Because you make my brain ouch

Dammit, people. Seriously. You’re actually dragging me into this with your stupidity? Fuck!

So, I tried to keep my only mention of the Gamergate bullshit to what people were trying to say was the heart of the argument. At least when they weren’t graphically threatening rape, personal violence and attempting to financially cripple people by shutting down their websites. Because, dammit, this is about integrity.

Then I read a largely well written and decently thought outarticle that complained about gamers being referred to as scum. And now I have that in my brain.

Let’s get a little something straight here: you are not scum because you are passionate about games. Anybody who says that is an asshole. I’m also pretty sure that the days of that occurring are pretty well dead and gone. Even hack comics have figured out that fucking everyone loves videogames just as much as fucking everyone loves Batman and “geek” means fuck-all as an insult anymore.

However, if you are using your passion as an excuse to degrade or attack people because they have the temerity to say something about the problems they see in the culture of gaming, then you are scum. If you take that to the extreme of stalking and threatening people because you are too damn cowardly to admit that there is no actual reason left in your argument, the you are a piece of human offal that needs to be scraped from the boot of society.

If you are being a dick and someone calls you on being a dick, that is not bullying any more than it is bullying to call someone a racist for complaining about “them damn niggers and spics ruining my neighborhood”. That is merely someone doing their civic duty in reminding you that we, as a people, do not accept behavior of that kind. And if your response is to try to strong arm people into shutting up with threats of physical violence or the use of force as applied through the intertoobs, then I suggest you make use of a dictionary. And maybe read up on your literary terms while you are at it.

I get that you don’t like that people are changing your cozy little home, the place you used to be able to cuddle up in and feel safe from the outsiders that made you feel sad and small. But you are holding on to the wrong parts of memory.

These were adventures that pulled us in and wrapped themselves around us, engaging us in ways that simply weren’t possible through other forms of storytelling. Often, they were as childish as we were, but they matured just as we did. Spreading out into broad, varies swaths of experience that was no longer quite second hand.

And you little, small minded pieces of shit are trying to ruin that.