What's all this "toxicity" bullshit about?

[Michael Jackson]

I grew up online gaming from 2001 to today.

From 2001-2009, by what people on the internet told me, apparently: everyone fucked my mother, everyone knew where I lived and would kill me, I was: a faggot, a nigger, needed to get gassed like a jew, needed to slice my own wrists, should never have been born, should go fuck myself, eat shit and die etc etc etc.

And these were some of the most memorable moments in online gaming I ever had.

Warcraft 3 custom maps.
Starcraft 1 custom maps.
CS 1.5, 1.6, Source
Tiberian Sun custom maps.
Starsiege Tribes
Battlefield 2
And so on.

No one gave a single fuck about being called anything online and played more and more, and for the carebear servers, the carebear admins would ban you or kick you if you were bending their rules, but such levels of handholding were rare, it was mainly not to spam the chat or the mic too much or go full racist hate speech shit.

Nowadays?

OMG YOU KILLED MY LOW LEVEL CHARACTER ON A PVP SERVER, YOU'RE A BASEMENT DWELLING RACIST SEXIST WHITE SUPREMACIST NECKBEARD 10 YEAR OLD WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU.

OMG YOU'RE SWEARING YOU MUST HAVE SUCH DEEPLY INGRAINED ISSUES WITH YOUR FATHER, REPORTED HOPE YOU GET BANNED.

TOOOOOOOXIIIIICIIIITYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY

Like what the fuck started this pansy ass movement? Was it that cringy letter from that MOBA league of legends or whatever where they "publicly spoke out against toxicity" in the late late 2000s or whatever?

Did the 2010s just usher in a massive generation of carebears? Wtf happened to the internet as a whole?

[Zig Zug]

This thread is going places.

[Nero Duskwind]

This thread is going places.

Yeah. All the wrong places.

[Shakzor]

Dude, even in the early games, if you were a massive dick on a CS 1.6 server and constantly going "i'm gonna fuck youre mother you faggot nazi", you'd be kicked.
It's not that people became softer/harder, we just have more people gaming now, meaning we see more assholes and also notice more assholes being kicked because we simply... have more of those. And due to social media, we have all these people immediately go "omg, i got kicked for no reason!! bunch of snowflakes!!" for possible hundreds to see

[alturic]

Dude, even in the early games, if you were a massive dick on a CS 1.6 server and constantly going "i'm gonna fuck youre mother you faggot nazi", you'd be kicked.
It's not that people became softer/harder, we just have more people gaming now, meaning we see more assholes and also notice more assholes being kicked because we simply... have more of those. And due to social media, we have all these people immediately go "omg, i got kicked for no reason!! bunch of snowflakes!!" for possible hundreds to see

Being a tool always existed, yes.

What the poster is questioning is why there was this shift from "being picked on" to now being "bullying", and "fighting" now being "violent assault", telling a person of the opposite sex they are "cute" now being "sexual harassment", etc.

As to OP, yes everyone has become hyper-emotional sometime in the past ~5-10 years it seems. For fucks sake you can lose your entire life by someone making a Twitter accusation against you now.

[Vespian]

Ah, my man. I am not going to participate, because I have fought the good fight before and judging by the state of the world right now, we have lost. (For now anyhow, even the normies will soon get pissed off by the SJW cancel culture bluehaired landwhale babies). Back when I scratched my head over some alleged need to have representation of every living culture or preference in every single form of entertainment, it's now become a reality and oh man, the stories are so bad..so bad..

Fight the good fight!

I'm waiting for these extremists to get stomped in the face (metaphorically) for pushing that goalpost just a bit too far. Not yet though, not yet.. [holds breath].

[Marrilaife]

One thing that changed is the expansion of automatic voice chat in gaming, in the past it was easier to ignore / mute ragers and assholes if they were typing instead of polluting voice chat.

[owbu]

Its about you and how people dont want to be around you anymore.

Luckily there are some pockets of the internet left, where you can pretend that what you are doing is normal and fun and that everyone who is treating each other with respect must be a communist pussy or something.

[Varodoc]

Is it that hard to act like a decent person on the internet? Jesus Christ....

[Relapses]

I hope the vacation this thread gives you is worth it. FWIW, it's an interesting topic of discussion.

Gaming is quite a bit different these days. I'm in my mid-30s now but I can remember as recently as MoP that many guild voice comms were full of gamer words and a bunch of stuff that would get you reported to the Twitter police these days. Society has definitely moved in the direction of condemning this behavior and gaming has capitulated (to an extent) but at the same time being an asshole on the internet is hardly a new concept. When people complain about toxicity in today's gaming climate, they're usually referring to post game lobbies and the like. Games like League where one single player can easily ruin the experience of nine others doesn't really help. (And in the case of players like Tyler1, can even garner you an enormous following.) There are some things that I don't particularly care for -- virtue signalling and woke culture in general are kind of annoying -- but we are living in an unprecedented time so it's interesting to see how people in general adapt to changing mentalities and societal norms. Older gamers like myself will have a hearty guffaw over the kind of stuff which newer millenial gamers may complain about but that doesn't mean their sensitivity should be bulldozed simply because we can remember a time when it was much worse.

[Kyphael]

Yeah. All the wrong places.

And by wrong you mean hilarious.

[Frosteye]

To be fair, I see less people saying other players are "toxic" to each other, except in rare extreme cases.

But it seems like whenever players offer a dissenting opinion about the state of the game, or criticize the developers, you immediately get labeled as "toxic".

[AlmightyGerkin]

Being a tool always existed, yes.

What the poster is questioning is why there was this shift from "being picked on" to now being "bullying", and "fighting" now being "violent assault", telling a person of the opposite sex they are "cute" now being "sexual harassment", etc.

As to OP, yes everyone has become hyper-emotional sometime in the past ~5-10 years it seems. For fucks sake you can lose your entire life by someone making a Twitter accusation against you now.

Ah the virus known as cancel culture that makes people Lose their livelihood. They love it except when it comes for them.

[Ragnarohk]

Being a tool always existed, yes.

What the poster is questioning is why there was this shift from "being picked on" to now being "bullying", and "fighting" now being "violent assault", telling a person of the opposite sex they are "cute" now being "sexual harassment", etc.

As to OP, yes everyone has become hyper-emotional sometime in the past ~5-10 years it seems. For fucks sake you can lose your entire life by someone making a Twitter accusation against you now.

Well, the term Bullying was coined exactly for that. It didn't exist before.

As far as sexual harrassment goes, the context is also important.... I compliment my collegues (male and female) when they wear something nice or look particularly good, idk. "Nice scarf! It matches your eyes! " Is not the same as "Nice ass, want to sleep with me? ".


I'm against cancel culture and PC culture, but those 2 terms make sense. They define situations. I swear people sometimes are really dense when it comes to common sense for what is or isn't appropriate

[Kyphael]

Is it that hard to act like a decent person on the internet? Jesus Christ....

Ironically, if everyone acted like Jesus Christ, social media would be a much better place. Everyone would turn the other cheek when told to "get rekt."

[Nero Duskwind]

And by wrong you mean hilarious.

Indeed I do!

[1001]

I don't see the problem. Just because people used to put up with certain behaviour does not mean they should still have to put up with it.

In all probability people back then would have been offended but not felt able to speak up because of how widespread certain attitudes were. Nowadays people don't feel they have to put up with stuff and that's a good thing. It doesn't make them pansy asses, standing up for yourself and your beliefs is far from being soft...

[Thee ANCOM]

uh, seems like they began not taking your toxic shit?

[Nero Duskwind]

Is it that hard to act like a decent person on the internet? Jesus Christ....

Apparently, these days it's too hard to act like a decent person in general.

[Ragnarohk]

Ironically, if everyone acted like Jesus Christ, social media would be a much better place. Everyone would turn the other cheek when told to "get rekt."

Kant's categorical imperative and why it's a flawed concept.