Norman Spinrad wrote Riding The Torch back in 1974. In it humanity is connected by a mechanical version of telepathy, and everyone can be a part of anyone’s sensorium at any time. The protagonists great struggle is learning to be alone in his own skull.
Great read, long out of print. Still available for cheap through the link!
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I’ve noticed that my youngest will text me while alone. For example, eating her lunch in a park while out of town, so she doesn’t know the locals. We carry on long conversations until it’s time for her to join actual people IRL again. That was never possible before, and it’s really lovely.
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But yeah, it’s not like we’re still living in a capitalist economy that shapes our division of labor and leisure… /s
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As an often extreme introvert myself, it definitely makes it easier to go into the real world when I can converse with someone familiar, even it it’s virtually.
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As for the title of the topic, Why are videogame communities so consistently toxic? my TL;DR summary is definitely
- primarily aggro dudes
- playing largely competitive videogames
- at a very advanced state of technological adoption relative to most other groups
for sure, I acknowledge all that, but also
- videogames barely do the absolute minimum of setting rules for allowed social behavior
- videogames don’t set a baseline of minimum expected technical features around policing social activity, such as “gee, maybe typing racial slurs in chat shouldn’t just go through automatically?” and “gee, maybe there should be an easy and convenient way to report problem players in-game?”
- videogames don’t deplatform bad actors aggressively enough, e.g. ban game keys from problem players when they get reported {x} times – without followup and actual consequences, even the best tooling doesn’t matter.
The funny thing is as bad as Twitter and Facebook et al used to be on this, they’re improving to a state where they are finally edging ahead. For example, Twitter now does primitive sentiment analysis on all tweets, and will suppress stuff that doesn’t pass. In the bad old days of … er … 3 years ago … that didn’t happen at all, so anything rando person X typed into a tweet addressing person Y – no matter how vile or horrible – would always show up in person Y’s feed.
Which is really kinda profoundly fucked up, if you think about it. Like how was that ever OK?
Ayyyyyyyy
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I have only recently started playing console games again, after several decades of mostly ignoring them. And when right wing religious fundy types try to place primary blame on video games for the stuff they don’t like, I’m right there with everyone else I know, in saying they’re dead wrong.
But for all of that, Im a little bewildered at how videogaming has become an identity. When I was playing missile command on my home deck, there was never any question that this was make believe, that the high score didnt really mean all that much. That it was only a game.
Swatting and Doxxing are behaviors that don’t show up in other communities, and it bothers me that this isnt taken more seriously by the industry.
There is a particularly obnoxious kind of entitlement emanating from certain videogame cultures, that -imho- arise when players forget that their accomplishments in-game do not translate into real world accomplishements. The “high score” feature does not lend gravity to one’s arguments.
And as Ive been playing games like Halo and Far Cry and Bioshock, it really hits me how the writing in these games deals with some pretty fucking heavy, grownup shit… in a very casual, offhanded way… in a way that seems designed to make the player feel like a tough, cynical, hardened soul -in game- and it doesnt surprise me at all when immature, unformed teenaged boys start to take themselves as seriously as one of these characters in one of these games.
There are lots of choices to make in deciding what to do about these problems, I dont expect people to agree with what I want to do about it… but hell yes, there most certainly is a problem here. The video game industry is profiting from cultivating a destructive worldview, and I want to see more pushback.
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I agree that the problems you mention happen in videogame culture, I just don’t see them as unique to that culture. Swatting is a unique form of violence that a person can do over the internet. Jumping over the sideboards and cheap-shotting the ref in the back of the head because you didn’t like their call in your 8-year-old’s hockey game is a form of violence that requires being in physical proximity. How people come to find their identity threatened by a loss of their or their proxy’s ranking in a game is the underlying issue, and why people defend from threats with physical violence.
The idea of high score not translating to merit outside of the game is the same trap people fall into with twitter followers, youtube views, or even achievements in serious areas. Engineers often think they can solve non-engineering problems easily. We live in a Dunning-Kruger culture - people tend to think of themselves as experts when they know nothing. Japan does not display that cultural trend, and they do not have a shortage of videogames.
The subjects covered in games may be pretty heavy, but so are the subjects covered in the Hunger Games and in Marvel universe movies. I actually think videogames offer a far greater diversity of narratives than you can find in other media. There are videogames about flowers growing and about a fly just flying up into the air - things that no one is making movies or writing stories about.
I agree that the videogame industry is profiting from cultivating a destructive worldview, but I think they are doing that as just one part of a culture that is cultivating a destructive worldview. What I’ve seen from videogames is that they seem to show pockets of resistance to that that I don’t see in pro sports, or movie, book or TV fandoms. I think it’s possible that videogames are mostly echoing and promoting the same toxic shit that most of our culture is but that they are actually among the least toxic forms of media.
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While a technical marvel, I think most people are going to find the filters themselves a fun thing to play with and try and circumvent.
Using accents, euphemisms, idioms, etc. Using the substitute words from sci-fi worlds (frakkiing, frelling, etc.)
It’s going to be a great time.
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It’s more a matter of most game publishers not being willing to make an actual political stand beyond “Nazis are bad” so most AAA games are steeped in metaphor and symbolism but little message.
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This is like asking if I want to go back to the “everything a new rando posts on Twitter, no matter how obviously vile, is immediately visible in the target person’s timeline” world.
Hell to the naw.
Doing something is immeasurably better than doing absolutely nothing.
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