.:i must be naieve:.

once again, it is the power of the video game that has kept me from posting.

i’m sure you’ve deduced that the offending game is call of duty 4, and the reason why it has been so powerful of a game dork aphrodesiac is because of the online aspect of it. there is much incentive to play with people online, specifically because you have a persistent character account and unlockables as you run yourself ragged down the level-up treadmill. for the common non-gamer, that means you start at level 1, and every level you go up, something cool unlocks all the way up to level 55. that something cool could be a new gun or a new ‘perk’, which allows you to enhance your character in some way which gives you great incentive to keep playing. so in some ways, it’s like an extremely lightweight MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game).

so the gameplay is great and the sheer amount of gametypes are sure to keep you entertained. however…there is one thing that i have noticed in playing, and that is the fact that games like these tend to bring out the inner ignorant racist in a lot of people. people rather flippantly use the ‘n’ word. people make jokes about jews and gas chambers. people enjoy calling others just about ever racial slur in the book with the same ease as calling one’s parents ‘mom’ or ‘dad’. i even got called ‘guerro’ for politely asking some guy to turn off his headset so everyone wouldn’t have to listen to him talking to/yelling at/scolding his little kid…

me: hey man, would you mind turning your headset mic off?

guy: what was that guerrro? how ’bout you worry about yourself and don’t worry about what i’m doing…

what the ‘ef?

at first, i was surprised…no…aghast would be the more appropriate word to use…at hearing these things said. don’t we live in the 21st century? aren’t video gamers supposed to be a fairly well educated and tolerant group of folk? and then i realized that, as the technology barrier becomes shorter and shorter, you start to introduce a lower common denominator of human into the mix. that sounds like a crappy thing to say, but it’s the truth. make it affordable for joey bob the welfare case to buy some cool technology and he’ll want it just as bad as every other video gamer out there.

but i really do not enjoy playing with joey bob because it makes me depressed, angry and scared for society in general. it leads me to believe that this is the way the majority of people really think, and that anonymity makes it possible for them to voice their true thoughts.

and then the reality of the whole deal sets in. the reality is that the american society has really only been ‘officially’ set free of the racial boundaries for approximately 1.5 generations. my parents grew up in the time of segregation and separate but equal. i happen to be one of the lucky ones in that i do not have dumb-asses for parents who would continue to pass down that way of thinking to me.

of course, you have a bunch of these asshats who get on and actually try to justify what they are saying by phrasing it as a ‘joke’. for example, there was a group of about 4 guys on there…sounded like college students…and they were talking about how they were going to have a KKK meeting over the weekend. they were throwing around the n word and laughing and making lynching jokes. and then they’d say something like, ‘i hope there aren’t any black people on here. i hope we’re not offending anyone. we’re only joking.’ then they’d continue to laugh about it. unbelieveable.

i’ve now gotten over the hump of standing by and listening and now i’m actually speaking up. i’m sure it doesn’t make that much of a difference, but at least i’m saying something and at least i’m not allowing these idiots complete command of the situation. what i say ranges anywhere from extreme sarcasm to being dead serious, and i’ve actually found that being dead serious works a little better than the sarcasm. an example of dead serious would be a very earnest request to please not use that kind of language and that it’s just not necessary. 7 out of 10 times, the guys will make one or two more comments and just stop. and when i don’t feel like putting up with it, it’s easy to just drop and switch games. the beauty of xbox live is that you can ‘review’ players. once you give a player a bad review, they get added to your ‘avoid’ list and you never have to play with/hear from them again. unfortunately there are A LOT of people on xbox live, so i’m sure it’ll take awhile to fill that list up.

i’d love to be able to say that racism will take a very effective beatdown over the 10-20 years…but i fear it’ll get worse before it gets better. this is only one path, but a significant one in my mind. one has to remember that there are a lot of kids playing too, and online play is yet another small window into a much larger world. perceptions have a high tendency of being skewed for kids, and if kids are hearing this kind of stuff on a daily basis…then i certainly hold a little fear for the future.

all together now: racism is not cool.

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 23rd, 2007 at 11:06 am and is filed under Games, General, Life. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.