[Kizzy]

Originally Posted by Toy Soldier

Not everyone, but not all gamers are involved in Gamergate. There are people on forums for any topic you can think of who get involved in "flaming wars" and keyboard battles. People behaving that way is certainly not restricted to gaming. I ran a parenting forum for several years and all it really taught me is that when pushed, sometimes even only a little bit, people online are ****ing awful to each other in ways that they would never dream of in the "real world".

During the Big Brother seasons it can start to get pretty messy on TiBB, even. Especially regarding divisive things e.g. Helen Wood. It doesn't get too out of hand because TiBB is small enough to be very actively moderated. If it was poorly moderated or unmoderated, I can only imagine the things that people would start saying about each other.

With gamergate you have a multitude of problems. Lots of immature teens getting involved who have grown up in the "troll generation", the fact that the whole issue has been hijacked by a massive lump of mostly unnecessary aggressive feminism (one of the messiness topics online), along with what I mentioned before: gaming is historically a favourite "buzz topic" for media hysterics. It was a bit of a perfect storm.

Beyond all of that, when it comes to the actual games, there aren't any huge issues. Even with online multiplayer, in my experience. There are small groups of idiots but aren't there always? Everywhere?

I specifically said the gamers involved in gamergate.