The kindness of creeps

[keldoen]

Since MoP dropped, I've been trying to obtain some of the game's rarest minipets, particularly the TCG pets, and so I've been interacting with people who tend to have these things.

To do this, I made alts on a number of high-pop servers, and then I went to the Auction House and tried to contact anyone who was selling a pet I wanted, to see if I could either get them to trade it for other pets or sell it for my gold on my server. I'd also try to talk to anyone I spotted in the trade district with a pet I wanted following them around.

A number of the people I talked to to try to get trades turned out to be female gamers who got the pets as "gifts." Apparently, men they've never met bought loot cards on e-bay for between $50 and $200 to give to them. Other players I've discussed this with seemed to believe these "gifts" were transactional in nature; exchanges for nude photos or dirty skype. And I got the impression that some of the recipients of these gifts were quite young and possibly underaged, and the givers are adult men.

I discussed this with other players I know, and they mentioned that this was similar to the recent trends of girls running streams of their webcams on Twitch TV and soliciting cash donations, gold, mounts and pets from their "fans."

Even if nothing is asked in return, these kinds of gifts seem really creepy to me. I guess I was sort of aware there was a gross underside of MMO gaming, but this is exceedingly yucky.

On the other hand, players who get these pets without interacting with the economy are more likely to trade them for below value.

What do you guys think about this?

I think the assumption that these gifts are being traded for sexual favors is wrong. From what I've seen it is very rare. Most of the guys that give gifts ask for nothing in return except maybe that the girl like him a little more. Because that is what the gifts are really about, they want female attention.

I really don't find it creepy. It is more sad. Most likely they are guys who are really socially inept attempting to get the girl to like him.

I've seen it plenty of times myself on my female characters. If i use a smiley or say the wrong thing I will get a guy whispering me about something random. I've even had people offer to help me out of no where. They always decline when i tell them i'm a dude.
Then there's my wife. She is always being passed loot and invited to random raids and parties. And yes given pets. She never asks for any of these things.

[Cybran]

I have yet to meet one of these awesome females that have such persuasive power.
Where are they?

You are making me feel special, but ever since i started playing in 2007 i have encountered such girls. One of the more recent cases:

http://i.imgur.com/sxVOuOD.jpg

I also have a bunch of pictures of girls talking about sex and their parts in guild chat. It's not hard to exploit naive guys with your sexualility. The way you present it makes it seem like an one way street. It's not.

[Justignoreme]

You don't even know them. Don't be so quick to judge.

The rallying cry of the self-esteem generation seems to be this. the actions, attitudes, and behaviours put forth are a good gauge to pass judgement upon. Perhaps calling her a slut, to imply she's sexually promiscuous is a misnomer, but manipulation is manipulation. You don't need to be good friends with someone and know their life story to identify manipulative behaviour, and it is not something to promote or be proud of, nor is it something you can be ignorant to.

[announced]

deathwing wasnt the destroyer of worlds.. women were.. haha jk.. but in all seriousness its better not to give gifts to women.. chances are they are already taken or are either underage or just unavailable.. its fine to be nice to them but better just to not get into it.

[Speaknoevil]

This isn't a new thing or WoW specific. If the girl is able to get a $200 dollar item by showing her body over the internet to someone she'll never know then she's manipulating them.

If a guy falls for this, he deserves to lose his money. A fool and his money are soon parted.
__

That being said, I would not choose to interact with this kind of female, ever.

[Beebeey]

Well, in the case of the aforementioned 14 year old once the scandal broke out she denied it--but i don't really blame her. Once I transferred off of that server I went to one of the biggest servers and my GM was a woman who was using fake pictures to pretend to be another woman and seduced a multi-glad feral into carrying her in arena. He also bought her a lot of expensive items to transmog. This case is a little different since it was initiated by the woman, but these things DEFINITELY happen.

It makes sense to me that those who receive gifts/carries/gold/etc in this way wouldn't want to admit to these things since they might reflect negatively on their character.

I agree with you: A 14 year old is a child. They don't have the clarity or maturity to realize the repercussions of such decisions. In such cases, I would place fault on the individuals who cater to such kids. A lot of younger people don't realize just how dangerous this can be.

An older person understands repercussions of their choices and has the clarity to make decisions. Now, whether sexual promiscuity or attention is involved, it is also that individual's choice to make. If they behave this way and are willing to take the risk of such actions: that is their choice. The blame falls directly on the individual and people involved.

[Simulacrum]

I just have such a hard time beliving inn all these stories. I dont know why, but for me it seems like it can't happen. I mean surely any boys aint this stupid?

I know guys who pretend to be girls to get free stuff, or just better deals in trades.

Women have huge inherent advantages over men in some cultures, in the sense that even just a woman's positive attention is considered a valuable thing. If you have absolutely no talent at whatever you are doing, you're not going to get anywhere if you're a man (at least not by virtue of being a man; even if you're dealing with unabashed sexists who'd never consider women, there'd still be tons of other men standing ready to shit all of you if you couldn't deal), but women get away with all sorts of crap because they're women and merely associating with them is seen as something positive.

On the flipside, if you're a woman (especially an attractive one) who isn't pathetically inompetent at what you do, you'd still have to deal with the prejudice that you only got where you are because of your gender and looks; so truly competent women are disadvantaged relative truly competent men in that sense.

One paralell to this (there are countless, but this one happened to be relevant) might be the misandry that the OP is engaging in, where he assumes that kindness is inherently predatory and sexual in nature if it's the kindness of a man who just does it because he likes making women happy for whatever reason.

Women are useless and weak; men are dangerous: welcome to the zeitgeist of our times.

[Beebeey]

You are making me feel special, but ever since i started playing in 2007 i have encountered such girls. One of the more recent cases:

http://i.imgur.com/sxVOuOD.jpg

I also have a bunch of pictures of girls talking about sex and their parts in guild chat. It's not hard to exploit naive guys with your sexualility. The way you present it makes it seem like an one way street. It's not.

I think there is a BIG difference between joking around with people and actually being serious however.
I see people of both genders make some pretty callous jokes in WoW.

Here is one I recently heard in a Monday night pug I tried to RL:

What do you call the skin around a <insert lady part here>?
A woman.

That was extremely offensive and disturbing to hear.
I had to laugh it off so I could get things done on my alt pre-reset.

Regardless, it was meant as a joke -- I didn't bother to look into it farther and moved on.

[Asmekiel]

Welcome to the internet. Where females have all the power with boobies.

This power stretches way beyond the boundaries of the internet.

[Deleted]

[...]

I am talking about the many 20+ year old players that like to talk about breasts, sex and other stuff on vent. Make "cute" jokes and try to overcompensate for their mistakes while raiding.

I do not find that 20+ behavior. I find that 16-21 behavior. Puberty. If you believe most people of my age (30-45) do this (which is what 20+ implies), then all I have to say is I feel sorry for you. Most of us are settled already, married with children. Perhaps that's why I feel more attracted to guilds where more mature players are around (of my own age) instead of teenagers. If us middle aged gits flirt, it is much less obvious and direct than the stuff you describe because we are long over that. Been there, done it, you know. Also, I certainly wouldn't accept such behavior if I was in a half serious raiding guild.

Felicia Day is a terrible example. The only reason anyone knows she exists is because of her "OMG I am such a gamer nerd" campaign. [...]

I learned to know her as the voice over of Zoija from GW2. After that, I found out about The Guild (I'm not much into sitcoms, so that perhaps explains). After I learned to know about her from GW2, I heard of a story where she got griefed by a journalist, and masses of young males defended her. Which is about all I know about her. So I guess I just proved your point wrong.

[SirMeo]

You are making me feel special, but ever since i started playing in 2007 i have encountered such girls. One of the more recent cases:

http://i.imgur.com/sxVOuOD.jpg

I also have a bunch of pictures of girls talking about sex and their parts in guild chat. It's not hard to exploit naive guys with your sexualility. The way you present it makes it seem like an one way street. It's not.

Wait, is that what sets men off?

[Deleted]

You are making me feel special, but ever since i started playing in 2007 i have encountered such girls. One of the more recent cases:

http://i.imgur.com/sxVOuOD.jpg

[...]

she/he is talking his/her cat, and its far more likely our speciman is male. I really don't talk about my genital in this way...

[Cybran]

she/he is talking his/her cat, and its far more likely our speciman is male. I really don't talk about my genital in this way...

You want me to link you her Facebook?

[Deleted]

All I'm going to say is that there are always going to be people out there who will exploit a situation for gain - some of these are women, some of them play games, and they will exploit a situation, whether it's making money on twitch or getting free stuff on WoW, there are some who will use the fact that they are women to gain something. Personally if I'm watching a stream then I like it to be either entertaining or knowledgeable or ideally both - don't care if the girl (or guy) is good looking. I give my friends a lot of gifts because they're my friends, both male and female. If other people like watching a stream because a chick is attractive to them, or giving a gift to a girl because he wants to flirt with her - and she is totally fine with these things - then I don't see the problem... just don't judge everyone the same.

Now if she is not fine and some guy is creeping on her and she's politely asked him to stop, then that's a very different situation - likewise if the girl is underage, and he's aware of it, that's a pretty bad problem. Every guy who ever hits on a girl online should be aware of a) she might not even be legal or the age she's saying she is and b) it might not even be a real chick.

Honestly I've never made any pretence of hiding the fact that I'm female, I'm also naturally very flirty and chatty in games, I like dirty jokes and I make a lot of silly sexual references in jest to both male and female friends, so do all my male friends too - even with each other! It's not about sex, it's about entertaining ourselves; I don't get stalked or creeped on, don't get showered in gifts or anything like that, my raiding guild had some 5 female raiders in it and no one ever treated us differently or gave us stuff, maybe I just hang out with mature people, I don't know.

I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced that it happens all that often, or maybe things are vastly different on the US servers than the EU.

[Hyve]

I personally know a few people who pay for several World of Warcraft subscriptions, Blizzard Store Items and other stuff in exchange for naked pictures and videos.

[bigbadbrawler]

wow players are the biggest creeps ever. play the game. read the forums, proof is all there. they are the bottom feeders of the gaming community.

[Xilurm]

Don't under estimate the power of boobs on the internet. Using it wisely it can control entire servers!

Meh. It doesn't affect me. I mean, I'm not gay or anything but I honestly couldn't give a shit.
I really don't get how some guys can't control themselves...
Unlike some people, I think love is superior to sex...

---------- Post added 2013-02-02 at 09:43 PM ----------

wow players are the biggest creeps ever. play the game. read the forums, proof is all there. they are the bottom feeders of the gaming community.

I have never been to Moonguard US, but Argent Dawn EU has everything I need to know about creeps.

[Veyne]

Holy fuck, the misogyny in this thread. I kind of feel ashamed to have a penis right now.

[Buu]

These things have been up into EVERYWHERE IN WORLD for, well... forever....

Not only WoW,or MMOs. I still remember the effort of Japanese government at the 90s about the trend of stopping schoolgirls prostitution. Older man, ages 40 to 50s used to pay sexual favors to schoolgirls. The parent could be oblivious for weeks or months, until they found the hoard their daughters had accumulated which value clearly surpassed the money they use to give as allowance. That's when they realized their daughters have been prostituting themselves after school to buy licensed and electronic products,

The bad thing about cyberspace is that unlike changing school exit, and putting policeman patrolling the vicinity, as making parents and licensed bus drivers deliver the girls directly at home, there is no viable prevention to this behavior.

[Deleted]

You want me to link you her Facebook?

Thank you but no, that won't be necessary since won't disprove and its far more likely