Gamers are Mad, again
Toxic nerds are angry at a woman online because she said a truth about gaming. This week’s rabble are attacking FerociouslySteph.
A story eternally retold, a tale older than time: every week, toxic nerds pick a new target to harass in the name of ‘defending games’.
This week’s target is tiny streamer FerociouslySteph, who became a target after being invited to participate in the Twitch Safety Advisory Council.
Steph streams on Twitch where she has a follower count of just less than 20,000 — tiny on a platform dominated by mega-personalities.
Transphobia is the driving force
The harassment storm began on May 14, when Twitch announced Steph as one of eight inaugral members of the Twitch Safety Advisory council alongside three fellow streamers and four media experts. Steph almost immediately drew fire because of one simple thing: Steph is openly trans.
Almost immediately, the usual suspects freaked out: Alex Jones’ Infowars threw up a blog post. The neckbeard ‘gator’ community churned out rant videos. Discord servers and reddit boards roused rabble and then the floodgates opened.
Voice chat is bad for women
Having acquired a target, gamers started digging for a reasonable-seeming line of attack to use. On Twitter, gamers mostly settled for attacking her for her criticism of voice chat and opposition to voice chat in Heroes of The Storm (a game where she competed in the collegiate league), and later, her widely-shared remark on the prevalence of white supremacist views among gamers.
Voice chat in almost any game is a bad place, but it’s even worse for women, who almost immediately get subjected to harassment. Especially in ‘competitive’ games, including Overwatch — many women play games, but because of harassment, few use voice chat.
Even professional player / streamer Anne Munition gets harassed.
Some games attract a more ‘chill’ community, but even among those, women who game are constantly hit on.
Yes, a lot of gamers are white supremacists
On May 15, Steph addressed her viewers during a brief stream segment:
“Someone thinks I’m super-racist against white people. No. I’m just not cool with white supremacy, y’all. I think a lot of you gamers are white supremacists. Sorry. Just a fact of how I feel. Which is an opinion.”
That, naturally, spawned even more comments from angry men.
Quite a bit of gamers are white supremacists, even if few wear regalia or have membership in today’s KKK-inspired clans and “drinking clubs”. White supremacist views are widespread because white supremacy is the foundation America is built on.
But change is a-coming. It may have taken twenty years for gaming to become cheap, affordable, and widely participated in, but it finally has, reaching a whopping 2.5 billion people this year. Two thirds of Americans play games every day, while overseas, numbers are skyrocketing thanks to an avalanche of free to start games.
Back in 2015, a Pew Research Center survey found around 19% of Hispanic respondents labelled themselves as gamers, compared to 11% of Black respondents and 7% of white respondents. A whopping 15% of dudes identified as gamers, while just 6% of women did, despite playing games at the same rate (about half of adults admitted to playing videogames).
It’s those changing tides which scare toxic nerds: the prospect of sharing a hobby with people who look different than themselves, who enjoy playing different games, and who are creating even more diverse games every single week. The future face of games is Steph. The future face of games is SonicFox. The future face of games is you.
