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Former White Supremacist leader confirms groups using multiplayer gaming to recruit young people
- Thread starter Cow Mengde
- Start date
What...
There's a reason Gamergate succeeded where Sad/Rabid Puppies and other attempts in other avenues didn't.
If you want them to stop you gotta get in their faces and in their ears and tell them to shut the fuck up
OP
OP
This is the consequence of gaming platforms not doing enough to both foster positive cultures in their communities and reinforce zero tolerance measures for toxic behavior and hateful beliefs. This includes the console manufacturers, the publishers, the developers, the digital marketplaces, the fan groups, the social media platforms, the games journalist sites, the influencers, the LPers and the streamers, the patreons, the enthusiast forums, etc.
Taking a hands-off approach has proven this out in the culture we have now. Staying silent and not condemning and shaming people who say and do heinous shit is a privilege that cannot be afforded to those who have the power to stop such actions, actions that have directly hurt and driven out many other people that are the targets of abuse, harassment, and violence.
Telling victims to just "ignore" the problem allowed GamerGate to blow up. Turning a blind eye to the problem doesn't work. It has to be actively combatted and stomped out on every front, with the platform holders taking a leading role to show to their communities that it's not tolerated and that they support the people most vulnerable in their communities.
Taking a hands-off approach has proven this out in the culture we have now. Staying silent and not condemning and shaming people who say and do heinous shit is a privilege that cannot be afforded to those who have the power to stop such actions, actions that have directly hurt and driven out many other people that are the targets of abuse, harassment, and violence.
Telling victims to just "ignore" the problem allowed GamerGate to blow up. Turning a blind eye to the problem doesn't work. It has to be actively combatted and stomped out on every front, with the platform holders taking a leading role to show to their communities that it's not tolerated and that they support the people most vulnerable in their communities.
Weird, I never open messages from people I don't know anyway. Maybe I should comb through them and see if I need to report anyone.
No it isn't.
Also comparing drug addicts to fucking Nazis and ISIS members is the most fucked up thing I'll read today. Drug addicts need therapy and a controlled environment like come on.
Nah it's mostly that people attack and argue with those who think engaging and discussing can make a change. Atleast in these forums it happens a lot. If one is opressed, I really do understand that they don't personally want anything to do with people who are harmful to them (or on a path to that). But how about not trying to fight back at those who are also wanting things to change and are also doing something about it and are trying to encourage others. This is not a problem for only minorities to fix, people with priviledges especially need to challenge others and the shit they see. Trying to shut down someone like Chettlar in this thread is ridiculous, trying to pick a fight with him. Like why the fuck? He seems respectful, understanding and thoughtful. Yet people are jumping at his throat and twisting what he has said or agreed with to extremes.
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Obviously I totally equated drug addicts to Nazis.
Maybe try actually reading something before puffing your chest and making a fool out of yourself.
Maybe try using some actual logic in combating Nazism and ISIS before making dumb as fuck posts about how people should convert terrorists and how it totally works!!!!
(Even though that's not what former ISIS terrorists say nor does the US government advocate)
Also you did equate addiction and extremism in using the same 'solution' to 'help' them so. Even though they aren't remotely the same problem and need to be tackled in different ways.
I can be angry at a young 20 something year old neo-nazi and try to start a conversation to help them. Those people have time to change and learn from their mistakes. At the same time, I can also wipe my hands clean and tell an older neo-nazi like Spencer to eat shit and fuck off. I ain't trying to have a conversation with someone that should be old enough to know better. Their time is up. And that goes well beyond neo-nazis.
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I would guess it's more like subtle anti-left stuff rather than overtly racist comments. At first anyway.
Build up the idea that triggering people is a fun and cool thing to do and treat anyone who is against it as a buzzkill authoritarian who you definitely have to try even harder to trigger.
From there generalisations would come into play and now you've potentially got them hating people they once saw as just little more than "spoilsports".
You could reasonably go from "Triggering SJWS is fun" to "SJWS are trying to get me banned" to "they are trying to ban me because I state true facts about gender and race and IQ" to "we are right and they are wrong and we need to get rid of them before they get rid of us".
It's deeply troubling that most of these recruiters seem to be based in Eastern Europe. I wonder if American kids are looking up to these more outspoken and seemingly uninhibited Polish or Russsian gamers and are admiring that in some way?
I'll be honest and say I don't know exactly HOW this is being played out in Fortnite or Minecraft or COD and I would like to see specifics. I bet their opening gambit is not an in your face declaration of intent. Could be wrong though.
Yeah I also feel I have a better impact with younger people, though I've engaged with older people too who are more ignorant than hateful. But it's really hard (if not impossible) to succesfully engage with pure hatred and vitriol. The difference between someone who thinks gays shouldn't have the right to marry and with someone who may physically assault someone for being gay, is quite big.
Yeah. Same.
I dunno where you're from but where I grew up we had the BNP (or a group very much like them anyway) hanging around outside the schools. They'd talk to the older kids and then you'd see these little cliques build up and over time you would get kids moving onto outwardly hooligan behaviour.
Something like bringing a ball to kick around in the park after school and the kids would kind of look up to these older guys who were seemingly taking us under their wing. They'd get booze and cigarettes for the kids who were older but not old enough to get those things legally.
There is a movie "This is England" that portrays what I saw in my own childhood quite well and you can see how that might translate over to people's modern online gaming experience.
The companies themselves need to crack down hard on this but I don't know exactly how.
Ever heard the term "grooming"? It's like that, but for racism.
Nobody starts out "hey you wanna join me in the KKK?!"
That's the best way to put it actually.
Parents need to be more involved and engaged with what their kids are doing online.
I think for sure the community needs better role models too.
Saw Boogie mentioned a lot and he was the winner of the trending gamer award in 2016. This guy is not a good role model AT ALL.
Who else have you got? Pewdipie? Jontron? Jim Sterling? That's not great, really.
Gaming definitely has room right now for some proper high profile figures that people can celebrate and look up to.
I quite like ZeRo (smash bros player) and would like to see more like him get more positive coverage and be held up as a good example (please, please, please, don't tell me he has done something bad that I am not aware of). Like he's just good at games and he seems like a nice guy,
Mechanisms of de-radicalisation and re-introduction of addicts into society are indeed similar. Protection from harmful influences and persons is paramount.
Maybe take a second to actually read up on the subject, and how european organisations are actually trying to diffuse radicalisation before it happens (after misguided attempts that amounted to basically stigmatising Muslims and Foreigners)
Preventative measures are absolutely worthwhile and have the highest amount of effectiveness. Sticking your head into the sand and saying: Well it can't be helped, is dangerous and only serves to placate the creeping guilt of inaction.
Do I expect minorities or people who run a real risk of bodily or mental harm by engaging these people to go out and do this? No. Fuck no. Your personal safety always comes first. Be that personal mental health or physical or monetary safety.
But it is a manifest fact that those that would have the power and social/political status to do more in the past 20 years elected to do nothing and ignore it. This has nothing to do with a stupid idea of White mans burden, but rather a failure of those that had the power to do something to protect their fellow man from the resurgence of Nazi ideology and action.
The times I had to shout at some stupid youth worker that tried to downplay Neo Nazi groups in my home region baffled me. Then, 15 years later when they found a fucking weapon stash and Nazi memorabilia en masse, they all acted surprised and shocked. And the worst part was the hand wringing about how these youths could have gotten to that point. Hypocrit idiots.
Fuck this willing ignorance. Fuck all those on the left that were in a position to do something and didn't. Instead of preventing youths to get caught in the web of Neo Nazis, they rather elected to pretend that everything was fine and that Nazis were demons of the past.
And that includes myself. Outside of being beaten up by some skinheads as a teen the risk for speaking up for me was never that serious. And I, like many others elected to ignore it. To pontificate and believe that the far right was comprised of idiots and fools.
To allow fatalism to create and foster inaction. My disillusion with how the threat of Neo Nazis was handled where I grew up, drove me into cynicism.
I do what I can to extend friendly hands, without waiving consequences for despiccable actions. But rehabilitation is possible, and so is prevention.
This makes sense, Gamergate proponents basically used this tactic. Entering conversations, pretending to be fairly clueless about the whole thing but actually just trotting out the exact same script you saw in multiple message boards and comment sections.
Also, the whole "triggering" people as a joke thing was def a tactic of people on the chan boards.
Ugh, the whole thing makes me feel dirty.
Yes and that's how it would work in the 80s and 90s too. Antagonizing people would be seen as just a bit of fun. So shouting racist shit or vandalizing something or even assaulting someone would be seen as either good fun or a rite of passage or a coming of age event and I think it just get more murky and dangerous from there.
Most will stop at some point and say it isn't fun anymore or it's just plain wrong but others will absolutely take it too far as they chase that "buzz" of acceptance.
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This is very true. I wonder what we can do to push people on a positive path. Should we start approaching those who haven't been groomed with positivity? Reach out to people with mental disabilities before these fuckers get to them?
Yup yup. There's nothing that can be done with guys like Richard Spencer or Milo; they've literally made careers off of being hateful people. So long as the money and notoriety keeps coming in, even if they no longer believe in what they're preaching, they'll keep preaching it and corrupting many others.
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Even if that very rare breed of bigots only make up 1% (which they don't), look at the shit that 1% has done over the past few years. Things are only gonna get worse unless something is done.
Who's fighting back? I just find it ridiculous that one would lecture minorites on how to face the problem and how we're all just doing it wrong. If you guys really understand, do the thing you want, just stop acting like we have no idea.
As a dad, I only let my sons play multiplayer games with their friends, and I also jump online with them to make sure things are on the up and up. I also restrict what they have access to. The internet is a terrifying landscape.
While I agree racism has always been around, I can't say I'm fond of the idea that this is "normal".
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I wonder if we should start another thread to bring this issue to light with other Era parents on this forum? When I was a kid, we didn't have online gaming, so that wasn't an issue for us, but now, our kids are growing up in a gaming landscape that's very different from when we were kids.
Life is rife with this shit. Society always prays on the weak. Religions do it, Business's do it. Humans have an inert nature to just be pure evil at times.
Guess pushing that mute button did wonders in solving the toxicity problem, amirite?
And all these people who were slamming others for saying that something should be done and going all "it's the internet, it's normal".
Thanks for allowing terrorist groups recruit gamers after all free speech, amirite?
And all these people who were slamming others for saying that something should be done and going all "it's the internet, it's normal".
Thanks for allowing terrorist groups recruit gamers after all free speech, amirite?
Well, voice muting, blocking and parental controls are very effective and useful tools made for reasons like these, if you don't use them that's on you.
I think its a mixture of things, primarily too many sideline guys. As someone else in the topic said, they need to be called out immediately. My friends and I were in a stream and a guy came into the chat being racist, all of my friends immediately called him out insulted him and booted him from the chat.
Any room will be taken as a chance to spew their trash unchecked, if someone is neutral or more hesisitant than forcefully apposed to them, that is when they try to appeal to empathy or sympathy. "I don't agree" or "You're wrong" is not enough for these guys, they need to be seen as a problem, not a disagreement.
Any room will be taken as a chance to spew their trash unchecked, if someone is neutral or more hesisitant than forcefully apposed to them, that is when they try to appeal to empathy or sympathy. "I don't agree" or "You're wrong" is not enough for these guys, they need to be seen as a problem, not a disagreement.
It's about as useful as shutting off Fox News in solving the current political climate.
It's really hard. I was never really veering down the path of Hate Group Membership, but there was definitely a time in my life that I would've been very susceptible to something like GamerGate. Say, high school, maybe early college. It took some very strong willed people in a community I was in butting heads with me for years for me to, ahem, wake up and accept that bigotry was still a real problem.
They got to me at the right time. Before GamerGate happened. Phew. Who knows where it could've gone after that. I like to think I'm a good person, generally, but... Maybe I might've gone bad. Ugh.
Anyway, I know it wasn't easy for them to talk to me. It certainly took a long time. And I'm very stubborn. (Even today! D:) The point is, I guess, to just try. I always try, and I think it helps. Reaching out to specific communities could definitely be the right path. Or a path, at least.
Sometimes, though, I don't try, because I'm too stressed, or they seem unwilling or unlikely to ever listen.
...
God, I've known about the targeting of people suffering from depression and intense social anxiety and stuff for a while now, but it still sickens me.
I don't know what kind of world you live/want to live in but this stuff will always be part of internet/gaming/life in general. There will always be disgusting people and the best you can do is report+ignore them and move on.
My question (and I've been thinking about making a thread on this) is: what is it about video games that makes the fandom so conservative? I understand that video games have become a mainstream staple of entertainment in society and that this seems like an odd question or just one that is caused by a silent majority not positing their views, but I think it still begs to be asked because even at industry award shows as mentioned in this thread "trending gamer" goes to fairly conservative streamers, and not to mention a ton of the most famous streamers are embroiled in controversy.
Yeah so basically "who cares, tough it up and stop pestering people about it".
No wonder gaming is so sucesptible to terrorist group indoctrinations.
Not all people have the luxury of being able to ignore the problem in peace.
And even if they did, the last few years have shown what happens when we ignore this kind of problem: It gets worse. It spreads.
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The issue is that ignoring them and the old saying of "ignore the trolls, they just want attention" does nothing and the trolls have only escalated things without fear of consequence because people do nothing. This is an extension of the old "ignore the bullies, they just want attention" people used to tell kids when they were bullied in schools and that also did nothing to help the kids being bullied. Eventually it was so bad there were campaigns against bullying, many of which are only very recent campaigns.
The cycle of ignoring trolls, bigots, etc. is a thing that really needs to stop as it only has made these people more fearless to keep going. It's why things like doxxing and swatting has taken off, why nazis show little fear online to say what they say and recruit more often, it's why many nerd/geek communities are infested with bigots and gatekeepers, especially in games where GamerGate was a thing that was a huge help in creating the "alt-right".
We should definitely worry a lot more.
Yes I'll just ignore, move on and whoops they just killed someone I know because that person was gay.
Look how many white supremacists gaming personalities there are.
They are the best recruiters of all.
They are the best recruiters of all.