It’s amazing that toxic gamer culture persists even as games become more mainstream. Sending death threats to a toddler over the death of a fictional character is unhinged.
The thing that is maybe being lost in this is that it literally is unhinged people doing this.
Most people in their day to day life only pass by people with schizophrenia or delusions of reference. But when media has a wide enough audience, those people fixate on various things in unhealthy ways.
Schizophrenics play video games too. But the way they relate to the games is different from how healthy people do.
If millions of people play the game, and even only 0.01% of the audience are unhinged enough to send death threats to an actors’ family because they can’t separate fact from fiction, that’s still 10 people sending death threats for every million people that play.
Uh… they sometimes kill players when they mess up in crucial games (soccer - colombia national team), and stab other players who threaten their favourite (tennis - Monica seles fan).
Edit: it was a Steffi graf fan who stabbed Monica seles.
It’s amazing that toxic gamer culture persists even as games become more mainstream. Sending death threats to a toddler over the death of a fictional character is unhinged.
The thing that is maybe being lost in this is that it literally is unhinged people doing this.
Most people in their day to day life only pass by people with schizophrenia or delusions of reference. But when media has a wide enough audience, those people fixate on various things in unhealthy ways.
Schizophrenics play video games too. But the way they relate to the games is different from how healthy people do.
If millions of people play the game, and even only 0.01% of the audience are unhinged enough to send death threats to an actors’ family because they can’t separate fact from fiction, that’s still 10 people sending death threats for every million people that play.
Source ?
That toxicity you speak of is pretty evident in humans in general, you don’t have to just leave it at the feet of gamers.
Did you hear the same behavior about soccers or tennis fan ? Do they threaten the children of referees by example.
Never heard such behavior. There is a part of the gamer community which is strongly toxic and seems to have no limits.
Uh… they sometimes kill players when they mess up in crucial games (soccer - colombia national team), and stab other players who threaten their favourite (tennis - Monica seles fan).
Edit: it was a Steffi graf fan who stabbed Monica seles.
Soccer? You mean the fans who are known to riot? Sometimes when they win?
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Fairly certain I’ve read about soccer fans cutting off a referees head in South America. What say you?
But we are specifically talking about toxic gamers in this case