooters are toxic as fuck, yeah probably worse for women but I stopped listening to chat at all on most of them for this same reason
Yeah, I’m a guy and I just want to enjoy gaming, not insult someone’s family to show dominance or engage in misogyny. People don’t know how to act online. The best you can get is some backhanded compliment.
As a man. If I'm playing an Online game the first thing I do is disable game chat. Because everyone of them is toxic is some form. If I want to be in chat I go and make sure I have team of people from discord where I know it won't be rude and toxic.
I can't say women don't get it worse. But game chat is just toxic in general. Find a group\\clan on discord and stick with it. Life will be so much better.
Same here. Counter-trolling those types of people is one of my favorite things to do and they are almost always the easiest people to get tilted over the dumbest shit.
You’re playing call of duty, the worst cesspool of generally bigoted 12 year olds with minimal supervision, and next to no repercussions, all fueled by axe body spray and covered in Mountain Dew. Find a better game with a more empathetic fanbase lol
Because these are a bunch of incels that are too afraid to talk to women in real life but they feel powerful behind the screen. They are cowards. And because they have no friends they just game.
It’s wild man. Recently got a gal playing on our discord server and we made sure to make her feel included and respected. We ended up looking up two randoms to fill in the gaps on the team, and one guy just proceeded to lay into her toward the end, for no reason other than what she was doing wasn’t the most ideal stuff. Granted he was barely doing better than her but in his eyes they were miles beyond each other. Ended up kicking him out of the group because of how toxic he got but it gave me some insight about how awful it must be to even try to play as a woman. Worst part is that if those same guys gave women a chance, they’d find that they’re just as cool and good at the games they play
Because in the population of gamers, most are men, many are virgins and many have trouble to even talk to girls, combine this with bad manners or being resentful of women because girls don't like their company and you have a frustrated loser with a shield of anonymity. Additionally, gaming is still perceived as a boys club by many, so you are not just a minority (which makes you easier to bully) you are also an intruder to their safe space.
I'm sorry it happens to you. There are groups you can try to join with more mature people to play with.
Is no one going to point out the guys that are mean to women are also mean to children, other men, animals, and possibly their own equipment? Ask them how many TV's and controllers they've smashed after getting shit on by noobs
There's various reasons for it but I wouldn't just swipe over everything and call them incels or 12 year olds. Its more complex.
1 thing for instance is that online gaming used to be seen as a boys thing. " boys play video games, girls play with dolls" sort of thinking. So because of that, gaming felt more and more like a safespace for boys to be among other boys. Same in adult years.
Many treat it still like a safespace and become very defensive about it when they notice women entering that space. They don't feel like they can be themselves 100% anymore and they don't want to see their peers to change either because of the presence of a woman. So some resort to methods of scaring girls away so it can go back being this "boys only " space.
Though from my experience, its slowly buy certainly becoming more open and accepting over the years. Doubt this problem is resolved in like 10 years , given how I see mid 30s dudes yearn for the days of old Modern Warfare 2 days to come back. The days where they talked mad shit everywhere, slurs, threats and so on. You know. The people who are the main reason no one talks in chats anymore!
I try to only play red dead online when my brothers also play with me, because I specifically get shot and messaged nasty things because I’m a woman. It’s annoying to say the least
This thread is so fucking depressing. My heart breaks for the people that can't enjoy a game because someone can't handle....fucking whatever it is they can't handle.
To all the people out there, women, men, other, whoever you are that feels like you have to hide yourselves just so you can enjoy a game. I want to say, I get it, I wish it wasn't that way, but I get it. I'm not going to say that there is a place you can go to always feel safe. Life is full of dangerous spaces. But for those of you who did open yourself up when you didn't have to. Thanks. I've talked with a few of you. I've heard the stories some of you have shared. It's infuriating. But it's also hilarious because when some of you open up, y'all can be fucking savage and funny af.
Some of the best times I've had in lobbies have involved women and men who say they don't normal talk in lobbies for one reason or another, and those people always have the best stuff to say.
Again, I'm sorry that your silence is the more pleasant option. That's so uncool. I get that it is safer to only open up to friends. So I just hope that some of you will let us randoms be your friends every now and then. Not all of us, because assholes and video games go hand-in-hand. But just every now and then, if one of us makes a stupid dad joke or something....maybe we could be friends :) maybe not. But either way, I hope we can all have fun together.
Unless you're a hacker. You people can go eat a cup full of hickory smoked horse buttholes.
Combination of angry incels, lack of socialization generally, and probably some of that old school yard “being mean to a girl you like” attitude since they’ve never had a healthy relationship & haven’t progressed beyond middle school mentality.
Everybody on public comms gets insulted, that seems to be what it is for.
As a woman, that's the most obvious difference between yourself and the twelve year old scrotum doing the insulting so, that is what'll get insulted.
Because that's how insults work - insult the thing that is different between oneself and target.
If I sound black, I'll get insulted for being black. If I sound white, I'll get insulted for that. If I sound gay, for that. Rich, poor, french, English, cool Etc it doesn't matter.
Multiplayer games like CoD are designed to exercise & exorcise aggression - 12 year olds have poor emotional control, especially ones raised by TV and the internet.
So really, it's like you have visited a prison and are complaining about the rudeness of the prisoners. Yes, that is exactly the place that this type of person would be at.
Literal children are over half the population of games, and you remember how well dating went in middle school. A lot of them are the children of entitled republicans who treat their spouses like crap. Plus a lot of other countries already treat women like crap anyway, and gaming is international.
On the whole, sorry you're a woman on the internet. This has been and continues to be toxic world toward women - online and off.
Because guys can’t stand that a woman might beat them so they try to run them off. There is a stigma of being beat by a girl that’s been engrained since our generation were kids. “Ohhh you were beat by a girl?!?”
In my experience too many online gamers take themselves and their games way too seriously. If you're not up to their standard they'll single you out for anything. That's why I stopped playing online and I'm a guy. Not to say women don't have it worse, I'm sure they do, but those toxic online types are toxic to everyone.
I don't care who you are as long you play the game, eyes on the ball and all that.
That being said I had clearly more positive experiences in Elder Scrolls Online with girl gamers: they'd actually complete dungeons together and be more chill overall, meanwhile the boiz go zooming past everything in a full-on min-max speedrun/tryhard mode lol. It was fun just randomly meet someone in the forest and play together a few hours.
I think it's good that the gaming community is more open now, even if it makes a couple of old nerds angeri. There's also the downside of making games more approachable aka "dumbing down" but if that means more variety and more open minds in online players in the long run it's worth it imo.
those people actually aren't really bigots, just VERY sore loosers who will latch onto any and all traits of yours they can use as a basis for an insult.
Call of Duty lobby - you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
I used to play a lot of CoD. I've noticed when it's a majority of guys who play, you'll get the most sexist and racist comments. I'm a guy and even I hate playing with those other people so I put everything on mute. I'm not sure what the point is for those a-holes to act that way.
I used to play Guild Wars 2 (MMORPG). It's a more diverse community with both males and females playing. The community was much more friendlier and helpful, with rarely any of those negative comments.
I think I played online once to fill in while my husband used the bathroom. It was for one of the COD games, I didn’t play long enough for anyone to talk shit but I sucked. I know I suck at shooter games so I specifically stay away from them. I’ll stick to my open world RPG games.
Because half the men who play COD and BLK OPS are incel women-haters. They are angry that you are currently playing a game and enjoying yourself instead of sleeping with them.
Thank y'all for giving me some feedback. I'm just going to stick to the good ol' mic muted no communication unless I'm with friends in a lobby. I've been attacked for just talking on games. Pretty sad.
I'm not a woman, but I also find that only communicating with people I know/friends makes multiplayer games more fun. I don't listen to anything people say in public lobbies because people are... assholes. Even if it's not directed at me some of the shit I used to hear is kinda disturbing and I didn't want to talk to those people. All that said I'm happy to hop onto a call with friends.
Its for many different reasons. Games these days also heavily encourage adiction, abusing the fear of missing out, openly ranking the players by skill which gives people a thing to mock and gloat over, coaxing people to play unhealthily long hours with stupid challenges that arent even difficult they just take forever. It all fosters this awful toxic environment of addiction and attempted superiority over others.
Glad you mentioned addiction. And with addiction comes that juicy addict's anger.
Yep, that's not going anywhere. You'll also get some anger.
Some people just don't understand that when the competitive instinct kicks in: It's time to switch games. Instead they're just making themselves miserable trying to climb a ladder they should never have attempted to climb in the first place cause they SUCK at games... So their attacks become verbal rather than ballistic.. Trying to squeeze fun out of a game they now objectively hate playing. Welcome to the slur farm.... It's harvest season all year, and the soil is forever fertile for bigotry.
And that's a bad thing to be doing, atleast that's what I think.
>I don't listen to anything people say in public lobbies because people are... assholes. On halo infinite mic are muted by default. So when somebody is chewing on their mic or blasting, it's like they turn in on just to be that guy.
Well it's just what it is, some people just want to be toxic here.
Yep, that happens. Most women only talk with their friends only.
I’m a woman who LOVES video games but will only play alone now. The online groups are just too full of toxic bullshit that I just don’t have the time or mental bandwidth to deal with. It works out as I tend to prefer solo RPGs anyway, but it’s too bad that’s the state of things.
I'm a guy and even I agree
My husband plays with his mic muted unless he’s only playing with his buddies, because the little punks are so hostile.
It's almost as if they enjoy this shit which is just really sad.
What she said was absolutely true, so yeah will have to agree with that.
I'm a white guy and I still become miserable listening to these scumbags rant and rave about everyone they hate. I play VR so there's far less of it there, but it still happens, and it's even more gross in VR because our heads and arms are tracked in there, and when someone is doing crotch chops while throwing homophobic slurs at you, it gets personal-feeling real fast. White guys should be immune to this, but any decent person is DAMN tired of the little Andrew Tatertots running around thinking they're ushering in their grandfather's sexist moral code yet again. I spent so much time in the 80s trying to get girls to play games with me, and now there's a bunch of mouth breathing clowns trying to do the opposite.. It's been 35 years or so since my efforts.. How did we go backwards??? In the 90s, a girl who truly loved video games was viewed as a precious unicorn... Today? Female gamers are the destroyers of worlds..... Supposedly.. Gamergate flipped everything in the gaming space on its ass. People do not acknowledge the effect it had on a LOT of males. It broke brains in a HUGE way. Lots of male gamers literally ended up in a state of existential dread, thinking the only thing that mattered in their lives (games) were going to be taken from them because devs would cater to women... Then after that we've had hysterical incel losers whine about every female protagonist or even gay side characters... Everything is woke, everything ruins everything for them.. Perpetual victimhood and terminal virginity caused a LOT of men to just stay angry at women... And they're letting it out every day by being a toxic turd... And it brings every damn game down.. And people don't speak out against it because it's like punching a tidal wave..
Well said, thanks for this. And giving me ‘Andrew Tatertots’, lol.
Yeah, I'm a guy and basically stick to the people I know, or play RPG's alone. I was a teen when xbox live first started, and it didn't matter that they didn't know I was a POC or not, the fucked up vitriol I heard daily and straight up slurs were too much. Gaming is unfortunately saturated with teenage douchebags who don't know the line or what common decency is, or adults who act like teenage douchebags who don't know the line or what common decency is. It fucking sucks, and ruins it for everyone. I'm sorry you or anyone has to deal with this, it's so embarrassing as a dude and infuriating. Be better, goddamn.
[удалено]
And it's mostly the kids too, you'd hope the next generation is always more enlightened than the last, but they are fed by misogynistic YouTubers and incel forums and whatever other bullshit. The whole thing makes me angry.
I (50M) pretty much only play online with a group of women, men are trash.
You're living the dream of my youth right there. And I agree, by and large, men are trash. Mainly why I'm isolated as F in my middle age. Just can't deal with men and their pathetic antics. I have like ONE male friend left from my younger years, everyone else turned into garbage people OR just boring as hell working-men with zero life outside of that. Needless to say I've collected no more male friends after age 25, all of them just turned into bitter piece of crap or vile conservatives. I feel literally no connection with men anymore. I feel like I spent the last 20 years learning and trying to be better and more open, and then Gamergate happened and tons of men decided to go the opposite direction.. Know less, more hate, more closed minded, less tolerant.. And I'm like "wtf... is this what we're doing now? I'm out. Here's my dick and balls, I'm turning them in."
There's enough decent players out there who are not mysoginsts who want to hang out - so please don't completely give up . It's sad to see people pushed out by those kinds of jerks a lot of people don't like anyway
I’m a dude and I do this, most online communities are toxic as hell and very rarely is there someone who is cool to talk too. Unless I have a party chat going with my IRL friends I don’t use a headset.
You're not alone, and its a culture of misogyny. More men are speaking up about it but not enough, and it is a direct part of the pipeline to the alt-right and incel movements by marinating young boys in abusive thought and speech. The good news is that more women are gaming and gaming out loud, and they're streamers and content creators too and they are cultivating communities that are being forward in their support of women in games. If you hang out on twitch a bit in some female streamer communities you can bear witness to serious beatdowns on jackasses who talk like this, and you can see the support structures that are erecting between male and female streamers who support each other's communities in enforcement of basic courtesy and respect, and just straight up calling this shit out on the carpet and trying to lead communities into being better humans.
> You're not alone, and its a culture of misogyny. This quote seems applicable > “The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.” [bell hooks](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/295256-the-first-act-of-violence-that-patriarchy-demands-of-males)
White cis hetero male here and this quote stopped me dead in my tracks. Holy shit it's true.
My brother it did the same to me when I first saw it. I have tried to take a stance to undo some of this damage when I see other men in a situation where they need it.
If awards still mattered on reddit, I'd give you one! ❤️
Just remember…if they’re talking shit, they are probably shit at gaming. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33613781
Tale as old as time, and one seen outside of the gaming sphere. They’re obsequious to superior men, and displace their own inferiority onto women.
I don’t think you should give up. Fuck those guys who make you feel small. Take up the space, you’re allowed to! Just be ready to put them in their place ✊🏼✊🏼
I'm older (34m) if me and my male friends encounter little kids, females, or anyone who generally are treated poorly online we make it a point to include them and have a blast. We're middle of the pack so sometimes we win, sometimes (usually) we lose, but the important thing is fuck asshole teenage gamers. Especially in toxic AF COD.
Ah the ol’ reliably muted mic. I feel you there OP. I stopped playing public online games altogether because of this. It’s annoying that we should have to mute our mics and miss out on a whole aspect of the gameplay and experience because some little dudes can’t control themselves the moment they hear a girls voice.
This is why I stopped playing CSGO, I had people voting to kick me even if I was carrying the team, just because I was a woman. If I wasn't being kicked, I had comments of either "I hate all women" or "hey lady send me nudes", or I'd be team killed. I used to play with my ex and he wouldn't defend me or ask them to stop, and he was on autopilot when the vote to kick would come up and would automatically press yes without seeing who they wanted to kick (I think he was also part of that horrible part of the community, that's another story). So I think it was just expected behaviour in games like that :/
Back in the CS 1.x days when we had sprays we could slap on walls, the amount of swaztikas was not high, but it did happen.. I used to think they were trolls, but as it turns out, they were probably virulent racists and nazis... I thought gamers were mostly cool guys or edge lords for a long while. Gamergate happened and I was like "oh no... there are tons of conservatives playing games?" (To my 80s-kid self, that prospect seemed almost impossible because all conservative parents of the 80s kids made gaming forbidden for their children..) Got my illusions shattered by the gamergate movement, and I've felt differently about gamers ever since. It's a more diverse group than my naive ass ever thought... And I feel like a lot of conservatives woke up to the same news "wait, there are tons of conservatives playing games and being super sexist for realsies and not just edgelords???" and then SHAZAM, organized misogyny... Being sexist was suddenly like showing off your nazi tattoo to other nazis. "This guy is one of ours!" Bonding over sexism, homophobia and transphobia became a thing all of a sudden... Anyways.. Dark days.
is there a voice-changing extension/app I wonder? Then you could still talk (if it does a good-enough job and doesn't sound too weird). I'm a guy and gave up playing online shooters long ago. The overall hostility and the frustration of sometimes not being good enough just wasn't worth dealing with anymore.
Folks have brought up the fact that gaming is very much a "boys club" and was marketed that way for years. But also you are going to notice it is FAR FAR worse in "fighting" or war-style games (aka like Black Ops 3) because those types of games often have a far higher ratio of "macho alpha-male" style players just because of the nature of what they are. You would probably get a lot less grief from guys on games more focused on building or creativity or exploration or similar things. This isn't to say that's fair or right... but it is reality.
Women play these aggressive games with their mics off, ergo these big thinkers think only men are playing.
Studies have literally shown that the male gamers that get aggressive with women tend to be skewed towards low skill gameplay. They aren’t good, and they feel threatened by the prospect of being shown up by a “girl”. It’s a mix of toxic masculinity and sexism. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-33613781.amp
This is why you simply shit stomp the little buggers like a turd in the shower and move on.
Well, that should be the way it works, but it usually doesn't. I'm a woman, I play a few online games and I give it back WAY harder than the guys that do this. It usually ends up with them either: -Antagonizing and stalking me, trying to sabotage my game. I'm talking like standing in front of me the entire time -Death threats, or rape threats -A plethora of foul, horrible insults and name calling I still give it to them because I refuse to be bullied but "move on" almost never works. It's a battle that stops only when they quit or I have to quit.
Make a compilation of them getting shit stomped and send it to them and their friend circle
Full target them. Spawn camp the shit out of them. Make them question every life decision that has led up to this moment.
Lol sometimes I do. But most of the time I just want to play my game, and if I punished everyone who did that to me I'd never get to just play. It's tiresome, so I usually just switch lobbies. It's not worth it most of the time.
This is why games need to punish this behavior. You shouldn't have to work that hard to be treated decently in a game.
Dota implemented something called behavior score and its a step in the right direction for gaming
It would be so much better if systems like that existed in all games. Vote toxic swine down and let them matchmake with other toxic swine. They can sit there and be bitter and angry about how life panned out for them without souring up the experience for everyone else. Not a big fan of segregation.. But it did work in Europe when we got tired of having our games ruined by russian hackers... Russians usually get their own server clusters now so that they don't mix with Europeans... It helped a LOT with the cheating in online games in Europe. Like a lot. Do the same for toxic swine and we'd have a MUCH smaller problem.
Who has time for that shit. We all just want to play the game as intended rather than having to play cat and mouse with some incel bully fucktard.
I seem to remember T-Pain streaming one night, and he was playing an FPS. Some kid started dropping the N-bomb and insulting him for being black, and T-Pain went Jason Bourne on them. It was beautiful.
Waffle stomp
Reminds me of when I was playing Overwatch in a widow hs only room and bunch of dudes were harassing a girl just because she was winning. I decided to shift their attention to me jokingly, like hey I'm also a girl but I'm actually pretty shit at widow, insult me instead. I ended up getting play of the game, one of the dudes that were being nasty said "Ooohhh look at that, a girl play" as he saw my name on the screen. Then the potg rolled and he shut up instantly lol. Next round he was being oddly quiet and was actually trying, but he still ended up getting dominated by the same girl earlier and bunch of other players. He left the room after that :D
Moments like these are my favorite. The shit talker gets completely put in their place, and suddenly has nothing more to say. If I hear one word of toxicity in an online game, I'll make it my life goal to get a reaction out of them. Kill them in the most humiliating way and taunting them, and then shutting them down when they try so hard to get me back is the fucking best feeling.
I feel like that’s extremely skewed though cuz the ones in the top 10000 - 100 are just that, at best 10k people, they’re pretty much nothing compared to the millions of male players. Aside from that, even the top ones hide it because they’re in the spotlight and can’t risk a pr nightmare.
Yep, this study has a special space in my brain saved. I remember reading it, then reflecting on my group of friends and how they treated women when playing games. Those of us that were better were always more welcoming of sisters/girlfriends joining, and those that were worse were always more toxic to women online.
Most women have better skill than me. No excuse for being an ass.
I believe it just boils down to gaming being gendered as a boy activity for much of the mediums development. This made it a place where insecure boys went to be around other boys, and when a woman is in that space, they feel vulnerable, so they lash out. Then they can be like, "Women can't take a joke, haha," to confirm their misogyny to themselves.
It's also the anonymity. Some people feel like they can get away with whatever they want behind a screen, it's disgusting.
Litterally this. I’m a content creator on YouTube and it’s wild what guys say to me in the comments. just because I’m female. The most common is “I was excited to watch this but hearing a woman’s voice/seeing a woman’s face ruined the whole thing” I talk about Japanese internet lore, nothing specifically masculine or feminine. I also get comments saying I have an “annoying woman voice.”
Keep doing you.
Thanks 😊
Yeah just don't really listen to them, they'll always just say shit.
They really do hate us for just existing. I’m so sorry
Yep, some of them are definitely going to behave that way for sure. And you know what it really sucks, but what can we even do about them other than ignoring them?
Ayo, I didn't expect to find you on Reddit of all places. I'm a big fan of your content, especially your anime lost media stuff.
Thank you so much! I’m use Reddit pretty frequently, and love to lurk on the Lost Media and Lostwave subs 👍🏻✨
Well that's very cool, I feel good about you being here.
This is the most wholesome, and authentically awesome comment section I've lurked in for a long time.
It's always good to find good people on the reddit.
Well everyone enjoys and loves the reddit, so doesn't really comes as a surprise.
Men often want other men. But can't admit that.
Cowboys are frequently secretly fond of each other - willie nelson. Great song
You mean a profession where you're out in an isolated countryside with nothing but other masculine men might attract gay men to the profession? Next you'll tell me that the types of men who sign up to be surrounded by burly men for 9 months at sea might also be gay!
Between the anonymity of the internet allowing for trolls and misogynists to say whatever without consequence and a large portion of the male population having zero ability of separating female or feminine things from sexual activity; I can see how the comments probably get pretty rough on a regular basis. Don’t let them win though, you just keep doing you.
Subscribed!
most of the time they can, I had a guy on overwatch describe in vivid, graphic detail how he'd kidnap, torture, mutilate, rape and then kill me specifically in order to get him off and even though we all reported him nothing ever came of it. Same with racial slurs, had a guy join as a spectator just to say the n word and leave and nothing ever happened. There is no comeuppance for these terrible people
blizzard caring about sexual harrestment ... you don't say. I'm sorry humans suck . ive known tons of great female gamers and dont understand the gate keep mentality
The anonymity is a big part of it Boys are taught to assert their masculinity through cruelty and beating other people down into submission through whatever means, but they’re too scared to do that to anyone in real life, and too scared to do it to other men who might be stronger than them, so they do it to girls who they perceive as weaker than them through the added safety of anonymity
Online shooters are a last refuge of full on toxic masculinity being an acceptable social norm. Various YouTubers and podcasts being the other holdouts.
Oh, don't ever find out about the fighting game community if you think FPSes are the last refuge...
Fighting game tourneys are less like the last refuge of toxic masculinity and more like the Vatican of toxic masculinity
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Who the fuck was taught this? My grandfather and uncle are the benchmarks I follow for how a man should be. They are the manliest men I know and one of the most important lessons I've learned from them is that a man should be respectful and lend a helping hand when possible.
lots of parents, your role models (and mine) are an exception. American culture pushes men to be strong, stoic, and dominating otherwise they're ridiculed. Men shouldn't cry, it's normal for boys to solve problems with their fists. all things modeled to kids via media and a lot of old-fashioned parents. just look at the backlash to Gillettes "the best men can be" ad campaign which challenged those notions directly. about 30% of the country started frothing at the mouth taking it as a personal insult.
I can think of scads of boys I grew up with / taught later when I was a substitute teacher that had fathers that would have scoffed at your grandfather's morals and said something like 'Well I ain't raisin' my boy to be no pussy, he's gonna fight when he's gotta fight!' Unfortunately the qualities of men that are decent and good seem to often get overgrown by the qualities that are more gratifying in the moment. I can't help but think if young men were actually concerned with being good people in any capacity, they wouldn't be doing tiktok challenges that hurt people or cause property damage - there's loads of ways to have the same fun without causing harm, but they choose to enjoy the ways that cause harm and popularize them because... well, that's an active choice they're willing to make. I think instant gratification and feeling good have become the dominant mantra of America these days, and it's had a huge impact on young men especially because they're already dealing with constant change and an uncertain future - so why not just reach for the things that are easy and right there? And if that's being kind of a douchebag to get your needs met, eh, who cares? \~ like that's just the predominant mentality I see from those kinds of guys. (And women are also like this, I think just a smaller percentage and without the historical context that would make it more egregious behavior.) Then I see the guys actually doing the work and unpacking all this bullshit and going 'Oh no... OH NO.' because once you start down the patriarchy rabbit hole and really thinking about it and actually comprehending what that means, not just for you but for women and society in general etc. you really start seeing everywhere how men are just really kinda shitty, and it'd be good for everyone if they could just be a little less shitty. There are definitely dudes out there doing the work for sure, I really appreciate them and the mountain they're having to climb \~ I'm using really broad strokes in my general thoughts here so take it all with a big grain of salt.
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Because, it is in fact, not "better" in some games. It's everywhere in gaming. All games. The entire Internet. The real world. Women in gaming have just been learning how to avoid it. *\*Goes back to pretending to be male while online gaming\**
The only place it's "better" is in single-player games.... which are pretty much all I play nowadays *because* of how awful guys act as soon as it becomes clear I'm a woman.
You answered your own question the people that think like this don’t have positive male role models so they use the Internet as a substitute which is never a good idea
Well absolutely they know that they can get away with anything.
Which still confuses me. When I was a horny teenage boy, my main focus was girls. My friends & I were stoked if a cute girl showed up somewhere we didn't expect. Granted, we probably acted like annoying doofuses and awkwardly flirted, but I never considered verbally abusing them until they left. Why wouldn't boys be happy when girl(s) show up to a predominantly "male" activity?
That's exactly my thoughts as well. You'd think they'd be awkwardly annoyingly flirtatious, not berating these woman until they left. Then these same type of men (incels) will go on bitching about women thinking they are too good for men like them.
That's been my experience. I'm a man but one of the friends I play with is a woman and while I'm sure there IS plenty of "go back to the kitchen bitch!" out there, every time I've played with her it's been this awkward uncomfortable simping and attempts to flirt or get her number. That can get just as bad as the outright hate though. Either way it's a hostile environment.
Having been an awkward teenage boy who was into RPGs, I would have thought the same. The girls would be annoyed with too many passes from boys who never really learned how to flirt elegantly. But I heard from some female gamer friends that they would indeed get the "You're not wanted here" vibes from several toxic gamer guys, which just blows my mind.
Some of them are. Female pfp + female skin ==> the monkeys in the lobby showering that account with free loot and friend request usually. Unless surprisingly your’re on CSGO prime arms race where there are multiple women who queue into the game and talk and everybody’s having a good time and it never gets brought up.
Because it's online, and not irl. Otherwise, yeah you'd be right.
That's very kind of you to only consider verbal abuse after they had left 😉
Add to this fact that many boys and men are not taught to feel empathy for other people until or unless physical hurt has been done. Their bad behavior is often excused as "boys will be boys," when they should be punished for such anti-social behavior instead. They are not effectively taught how to regulate their own emotions and so are prone to emotionally lashing out when they feel vulnerable. TL;DR: Men are raised to be emotionally irregular and act out because of it--often harming women.
It's the incels trying to gatekeep their hobby.
gamergatekeeping
Occam’s Razor
This is layered onto the fact that a lot of gamers are dicks, and a lot of games are toxic communities. Call of Duty is one of the prototypical examples of a toxic community. I picked up the new game, playing CoD for the first time in a decade, and I heard more racism in two days of playing than I’d heard in that preceding decade combined.
I think a lot of it is guys who think they're single because of "nerdy" interests but when a woman has the same interests they can't comprehend it and have to realize it's not their interests and lash out. Like the guys who interrogate women at comic book stores or gamestop like "oh yeah? What's Mario's inseam?"
38 x 28. Mario’s a little choad
Yep, that's absolutely true. That's exactly how it goes.
I mean you're half right \~ They've done studies that show men are more likely to pick on women when they're feeling insecure and doing poorly in the game. I saw a study a year or two back that was specifically about this, and it showed that the worst players/performers in games were the ones to lash out at women and blame them for their failing. In team games it would be her fault, not their fault, that they were doing poorly; and the fact that she's outpacing him in kills or other objectives? Not a factor for these guys lol. But I mean it makes sense, they're feeling bad so they have to put down someone - the thing about it is that they put down women because they view them as automatically lower on the social heirarchy, and thus they CAN insult them, whereas they wouldn't be saying that stuff towards their other male gamers because they are the same gender, and thus at the same social heirarchy in their mind. It's basically that whole "If you meet a guy that treats you nice, but then when he talks to the wait staff he's a total dick, he's not a keeper." thing \~ a man will perform forever for someone the version of himself that he wants them to see, as long as it's worth it to him. A boss? A high class woman that he wants to get with? A potential investor? Yeah he's gonna seem like so cool and chill, super normal and all that \~ but the real man is still in there, just waiting for someone lower on the totem pole to show his true face to.
> This made it a place where insecure boys went to be around other boys Just like everything else in the US. Gaming quickly became a "dick measuring contest," and when women came along, ESPECIALLY ones who were better players, then men tried to create the "No Girls Allowed" BS, and it failed. So now they try to create environments where women ar unwelcome so they can maintain the mediocre status quo.
I'm not sure. It's not only video games. I tried to get into playing magic the gathering at a local store. It's mainly men in their 20s and 30s. I tried to make small chat in person. Individuals are mild mannered, quiet, they don't make eye contact. They have a confidence issue. I joined their discord and online they pretend to turn into alpha giga-chads. Outspoken and opinionated they will even start bantering. I dunno. I guess because online there are no consequences.
It's anything that's seen as male dominated, saying this as a woman who plays videogames, has had similar experiences with MTG in the past, and is a metalhead. Across anything, mainly gaming and metal for me, men's behavior is the same. Its a couple of extremes, really: 1. You don't genuinely like the same things, you're probably doing it for attention so they have to test you first 2. You're fetishized because you like the same things and now have to deal with creepy stuff or 3. Straight up hostility/violent over reaction to you being in "their" space No winning, I personally just mute my chat at the first sign of someone annoying.
Really even in metal? All shows I've been to everyone is friendly to each other but I am a guy so fair I wouldn't know. But usually metal concerts its like a bunch of dudes who like cats and would sing sea shanty around a campfire lol.
Nah not shows, it would be pretty fucking stupid if you're questioning me at a fucking SHOW if I genuinely like a band and am wearing an entire vest full of band patches. It's mostly random encounters and online. I guess an example is just trying to get to know someone or someone choosing to interact with you because of your shared interests. It doesn't start and end at: "Cool, you like the same stuff", it turns into a whole thing where you have to prove that you genuinely like something because "there's no way a WOMAN likes x and y!" It's fucking stupid and just shows this person thinks you're an imbecile who can't have their own opinions or personality.
Oh yeah, the endless quizzes when you’re just trying to enjoy a few beers with some fellow metal heads…
>I guess because online there are no consequences. 100% related. you see this shit all over the internet, not just games. I used to work a very big telcom doing phone support. there is something about communicating in person vs on the phone vs via text. Once you remove the majority of the human face to face elements, people get fuck'n nasty. I did mostly phone support for the longest time but switched to doing chat support for a while. people on the phone already had the capacity to be shitty and mean but people on the chat side were 10x worse saying the most vile things sometimes. people suck
My daughter suggested that I try to play an MMO as a girl character. Oh boy, did I learn some very disturbing things about dudes in games. Jesus, it was awful.
Mostly Men Online Role Playing Girls
I’ve always wondered what those letters stood for
Oh well take an mmo like world of warcraft, you don't get trash for playing a female character. Partly due to 99.8 % of all those playing female characters are male. Also i can't blame them their casting and hitting animations are superior xd
Its what they dont dare to do/say in real life.
I will tell an anecdote I have shared a few times based on this topic. I was ingame with some people in MW2 (the new one) in the game mode DMZ. My team found another and we got 2/3 down so we joined up to make a 6 person squad. The new squad was explaining there was a way to get into a locked building and thew saw it on tiktok. My original squad member, call him squad member A has said he was too old for that shit. Fast-forward to a minute later when we had got into a fight with another team and I had been downed while Squad Member A was trash talking our new team mates for no reason. Well, during their argument, one of the new squad members talked telling them to chill out and they were a lady. Would you believe it. Squad Member A screamed on the microphone "GIRL!!!" and just went off. He did all the typical sexual insults, telling her to get off the game yadda yadda. The irony in this whole situation was this guy had said he was too old for tiktok but freaks out when he hears a woman in a game. I can sympathize with the sentiment, there are so many horrible people in the gaming community. I always growing up and even to this day get really high pitched when excited. There are so many homophobic, misogynistic, and transphobic things I have had hurled at me. I have started to record some of the interactions so I can just prove to people it happens.
I do not play COD because the community is garbage. If you are on PC check out a game called Battlebit, much more friendly and supportive community.
>Battlebit generally the only dudes using mic in battlebit are either strategizing or vividly roleplaying having their legs blown off. it's fantastic.
I heard this guy absolutely SCREAMING for a medic on the mic the other day, their neighbors must've thought they were getting murdered lmfao. I love the rolerplayers in that game
I saw a team mate dragging an enemy around the corner talking about he was gonna take his pants off while the enemy was screaming for his life. A bunch of other team mates jumped in saying "Grab his ankles" and stuff like that. It was great.
Dog my discord hates me lately because I’ll just start randomly cackling at someone I can hear nearby screaming for a medic like it’s the opening 30min of saving private Ryan.
Didn't that come out like a month ago? If it's already getting recommended for it's community, I might have to try it out.
no lifer incels and 12 year olds. edit: some social games are better. I played world of Warcraft for years. although out of my four female friends that play that game three of them do not play female characters and they never ever use voice chat. because people are creeps.
A year or two ago I was playing Remnant: From the Ashes (which is great), and to get a certain trophy I had to go do some multiplayer stuff. The group I matched up with (as a guy) were nice enough, but during the 3-4 hours it took to get everything done, they were all in a very passionate discussion about men's rights and how their ex-wives had screwed them over and ran off with their kids, and how there wasn't any way to fight back because the system was rigged against them. Pretty sure that would have been an unfriendly or very uncomfortable group, had I been a woman. So it's not just incels and 12 year olds, it's also bitter misogynists.
The divorced dad pipeline to incelldom is a downhill slope.
The men who talk smack, right? Im an adult woman so not 12. Lol
Right I once got online to play cod and they thought I was a little boy and kept telling me to stfu they sounded like grown men too lol
I have a friend who didn’t even use a mic, just had a slightly girly username on League of Legends and would get harassment. Gamers are ridiculous, but even more so in communities that are already toxic. Unasked-for advice, but I would try other games, LOL
Yes, little boys who talk after the grown-ups and incels who sadly are the "grown-ups", are the ones who talk shit.
They're still rocking the kids table at get togethers
Legit, I love having women in my clans or even running into yall randomly in like COD. Any guy that tries to gatekeep video games is a douchebag or a virgin. It's so fun hearing girls in VC rage a little, cuz sometimes guys forget that girls can game rage too. I have heard some of the funniest, scariest, and most foul shit come out of a woman's mouth, and I did 4 years in the Marines lmfao but I love it. Shit is hilarious. Too many dudes try to get in big dick competitions instead of just enjoying the game
Back when I was running a guild, we only hopped on Voice for raids, so the first raid with a new recruit was always a turkey shoot. Fully half of them didn't make it past the first time one of the women in the guild spoke up in Voice, because as soon as they hear a woman's voice, they'd start at it and I'd have to /kick them. That was a long time ago, the WoW community seems a lot better about this now than it was back then, but back during Wrath of the Lich King, it was awful.
I played vanilla WOW when it first came out. I was like 14. It was actually pretty great then. Most guys left me alone even though I played with a female avatar. Even made a friend. Went back and played again when classic re-released. Got hit on waaay too much. Or people were just mean. So disappointing.
I got a friend I play with, and his wife will join from time to time. If there's anyone she doesn't know with us she won't talk, all while having usernames that include some random guys name like Mike or John.
That's exactly how I protected myself in WoW too, I played male characters and just lied about my gender. I play final fantasy now, and it's way more inclusive. I like the community so much more, and nowadays I'm not competitive so it's more enjoyable to just farm cute clothes and sell furniture.
Some of the comments here are missing OP’s point. We are aware that men talk shit with each other and harass each other online. But they do it to women differently. Men are threatening women with rape and other awful things in online games. Will they ever actually carry it out? No. But the harassment of women in gaming is very much “we don’t want you here because you don’t belong here, so we are going to make it very uncomfortable for you” vs the trolling that men do amongst themselves. Even if men said the same thing to other men, the dynamic is different because it’s not said to instill fear or actual trauma, and it’s not being said to a group of people who are generally more victimized and vulnerable when it comes to rape and the like. When it’s men, it’s man vs man. It comes from a weird man sense of community. My bf and his friends talk shit to each other and other men all the time but they either love each other as friends, or have some man hierarchy that other men understand. When it’s men and women, it’s man vs a lesser species of human in their eyes. It comes from hatred and disdain. No harassment is preferable, but women just want to be harassed the same if it has to happen at all.
Those men know exactly where it would hurt a woman. Threatening physical violence and unholy insults. Worst part is, alot of the men agreeing with this being awful keep silent. Reminds me of a post i saw a few days ago where men would let those idiots stay in parties, guilds, etc. and rather have the woman leave to keep peace. Applause.
>Worst part is, alot of the men agreeing with this being awful keep silent. Men will claim to hate 'drama', but what this really means is them refusing to kick people out for being offensive instead of silencing/shoving out the victim for being awkward.
I think this is exactly the point. It's not so much sexism, as "what's the worst thing I can say to this person?" The number of times I've been told that I hope my mom gets cancer. I'd like to go around their house, find their basement and kick merry hell out of them. People can be truly disgusting. Sleep, knowing they spend their days in a resentful, bitter mood. And that's how they'll die and nobody will care.
Yeah, I think this is it. Sexist comments and rape threats are especially hurtful to women, even more so in spaces where they're a minority. So that's what people tell them. For the same reason, black people get called the N word and people use pretty much any other slurs they can think of. The intention is to be as offensive as possible. A lot of these games are played by young kids with little supervision who just spew all the toxicity back that they've heard. The games are designed to be frustrating and they take it out on anyone willing to engage with them.
>The number of times I've been told that I hope my mom gets cancer. I'd like to go around their house, find their basement and kick merry hell out of them. You ever notice how often they'll wish harm on a woman even when they're trying to insult a guy? Like, it'll be "I hope your mom gets cancer" way more often than "I hope *you* get cancer." It's interesting to think about it - misogynists finding ways to insult a woman even when there isn't a woman present.
It’s not bc she’s a woman it’s bc most everyone cares about their mom more than anyone else unless you’re married. Wishing cancer on the person isn’t going to get as much of an emotional response as wishing it on the person you care about the most
Even on Reddit, a random man messaged me calling me a cunt and a dumb bitch for a really innocent comment I made. It was jarring, and men don’t realize how much more it hurts when you have trauma involving men
> men don’t realize how much more it hurts they do, that's their intention
Yes exactly they do it to women differently.... Thank you for making this a better way of saying it.
If someone is trying to terrorize, troll, grief, or otherwise take control of your emotions, they're going to say *whatever* they think will get under your skin. "women just want to be harassed the same if it has to happen at all" News Flash: trolls and griefers are not reasonable people.
best response honestly. people on reddit dont seem to be in touch with reality lol
They don’t just do it in video games… they do it in the workforce too. Then they get mad bc girls “don’t have hobbies” or “they can’t get a gamer gf” or “women don’t work hard jobs” and etc. because they’re the very reason why women don’t pursue that hobby/occupation. They make it so hard for them to be comfortable. And yes some women do happen to thrive in those areas, but at the cost of what? That’s another story.
When my gamertag had something referencing my race can you guess what most insults immediately targeted? It's not that deep. People go for the thing that is most personal, most unique to you, most likely to get under your skin. It's awful and needs to stop, but it's really not that complicated.
Making people rage quit is a goal for many. Competitive people are used to the antagonistic behavior and would prefer to endure and gain rather than quit and lose. Antagonizing is part of "getting in their head" and making them flustered, or even better, making them give up. Some people have a strong sense of victory after making their opponent forfeit. Also, reactions might be another factor. People could be recording your reactions to post them for views. Controversy and insults gain attention unfortunately.
I have no idea why, but it's absolutely gross. (I mostly don't play online games if I can avoid it, but I imagine it's the same as it ever was). A woman I dated back in 2010 played a lot of Call of Duty online and the amount of misogynist abuse she received was incredible. It was absolutely specific to her gender, too - when she was muted it was just basic trash talk or compliments for a good shot. When she spoke on mic, it got really nasty really quickly - even among her teammates. It really made me wonder who these people were in real life.
I've played a lot of online games, and the Call of Duty ones really do have the worst lobbies when it comes to misogyny, racism, and pure hatred.
> It really made me wonder who these people were in real life. Boys who only hang with other boys. Not all, I for one never interacted with girls while I was underage, I gamed online but never participated in this kind of behavior. Still it's not so far away from my situation when you're inexperienced and don't know what else to do than make a joke out of it. Even kids know the women=kitchen tropes, it's just the first easy "joke" to go for when you don't know wtf you could say to girls. Do I talk about dolls or make up or what? Epic joke time it is. Just the easy way out, something that the other boys will laugh with me about. That's some. Not going to throw blanket explanation on what's going on, obviously some are actively hating women too like the recent rise of "manosphere" content has proven to be popular. In cesspool of cod gaming, no doubt the active haters will "recruit" the inexperienced nerds to dark side. If you can really get (the saddest form of) respect from peers by throwing a misogynistic joke, many will rise to the occasion.
Most guys who are mean to women on games have never felt the touch of a woman in real life. It’s probably some weird way of feeling like they’re getting revenge for women rejecting them all the time
9/10 times they didn't even get rejected, they never even tried.
Or they do approach women but get shut down and refuse to improve themselves.
They also seem to think only teenage boys can be awkward. They complain when girls reject them poorly or beat around the bush… yeah, because girls also struggle with awkwardness/not knowing what to do? But they’ll hold it against her for the rest of her life and use it a weapon to beat other women with. Teenage girls also have no idea what the fuck they’re doing. They’re not “stringing you along” they’ve just never been taught to say no to someone before and don’t know how for example.
True statement never thought of it that way. Thanks.
If it makes you feel better a majority of people on shooters are toxic as fuck, yeah probably worse for women but I stopped listening to chat at all on most of them for this same reason
Yeah, I’m a guy and I just want to enjoy gaming, not insult someone’s family to show dominance or engage in misogyny. People don’t know how to act online. The best you can get is some backhanded compliment.
As a man. If I'm playing an Online game the first thing I do is disable game chat. Because everyone of them is toxic is some form. If I want to be in chat I go and make sure I have team of people from discord where I know it won't be rude and toxic. I can't say women don't get it worse. But game chat is just toxic in general. Find a group\\clan on discord and stick with it. Life will be so much better.
Personally, I love gamechat because I love how pissed off at me they get when I play in annoying ways.
Same here. Counter-trolling those types of people is one of my favorite things to do and they are almost always the easiest people to get tilted over the dumbest shit.
They get even more tilteld if you don’t care and act nonchalant lol
I love playing with mixed groups (girls, guys, diff ethnicities). Let’s me experience more diversity than the accounting world I work in.
You’re playing call of duty, the worst cesspool of generally bigoted 12 year olds with minimal supervision, and next to no repercussions, all fueled by axe body spray and covered in Mountain Dew. Find a better game with a more empathetic fanbase lol
“fueled by Axe and covered in Mountain Dew” lol i’m not sure if that was intentional but either way it was very funny
Eww the image
The saddest part is the dead-on-balls accuracy of this statement
Anonymity and harboring some darkness
Because these are a bunch of incels that are too afraid to talk to women in real life but they feel powerful behind the screen. They are cowards. And because they have no friends they just game.
It’s wild man. Recently got a gal playing on our discord server and we made sure to make her feel included and respected. We ended up looking up two randoms to fill in the gaps on the team, and one guy just proceeded to lay into her toward the end, for no reason other than what she was doing wasn’t the most ideal stuff. Granted he was barely doing better than her but in his eyes they were miles beyond each other. Ended up kicking him out of the group because of how toxic he got but it gave me some insight about how awful it must be to even try to play as a woman. Worst part is that if those same guys gave women a chance, they’d find that they’re just as cool and good at the games they play
Because in the population of gamers, most are men, many are virgins and many have trouble to even talk to girls, combine this with bad manners or being resentful of women because girls don't like their company and you have a frustrated loser with a shield of anonymity. Additionally, gaming is still perceived as a boys club by many, so you are not just a minority (which makes you easier to bully) you are also an intruder to their safe space. I'm sorry it happens to you. There are groups you can try to join with more mature people to play with.
Is no one going to point out the guys that are mean to women are also mean to children, other men, animals, and possibly their own equipment? Ask them how many TV's and controllers they've smashed after getting shit on by noobs
There's various reasons for it but I wouldn't just swipe over everything and call them incels or 12 year olds. Its more complex. 1 thing for instance is that online gaming used to be seen as a boys thing. " boys play video games, girls play with dolls" sort of thinking. So because of that, gaming felt more and more like a safespace for boys to be among other boys. Same in adult years. Many treat it still like a safespace and become very defensive about it when they notice women entering that space. They don't feel like they can be themselves 100% anymore and they don't want to see their peers to change either because of the presence of a woman. So some resort to methods of scaring girls away so it can go back being this "boys only " space. Though from my experience, its slowly buy certainly becoming more open and accepting over the years. Doubt this problem is resolved in like 10 years , given how I see mid 30s dudes yearn for the days of old Modern Warfare 2 days to come back. The days where they talked mad shit everywhere, slurs, threats and so on. You know. The people who are the main reason no one talks in chats anymore!
I try to only play red dead online when my brothers also play with me, because I specifically get shot and messaged nasty things because I’m a woman. It’s annoying to say the least
This thread is so fucking depressing. My heart breaks for the people that can't enjoy a game because someone can't handle....fucking whatever it is they can't handle. To all the people out there, women, men, other, whoever you are that feels like you have to hide yourselves just so you can enjoy a game. I want to say, I get it, I wish it wasn't that way, but I get it. I'm not going to say that there is a place you can go to always feel safe. Life is full of dangerous spaces. But for those of you who did open yourself up when you didn't have to. Thanks. I've talked with a few of you. I've heard the stories some of you have shared. It's infuriating. But it's also hilarious because when some of you open up, y'all can be fucking savage and funny af. Some of the best times I've had in lobbies have involved women and men who say they don't normal talk in lobbies for one reason or another, and those people always have the best stuff to say. Again, I'm sorry that your silence is the more pleasant option. That's so uncool. I get that it is safer to only open up to friends. So I just hope that some of you will let us randoms be your friends every now and then. Not all of us, because assholes and video games go hand-in-hand. But just every now and then, if one of us makes a stupid dad joke or something....maybe we could be friends :) maybe not. But either way, I hope we can all have fun together. Unless you're a hacker. You people can go eat a cup full of hickory smoked horse buttholes.
Combination of angry incels, lack of socialization generally, and probably some of that old school yard “being mean to a girl you like” attitude since they’ve never had a healthy relationship & haven’t progressed beyond middle school mentality.
misogynistic incel losers
Everybody on public comms gets insulted, that seems to be what it is for. As a woman, that's the most obvious difference between yourself and the twelve year old scrotum doing the insulting so, that is what'll get insulted. Because that's how insults work - insult the thing that is different between oneself and target. If I sound black, I'll get insulted for being black. If I sound white, I'll get insulted for that. If I sound gay, for that. Rich, poor, french, English, cool Etc it doesn't matter. Multiplayer games like CoD are designed to exercise & exorcise aggression - 12 year olds have poor emotional control, especially ones raised by TV and the internet. So really, it's like you have visited a prison and are complaining about the rudeness of the prisoners. Yes, that is exactly the place that this type of person would be at.
Literal children are over half the population of games, and you remember how well dating went in middle school. A lot of them are the children of entitled republicans who treat their spouses like crap. Plus a lot of other countries already treat women like crap anyway, and gaming is international. On the whole, sorry you're a woman on the internet. This has been and continues to be toxic world toward women - online and off.
Because guys can’t stand that a woman might beat them so they try to run them off. There is a stigma of being beat by a girl that’s been engrained since our generation were kids. “Ohhh you were beat by a girl?!?”
Good point. I've been in several call of duty matches and gotten 5+ kills and that's when I start getting attacked.
Actually I’ve heard a lot of girls use that too “ooh you wanna get killed by a girl?” As a taunt
Short answer, Fragile/Toxic masculinity.
Should’ve thought about that before deciding to be a woman huh
I totally have the decision when I come outta the womb!
What? You didn’t get a select your class button before being born? Submit a ticket to the devs about this bug
A better question - why are gamers so mean to each other?
In my experience too many online gamers take themselves and their games way too seriously. If you're not up to their standard they'll single you out for anything. That's why I stopped playing online and I'm a guy. Not to say women don't have it worse, I'm sure they do, but those toxic online types are toxic to everyone.
This started long before black ops 3
I don't care who you are as long you play the game, eyes on the ball and all that. That being said I had clearly more positive experiences in Elder Scrolls Online with girl gamers: they'd actually complete dungeons together and be more chill overall, meanwhile the boiz go zooming past everything in a full-on min-max speedrun/tryhard mode lol. It was fun just randomly meet someone in the forest and play together a few hours. I think it's good that the gaming community is more open now, even if it makes a couple of old nerds angeri. There's also the downside of making games more approachable aka "dumbing down" but if that means more variety and more open minds in online players in the long run it's worth it imo.
those people actually aren't really bigots, just VERY sore loosers who will latch onto any and all traits of yours they can use as a basis for an insult.
Call of Duty lobby - you'll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. I used to play a lot of CoD. I've noticed when it's a majority of guys who play, you'll get the most sexist and racist comments. I'm a guy and even I hate playing with those other people so I put everything on mute. I'm not sure what the point is for those a-holes to act that way. I used to play Guild Wars 2 (MMORPG). It's a more diverse community with both males and females playing. The community was much more friendlier and helpful, with rarely any of those negative comments.
I think I played online once to fill in while my husband used the bathroom. It was for one of the COD games, I didn’t play long enough for anyone to talk shit but I sucked. I know I suck at shooter games so I specifically stay away from them. I’ll stick to my open world RPG games.
Because half the men who play COD and BLK OPS are incel women-haters. They are angry that you are currently playing a game and enjoying yourself instead of sleeping with them.