You Don’t Look Like a Gamer: On Toxicity, Gatekeeping, and Women Who Share Their Gaming Lives Online (my article)
2d 15h ago by lemmy.world/u/PerfectDark in games
Today's article was just a short one, and engaging in what makes everyone roll their eyes: seeing something happen on Reddit and writing an article about it.
To cut it short:
- Billie Eilish (famous singer) uploaded a picture of her old Nintendo DSi in gallery of images, to her Instagram account
- Someone shared that on Reddit
- Half of the comment section slid straight into shitty gamer dude Hell (the other half did not)
- Some man on Mastodon attacked me
- Post removed from Reddit when moderators spotted the comments
...this is a fast-forward of the oddness, but if you want to read over my ramble here, and see some shittiness, the link will help:
https://gardinerbryant.com/you-dont-look-like-a-gamer/
I see this shit all the time, and it is not only exhausting, but something no one should see (no matter their identity) should be subjected to. Anyway, read on if you'd like!
What losers. This is why there are safe places online. All it takes is one weirdo too. Social media, Reddit, even here. Theres a reason you should never reveal your real name on the internet. And aparently gender jeez. Wtf. Gateeeping is strange people. Its a fun thing to do for everyone.
Gateeeping is strange people.
That's the weird thing. Shouldn't people be thrilled that someone shared their love of a console? The gatekeeping is just the weirdest part of all of this. The new (and thoroughly shitty thing) is everyone shouting about people 'larping'. It was all over the Sony PSP communities I scroll through, over the last few months. Why should anyone care what someone else is doing with a console? If someone buys something to use occasionally and look nice on a shelf...why care?!
I swear if I roll my eyes more at people's actions they'll just roll on out of my head.
edit hah, laughing at the downvote. I know just the kind of person you are!
That's the weird thing. Shouldn't people be thrilled that someone shared their love of a console?
This applies to all gaming I feel. We all have a hobby in common, so why be shitty to one another? Like I get light trash talking (about the match specifically at least) but as someone with more CS hours than I care to admit, there are just a lot of unwell, and even just incredibly bitter/unhappy people out there who use games as a means to take it out on others.
There’s a reason in CS and competitive shooters/games you pretty much never hear women on comms unless they A. Join with you B. Are already in the server with a group of people they know. As an aside being a “gamer” seems to vary wildly from being a title worth protecting from ‘posers’ to derogatory every five seconds. It’s all very reminiscent of the “oh yeah, name their last 10 albums” shit.
We need better safe spaces. There we need to put those people, and then lock the doors. Safe.
Reading again I realized that can be easily misunderstood. I mean those idiots, not the people fleeing from them. Why should people need safe spaces to live their life without any harm to anyone? The others are the ones that should be kept away. You don't like people that are different? Oh no! Tough luck. Fuck off then. Don't come back.
I grew up hearing that what ever game I enjoyed, "was not a real video game." And this was IRL, from people I knew and thought as my friends, at the time. If I tried to continue, it turned verbally abusive and my fave games got properly shitted on. So I learned to stay quiet and play only offline games, just play my lil games alone. These days I got real friends who'd like to play with me, but I'm too shy to go online.. Like I want to, but just too afraid. It's really fucking dumb.
Fyi I am your friend and I support your personal, self found flavour of games 🤙🏾
socially inept incel gamer boys feel threatened by girls and women entering "their" space, and communicate in the only way they know how: by lashing out with gamer shittalking. it's barely a step above toddler temper tantrums. unfortunately no one can force anyone to grow tf up, especially when part of their core identity is as some kind of someone within the anti-woman circlejerk. best practice is to just block them and move on. angry reaction is what they want. fuck that.
also, wtf is this new "larping" business?
also, wtf is this new “larping” business?
I fucking hate how people throw this word larping around. Like there's only 'real gamers' who can be 'true gamers', and if someone doesn't use a device like them...they're role-playing? So weird. SO weird. And cringe, too.
oh yes they love dividing people into "real/true" gamers and "not" lol
these miserable children have nothing to offer the world except bitterness and drama. let them fellate each other to the end of time. i'll be literally anyplace else, doing literally anything else
It's fascism . Some are not aware it.
I am extremely aware if it, so I don't entertain it.
Maybe by 'true gamer' they mean someone whose identity is defined by gaming? Not for me to say whether or not that's healthy, but it's certainly extreme. And then going further to link this identity to gender is just weird. I mean, who cares? We're all just text on the internet to each other, what difference does gender or sexuality or race etc make to gaming? Unless it's a game that explores those themes, it shouldn't, but here we are.
As someone who would admit to their identity being shaped by video games: I also play the Sims a lot, which (in the eyes of your typical gamer bro) isn't a real game
There are sex differences in social behaviour, and gaming has historically been a male-coded status space. So when women enter that space, especially visibly, some men interpret it through suspicion: attention-seeking, trend-following, or identity performance.
i like your philosopher larping
socially inept incel gamer boys feel threatened by girls
That's a very outdated way of thinking unless you've only hung out in boyzones. It is certainly true in many ways still, but look at the profile pics and usernames, for example.
I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding who you're replying to, or if I'm misunderstanding you in this reply, but I don't think they're saying "all gamers are incels who don't like girls", I think they're saying "all the shitty people reacting poorly are the remaining socially inept incel guys"
but look at the profile pics and usernames, for example.
Which are known for being truthful and realistic...
Just like online assumptions. The backbone of truth for all reactionary behaviour. In this case, mirrored essentialism.
You're just ironically using the same reductive pattern incels use. Doesn't matter if you're on the other end of a spectrum to them, you're just being the same type of person by saying that.
This guy had a great analysis video, complete with interviews with victims, of toxicity towards female entry into male spaces. He goes historically into how video games were first age-neutral, then Nintendo made them "toys", and toys were for boys, slowly leading to the space having a toxic exclusivity problem.
One of the best bits (which I unfortunately don't have a timestamp for right now) is when he talks about his own experience as a kid, and how he inadvertently tried to exclude a family member when she started playing the game better than him.
how he inadvertently tried to exclude a family member when she started playing the game better than him.
Yep, that is a big part of the reason. There was a study where they showed: the top players weren't as misogynistic as the bottom players when a woman played with them. So the conclusion is that to a lot of people they are really fragile and lash out because they aren't as good as they like to be and fear losing 'status' if women would join our hobby.
Sadly I can't find the study at the moment.
Thanks for sharing this! It's good to also hear men bring these issues up.
Years of playing multiplayer have taught me why girls play muted. And I do what I can but often that's just getting some sweaty dude at the bottom of the leaderboard banned. It's so often the same ones that are silent until the match is over and they're blaming everyone but themselves.
You know, growing up I always thought it was super odd for the 'gamer guys' I knew to talk about gaming as a hobby that boys and men are into by default and girls, and especially women, just wouldn't understand.
They mentioned or assumed it so casually in all kinds of contexts, as if it was just a fact about the world everyone knew or agreed upon.
Meanwhile, most of my girl (and later, women) friends played games. And not just the type of games the guys would look down upon, like mobile games, but established major gaming franchises like Final Fantasy, SimCity or Legend of Zelda. They wrote fan-fiction about Sephiroth, they snuck their little DS lite under the school desk to finish a section of Majora's Mask, or they spent weeks at a time meticulously crafting a storyboard in Sims 2. I never understood why the cultural image of gaming at the same time only included guys and maaybe one pick-me-esque 'gamer girl', when most girls and women around me actually were super into some games.
I eventually realised that these 'gamer guys' just never interacted with the girls I knew. Their entire world view came from the internet, from movies and other cultural sources. That was an eye-opener.
It makes me angry and sad to see games with a traditionally female userbase, such as The Sims, to be lumped into 'casual' genres, when I never knew a single Sims player who had a casual relationship with that game. They were typically much more intense about these games and fandoms than your average male FIFA/Call of Duty/Battlefield players, but the latter count as 'real gamers'. It's really just misogyny.
It makes me angry and sad to see games with a traditionally female userbase, such as The Sims, to be lumped into ‘casual’ genres, when I never knew a single Sims player who had a casual relationship with that game. They were typically much more intense about these games and fandoms than your average male FIFA/Call of Duty/Battlefield players, but the latter count as ‘real gamers’.
This is a really good point and it makes me realize that "casual" as a genre translates pretty well to "games stereotyped towards women". I'd go as far as to say most modern video games can be played casually, but if we actually put the bar at games that aren't intended to be played otherwise we're looking at freecell.
It has been a strange and long ride for me in gaming, one of my fondest early memories of gaming is playing coop Diablo 1 on a PS1 late at night with (the horror) a girl.
Then we had a healthy CSGO server with several women/girls who played with us. One of them married one of the lads.
WoW was nearly half populated by women from the start. Two of the women I raided with married blokes they met in our raids.
Yet somehow the myth that women don’t game has persisted.
It’s almost like the people who believe that are so hostile to women that any women in online spaces will avoid outing themselves to avoid the inevitable harassment.
Growing up, that whole stereotype was actually accurate in my class at least, which of course caused me to also believe it was this way until later in life. Girls here would at most play sims. Most boys would play various iterations of Need for Speed, Runescape and Counter Strike (1.6 of course), with the nerdier ones (me included) playing a bunch of other things too. Pretty much every boy played something.
I've since gotten to know several gamer girls, but literally all of them from other towns in my later life, none from my old school days. Which makes me think there was some localized girl gamer shaming going on, but I'm not sure it was from the boys in this case, it always felt like some of the more popular girls in school saw gaming as something infantile and therefore their clique just didn't do it, or didn't talk about it. Wouldn't be surprised if some of the more quiet girls played a bunch of vidya and just never talked about it though.
Perhaps they just did not share their hobbies and interests with you at the time. Were any of them actually close friends with you?
None of the girls and women I know who are into gaming are really 'obvious' about it to strangers, partly because of the stigma and the resulting interactions you'd get, and partly because there just isn't too much to talk about that you can't already talk about online in your communities. Especially if most reactions to your gaming hobby you'd get from boys would be ridicule, weird creepiness and/or condescension. We usually kept it to ourselves.
Besides, if they played games like The Sims, it's pretty obvious they were really into gaming. Sims is an incredibly complex and time-consuming hobby for most people – modding, worldbuilding projects, family legacies that take hundreds of hours of playtime. I know not a single Sims-playing woman who is not at least temporarily obsessed with that game, hasn't modded it to shreds and hasn't spent a three-digit amount of money on its expansions.
I'd say that the average Need for Speed gamer is a much more casual gamer than a Sims player. But because the latter are mostly women, we were treated with the same condescending "it's a kid's toy" type attitude boys actually thought we had toward their games.
Yeah the Sims is a game that the older I get the more I see it as serious gaming. The people who were into it were so much more into it than the people who played standard fpses were. And people of all genders were playing shit like bioshock and skyrim when I was in high school.
The only reason the Sims isn't treated as a serious game is because it was significantly more popular with girls than boys.
Were any of them actually close friends with you?
Only a few of the more quiet ones, since I was the unpopular nerdy bullied guy the rest of them didn't really want to be seen talking to. Later on as my bully dropped out in 8th grade, I gained a lot of confidence and got closer to the others too.
None of the girls and women I know who are into gaming are really ‘obvious’ about it to strangers, partly because of the stigma and the resulting interactions you’d get, and partly because there just isn’t too much to talk about that you can’t already talk about online in your communities. Especially if most reactions to your gaming hobby you’d get from boys would be ridicule, weird creepiness and/or condescension. We usually kept it to ourselves.
I mean yes, that's all true, stigma and all, I'm just saying that over here in particular, it was mostly the girls who'd ridicule gaming as a childish hobby (especially if you played Runescape which was seen as particularly childish for some reason), which I've since found out is not common everywhere (and in fact of the people I know who still play Runescape, half are women. They're just all from other towns/cities).
Besides, if they played games like The Sims, it’s pretty obvious they were really into gaming. Sims is an incredibly complex and time-consuming hobby for most people – modding, worldbuilding projects, family legacies that take hundreds of hours of playtime.
I wouldn't say it's that obvious. I know plenty who have played it very casually, but not many who have gotten that deep into it. It was like one of the default games everyone dabbled in as a kid. And yes, I know you can spend thousands of hours in it. I've got a couple hundred in it myself over the years (have played 1, 3, 4 and Medieval). I would doubt most got that deep into it back then. For one, that would require understanding the language the game was in, which most didn't. Like 5 kids out of 25 in our class understood the language. I sometimes made money doing important Runescape quests (like Lost City or Monkey Madness to unlock dragon longsword and dragon scimmy) for others because they couldn't do it themselves.
hasn’t spent a three-digit amount of money on its expansions.
I on the other hand don't think I know anyone who's spent a cent on it. Estonia wasn't particularly rich in the mid 00s, so we pirated games. If you didn't know how to, you knew someone else who did. Most kids had older siblings or friends who'd help. This has carried on. I've bought many games over the years now, but never The Sims. Always pirated that.
Now it's CoD bros thinking anything else isn't real gaming.
ok forgive me for being old but they're saying "larp larp larp" like they're saying she's "Live Action Role Playing" being a "gamer" cause she took a photo of her old DS? am I right on that one?
Misery loves company.
Whenever I see stuff like this online that's the first thing I think of. These people are all miserable, depressed, and alone. The most basic and simplistic forms of joy from others sends them into a "woe is me" rage. They then MUST ensure said person or whomever defends said person be brought down into the same misery hole they dug for themselves.
And you can't just say "oh just ignore them" I'm sorry but no, you can't. I'm sure OP has tried taking that route several times but again these peoples entire lot in life is to ensure you become as miserable as they do. so you can't ignore them.
So what do you do? you keep living your life. Enjoy whatever the ever living fuck you want to enjoy, post about it online, let the miserable cunts try to knock you down, post more. post A LOT more. infuriate them, let them attack you. respond to their posts with a simple "k." or "cool story, bro" or "thank you for the feedback!" kell em with kindness or just an out right virtual pat on the head. "great post champ!" all that. Show them that you're happier then they are and will ever be.
ok forgive me for being old but they’re saying “larp larp larp” like they’re saying she’s “Live Action Role Playing” being a “gamer” cause she took a photo of her old DS? am I right on that one?
My favorite bit is how Billie somehow 'larped' so hard she managed to invent time travel, went back to when she was a kid, took a selfie of herself with that DSi, used it as the image on the screen...then went back to now
I fucking hate this 'larp' shit, it is so, so, so tiring to see in these communities. I figure it has to be kids.
I think the trick for that sort of thing is rather than trying to circumvent or silence those voices, you just gotta ignore them until they eventually snowball into cringe lol
Kind of like how it used to be considered cool to dunk on people for being religious online, but now it's pretty much the opposite
It can't be larp if it's real
I removed their comment and warned a ban for the future. I'm not putting up with that word being used as a casual put-down, that is not on for this community.
Thank you for looking out for your community's health ❤️
So apparently Nazis 1) have infiltrated threadiverse, 2) and are using that word to be misogynistic .
Thank you, letting our teams know. CC @Deceptichum@quokk.au @recursive_recursion@lemmy.ca @Quokka@quokk.au
Good read! Thanks for sharing your work.
The comment section (in part) quickly becomes less about the device or shared memories, and more about performance: who is “allowed” to be associated with gaming culture, and on what terms.
Yuck, disgusting reddit behaviour.
I'm glad to report that my experience here in the fediverse has been quite plesant as wimmin folk with an interest in discussing games. ! I have to give a shoutout to my favourite comm !soulslike@lemmy.zip and our wonderful overlord mod @v4ld1z@lemmy.zip and the folks over at the community for creating a cool and welcoming environment for everyone.
Thank you so much for the shout-out - means a lot to me. Trying my best 💜
I'm quite surprised that in all the time moderating the community, I've barely, if at all, had to remove comments or posts due to toxicity of any kind, let alone misogyny or other forms of sexual discrimination. And that's quite telling for a video game genre that's so full of elitist #Gamers™ who bombard you with toxicity for playing a game a "wrong" way or having a different opinion about which game occupies which spot in an arbitrary ranking. Although, these issues primarily accompany reddit's toxic neckbeard community, which we're rid of for the most part
I fucking hate dudes like this. I’m someone who has “nerdy” interests and such and naturally they tend to be male dominated because people keep gatekeeping and being misogynistic for no reason. I’d love to have to partner with similar interests in this regard but it’s made harder by the fact that the men in the spaces are the way they are and it’s hard to engage in that way without making the person uncomfortable because there’s a precedent for all sorts of weird behavior. And then these same incels complain they are unsuccessful, well please stop ruining it for the rest of us as well. Even in a non dating context having a more diverse hobby means a more diverse experience.
and naturally they tend to be male dominated because people keep gatekeeping and being misogynistic for no reason.
Why does every male-dominated space need to become inclusive? Why does the same not happen with female-dominated spaces? Why does this only happen in one direction?
Spaces can be man or woman dominant but they should not become this way through discrimination, only through self-selection. It does happen with women-dominant spaces as well.
Have you tried to be in a female dominated space? I've had zero issues being in majority female environments like dance classes or arts classes once they see you're not there to hit on every single one of them.
This is the second comment I've seen in here by you. Each of them gross. You've got yourself a ban now, but I did not make it permanent. Once the 30 days is up and you're back in here, please have a think before you type. This is not the kind of shit anyone wants to read in this space.
Why does this only happen in one direction?
The "friends" my husband had, well his friend's husband, invited him to D&D he hosted. He was not interested. The guy begged, utterly begged him, he declined. I said, I will! I've always wanted to play. They declined, and I was really confused.
Realized a few months later after talking to the host's wife more, it was a boys club, and I wasnt allowed. My husband declined because he knew they guys there, and well, knew who they were. The type to make the joke"hey I have a dishwasher!" and point to their wife, cringe shit. I was new, and just hadnt figured them out yet. My circle of friends was never like that.
They divorced, I must mention. My therapist is starting a new D&D therapy group next month after planning it for a year. So, im finally going to be ablevto learn to play!
If I had an all lady D&D group and a dude wanted to join, a dude could join, anyone could. Hell (fuck EA and the sims) but If I had a sims party, whatever that may be, a guy could come to that too. Im not different in front of people, for better or worse, I am the same for everyone.
I think the telling thing is that these angry gamer dudes are awfully lonely and would kill to have a girlfriend who shared at least some of their interests.
This kind of self-face punching comes from such a low self esteem that they have to reject the idea for fear of rejection in reality.
And then they go looking for every other reason to explain their loneliness epidemic.
Yeah, it's not a clever or new observation to point out that the men who are mad they can't meet women are the same ones who make being a woman in nerdy spaces suck, especially online gaming (but also plenty of irl spaces, my ex was a female magic the gathering judge and oh boy did she get treated poorly). But it is something still worth mentioning.
This also gets worse when genuinely nerdy women are anything other than the equivalent of the worst stereotypes of nerds. When you ask the question why wouldn't some women of all sorts have been Tolkien heads or been playing ttrpgs since they were teenagers (or have always wanted to try), or been gaming since they were kids, then this behavior gets even more absurd.
If led Zeppelin could be super into Tolkien, why can't Billie Eilish be a gamer? If Henry Caville can be as nerdy as he is, why can't a similarly attractive actress be equally nerdy? If some of the guys at the game shop grew into their face and got into working out, why should you assume that that's not a possible story behind a pretty woman who decides to come in?
Yeah, it's not a clever or new observation to point out that the men...
Eh, thanks. I mean, that's a bit of a harsh way to start a reply to a comment you then go on to agree with.
Ope sorry if it came off critical, I meant it in a form of "this has been said many times and yet it continues to bear the repetition that you engaged in and I'm about to"
Ah, my bad, no harm done and thank you for explaining that, it really is appreciated.
I find so much online discourse has become performative contrarianism that I'm probably a little over sensitive to it.
I like this place precisely cause of people like you two!
Totally fair lol, I too can get a little over sensitive to online comments for similar reasons.
This but unironically.
A lot of this behavior is actually outlined in the lesser discussed Fearful-Avoidant aka Disorganized Attachment Style. From my understanding, people with this style of attachment are more likely to lash out even when presented with the ideal safe relationship environment due to past abandonment trauma.
The way I specifically heard it described once is even after a caregiver returns to a child who needs emotional consolement after separation anxiety, unlike the other children who will immediately calm down, the child with a Fearful-Avoidant style will continue to cry, almost as if perceiving the sense of danger or emotional upset as permanent.
Growing up, PCs and video games were very much a boys thing and every time I saw someone outed as a girl/woman playing games, I was like "Nice! A unicorn!".
And every time they played better than me, I was like "Wow, that's amazing! Carry me, mommy!"
So my toxicity went the other way, as in too enthusiastic. Or a simp as some might call it. "Don't be mean to this rare, mythical creature or she might run away!"
Now that I'm older, I've been tempered somewhat. No longer do i simp biasedly. I can yell out both "Carry me, mommy/daddy!" shamelessly.
Okay I've read the article (although probably too fast) and the part where harassment can also be 'exclusionary humour' is like. Hit me in the brain.
I am female and visibly so. I use to frequent a local game store before it closed. And while I was mostly welcomed there (father would have raised hell if anything was overt, he knew the owner well) the amount of inside jokes, the "oh you wouldn't understand", "it's fine" when I'd ask what they were talking about was just :<
But at least I meet my husband there. He's cool. He loves sharing nerdy things with me.
Dickheads like this are the reason I don’t like telling people I play games. People that attempt to put others in boxes are the worst
I too, hate boxes.
I think the only person posing as a gamer is Elon cause he pays people to farm his Diablo account. Everyone else gets a pass no matter what they play or how much they play.
I thought it was PoE he was caught paying to farm. Still a bitch move no matter the game though.
I think it was both.
People on the internet discriminating around the most irrelevant details.
You know what grinds my gears? Tooling doesn't help. In communities like reddit or lemmy, downvotes mean your content will be more hidden. When a dumb-wagon is formed the good content goes to hell. And people use the downvote as a disagree button. It's annoying.
Thank you for sharing names. Easy blocks and reports. The irony was clearly lost with this guy and his concept of “compassion”.
Must still be practicing.
He said the concept of compassion for a reason though.
Obviously this is not a representative sample, but it's hard not to notice that the three redditors in these screenshots that are gatekeeping gaming all have female-presenting avatars. It makes me think of an article I read two or three years ago written by a black man saying he gave his son advice that in an emergency white cops were a significantly safer bet because institutionalized racism gives them a lot more leeway to show empathy towards minorities without being ostracized for it. A woman actually trying to fit into a misogynistic culture is going to feel more pressure to consistently prove her belonging, and can end up being more ruthless in enforcing the misogyny and more effective because her gender allows a cover of legitimacy.
anime girl PFPs are the new 'xXx_420_BLAZE_IT_xXx'
.....it's the same dude who had a ar15/skull/COD Ghost PFP 10 years ago...
Anime avatars have been a thing for much longer than that but these are clearly not anime girls, it's the thing where people customize the reddit logo to look like themselves. I might be wrong but I'm under the impression that the culture with these isn't one where toxic masculinity will mesh with presenting as female.
One of them has a trans balloon, this seems to further ratify what you are saying, trying to validate a stereotype to fit in better. This is sad from humanity :(
Remember kids you can be who you are without needing external validation. Especially not external validation gotten by being against your “own group “
Remember kids you can be who you are without needing external validation. Especially not external validation gotten by being against your “own group “
I don't think it's quite that straightforward, because they're doing this because they're also perceiving gamers as their own group and feeling like being a part of two groups at odds with one another demands that a choice be made. Their version of not being against their own group begins with asking themselves "which group do I identify more with", rather than asking whether the two have to be at odds with each other in the first place. The lesson is that your immutable characteristics are not character failures, and if you're starting to feel like they are it's really important to introspect on where that's coming from.
I know people generally look at this kind of gatekeeping from the outside and write it off as a repressed self-hatred, but I'm kind of inclined to think of it the opposite way. If your immutable characteristics are a handicap to being a part of something important to you, then actually being accepted into that group is a triumph that most people with the same handicap can't achieve. If gamers are cool and I don't question the premise that girls aren't fit to be gamers, then if I can kind of sort of be accepted in this space that's still better than most other girls. The boys fit in better here of course, but it's not impressive it's just normal. This other girl is just larping because she wants to be like me.
We should strive to identify cultures of looking down on others. We should strive not to participate in that. Don't just find comfort in being who you are, but allow others to find the same comfort with more ease than you had.
If this happens to a celebrity posting about a 20 year old Nintendo game system, I can only imagine what it's like for your average female logging into modern competitive shooter.
Gamergate never went away. It was the precursor to the youthful fadcisti, in many ways. We need women in these spaces to help diffuse the malignant culture. They'll remain targets of harassment tho, so it's up to everyone to police misogyny, and racism for that matter, too.
Gaming is one of those weird spaces; it mainstreamed in the smartphone era, with a lot of folks who previously mocked it embracing it.
It's picked up the toxic manosphere infection as it transitioned ("casual gamers" Vs "real gamers" facilitated that boxing off). The onlyfans "egirl" revolution painted a skewed picture of girls as gamers in the worst possible way (doing it for attention to make money), and the manosphere has amplified this to the detriment of gamers everywhere.
Gaming also focuses a lot of moral outrage, and that hasn't helped matters. It's given some men a ghost to fight against ("the big bad feminist trying to ban waifus"), whereas the reality is far from that!
The reality is gaming is for everyone who wants to game; the best question to ask another gamer is what they've enjoyed playing (for the Ds, the Etrian Odyssey games are amazing!). Not every game is for every person, except for Super Smash on the GameCube, because that game was high art.
I really like Etrian's artstyle. I really should get around to playing it.
The soundtrack is also really good, and the sheer range of options to create parties is just outstanding.
#3 is the one I sunk the most hours into, it's a good one to start with as they'd iterated on ideas, cut some grind, and the multi-class system let's you design some beautifully overpowered parties for the endgame.
Ooh, that's sounds cool. Yeah, I'll look at the third one then.
That’s too bad people can’t behave.
Mind if I share where I’m grappling with the following from a privacy perspective?
I can imagine a privacy hawk making that comment with a deep concern for others and desire to force a very difficult social change.
I remember someone complained everyone in their life said “I’m not even really on Facebook! …I just use it for <thing everyone uses Facebook for>”
Maybe I am a bad person to judge because the underlying concern resonates with me, so I can be sympathetic and treat it as hyperbole. (edit: lol it’s so wrong on its face, IG like world’s most popular platform or almost)
Thank you for your analysis and reporting here!
I think I'm piggy-backing off of something you're not talking about, I'm not sure. But I wanted to say it anyway.
The phrase "did you think anybody here wants to hear about instagram" isn't just a personal reaction,
People say things like this when what they mean is "I don't want to hear about Instagram" all the time. If you're listening for it, you can pick language like this out near constantly. It's really, really dishonest, and it drives me crazy.
A person won't say "I didn't like this movie," but they will say "this movie is bad" because they know the second one gets taken more seriously. They effortlessly move a subjective opinion into the objective, and this is where, like, 90% of arguments about media stem from.
People are constantly embellishing their opinions to seem more important than they are, and I really wish they would stop treating the public consensus like a game of King of the Hill.
That's not to say that speaking for a crowd is always a bad thing, but god do people abuse it.
gaming is more cerebral than corporeal
The you don’t look like a gamer line has always been so tired. If someone plays games, they’re a gamer — no gatekeeping DLC required.
Yes and no. I'm sorry I refuse to count someone who exclusively plays Candy Crush on their phone as a "gamer". I mean I'm not acting like it's a exclusive title, but there is a reasonable minimum. You wouldn't call someone an artist because they drew a stick figure doodle on their school notes.
By the logic everyone would be everything.
I mean what does a gamer look like? 35 year old neck beard? I mean I’m a 55 year old dude that’s been playing games since I was 6 years old. Do I look like a gamer?
Find somebody playing a game. Look at them. That’s what a gamer looks like. FFS it ain’t that hard.
Guys, guys, it’s 2026, gamers don’t need to look like unhygienic basement dwellers anymore, get on with the times!
What if I like it?
You don’t need to be like that, but if you do, go nuts!
I think the root of the problem is a pathological need for social control. Excessive wealth accumulation, sexism, racism.
The piece of information that makes me choose not to engage in this behavior is understanding the value of my own life and by extension the lives of others.
Psychology doesn't consider a lot of this a mental illness because the behavior confers benefits to the person performing them. But if I assume abusing women online is irrational.
Then this is a child development problem.
Based comment.
Hey dash! Cool article on an issue worth writing about. Thank you for sharing your own work here.
I have a question about something that surprised me: did you consider censoring user names of the people you used as examples of negative internet culture? From a perspective of journalistic best practice, I personally feel like this would have been better, mostly since you are making a point about general culture, not specific people. This became noticable to me with the reference to mastodon (less with reddit). Maybe because mastodon feels like more of a personal, less anonymous platform. Also, @f... (no thank you voyager, I won't tag him here, even if you autocomplete the handle) is more singled out.
What I want to express is that I feel like that not censoring names detracts from your point of 'online spaces are bad' to 'these people are bad'. This is especially true if the bad actor is a single person, as in the mastodon / 'shut up about instagram'-section. This is the case in addition to the risk of people reaching out to the posters in question to worsen their day.
I like not censoring names. Hold people accountable for their words, name and shame. It's nothing a decent googler can't find by searching with quotation marks. People willingly put their posts online next to their usernames, they out to stand by it.
I’m very much in favor of naming and shaming. I think the average person can figure out that more than one mysogynistic idiot exists. And it would be a great public service to know who to block.
Gaming gatekeeping is just the old tribalism rearing its nasty mug. It's all over the place in all sorts of environments.
I love billie so much, she's such an icon
A recent Reddit post in the r/NintendoDS community, titled “Billie Eilish via last Instagram post,” is a small but telling example of how these dynamics surface in otherwise ordinary gaming spaces. While the post itself is fairly innocuous: it just shows Billie Eilish and a Nintendo console associated with nostalgia. The comment section (in part) quickly becomes less about the device or shared memories, and more about performance: who is “allowed” to be associated with gaming culture, and on what terms.
Are you positive it's about women and not celebrities? Personally I've never seen or heard about anyone's disbelief in women being gamers. However, I have absolutely seen and heard about a lof ot people's disbelief in anything celebrities do for attention.
Not necessarily saying Billie is full of shit. Just celebrities in general, and she happens to be one.
Good lord you cannot be this naive in 2026
Seriously. Have they talked to a woman about their life experiences? More importantly, have they ever actually listened to a woman?
I mean, I'd imagine that you wouldn't know those kinds of people. But it's very much real. While it no doubt encompasses celebrity gatekeeping, it's at least as much about women in gaming as well. Gaming was associated with boys as part of a campaign to bring it back from the brink, and that's manifested a culture of misogyny since. Gamergate's continued smoldering is evidence of that
Personally I’ve never seen or heard about anyone’s disbelief in women being gamers.
Rule 30 of the "Rules of the Internet"
The only celebrities I trust to be gamers are those like Henry Cavill who have the bills to show it. Not because what gender they happen to be.
I remember when I used to play video games. Yea, I was your typical window masturbator with kilobytes of child porn and may have killed a dog. Then I got MKULTRA'd and got taken advantage of by a cult that reprogrammed my dopaminergic potential with oil changes n cheese cloths to then escape by cutting into my arm to do acid again to realize I was a woman to spiral into homelessness while traveling the country and creating a sex cult built around incestuous necrophilia that would get me v& by the FBI for accidentally advertising it on the Roblox subreddit. And also obscene terroristic threats to a prominent US senator. Obviously, I just talked my way outta it, and thank God I got taken advantage of by that cult cuz I woulda still had them kilobytes while playing Dragon Age or some shit for the sex scenes, cuz that's what mattered when I played video games.
wait is this article really complaining that someone said they don’t care about her complaining about shitty people on Reddit?
presumably the point of leaving for some of us was so we don’t have to hear about stupid shit said by its remaining users
like giving a fuck about what’s left on X
anyway my wife has more console games than I ever had and most cater to her demographic over mine
what a dumb thing for the original reddit users to try and gate keep in this day and age
it’s not the 90s, women game in mainstream
that said the whole lying by rich and famous people for pointless gaming cred is real, just look to moron Elon and Path of Exile
Missing the point in so many ways, you'd think a stormtrooper wrote this
which point?
I’m sympathetic about her complaint over reddit but nothing with mastadon had anything to do with her being a woman
“Calling women fake gamers, larpers, attention-seekers, or outsiders for visibly enjoying games is gatekeeping. It turns a hobby into a status boundary and makes gaming spaces worse.”
That's the point I got from GPT-5.5.
I disagree with the conclusion - I don't think gate-keeping is bad. I used to think it wasn't, but I see a lack of gate-keeping spaces, on both a local and national level, as the cause of certain issues. Go create your own damn hobbies with sparkle-ponies and hot-Antonio-Banderas lookalikes. Just leave mine alone.
gate keeping on controllable things that are bad is fine
see Elon Musk lying about being a top Path of Exile player, when he payed some farmer for his account
shitting on women gamers because they don’t play game exactly like you do is shit behavior (not saying you are doing this)
it does suck though when your favorite gaming space no longer cares about your demographic though when you were there first
fuck the fallout series post 2 except nv
(tactics was a guilty pleasure)
i think there should be space to complain about the changes without attacking people genuinely enjoying a game in their own way (not aholes trying to make money off of it)
Pot meet kettle