So it turns out that this week is full of stuff that I would like to share with you, Internet.
First, I wrote a column for The Washington Post about how anonymous trolls are poisoning the video game community, and what we can do about it.
Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society’s worst actors. The loudest, most obnoxious, most toxic voices are able to drown out the rest of us—a spectacle that has nearly pushed me to quit the video-game world entirely in recent months. I don’t need to hear about the sexual conquest of my mother from a random 12-year-old on Xbox Live ever again.
But here’s the thing: that random 12-year-old I seem to encounter so often? He probably isn’t 12. According to the ERSB, the average age of a video gamer is 34. That 34-year-old is certainly old enough to know better, but he probably came of age in an era when trolling was not just acceptable but encouraged by a generation of players who rarely, if ever, had to see the actual people they were playing with. No wonder he feels enabled by digital anonymity. It means he never has to face the consequences of his actions, or acknowledge that there is a human being on the other side of the screen.
It’s time to break this cycle—and to teach gamers that they can compete without being competitive, that they can win and lose without spewing racist, misogynist, homophobic bile at their fellow gamers. But doing so requires casting off the cloak of anonymity.
Early feedback via Twitter is split between a majority, who are tired of being harassed while gaming, and a minority who seem to believe I am advocating for an end to online privacy (which I clearly am not). I’m interested to know your thoughts on this column, so please read it, and comment here, if you don’t mind. If you’d like to read more about it, I highly recommend this article, which quotes my friend, Stepto, at length.
I’m hosting DC ALL ACCESS this week. Here’s the trailer, which makes me laugh:
Tabletop Season Three premieres in just two days!! We put together a special trailer for this season that asks the question that’s on everyone’s mind…
I signed agreements to do two more audiobooks. I can’t reveal their titles, yet, but I will as soon as I get permission.
Next Monday, I’m performing in a live show here in Los Angeles, with Hal Lublin, and John Ross Bowie. It’s Hot Comedy Dreamtime, written by my friend Joseph Scrimshaw.
Oh! Also next week, I’m filling in for Larry King, and interviewing Chris Hardwick for Larry King Now.
In a couple hours, I’ll sit on a seat which will magically hoist itself into in the sky, and I’ll end my day in New York City. I don’t think I can talk about why I’m going, yet, but I’ll be there for just under 24 hours, for something really awesome that I can’t wait to share with the world.
PLAY MORE GAMES!
I have additional thoughts, based on your comments, which I wrote while in a seat in the sky. They are behind the jump.
I really want to be listening to Serial, but I wanted to take a moment and talk about my column in the Post today. Before I get into it, this is important: I fully stand by everything I wrote. I’m writing this simply because I have the opportunity to take up a little more column space, here on my blog, to dig a little deeper into what we published this morning. Most of this is in response to what I’m 75% certain is just the deliberately provocative distortion and obtuseness of trolls, but if there are 25% of people who genuinely misunderstood me, this is for them.
It feels like a lot of people — unsurprisingly people who associate themselves with #GobbleGrabber — are either misunderstanding, or deliberately distorting the thesis of my piece. I could continue to just block and ignore these people, but I hope that there are some well-intentioned people among their number who are being mislead by the loudest among them, who I may be capable of reaching.
First, something I had not considered when I worked out, researched, and wrote my column: the very real possibility that some people who are survivors of various forms of abuse, or people who have dealt with stalkers may feel even more exposed while gaming online if they were forced to play games under their actual identities. I acknowledge that this oversight springs directly from the reality that I am extraordinarily privileged, and live my life on Scalzi’s lowest difficulty setting, with the celebrity cheat enabled. The fact that this is a very real fear for a lot of players (mostly women), supports my main points that the worst among us are making things terrible for the rest of us. But I will also point out that I do not believe anyone should be forced to decloak. In fact, one of the headlines suggested for my story was about “banning” anonymity in online games, and I asked that it not be used, because I don’t believe in banning anonymity online. The suggestion that ending blanket anonymity in gaming somehow ends anonymity everywhere is such a lazy argument, it isn’t even worth refuting. As I said, anonymity is extremely important for a lot of people, and I can simultaneously oppose SOPA and Total Information Awareness, and understand that some people need anonymity to be protected from abusers, while I hate that some other people take advantage of anonymity to be shitlords on the Internet. See, when you’re a grown up, that’s not difficult to understand. I believe in holding people accountable for their actions online (and offline), so maybe to that end, a player can be anonymous, but if he’s a shitlord on a consistent basis, maybe his console is banned, his IP is banned, his account is banned, or something that he can’t throw away as easily as an e-mail address ties him to his words and actions, so he will think twice about how he behaves while gaming. And, listen, people, this isn’t about forcing some sort of Orwellian surveillance onto political dissidents living under totalitarian regimes. This is about people being bullies while playing video games. This is about people driving developers from their homes, out of fears for their own safety, because someone doesn’t like a video game.
The same people who claim that #GilbertGrape is about stopping misogyny, bullying, and bigotry are also out in force, asserting that I said and believe things that I didn’t write, and claiming that I somehow support bullying, doxxing, and misogyny, because of reasons. It’s frustrating to put a lot of time and effort into making a clear point that I hope spurs discussion, only to have a small but loud hive of annoying insects buzz around, seeing how loud they can get it inside their echo chamber. A typical line of argument goes something like: But if you ban anonymity in gaming, it will make things even more terrible for women! This argument fails to consider or address the root cause of women being treated poorly in online gaming (men harassing women, threatening women, and generally making it miserable for women to play games unless those women adopt a masculine identity). Yes, if nothing were to change, and we were to continue along the arc we, as a gaming community, are on, it absolutely would make things worse for women. But when gaming online is safe for everyone, because people are held to account for their actions, everyone should be able to play as themselves, without fear of systemic and sustained harassment. These people who make this argument seem to ignore the fact that bad behavior should be addressed, and instead make the case that women should just continue to hide their identities, rather than holding accountable the men who harass them. I understand the benefits of positive anonymity, and I support positive anonymity.
I do believe in holding people accountable for their behavior, online and offline. I do believe that the vast majority — a silent majority, but a majority still — of gamers are awesome people who play hard, but aren’t dicks about it. I do believe that a very small minority of loud and persistent shitlords are having a very loud and very public temper tantrum, because they feel threatened by something that, frankly, isn’t objectively threatening. (Sidebar: the existence of a casual game like Flying Unicorn Happy Song or whatever doesn’t negate or dilute whatever First Person Testosterone-a-rama you currently love to play. The existence of a discussion about how women are portrayed in gaming, and whether that affects how welcomed women feel in the gaming community, isn’t an attack on you, Mister #NotAllMen. In fact, it isn’t and never was about you. And I won’t even dig into the insanity of expecting a review to be “objective”, when reviews are, by their nature, subjective.)
The point I was making, which I know the vast majority of people understood and comprehended, is that I want games to be accessible to everyone, and as long as a small but loud minority of people can act like shitlords with impunity, large swaths of gaming will be accessible only to the most vile and wretched group of trolls. The more people game, the more games we’ll have available to us to play. The wider the demographic of gamers, the more diverse styles of games we’ll get to play. The sooner we who are the majority of decent people stand up and demand that people who are terrible in gaming be held accountable for their actions — actions which would, in many cases, be criminal if perpetrated in-person — the sooner we can all hold our heads up high and say, You’re damn right, I’m a gamer, and I’m damn proud of it. Want to play a game?
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I used to look up to you.
He is advocating that people treat each other with respect, and to not be assholes. Which has always been his message. If you no longer look up to him, then you must not have been looking at him right to begin with.
Would you mind explaining why you no longer look up to him? Because I don’t understand why you wouldn’t.
Probably because he’s judging an entire group of gamers based on the actions of a few trolls. And everyone of those trolls that has been identified has been proven to not be affiliated with the group he’s judging.
As a gamer older than the average that Wil has pointed out, I remember when they tried telling us that our hobby was satanic and led to devil worship. Then later it was blamed for causing violence and murder. Now there are those misrepresenting games and gamers as sexist and spreading misogyny.
So now there’s a consumer revolt against those accusations and other issues in gaming media…and the media’s response is that we’re “threatened by girls trying to intrude on our boy’s club”…the same club that we’ve been trying to invite girls into for decades. Hell, I remember when near every nerd’s biggest dream was to have a gamer girlfriend. Most of us are very inclusive people, and welcome gamers of all kinds, races, genders, and orientations. I want to game with you and play games made by you, no matter who you are.
So yes, it’s a little disappointing to see someone you looked up to denigrate us as a hate group based on the actions of a few actual trolls.
“Probably because he’s judging an entire group of gamers based on the actions of a few trolls.”
That statement is so full of $#!*. If you took the time to read and understand the article, you’d know that Wil specifically points out that the majority of gamers are awesome people – as reflected in his long history of gaming.
The mentality that “it’s just a few bad apples” is so poisonous. If you truly believe, like Wil, that gamers are generally cool people then you should be pissed off more than non-gamers at these trolls. I’m pretty sure that’s what Wil was getting at in the last paragraph. Speak up because the trolls definitely are.
I wasn’t referring to his article here. This article here I pretty largely agree with, and represents the same Wil I’d respected for many years.
It’s his comments and prejudice on twitter etc that saddens me, and I assume was the impetus behind the first comment above.
I almost didn’t write that comment at all, because I feel like there’s been a vicious cycle here…accusations happen, people who think those accusations are unfair feel hurt, some of who lash out, causing hurt, and providing “justification” for those accusations, and the cycle continues; and I feared that by criticizing Wil that I’d just be contributing to the cycle. (And I tried to write that in as general terms as I could as to seem as non-accusatory as I could manage.)
And though I’m just one person who kinda recently fell on the pro-Gamergate side (in part for the reasons I tried to explain above), and so hardly represent the “movement” as a whole, I really do want to extend an olive branch where I can. Because as I’ve been telling everyone else at every opportunity, both pro-GG and against.
No matter your gender, orientation, race, religion, etc…
Please let’s be excellent to one another.
No he is judging the trolls on the behaviour of trolls. There is no consumer revolt, the fools “revolting” are the sort to get most of their games form Pirate Bay anyway. I bet “big business” is quaking in their boots when a whole bunch of people that don’t pay for games continue to not pay for games.
By the way as a ‘girl” I don’t need inviting into your club, I have my own club with or without blackjack & hookers, that’s the point we don’t want to be “invited or allowed into YOUR club” we just want to play games. Maybe when you stop thinking of yourself as special because you play games are realize most people do now a days & it’s not some super secret special club that people need your permission or approval to enter you’ll get what people like Wil are talking about.
You really, really, misunderstood just about every aspect of my post.
1) I’ve never claimed to be special.
2) I’ve never claimed to be part of a special club that required an invitation.
You just want to play games? Awesome. That’s the club of which I speak, and am surprised to be getting hate for simply saying that I believe everyone should feel welcome to game, and to please be excellent to one another.
Then your plane landed.
I don’t get the comment either – I agree with the other posters – Wil has never excluded anyone nor advocated for random trolling – his whole mantra is “Don’t be a Dick”. Good mantra to live by. It is important that we expose trolling for what it is – a form of cyber-bullying.
Posting anonymous is for idiots. I sign all my messages and if I am ashamed to do so, then there is probably something wrong with my post and I shouldn’t submit it in the first place! I am all for critical discussions and well thought out arguments… but if you can’t sign it… don’t post it.
Adam Savage summed it up for me the other day with, “The moment you’re trying to hurt other people, whether with words or physical violence — there’s something deeply wrong with you.”
I can usually ignore the trolls, but I have a 12-year-old son. Gosh, it was awfully fun showing him the ‘ignore’ function when he was playing Minecraft (MINECRAFT!) at 9 years old.
Congrats on the business type stuff! It’s always good to be busy!
As for the Internet Fuckwad Theory, something needs to be done, I just don’t know what it is. I think that the people screaming racist, homophobic, misogynistic filth over gaming networks need to be held accountable, but at the same time I’m not comfortable having real names, email addresses, ages, or other stuff like that visible to anyone who has a complaint. We could only allow voice chat when doing stuff like Team Deathmatch so you can coordinate with your team, but you can’t say anything to the other team? Would that work?
The not so funny thing about it is that when South Korea introduced a law that required people to sign everything they posted with their real names, people became even worse assholes. And two years later, the supreme court shot the law down as unconstitutional.
Sheriff of forbidden sushi sounds like and awesome game!
Mmm, forbidden sushi….
Pay no mind to the first response, here. Felt like the epitome of what you were talking about. In any case, EVERYTHING you post is made of Chocolate coated AWESOME.
That is all….
While its a good idea in theory, I’m not sure its practical. I’m not sure what tools you could employ to remove the anonymity of the internet that wouldn’t ultimately cause more damage than they would solve.
Thanks for speaking up sir, you’re the best.
I personally feel that anyone who spews hate in the way some gamers have gotten into the habit of doing and also any others who can’t voice an opinion without attacking individuals in the way trolls do, should loose the right to anonymity. They are mostly only behaving the way they do because they don’t think anyone can find them, so if they loose their safety blanket due to consistently bad behaviour then perhaps they might learn that the internet has the same social requirements as “real life” does.
LOVING the trailer for the new season of TableTop!
Nice article. I’m not sure what a practical solution could be, but I’m glad that you’re continuing the discussion.
I also think that the rise of, for lack of a better word, “dicks” in online gaming is helping fuel the resurgence of tabletop games.
Thanks for all you do, Wil. I’m eagerly awaiting season 3!!
i don’t game online, but my older son does. on occasion, his younger brother, an 11yo, will get on his account. he has shared with me some of the things that those guys say, mostly sexual stuff he has no context for and what it means. even though he usually doesn’t participate in the discussion (more because he doesn’t want them to know he’s 11), he hears it when he wears the headpiece.
i try not to be overprotective, and he is exposed to strong language (though i try to limit it), but i wish there was an online community he could join that i wouldn’t cringe at. I totally get it that he can close it off to just friends, but at his age, that is very limited to communicating when those kids will be available to play (homework n’ soccer n’ stuff, ya know).
it just makes me sad to know that people (regardless of age, i find) can spew such filth to anyone they are talking to, such as an 11yo who won’t reveal his age – like those guys would temper their talk anyway.
I like your column and I certainly agree with the main message that we need a cultural shift. I’m not sure if a lack of anonymity is the answer though. YouTube comments would make for an interesting case study, since a lot of people post under their real name since the G+ integration. I don’t think that has made much difference to the tone of YT comments, but I can’t say I’ve done any kind of systematic study either.
Interestingly I find that the quality / tone of YT comments varies a lot depending on the channel.
Is it enough to just not feed the trolls, or do we need to speak out against them? Or rather than engaging trolls directly ensure they are drowned out by more positive messages?
I don’t understand why anonymity is so protected. If I was walking down the street and someone spewed some of the filth I see on Trade Chat it could conceivable by construed as disturbance of the peace and an arrest could be made. Do it online? Crickets.
When I see egregious trolling I do report it. I’ve seen bans, at least for a time when it’s truly awful. But then it comes back, sometimes even worse.
There has to be some way to gain some semblance of civility in gaming culture. I refuse to believe that such a vocal minority will prevail with their hate speech and vitriol.
As a nearly 50 year old female gamer I do believe the gaming culture can do better and we can find a way to police our own.
I loved the post article. Shared it, and has been shared by my gamer pals.
Wil, I beg you as a deaf fan, please get your videos captioned. Especially TableTop. I love the show, but the YouTube auto-captions are the worst thing imaginable. If you want to feel how I do, mute an episode and turn on the captions. It can’t tell who’s talking or when one stops and another begins. It’s a mess. And that’s not even taking into account the wrong wording that is in every single sentence.
TL:DR version: Please caption TableTop for the love of your deaf fans. Thanks!
Unfortunately, I fear you’re right. It’s a damned-if-you-do-or-don’t scenario. :/
I’m not sure that removing the anonymity factor will produce any improvement in behavior. It feels to me as if it’s the fact that you’re not face to face (as you mentioned in your column) is more to blame.
When someone is communicating with you over the internet, they have a certain amount of inherent safety. They’re not in the same room with you. They can say whatever they want and they’ll never have to answer for it.
Stronger moderation with serious consequences (account banning, etc.) might produce better results. You can see the effect of proper moderation if you visit different online message boards. In a well-managed message board, not only are the worst offenders weeded out, but the remaining community tends to police itself. In an unmanaged environment, abusers seem to encourage each other and try to out-do each other.
What we really need is a change in the assumed social contract we all operate under online. In real life, I could go out on the street and deliver horrible insults to random people, but people around me would look at me strangely and would probably try to discourage me. The face-to-face social contract that we all learn from childhood tells us that harassing strangers is inappropriate. We don’t really have that kind of social contact online. I could sign on to a variety of online games and deliver the most horrible personal attacks, and in many cases, my fellow gamers would laugh and encourage me. If we can get to the point where we all (or even just most of us) understand and agree that basic decency is necessary online, abusers will be crowded out. But right now, general online culture assumes that “anything goes”, and most people will either encourage abuse or just remain silent and shrug it off.
So once I build my orbital mind control laser, I’ll be able to solve this for you.
Regarding a lot of what Don Bisdorf said…
Perhaps it’s time to get the ESRB to be more stingy with their ratings by having them require game makers to enforce a more well moderated system within the multi-player aspects of the games upon which they place ratings in order to get the rating they want.
Because: “Many U.S. retailers, including most major chains, have policies to only stock or sell games that carry an ESRB rating” (reference their site for that quote..it’s in the FAQ), game makers would be hard presses to ensure this kind of social policing in order to achieve their bottom line.
By ‘more well moderated system’, I mean a comprehensive, automatic warning and banning system which references a massive variety of negative idioms and colloquialisms, (potty mouth speak), in all possible spellings and iterations, (leet, included), which would capture the lines of text surrounding said offending text and issue a warning message to the offending gamer that includes the same. This could be sent via email, text, and in the gaming system.
Two strikes and they’re temp banned for a day.
Three strikes and they’re sent to gulag for a MONTH.
One more after that and they’re permanently banned from ALL games produced by that game maker.
Strict? Perhaps. Effective, you betcha. Culling the herd, so to speak, but the result would most likely be a far better gaming experience as these people, (in my mind, anyway), would be the ones more inclined to hack.
Perhaps this doesn’t even have to be something enforced by the ESRB, but perhaps endorsed by them. Providing this service for makers of games might just start creating a better online gaming experience again.
(hoists an eleven foot pole with a standard proudly waving on the end)
Civility!!
Bravo, sir. I agree wholeheartedly.
We wouldn’t stand for it, face to face. Why should we stand for it online?
I try to turn the negative into a positive. Being a competitive COD gamer I regularly get told where my mother was last night and what she was sucking. I find it amusing my kicking arse makes them so butthurt.
…I know, right? Same way in Hawken.
That’s fine in COD or even WOW (thought it shouldn’t be) but what about the person above who mentioned encountering the problem in Minecraft? Even CLUB PENGUIN has had problems with these trolls, and they actively try to censor, block and otherwise hinder said trolls, because the site is designed specifically FOR children. I’m a member of Gaia Online (at this point, mostly for nostalgia; I quit enjoying the site some time ago), and one of the reasons I quit spending time there regularly was because I couldn’t go into Towns ONCE without demands to see boobs or various other inappropriate interactions – especially because, again, the site is targeted to underagers. It’s hard to “turn the negative into a positive” in those situations.
Let me say that I love your work, and I respect your efforts to make gaming more inclusive for women and minorities. It means the world to me. But I have to respectfully disagree with you on this one.
I am a woman, and I’m a woman who would play more online/multiplayer games if not for the shitty behavior of a lot of gamers. So finding a way to change the culture is important to me. I still remember being an excited teenager hopping on Xbox Live for the first time, only to realize that if I actually used my mic or tried to make friends, I would immediately become a target.
But I’m also a woman who has a job that’s under a great deal of media scrutiny. I can’t be myself online, and I don’t want to have to choose between games I love and the job I love.
Additionally, the harrassment culture is deeply ingrained in gaming. What if we remove anonymity, and nothing changes? What if people are still shitlords? Only now they know who I am? It may be easier to sling mud from behind the shield of anonymity, but let me tell you, it’s also a lot easier to let that mud hit my own shield.
In my forays into online gaming, I’ve met some truly kind and helpful people. Anonymity doesn’t turn everyone into slavering harassmonsters, and it’s a protection that a lot of marginalized gamers actually need, or we wouldn’t feel safe gaming in the first place. Wil, thank you SO MUCH for speaking out the way that you do and supporting an inclusive gaming community. But this isn’t the way to do it.
This is one of those things that prove the “few rotten apples spoil the whole barrel” type of metaphor. When internet trolling leaches in to real life actions (like threatening violent death, rape, etc.) that’s called terroristic threatening and is actionable by the law. Even a 12-year old doing such things would potentially find themselves in juvenile detention. Good people need to stand up for themselves and others on this. If that means I need to enter a card number or something then so be it. If I could track the bat-turds that act like this and bring them to justice, I would. No one should fear for their life over games.
Agree. I doubt it’d be a panacea. But for any given gaming “community” it would definitely make a difference. Anybody who thinks having to use your real name on a gaming service is some kind of loss of civil liberties needs to get some perspective.
Tell that my future employer. 😉
I think its really important to start thinking and talking about the anonymity question in terms more subtle than just yes/no. Because just requiring people to use “real names” (or something that looks like a real name) doesn’t actually fix the problem. Its a persistent belief that people wouldn’t behave so badly if they had to use their own names, but actually there are many people who have zero issue with being giant dicks under their real names.
There are also people who need to operate under a pseudonym to protect themselves from giant dicks who are using their real names. Yonatan Zunger wrote a good post over on Google about how real names mostly just reinforce existing power differentials. Which is fine if you’re already on top, but not so fine if you are (for example) a gay Christian teen in a hostile environment.
So really I don’t think its about anonymity, its about keeping track of bad behavior on a platform so that bad actors can’t just build a terrible reputation and then dodge out of it and start fresh to do the same things all over again. Which doesn’t actually require a real name policy so much as it does reputational persistance.
“I’m not sure what tools you could employ to remove the anonymity of the internet”
I don’t know if the goal would be so much to remove anonymity as it would be to add accountability.
Right now it is very easy to create a throwaway account, spew threats, and vanish. It is very difficult for anyone, including authorities, to then find/stop the person. It puts us in the position where the person making the threats, no matter how serious, will rarely have to think about any consequences for him- or herself.
This kind of action without accountability is what many people associate with anonymity. Why does it have to be that way, though? Why should it be so easy to create accounts that can be used to terrorize others without providing any actual information?
I’m not saying the internet should go all Zuckerberg and try to have us all use our real names online. We need to find a way to keep the part that allows us to post under an alias while adding a backbone that allows for protection and accountability. Not an easy thing, I’m sure, but neither is maintaining a society with laws and structure.
Speaking of, part of the solution has to include law. I do not think current laws are ready for the internet age. True free speech should be protected, but business and individuals need to have some kind of protection as well and a recourse when attacked online. Whether that means ddos, doxx, or death threats.
Again, not an easy goal. But one I think we will need to work toward if we want all these new communication methods to enable our progression rather than enabling our regression.
I understand what you mean by the original article: there is a very big difference between anonymity and privacy. Knowing that someone is 34 is not the same as knowing what they do in their private life. If you can have a driver’s license that boasts basic public information, you can have an honest gamer tag. I can still be a 32 year old woman and play a male character in WoW, but my guild doesn’t have to know that I play in my underpants while fantasizing about being swathed in a mantle of bacon (I don’t, but I might now because that sounds pretty great).
As for the trolling, I’m 32, I’m a woman, I’ve been gaming all my life, and while I have been harassed while gaming, that never deters me from doing it. I think it’s interesting that the average gaming age is 34, which, like you said, means that some of those 12 year-olds are not indeed 12. I guess it’s easy just to write off every online jerk as an angst-ridden teen, and maybe that’s what makes it easier to deal with and accept.
I can happily say that everyone in my circle of gaming friends (ages 30-58) has never taken to the internet streets to troll no matter how dissatisfied they have been with a certain game or developer. I had this conversation with two guys at ComicCon over trolling and the Mass Effect 3 ending. I know many people were unhappy with it, but the three of us were discussing how we could not understand the enormous outcry. One of the people I was speaking to said to me, “Look, I’m 36, not 15. I didn’t like the end to a game– so what? I said ‘Man, that sucked’ and got on with my life by playing something else.” And at the time, I thought, well maybe I’m just an older gamer and older gamers don’t flock to Twitter to track down developers and tell them how much I want to set their face on fire. Now, however, I wonder how many trolls are my age or even older. I can allow for an angry 15 year old with no other outlet to vent his frustration at life on the only platform he has available, but I would hope to think that a 30 or 40 year old might know better. I do agree with you, and I do think that taking away the shroud of anonymity would deter at least some trolls from trolling. At the very least, I think it might stop some of them from whipping out the death threats when everyone knows their name and that they’re not 5.
Any harassment I’ve suffered has come from the 15-21 age group, and I don’t think they’re doing it because they really mean it. Age or situation doesn’t give anyone a right to troll someone else, but since some of us nerds tremble in the agony of social interaction, the cloak of anonymity presents an outlet for both good and bad: it gives those who feel otherwise powerless a chance to come out of their shells, and it gives those who have been waiting for a chance to rage at others a venue. I would have no problem sharing public information with other gamers online if it meant the end of game harassment.
I agree with the spirit of your column, however not only would ridding online gaming of anonymity be incredibly difficult to implement and enforce, it would also remove what little feelings of safety and protection female gamers have. I mean there’s no way to require that just the trolls be accountable. If I was a woman I certainly wouldn’t want to lose the option of being totally anonymous and genderless when playing online.
As with all problems relating to sexism and bigotry, the ultimate cure lies in each future generation of parents. To raise their children to be respectful and inclusive.
Progression as a society is the fix. It’s going to take decades, but look how far we’ve already come. 30 years ago, any issue with misogyny would not have had nearly the male presence on the side of right that it has now.
Just as real communities have neighborhood watches, so should virtual ones. Trolls and abuse, I don’t believe, will ever be eradicated, but if members of the community make an effort to call out the trolls, the problem could at least be curtailed. I don’t mean by starting a flame war, but if nothing else, flag the statements so that mods are aware of the problem and remove/ban them to minimize the attacks. If members of a community hold each other accountable for their behavior, I don’t need to know what JoeSchmo54’s real identity is to flag a comment as abusive.
Wil- I don’t think this is a matter of anonymity. I think this is a matter of oversight. As the creator of Wheaton’s Law, I think you’re ideally suited to make this happen (if only as a figurehead- some lawyers and industry friends could probably figure the details out with some minor oversight). What you need to do is:
Create a gaming service, for the moment we’ll call it DBAD (Don’t be a Dick). The aim of the service is to allow users to avoid playing with the majority of fuckwads on the internet.
The way it works is that users sign up for this completely voluntary service using their actual identity. This identity is only held at the account level, and is not visible to other gamers, though it will make note of whether a user is a child and allow for children at various ages to have special rules applies as necessary. The user then makes a deposit (refundable at any time when the user chooses to no longer use the service, assuming they haven’t done anything that would get them booted off).
Partner with Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Steam… whoever will be willing to integrate your service into their games.
People who are not signed up to the service can only play with other non-users. People signed up for the service (and especially kids) may choose to play only with other people who are signed up (or slum it with their non-user friends, their choice).
Moderation happens by having people report fuckwads who are on the service (similar to LoL, I think?), and adjudicated based on the terms of the contract the user has with the service. If they meet the terms for being booted off the service, their deposit is forfeited, and used to cover the cost of moderation/upkeep of the service. The fuckwad either wouldn’t be allowed back on the service ever, or there would be some sort of parole requiring a larger amount of money to be deposited the second time around.
Do this for us, Wil. You are our only hope 😀
Wil, I think you have a finger on the pulse of a part of the virtual world I am not as exposed to. I am a gamer. I am online frequently. I follow a diverse group of interests. I hear about this realm of online fiends and believe that anonymity is their strength. The strange thing is that I don’t encounter it as much personally. Or maybe I’m not as sensitive as I thought I would be to it.
I believe that the experiences that you describe happen. I believe that there are human beings who check out of their humanity when they log into their comfortable anonymous virtual persona. The internet has allowed the weak and cowardly to have a big, loud voice.
But I wonder if these people are something else entirely when they step into the light of real world living?
I wonder if they can maintain that vileness when looking at people eye-to-eye. I wonder if they have a “split-personality” that enables them to unleash on the internet what they would not have the courage or strength of integrity to do to the person breathing the same oxygen.
I have had to deal, personally, with a child who decided to manipulate and bully another person online. The child is normally kind and gracious and helpful. But in this instance, there was a radically different side of personality that came out.
The dark and light side of anonymity is that it allows us to become something that perhaps we couldn’t do any other way. How it is used is usually a reflection of deeper context that we most likely will never be aware of. I admire and respect you, even though we disagree on some issues. I feel free to offer my thoughts to you in this forum, knowing that we will likely never have a face-to-face conversation about them. And if the opportunity to do so ever presented itself, I would miss it because the feelings of bothering you or intruding upon your personal life would be overwhelming. My personality in that real life experience would stop me from doing what I feel free to do here.
Trolls and cowards who speak so loud have issues that we can’t easily explain. They live in contexts that we don’t fully understand. It doesn’t justify or forgive their behaviors. But it should offer us a broader understanding that there are things we don’t understand about them and their behavior.
It seems that the growing sentiment is that the trolls shouldn’t be allowed to dominate the virtual sphere. That is a healthy response. The good, helpful, considerate, humane people who populate the digital world should police their corners of the internet. They should work to eliminate the voices of hate and vileness that are not part of civilized human interaction.
But remembering that they are human is important. Every action of hate that is met with a similar response doesn’t change the attitude. It reinforces it. Every person who attacks, and is met with counter-attack, is vindicated in their behavior and in escalating or increasing that behavior. The end (removing trolls and other hatemongers) doesn’t justify all means. We can still retain our humanity even when we are being treated as something less than human.
I don’t think anonymity has to go to solve the troll problem. I think trolling just needs to come at a cost, whether that is a real financial one or a more idealistic one. For example, one way to create a cost would be to ban games from online play for trolling so the troll has to buy a new copy. Or there could be a decent reputation system in which you accumulate reputation over time, but lose all of it for trolling. Players could then limit matches to player who have a certain reputation. New players would have to get there first and endure some trolls, but with decent flagging and moderation of troll comments, reputation could go up pretty quickly and trolls could be further punished by banning their copy for a certain amount of time. Good moderators and easy flagging are a must, though.
I’m very excited about you hosting Larry King Now. I just recently watched the episode in which you promoted TWWP and I loved it. I guess Larry King really liked you to let you host his show.
And yay, Tabletop season 3! Can’t wait!
See, this worries me. You’re awesome, I know you mean well, and I know you want to try to think of things that could help the horrible things that have happened to awesome people. Sometimes, gaming’s biggest problem is really obnoxious gamers. 🙁
Real names in gaming are well-meaning, but (I think) a very bad idea. That’s why Blizzard backed down when we begged them to not do it to World of Warcraft a few years back—you remember that, right? I was there, too.
Take a look at what happened to Facebook first. It chose this path. And we can learn from that. It’s more rife with bullying than almost anywhere else—trolls just make fake accounts—and, meanwhile, it exposes our identities to the people we least want to have them.
You never expose your IP to the sore loser with the booter, and you really don’t want to expose your “dox” to the troll with doxbin. That is literally the last thing you want to do, as a potential victim of harassment.
So I don’t think that’s a positive. So many women, or many other threatened minorities, who game do so a bit quietly, low-key—ask around, you’ll find it’s true—we don’t like to speak up much, because if we do, we are concerned about the response we’ll receive, which is often unwelcome: either unwelcome advances, or unwelcome threats.
Putting our real names on everything? Well, I can do it on some things, but I know many others who just can’t take that chance, not over games—they’re not important enough to put our real names to, and risk far more personal harassment. Your friends know that better than most. Many of us would have to lie, or back out. I know you mean well, but it won’t drive the trolls out—it’ll drive out those of us who wish to avoid them.
I wish I had a solution that would solve this overnight. But there isn’t one. Maybe it needs a cultural shift, but pseudonymity is not the problem here, and getting rid of it will get rid of something that shields the most vulnerable of us. All I can really do is play games, and choose to not play with obnoxious people. Real names aren’t much use for that, I’m afraid.
In any case, rock on. We disagree on whether this particular thing would help or hurt, but we still want the same things in the end, and you’re still awesome. 🙂
Freedom of Expression, Freedom of Speech, does not guarantee freedom from consequence. You have the right to say what you want, but that does not give you the right to be heard, or the right to an audience, or the right say it with impunity. To think otherwise is ludicrous.
Some streams of consciousness on the article Wil wrote for the Washington post:
Firstly, well done article Wil! I’m praying you won’t get doxxed (or maybe you have been already and I just haven’t heard.)
I’m a bit skeptical of the extrapolation from the ESRB data; I wish we had more specific statistics to cite, but for the moment, while it’s fairly reasonable to assume that the random 12-year-old is around 34-years-old, that may not be the case. Regardless, age doesn’t justify this trolling keyboard-warrior internet behavior that we find.
We’re focusing on video games because it’s something we love, we’re passionate about, and it’s made the news most recently, but this behavior extends beyond video games, If you go to a sports blog / article / forum / whatever, you’ll find out-of-control trolling comments that no one is held accountable for.
That it extends beyond the internet and into our real lives is unfortunately true, which Wil references in his introduction with the harassment of Shoshanna walking around NYC for no good reason.
For me, the takeaway from the video is that this behavior extends everywhere, and people aren’t being held accountable. It definitely exists in our face-to-face interactions, unfortunately. Anyone that has been treated differently due to gender, the color of their skin, can attest to this.
I like the direction Wil was going, the opening / continuation of a reasonable dialogue among the gaming community. A conversation that could be had in person, face-to-face, simply trumps online-only interaction. That’s how you build community, find common ground, develop meaningful ideas and relationships. Imagine having peace negotiations 100% entirely over twitter or facebook? That’d be awful and scary.
As gamers, encouraging gaming together in-person, whether it be tabletop or a LAN party, is the best way to promote this idea. Also, encouraging that idea and importance that differences of opinion doesn’t automatically mean I don’t respect what you have to say or that we can’t be friends is important.
My theory is that the anonymity of the internet is like an exponential multiplier for this type of behavior,
One aspect that may have some relevance (or none at all) is that we live in a 24-hour news cycle, so news and information travels / is acquired much faster than it was 10-20 years ago. So it may not be that this behavior is more prevalent now than it was decades ago; rather we see it more often, and like I said, with the empowering feeling of internet anonymity, this behavior is intensified, unsupervised, and unaccounted for.
I think I read in the comments someone saying ‘cultural shift,’ and I’d love to see it start in gaming, but also to extend beyond the gaming community. It’ll take hard work, compromise, compassion, forgiveness…okay, I’m babbling now. Sorry.
Two thoughts:
As you said in your post, definitely do not want to ban anonymity. Many of us have been stalked or have been abused in some way and to take away the shield someone has made in an avatar can be potentially deadly.
That said, what about groups that basically lobby places like Youtube and Steam? It’s easy to change your handle, but to change your Steam account? That’s a bigger pain. If reports of your behavior could be tallied across games and tied to your Steam account, we may be able to either have Steam shut you off for a couple days, or provide a body of evidence of harassment for if someone did decide to pursue a suit. Basically, I am suggesting we find some way to be anonymous to players, but not from the network through which you access games.
I’m not sure how feasible that is, or how willing these types of places would be to really crack down on a broader scale. But maybe if there was a push against providers, we’d see some lobbying to make internet crimes a bigger priority for state governments. It’s a long shot, of course, but it may not be the worst place to start, especially if we do it en masse.
Firstly, so glad you and Dr. Copper are still buds. 😉 Bravado behind a keyboard has been a problem for a very long time and is not limited to the gaming world. How about the boss that face-to-face is fine but is known for his or her toxic email rants to employees? Ever sent an email that you regretted? Here’s the root of the matter, a basic decorum of respect and civility has given way to self absorption and HOW DARE anyone tell us what to do- no matter the reason!
Any console or MMO gamer thats been doing this for more then a year or two, has experienced how awesome a helping hand can feel, as well as the pain of a toxic attack. The bottom line is, as long as we think this is a debate about free speech (along with some forum moderators thinking this way) versus being about civility, nothing will change. Its not about freedom of speech, the act of constructively sharing differing points of view. Trolls in the cyber world are no different than bullies IRL.
Im writing this from a coffeehouse. Lets picture a scenario. I suddenly stand up and loud enough for everyone to hear and start a rant. “Hey lady, really. that dress? Why did you even leave the house? Dude, seriously, you call that a laptop? Why not go back to pen and paper- you would be better off! These muffins suck and anyone who says otherwise sucks. This place will fail, like soon, because it sucks and the people in it suck.” So if I were blasting my so called free speech in this coffeehouse, what would be their response? Let me help- they would kick my butt out the door and probably never serve me again.
The key point to made in my example is that everyone in this coffeehouse might agree with my right to free speech but thats not what I was exercising. I was being (if that had really happened), a horrid bully, lacking any basic social skills and civility. In other words, they would have every right to boot me. But for some reason on forums and such, we feel we have MORE rights. Specifically, we feel we have the right to emotionally wound and destroy.
We don’t.
You are right. So very, very, very right. I wonder??? If games were treated like someone’s living room and there was active moderation would things change?
There is a site called Ravelry with very, very active moderation and clear TOS. You do NOT see any of the kinds of rude behavior I’ve seen on other forums I’ve belonged to. Yes you can be relatively anonymous on Rav with a Handle, not disclosing personal info, etc. But…. You cannot be a dick.
By the by… there are over 4 million members on that site and at any given time 5K-10K actively posting.
I would pay MORE money for a game with active chat mods. It’s frustrating to see a guy on Trade Chat saying he “wants to cut his wife’s tongue out so she cannot say no” and you report it and he’s still there hours later, spewing the same filth. That’s the type of language that needs a time out for that person as a first offense, more time for a 2nd and a perma-ban if it continues.
Like you said…. it wouldn’t happen in public, why are we putting up with it in game.
I agree whole heartedly with what is said here, unless I’m playing with my friends, I mute all other players just so I don’t have to hear the abuse spewing forth. One of the worst games I’ve ever played for that was GTA IV, which I actually just could not play online anymore because of the way people “talk” to each other in that game.
I’m an avid computer gamer, both online and off, and an avid Tabletop gamer too, you would never ever hear people talk to each other like that face to face in a Tabletop game, the anonymity of gaming has let people reveal the worst of themselves just because they think nobody knows who they are. I always play as though someone I know might be there, you never know who’s in your games.
In our current tabletop game, my character is evil to the core, yet none of the other gamers perform character assassinations half as well as people do online, and that’s when you’re on the same team half the time! I’m so fed up with the whole situation that as I say; I put everyone on mute, and I no longer commune with other gamers unless they’re already my friends. A sad truth of the age we live in where what is probably a minority spoils everyone’s game.
I can’t agree that anonymity causes bad behaviour. G+, Youtube show that these people would probably behave exactly the same anyway. Do most anon accounts threaten and bully? If they did, that would be meaningful. Personally I doubt they do. Otherwise it’s just a false equivalence.
And I can’t agree that anonymity should be limited. Who would decide where the fair limits would be? Do US citizens need it – a country that now imprisons more whistleblowers than ever before? Australia, which has just passed draconic snooping laws? The UK, where you can be imprisoned for forgetting your password? We all have a right to anon.
Trolls are the kids whose parents ignored them unless they were doing something wrong. It’s the only way they know how to get attention. If they don’t get the attention, they generally give up and go away.
A lot of these GG guys aren’t trolls, they are sociopaths. I think lumping them all together is a mistake.
Maybe the solution is to make the organizations that provide the outlet for harassment accountable. Harassment is illegal. Making threats is illegal. If we can’t go for the actually harassers because they are anonymous, then go after the sites that allowed it. It doesn’t have to be criminal action, it can be civil action. we need an organization like the ACLU to step up and file lawsuits against these companies/organizations. When letting the harassment slide starts affecting their bottom line, they will find ways to control it.
Very nice iteration of your “Don’t Be A Dick” slogan. I think you make it absolutely clear that you value anonymity in certain circumstances (political whistleblowers, etc.) and you draw a very definite line between that and what’s going on with the current incidents of harassment.
Wil, I laud your writing, and I agree with pretty much every point you make. However, part of the title is …Here’s how to stop them.
It’s time to name names.” Perhaps I’ve been spoon-fed too much, but I’m not finding a clear solution. You reference several points:
1. It’s time to teach gamers,
2. We must throw off the cloak of invisibility,
3. Gaming in person generally requires better behavior,
4. It’s time for the silent majority to stand up and protect what we love.
So, help me here, spoon-feed me – Is your suggestion to play with real names? Public email addresses? Only game online with folks on a friends list? Only game in person? Provide education to the next generation of gamers? These are all certainly possible. Yet, even today retaliation moves to off-line formats with these terrible, childish death threats, stalkers/assailants showing up at homes. Some gamers even call the police to the homes of their online competitors (swatting) in order to garner a better score or embarrass others. While exposing trolls online, providing real name information exposes those of us innocently playing to some potentially real life griefing. That, for me, is a huge deterrent and would prevent me from playing.
I, for one, agree with your point that without consequences, bad behavior persists, and anonymity removes consequences. I agree that we need to stand up and protect what we love. But I’m not seeing a clear solution presented in your article. And, frankly, I don’t have one either. Perhaps the solution is, as others here have suggested, supporting those who are being trolled, banning those who are trolling, and removing those undesirables from the game or preventing them from posting/playing. Perhaps the same anonymity that prevents consequences for bad behavior also removes any praise for good behavior? It would be just as easy to be a champion for others under the mask of anonymity as it would be to be a villain troll. Still, even some super heroes hide their identities, though they do good, to protect their loved ones from the harm of the evildoer (think DEA agents and undercover police, not capes). Perhaps anonymity can help and be the solution as well.
Personally, I know that I’m thankful for the “/ignore” command, for guilds that support me when I’ve been griefed, for forum posters that support debate but decry racist name calling and insults. I know I don’t have the solution, but I so very much thank you for starting the discussion.
I am seriously tired of the constant immature harassment so common in video games. It’s why I never play multi-player games with voice chat anymore.
I’ve been a gamer since the Atari 2600 came out and I remember spending hours upon hours trying to keep my little spaceship alive and pounding away at asteroids. Or keeping Pac-man away from ghosts.Or jumping that stupid black hole with Pitfall Harry. Yeah, that’s how old I am.
I stopped playing online versus strangers a long time ago because I saw what was happening and I can’t stand that kind of negativity in my life. Now I have a teenage son and I’m hearing him tell me of the stuff that he has heard. Its painful.
I agree with you that anonymity in gaming isn’t necessary, and that we need to stand up for our community.
What does this mean in a practical way though? ID verification? Strict moderation? Both? As long as it can be kept in a middle ground it might work – going too far with moderation causes cries of censorship.
Its a pretty tangled and complex issue that touches on lots of others. I don’t have much in the way of answers though.
These days, I don’t play videogames very often, and not at all online, but it irks me that they’ve cultivated, and might be associated with, a minority of ass-hat, cyber-bully, trash-talkers who anonymously slander, threaten, and terrorizer people.
Sorry, I do not agree with your article. As long as gaming is considered childish and unprofessional I cannot allow my (potential) employer to know I love video games, because it will cost me hiring opportunities or advancement in my job. There has to be a clear border between my online persona and my off-line identity. If I had to post about games with my real name I could not risk to do that anymore.
That would have to suck, being ashamed and hiding something you love to advance at a job. I work for one of the two major consoles and all I do is talk about gaming all day.
I am not a gamer as many of your readers are..however I know a few that fit into that 30 or even 40 something gamers that behave just as you describe behind the curtain of anonymity. Competition and childish behavior should not mix…if you can’t be a grownup when its handed to you online, don’t play.. and get help since you proably are just as childish just not as brazen in the real world.
Hello, With regards to the ask.fm suicide it turned out that she had sent the abuse to yourself, if you google her name you can find many articles about it, she was sadly very troubled. Here is a quote from one of the articles.
“The firm claims that up to 98 per cent of the messages sent to Hannah came from the same IP address as her own computer.”
Hal Lublin is awesome. We had him on our wrestling podcast awhile back. Wish I could go to that show. Happy to see all the cool stuff you are working on, Wil. Kick some ass!
What’s wrong with being competitive again?
I think technological innovation will push a lot of these crusty couch-surfing hate mongers out of game servers. Pretty soon, when a low-life threatens to rape and murder you through in-game voice chat, you’ll be able to say ‘Xbox, record that’, and send that info to moderators who will promptly ban that particular scumbag’s console for life from any online play. (Actually, can we do that now?)
Now, you won’t be able to do something like that with blogs, of course. But I think if the hate trend continues, game developers will simply shut down their blogs and forums, and not ask for any input from the gaming community. We’re already seeing increased scrutiny on the comments sections all across the internet, from developer’s websites to youTube channels and more.
This is unfortunate, but it’s the price we’ll have to pay to have both individual anonymity and game developers who don’t hate their own lives. So, scream loudly enough and everyone will get muted.
So what are you advocating for here? For my safety as an abuse and rape survivor to be compromised because I had to sign in with my real name? Or for me to give up my lifelong hobby so I can continue hiding in peace? Because I’m pretty sure that’d be chasing a woman out of gaming. cough