10 ms·

One of Norway's biggest CS players tries playing under a female alias [video]

91 points by kasperni 4y ago

tpoacher 4y ago
This is exactly how I remember CS (boob insults and everything) and I'm male. Without wanting to detract from the problem, claiming something is "worse" because it's "bad" is a bit disingenuous when the implication that the alternative is not equally bad is not addressed or compared. It reminds me of when I arrived for work in what was reputed as "the dryest city in the whole of the UK", only to find rain non-stop for 3 months. When I pointed this out to my boss, he laughed and said "I said it was the dryest, I never said it was actually dry!".
rasz 4y ago
Sounded pretty "normal", as in males receive same amount of abuse. Some games end up deleting cross team chat completely for this very reason.
SOTGO 4y ago
The treatment of female CS players is sickening. Every public lobby that I've been in where someone had an identifiably female voice eventually ended in harassment and sexist statements.
joebob42 4y ago
I know biggest basically makes sense and means most popular here, but I can't get the image of all the cs players lining up to compare heights out of my head.
sharken 4y ago
Great initiative to show how bad things really are. Gaming where voice is enabled without admins to supervise it, will degenerate into this nearly every time. Sad state of affairs indeed.
- _carbyau_ 4y ago
  Oh yeah, the virtual "anonymous"(for whatever value of anonymity) public is not a nice place. Even in face-to-face interactions I have a rule that 1 in twenty people are guaranteed jerks. But online? 50/50. And in a PvP environment like CS?... 9 out of 10. I always hope I am wrong, and am pleasantly surprised when I am, but I don't have high expectations.
abridgett 4y ago
Might want to change the subtitles from "that was sick" to "that was disgusting" just to prevent anyone misinterpreting that (unintentionally or otherwise) as "sick" is slang for "excellent" in some places.
- michaericalribo 4y ago
  In context, it’s pretty unambiguous he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t think it was an excellent experience
K0nserv 4y ago
As bad as the situation already is(and it's bad) the lack of action on Valve's side is particularly depressing. People invest a significant amount of money into their steam accounts(by purchasing skins and games) and targetting folks with some serious bans would help curb this behaviour. For example, a four month ban on the first offence, a year on the second, and lifetime on the third seems pretty reasonable and would surely have a significant impact.
- thatguy0900 4y ago
  You want people to be banned from the storefront valve instead of just the game cs? That is very extreme. Would valve be extending that to other games? Why do it on just their own?
  - fennecs 4y ago
    Honestly why not, actions can have consequences.
    - hulitu 4y ago
      Just look at google: how some people lost data. When they start to implement such things, sooner or later a lot of people who have done nothing wrong will be affected. It is like CP.
  - mr_toad 4y ago
    If you ban someone toxic from a game you don’t want them logging into another game and being toxic there too. An ounce of prevention… Perhaps you could be lenient and if you’re only worried about prevention and not deterrence you could restrict the ban to online games and forums.
  - K0nserv 4y ago
    I'm not sure, it's just a quick one off suggestion to indicate the direction I'd like to see. Maybe you'd not be banned from the storefront, but all Valve's game as well as the steam marketplace for those games. Perhaps Valve could create a system that lets other publishers opt in to receiving a notice when a player receives a ban like this so that they can mirror it. Locking the player out of all online games as a consequence of their actions seems fine. The details don't need to be hashed out here but my overall point is that Valve has powerful levers at their disposal to tackle these problems and they aren't doing enough.
Havoc 4y ago
oh wow that is much worse than I was expecting :(
okwubodu 4y ago
At some point I realized this is why my girl friends almost never play online games without us queued with them :(
xenadu02 4y ago
Funny that some people commenting on the video immediately claim it is fake. This kind of abuse was extremely common when CS was in perpetual beta and voice chat first started being a thing. There is clearly a subset of online gamers, especially in FPS games, who cross the line from joking/hazing into abuse against anyone with a female name or voice. I sometimes wonder what makes these people knee-jerk deny such obvious behavior anyone can observe?
- subjectsigma 4y ago
  In all likelihood they are not CS players. I played a ton of Overwatch in college and a decent amount of CoD/Halo as a child. There were definitely bad people in voice chat but nowhere near CS levels. I could see other FPS fans thinking this was fake or at least played up.
  - OhSoHumble 4y ago
    I've seen people tell other people to kill themselves in dota.
    - subjectsigma 4y ago
      Oh I've seen that and way worse on other MOBAs. My point wasn't that this is acceptable or that the video is fake; it was that people coming from more popular communities with less abuse simply have no idea what is or isn't the norm for other communities. If what they're seeing is outrageously outside their norm, they might not believe it.
- accountofme 4y ago
  That is human nature though. We deny things we know are true if we feel guilty. It is easier to attack that admit. Sadly we are still at the whims of evolution. We are all sadly not as evolved as we think we are and more importantly we do not see how our social dynamics rely on certian algorithms. (this is all my own conjecture based on ny experience in life)
8bitsrule 4y ago
- specialist 4y ago
  Yes and: This is straight up misogyny. As I understand it, "toxic masculinity" is stuff that harms males, like telling boys that real men don't cry, which then has all sorts of knock-on effects.
  - jfengel 4y ago
    "Toxic masculinity" harms both men and women. It's most often pointed out in the way expected, common male behaviors harm women, such as cat-calling and ignoring women in meetings (among any others). But the things you talk about are also examples of toxic masculinity. It's anything that's forced on men specifically solely for being male, whether it benefits them or not. Often, even the things that might be advantages (like "men are big and strong and like to fight") will harm some if not all men. Not all masculinity is toxic, but there are many different ways to be a man. The toxicity comes in enforcing one specific stereotypical, outdated kind of masculinity.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr 4y ago
In one FPS game I picked a new name that was neutral or male, but people misread it as “foxy” and assumed I’m a woman. In half an hour I got several dumb comments from guys over voice chat. The abuse towards women in games is intense.
trafficante 4y ago
This sort of thing has made most multiplayer VR games completely unplayable for me. The only viable solution to hordes of screaming ultra-toxic kids quite literally surrounding you is to put up with it until your rank/ELO gets high enough to solve the problem via matchmaking. Horizon Worlds is actually not quite as bad as the average third-party game. Ironically, I think this is the one unintended positive outcome of Facebook control - if you get a week ban on Horizon, you’re also banned from all Facebook properties. And not just the web properties, it seems that you also lose access to your entire Oculus library. Is that a good thing? Probably not, but it seems to be the only thing out there in the VR space with enough teeth to make a tangible difference.
ncmncm 4y ago
- aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
  Controversial concept, "female names".
  - ncmncm 4y ago
    Perceived as female suffices.
Richard_Kayala 4y ago
- dvngnt_ 4y ago
  number 4 was the funniest one
j7ake 4y ago
I wonder how much this abusive behaviour can explain the lack of women in certain fields? For example a girl joining a male-dominated chess club could face some of these remarks, leading to fewer girls joining the chess club. Then we see an end result of some activities completely dominated by men at the elite levels, creating ammo for misogynists to spew distorted “facts” about how men are better than women.
libraryatnight 4y ago
My wife gets treated like shit if she reveals she's a woman when we play rocket league. It was such a noticeable difference that a few years ago when she started back at school to get another degree and had to take some basic sociology course she used it as the subject for a paper - the teacher was not aware of the gaming world and was pretty shocked by how brazen men and boys were online.
rendall 4y ago
I'm afraid the staging undermined the message, alas. Lots of questions in the comments about why these are Norwegians, but the dialogue is all North Americans. Anyone know what happened there?

91 points by kasperni 4y ago

This is exactly how I remember CS (boob insults and everything) and I'm male. Without wanting to detract from the problem, claiming something is "worse" because it's "bad" is a bit disingenuous when the implication that the alternative is not equally bad is not addressed or compared. It reminds me of when I arrived for work in what was reputed as "the dryest city in the whole of the UK", only to find rain non-stop for 3 months. When I pointed this out to my boss, he laughed and said "I said it was the dryest, I never said it was actually dry!".

rasz 4y ago

Sounded pretty "normal", as in males receive same amount of abuse. Some games end up deleting cross team chat completely for this very reason.

SOTGO 4y ago

The treatment of female CS players is sickening. Every public lobby that I've been in where someone had an identifiably female voice eventually ended in harassment and sexist statements.

joebob42 4y ago

I know biggest basically makes sense and means most popular here, but I can't get the image of all the cs players lining up to compare heights out of my head.

sharken 4y ago

Great initiative to show how bad things really are. Gaming where voice is enabled without admins to supervise it, will degenerate into this nearly every time. Sad state of affairs indeed.

_carbyau_ 4y ago
Oh yeah, the virtual "anonymous"(for whatever value of anonymity) public is not a nice place. Even in face-to-face interactions I have a rule that 1 in twenty people are guaranteed jerks. But online? 50/50. And in a PvP environment like CS?... 9 out of 10. I always hope I am wrong, and am pleasantly surprised when I am, but I don't have high expectations.

abridgett 4y ago

Might want to change the subtitles from "that was sick" to "that was disgusting" just to prevent anyone misinterpreting that (unintentionally or otherwise) as "sick" is slang for "excellent" in some places.

michaericalribo 4y ago
In context, it’s pretty unambiguous he’s uncomfortable and doesn’t think it was an excellent experience

K0nserv 4y ago

As bad as the situation already is(and it's bad) the lack of action on Valve's side is particularly depressing. People invest a significant amount of money into their steam accounts(by purchasing skins and games) and targetting folks with some serious bans would help curb this behaviour. For example, a four month ban on the first offence, a year on the second, and lifetime on the third seems pretty reasonable and would surely have a significant impact.

thatguy0900 4y ago
You want people to be banned from the storefront valve instead of just the game cs? That is very extreme. Would valve be extending that to other games? Why do it on just their own?
- fennecs 4y ago
  Honestly why not, actions can have consequences.
  - hulitu 4y ago
    Just look at google: how some people lost data. When they start to implement such things, sooner or later a lot of people who have done nothing wrong will be affected. It is like CP.
- mr_toad 4y ago
  If you ban someone toxic from a game you don’t want them logging into another game and being toxic there too. An ounce of prevention… Perhaps you could be lenient and if you’re only worried about prevention and not deterrence you could restrict the ban to online games and forums.
- K0nserv 4y ago
  I'm not sure, it's just a quick one off suggestion to indicate the direction I'd like to see. Maybe you'd not be banned from the storefront, but all Valve's game as well as the steam marketplace for those games. Perhaps Valve could create a system that lets other publishers opt in to receiving a notice when a player receives a ban like this so that they can mirror it. Locking the player out of all online games as a consequence of their actions seems fine. The details don't need to be hashed out here but my overall point is that Valve has powerful levers at their disposal to tackle these problems and they aren't doing enough.

Havoc 4y ago

oh wow that is much worse than I was expecting :(

okwubodu 4y ago

At some point I realized this is why my girl friends almost never play online games without us queued with them :(

xenadu02 4y ago

Funny that some people commenting on the video immediately claim it is fake. This kind of abuse was extremely common when CS was in perpetual beta and voice chat first started being a thing. There is clearly a subset of online gamers, especially in FPS games, who cross the line from joking/hazing into abuse against anyone with a female name or voice. I sometimes wonder what makes these people knee-jerk deny such obvious behavior anyone can observe?

subjectsigma 4y ago
In all likelihood they are not CS players. I played a ton of Overwatch in college and a decent amount of CoD/Halo as a child. There were definitely bad people in voice chat but nowhere near CS levels. I could see other FPS fans thinking this was fake or at least played up.
- OhSoHumble 4y ago
  I've seen people tell other people to kill themselves in dota.
  - subjectsigma 4y ago
    Oh I've seen that and way worse on other MOBAs. My point wasn't that this is acceptable or that the video is fake; it was that people coming from more popular communities with less abuse simply have no idea what is or isn't the norm for other communities. If what they're seeing is outrageously outside their norm, they might not believe it.
accountofme 4y ago
That is human nature though. We deny things we know are true if we feel guilty. It is easier to attack that admit. Sadly we are still at the whims of evolution. We are all sadly not as evolved as we think we are and more importantly we do not see how our social dynamics rely on certian algorithms. (this is all my own conjecture based on ny experience in life)

8bitsrule 4y ago

specialist 4y ago
Yes and: This is straight up misogyny. As I understand it, "toxic masculinity" is stuff that harms males, like telling boys that real men don't cry, which then has all sorts of knock-on effects.
- jfengel 4y ago
  "Toxic masculinity" harms both men and women. It's most often pointed out in the way expected, common male behaviors harm women, such as cat-calling and ignoring women in meetings (among any others). But the things you talk about are also examples of toxic masculinity. It's anything that's forced on men specifically solely for being male, whether it benefits them or not. Often, even the things that might be advantages (like "men are big and strong and like to fight") will harm some if not all men. Not all masculinity is toxic, but there are many different ways to be a man. The toxicity comes in enforcing one specific stereotypical, outdated kind of masculinity.

tqkxzugoaupvwqr 4y ago

In one FPS game I picked a new name that was neutral or male, but people misread it as “foxy” and assumed I’m a woman. In half an hour I got several dumb comments from guys over voice chat. The abuse towards women in games is intense.

trafficante 4y ago

This sort of thing has made most multiplayer VR games completely unplayable for me. The only viable solution to hordes of screaming ultra-toxic kids quite literally surrounding you is to put up with it until your rank/ELO gets high enough to solve the problem via matchmaking. Horizon Worlds is actually not quite as bad as the average third-party game. Ironically, I think this is the one unintended positive outcome of Facebook control - if you get a week ban on Horizon, you’re also banned from all Facebook properties. And not just the web properties, it seems that you also lose access to your entire Oculus library. Is that a good thing? Probably not, but it seems to be the only thing out there in the VR space with enough teeth to make a tangible difference.

ncmncm 4y ago

aaaaaaaaata 4y ago
Controversial concept, "female names".
- ncmncm 4y ago
  Perceived as female suffices.

Richard_Kayala 4y ago

dvngnt_ 4y ago
number 4 was the funniest one

j7ake 4y ago

I wonder how much this abusive behaviour can explain the lack of women in certain fields? For example a girl joining a male-dominated chess club could face some of these remarks, leading to fewer girls joining the chess club. Then we see an end result of some activities completely dominated by men at the elite levels, creating ammo for misogynists to spew distorted “facts” about how men are better than women.

libraryatnight 4y ago

My wife gets treated like shit if she reveals she's a woman when we play rocket league. It was such a noticeable difference that a few years ago when she started back at school to get another degree and had to take some basic sociology course she used it as the subject for a paper - the teacher was not aware of the gaming world and was pretty shocked by how brazen men and boys were online.

rendall 4y ago

I'm afraid the staging undermined the message, alas. Lots of questions in the comments about why these are Norwegians, but the dialogue is all North Americans. Anyone know what happened there?