John Birmingham
Men need to play more video games. Real men, grown-ups. Not squirty, pizza-faced little boys screaming abuse into their headsets because Lara Croft is the only woman in the world who’ll let them stare openly at her boobies.
Real men, with a few years on the clock, some wrinkles, and enough sense to respect the gaming skills of a good player.
Real men, not idiot boys who’d disrespect the same player purely for her gender and the way it makes them feel uncomfortable about themselves.
Reading some of the ugly, misogynist crap coming out of the gaming community the last few weeks, I’m reminded why I don’t waste a lot of time in multiplayer. And when I do it’s almost always in private sessions with mates. The sort of mates who’d bite off their own tongues before calling a woman a ‘slut’, ‘bitch’ or ‘whore’. Either because she just pwnd them, or because she was, you know, just there. And she had a vagina, and stuff. A ‘vagina-n-stuff’ being about the full extent of some losers understanding of who and what constitutes a woman.
Anybody who spends any time playing video games online will be familiar with the crude ugliness of thought and rhetoric that characterises a lot of players, particularly younger, male players. It’s not just women, of course, who suffer abuse at the moist hands of these sad little gimps.Racism and homophobia are rampant as well. Taken together, they’re almost the defining characteristics of online game chat, a communications channel that makes the open sewer of most blog comment threads look like afternoon tea at the Algonquin Roundtable. If the industry and wider culture is truly interested in being taken seriously as an art form, be it high or mass art, the boneheaded stupidity of a significant part of its audience might be one of the biggest impediments. (Attend to the very first comment in the thread below, for instance. That is the opinion most outsiders have of gamers. The third comment, on the other hand, is a fine proof of concept for the proposition that you should never read the comments).
While anybody not confirming to the Nerdworld Hitler Youth gamer stereotype is fair game, the recent outbreak of unpleasantness, has centred mostly on women. You can hit up the link below to read about some of the more egregious examples.
It’s not all toxic and hateful, though. One of the bright spots in the recent nastiness was the positive response to one woman’s Kickstarter project looking to raise funds for a series of videos examining the portrayal of women in games; an examination undertaken from a feminist perspective. In spite of some really sickening pushback from the tiny penis lobby, the project was massively oversubscribed. Not all men hate women.
That’s what’s making me think it might be time to get my mates together, and get our game on. There’s some naughty little boys out there who need to be shown how to behave before they can call themselves men.
Elsewhere
It’s a man’s (virtual) world
you said it... 
Boring and irrelevant to this blog. Why not start a post on Joe Hilderbrand’s latest fail?
You mean his highly successful TV show? Or his long career as a journalist?
We’ve noticed that racists and bigots are big failures, both professionally (if you call an inordinate amount of time on Centrelink because they are poor employees “professional”) and personally (all the ones we have encountered have usually appeared as somewhat mentally unwell)
We decide what is relevant, not you.
I see the relevance.
LOL By what measure has he been successful? I hope he shows next weeks show unedited, but I doubt it. He went to the NT to show us how friendly Aboriginals really are, only to be attacked by them en masse.
Ronnie doesn’t understand how the process of making TV works.
I get the feeling Ronnie doesn’t understand much at all to be honest.
Wonder if he’s another butthurt APP member…….
By what measure succesful? Well, having the highest rated ABC2 show in the channel’s history is one measure.
How many programs have the APP produced which became rating hits? Hell, how many anythings have the APP produced that have ever been succesful? Because all I’ve seen of the pary so far are political candidates no one wants to vote for, political rallies no one wants to attend, websites no one wants to oin, discussion boards no one wants to post on….
WOWEEEE !!! ABC2 history!!! And what an illustrious history it is!!! And by the way, what the fuck has the APP got to do with it? Or are you one of those morons that actually believes REAL, lasting change can be achieved at the ballot box? In that case, I have a bridge to sell you stupid. lol
So just ot be clear, you or another of your crazy rightwingers has a tv show that has resulted in a greater success? Or are you just an arsehole that shits on anything while producing nothing but shit?
And the reason I mentioned the APP? They’re the ones who have had the greatest publicity they’ve ever had due to this show-yet appear to be slightly ungrateful.
Lasting change? Women voting? Public education and healthcare? Indigenous rights? Carbon pricing, marriage equality and migration policy? Just a few changes that have occurred or been brought to the fore over the last few decades.
Not seeing any lasting changes from any right wing organisations as such.
“In tonight’s episode which I just sat and watched I was expecting to see some sort of evidence that Melbourne and people from there were evil. Yet everything was just like a normal large city working like clockwork, yet scruffy Joe tried so hard to convince with footage, lies and conjecture to make the 4 Indians experience of Melbourne bad. He failed dismally.
Next week should cement his future as a creditable journalist, when he travels to Alice springs where he upset the indigenous to such a point they attacked him and his crew. This man is definitely a risk to Australian society.”
“Lasting change? Women voting? Public education and healthcare? Indigenous rights? Carbon pricing, marriage equality and migration policy? Just a few changes that have occurred or been brought to the fore over the last few decades”
Oh, ok, so you’re happy with the progress bought about at the ballot box re- Public education and healthcare? Indigenous rights? Carbon pricing, marriage equality and migration policy?.
Tell me, when did your marriage “equality” scheme become law? I’m sorry I must have missed that.
And tell me, when were the people given the right to state their views via the ballot box on these issues? The greatest fail you’ve included here is carbon pricing. Are you going to tell me Gillard and Co were elected on a platform of carbon pricing? Or on a platform of lying about carbon pricing.
As for the achievements of the right-wing. Well your Labor Party and Australian greens are a spent force politically speaking thanks to the carbon tax. So the shift to the right continues. But the point you seem to have missed is the far right aren’t interested in elections and ballot boxes. Don’t include Hodges and co in this. They are part of the problem. Study history and you’ll see that the ballot box is irrelevant to the far right. But you sheep just keep falling for the election scam and we’ll just keep working away, out of sight for now.