Today’s article was just a short one, and engaging in what makes everyone roll their eyes: seeing something happen on Reddit and writing an article about it.
To cut it short:
- Billie Eilish (famous singer) uploaded a picture of her old Nintendo DSi in gallery of images, to her Instagram account
- Someone shared that on Reddit
- Half of the comment section slid straight into shitty gamer dude Hell (the other half did not)
- Some man on Mastodon attacked me
- Post removed from Reddit when moderators spotted the comments
…this is a fast-forward of the oddness, but if you want to read over my ramble here, and see some shittiness, the link will help:
https://gardinerbryant.com/you-dont-look-like-a-gamer/
I see this shit all the time, and it is not only exhausting, but something no one should see (no matter their identity) should be subjected to. Anyway, read on if you’d like!
I grew up hearing that what ever game I enjoyed, “was not a real video game.” And this was IRL, from people I knew and thought as my friends, at the time. If I tried to continue, it turned verbally abusive and my fave games got properly shitted on. So I learned to stay quiet and play only offline games, just play my lil games alone. These days I got real friends who’d like to play with me, but I’m too shy to go online… Like I want to, but just too afraid. It’s really fucking dumb.
Fyi I am your friend and I support your personal, self found flavour of games 🤙🏾
I think the telling thing is that these angry gamer dudes are awfully lonely and would kill to have a girlfriend who shared at least some of their interests.
This kind of self-face punching comes from such a low self esteem that they have to reject the idea for fear of rejection in reality.
And then they go looking for every other reason to explain their loneliness epidemic.
Yeah, it’s not a clever or new observation to point out that the men who are mad they can’t meet women are the same ones who make being a woman in nerdy spaces suck, especially online gaming (but also plenty of irl spaces, my ex was a female magic the gathering judge and oh boy did she get treated poorly). But it is something still worth mentioning.
This also gets worse when genuinely nerdy women are anything other than the equivalent of the worst stereotypes of nerds. When you ask the question why wouldn’t some women of all sorts have been Tolkien heads or been playing ttrpgs since they were teenagers (or have always wanted to try), or been gaming since they were kids, then this behavior gets even more absurd.
If led Zeppelin could be super into Tolkien, why can’t Billie Eilish be a gamer? If Henry Caville can be as nerdy as he is, why can’t a similarly attractive actress be equally nerdy? If some of the guys at the game shop grew into their face and got into working out, why should you assume that that’s not a possible story behind a pretty woman who decides to come in?
Yeah, it’s not a clever or new observation to point out that the men…
Eh, thanks. I mean, that’s a bit of a harsh way to start a reply to a comment you then go on to agree with.
Ope sorry if it came off critical, I meant it in a form of “this has been said many times and yet it continues to bear the repetition that you engaged in and I’m about to”
Ah, my bad, no harm done and thank you for explaining that, it really is appreciated.
I find so much online discourse has become performative contrarianism that I’m probably a little over sensitive to it.
Totally fair lol, I too can get a little over sensitive to online comments for similar reasons.
I fucking hate dudes like this. I’m someone who has “nerdy” interests and such and naturally they tend to be male dominated because people keep gatekeeping and being misogynistic for no reason. I’d love to have to partner with similar interests in this regard but it’s made harder by the fact that the men in the spaces are the way they are and it’s hard to engage in that way without making the person uncomfortable because there’s a precedent for all sorts of weird behavior. And then these same incels complain they are unsuccessful, well please stop ruining it for the rest of us as well. Even in a non dating context having a more diverse hobby means a more diverse experience.
This guy had a great analysis video, complete with interviews with victims, of toxicity towards female entry into male spaces. He goes historically into how video games were first age-neutral, then Nintendo made them “toys”, and toys were for boys, slowly leading to the space having a toxic exclusivity problem.
One of the best bits (which I unfortunately don’t have a timestamp for right now) is when he talks about his own experience as a kid, and how he inadvertently tried to exclude a family member when she started playing the game better than him.
Okay I’ve read the article (although probably too fast) and the part where harassment can also be ‘exclusionary humour’ is like. Hit me in the brain.
I am female and visibly so. I use to frequent a local game store before it closed. And while I was mostly welcomed there (father would have raised hell if anything was overt, he knew the owner well) the amount of inside jokes, the “oh you wouldn’t understand”, “it’s fine” when I’d ask what they were talking about was just :<
But at least I meet my husband there. He’s cool. He loves sharing nerdy things with me.
Dickheads like this are the reason I don’t like telling people I play games. People that attempt to put others in boxes are the worst
I too, hate boxes.
I think the only person posing as a gamer is Elon cause he pays people to farm his Diablo account. Everyone else gets a pass no matter what they play or how much they play.
People on the internet discriminating around the most irrelevant details.
You know what grinds my gears? Tooling doesn’t help. In communities like reddit or lemmy, downvotes mean your content will be more hidden. When a dumb-wagon is formed the good content goes to hell. And people use the downvote as a disagree button. It’s annoying.
Obviously this is not a representative sample, but it’s hard not to notice that the three redditors in these screenshots that are gatekeeping gaming all have female-presenting avatars. It makes me think of an article I read two or three years ago written by a black man saying he gave his son advice that in an emergency white cops were a significantly safer bet because institutionalized racism gives them a lot more leeway to show empathy towards minorities without being ostracized for it. A woman actually trying to fit into a misogynistic culture is going to feel more pressure to consistently prove her belonging, and can end up being more ruthless in enforcing the misogyny and more effective because her gender allows a cover of legitimacy.
anime girl PFPs are the new ‘xXx_420_BLAZE_IT_xXx’
…it’s the same dude who had a ar15/skull/COD Ghost PFP 10 years ago…
Anime avatars have been a thing for much longer than that but these are clearly not anime girls, it’s the thing where people customize the reddit logo to look like themselves. I might be wrong but I’m under the impression that the culture with these isn’t one where toxic masculinity will mesh with presenting as female.
One of them has a trans balloon, this seems to further ratify what you are saying, trying to validate a stereotype to fit in better. This is sad from humanity :(
Remember kids you can be who you are without needing external validation. Especially not external validation gotten by being against your “own group “
Remember kids you can be who you are without needing external validation. Especially not external validation gotten by being against your “own group “
I don’t think it’s quite that straightforward, because they’re doing this because they’re also perceiving gamers as their own group and feeling like being a part of two groups at odds with one another demands that a choice be made. Their version of not being against their own group begins with asking themselves “which group do I identify more with”, rather than asking whether the two have to be at odds with each other in the first place. The lesson is that your immutable characteristics are not character failures, and if you’re starting to feel like they are it’s really important to introspect on where that’s coming from.
I know people generally look at this kind of gatekeeping from the outside and write it off as a repressed self-hatred, but I’m kind of inclined to think of it the opposite way. If your immutable characteristics are a handicap to being a part of something important to you, then actually being accepted into that group is a triumph that most people with the same handicap can’t achieve. If gamers are cool and I don’t question the premise that girls aren’t fit to be gamers, then if I can kind of sort of be accepted in this space that’s still better than most other girls. The boys fit in better here of course, but it’s not impressive it’s just normal. This other girl is just larping because she wants to be like me.
We should strive to identify cultures of looking down on others. We should strive not to participate in that. Don’t just find comfort in being who you are, but allow others to find the same comfort with more ease than you had.
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That’s too bad people can’t behave.
Mind if I share where I’m grappling with the following from a privacy perspective?
I can imagine a privacy hawk making that comment with a deep concern for others and desire to force a very difficult social change.
I remember someone complained everyone in their life said “I’m not even really on Facebook! …I just use it for <thing everyone uses Facebook for>”
Maybe I am a bad person to judge because the underlying concern resonates with me, so I can be sympathetic and treat it as hyperbole. (edit: lol it’s so wrong on its face, IG like world’s most popular platform or almost)
Thank you for your analysis and reporting here!
I think I’m piggy-backing off of something you’re not talking about, I’m not sure. But I wanted to say it anyway.
The phrase “did you think anybody here wants to hear about instagram” isn’t just a personal reaction,
People say things like this when what they mean is “I don’t want to hear about Instagram” all the time. If you’re listening for it, you can pick language like this out near constantly. It’s really, really dishonest, and it drives me crazy.
A person won’t say “I didn’t like this movie,” but they will say “this movie is bad” because they know the second one gets taken more seriously. They effortlessly move a subjective opinion into the objective, and this is where, like, 90% of arguments about media stem from.
People are constantly embellishing their opinions to seem more important than they are, and I really wish they would stop treating the public consensus like a game of King of the Hill.
That’s not to say that speaking for a crowd is always a bad thing, but god do people abuse it.
Gaming is one of those weird spaces; it mainstreamed in the smartphone era, with a lot of folks who previously mocked it embracing it.
It’s picked up the toxic manosphere infection as it transitioned (“casual gamers” Vs “real gamers” facilitated that boxing off). The onlyfans “egirl” revolution painted a skewed picture of girls as gamers in the worst possible way (doing it for attention to make money), and the manosphere has amplified this to the detriment of gamers everywhere.
Gaming also focuses a lot of moral outrage, and that hasn’t helped matters. It’s given some men a ghost to fight against (“the big bad feminist trying to ban waifus”), whereas the reality is far from that!
The reality is gaming is for everyone who wants to game; the best question to ask another gamer is what they’ve enjoyed playing (for the Ds, the Etrian Odyssey games are amazing!). Not every game is for every person, except for Super Smash on the GameCube, because that game was high art.
I really like Etrian’s artstyle. I really should get around to playing it.
The soundtrack is also really good, and the sheer range of options to create parties is just outstanding.
#3 is the one I sunk the most hours into, it’s a good one to start with as they’d iterated on ideas, cut some grind, and the multi-class system let’s you design some beautifully overpowered parties for the endgame.
Ooh, that’s sounds cool. Yeah, I’ll look at the third one then.
I mean what does a gamer look like? 35 year old neck beard? I mean I’m a 55 year old dude that’s been playing games since I was 6 years old. Do I look like a gamer?
Find somebody playing a game. Look at them. That’s what a gamer looks like. FFS it ain’t that hard.
Guys, guys, it’s 2026, gamers don’t need to look like unhygienic basement dwellers anymore, get on with the times!
What if I like it?
You don’t need to be like that, but if you do, go nuts!
gaming is more cerebral than corporeal
The you don’t look like a gamer line has always been so tired. If someone plays games, they’re a gamer — no gatekeeping DLC required.
