The Cultural Divide in the Gaming Community and The Rest of the World Needs to Be Closed

In today’s day and age in our country, and really the rest of the world, is about as culturally divided since the civil war. This most definitely holds true for the video gaming industry as well. From Gamergate to many senseless comments made by Pewdiepie, there are examples of this cultural divide almost everywhere in the gaming community. While the gaming industry can do their best to try to help the cause, it really is a much too big of a problem for the industry to handle by itself. The gaming community definitely acts as a great reflection of our society and in order for the gaming community to become a better place, the rest of society will have to improve drastically as well.

Gamergate started off in 2013 when Zoe Quin released a game called Depression Quest, which isn’t a traditional game. “It’s more of a story or a piece of interactive art, which as it unfolds, tells the story of a young adult’s depression.” One of Quinn’s ex-boyfriends posted a blog post claiming that she had cheated on him with several men in the gaming industry to promote her career. What ensued was horrific. Women in the gaming industry started to receive continuous harassment and many resigned as a result of said harassment (Dewey, 2014).

In today’s internet era it is far too easy for people to harass others while never even revealing their true identity. Because people can hide who they are, often time these “trolls” will become much more aggressive in their attacks (Dewey, 2014). This is a major problem that isn’t exclusive to Gamergate or even the gaming community. All form of social media are hosts for these savage people to troll as much as their heart desires. Even if people aren’t necessarily trolling, people are still constantly bickering over the internet over politics, religion or almost anything you can think of. While dialogue over such issues can most definitely be a positive thing, far too often these arguments are simply people bashing each other and trying to “win” the argument rather than actually conversing and trying to find a solution that people can agree on. This is a major reason for the massive cultural divide that exists.

One of the most popular forms of media intake on the internet is YouTube and the person with the biggest following on YouTube is Pewdiepie, a man who in a way sums up our cultural divide. Pewdiepie has been in hot water many times for a number of reasons including making jokes about Jewish people and embracing nazi references. Pewdiepie’s criticisms peaked after he used the n-word while streaming (Hernandez, 2017). As sad as it is, Pewdipie isn’t alone in making these harsh comments while playing video games. Such slurs are said far too often by gamers every day. As sad as it is, this also isn’t exclusive to the gaming community.

In no way am I saying that his actions are no big deal, but you hear these types of harsh comments and racial slurs everywhere. An overwhelming of popular artists use the n-word an extremely high amount of times in their lyrics. There might be a difference being that Pewdiepie used the term as an insult which generally isn’t the case in rap music, but still by using this term so frequently in pop-culture such slurs have almost become almost normalized over the years. These actions must come to an end for our society to move forward.

Harassment over social media and gaming, use of offensive slurs and other contributing factors to our cultural divide cannot be accomplished through internet battles. That in large part is why such a divide exists. Closing the divide needs to be accomplished through healthy conversations that allow us to have a better understanding of everyone around us. If we can do this the gaming community, social media and the rest of the world will be a much better place to inhabit.

Works Cited

Dewey, C. (2014, October 14). The Only Guid to Gamergate You Will Ever Need to Read. Retrieved from Washington Post: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2014/10/14/the-only-guide-to-gamergate-you-will-ever-need-to-read/?utm_term=.568af422db27

Hernandez, P. (2017, September 10). Indie Dev Calls For Copyright Strike Against Pewdiepie After He Says the N-Word on Stream. Retrieved from Kotaku: https://kotaku.com/indie-dev-calls-for-copyright-strikes-against-pewdiepie-1803099736