ZDoom

Just a disclaimer: I'm just gonna open this up saying that this is 100% a serious topic that I've chatted about previously in IRC, talked with many people about this subject in the Doom community, and I want to talk about it here. Because I think there are enough here for this to be a discussion, a serious one at that.

Given what I've seen of the Doom community for over 16 years, and pretty much any gaming community that was infested with teenagers, I can say this about all of them at least some point in time: In any game community where the game is seen by most in the community as "manly", even if it originally wasn't meant to be, you can bet your bottom dollar that a group of immature dudes will try to exploit that, and go as far as to turn the community against each other in their zeal to turn the place into a He-Man Womanhaters' Club - usually in response to something they deserved, like being banned (for obvious reasons) in multiplayer ports/servers/forums. If said admin doing the banning is female, well, get ready to taste the impotent hellfire of a bunch of dumb kids.

The stuff I've seen happen in this community alone, of all the years I've been here , and I have been involved since 1998, could fill a book. Posts like "Thanks for showing that women shouldn't be in charge of anything" were in response to a multitude of Skulltag/Zandronum administration meltdowns, some public, some not. One of the kids went as far as to hack the forums to insert a video of himself naked, including the parts no one wants to see in their life, in the MOTD container, and setting the video to autoplay.

Yeah, that'll show the females not to push him around!

So with all that crap in mind, I have noticed a lot of woman gamers put on male personas for years just to keep the mongs from attacking them, for the crime of "having cooties" or whatever. How dare someone be a woman on the Internet, am i rite? Not only does this make those gamers feel like liars, even to the point of changing how they type and what words they type (because somehow these dumb kids can smell the pheromones in the posts), it becomes a friggin' chore for them to enjoy anything the community has to offer - Can you honestly blame them if they give up? Sometimes it's not worth it! Some that tried to take the mask off ended up with a burned face and probation, and, if some forums are to be used as an example, perma-banned for "causing drama". Woo.

I'm no stranger to this. I know one mapper that has been burned this way. I'm not naming names, so don't even ask. If you're an oldbie and remember all this, then you can back me up on this. The mapper was assistant in some community projects, then disappeared completely because "he" didn't want to be that fake persona anymore, and never dared to come back. And yes, there was plenty of drama to go around after this was revealed, right on cue. People accused her of trying to be "two people". In a way, she had to be two people. But hey, if only she could have been herself in the first place, none of that drama would have happened.

Spoiler:

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I know another who didn't leave, and she still gets crap about it, despite being a talented programmer, artist, mapper, musician, you name it - all that's thrown out the window when the narrative surrounding her is "haha it's a man bby lulz XDDDD" by a few select idiots (I should name names here, but I'm not) that couldn't help themselves. To those who still cannot let this go, and have botnets at the ready to mass flag everything she posts on social media, I pity you. It's been over a decade, and you're still mad about absolutely nothing.

I hope those days are gone now for the Doom community, and perhaps they are, because in the past 5 years, I've seen quite a few doomers throw the mask off, or just show up as themselves. To that I say, good job, you. That can't be said for the Runescape community, the DoTA/LoL/MOBA community, or any competitive FPS with voice chat.

Aaaaand then there's the flip side - those communities with the creepers, the ones that need to take about 15 steps away from a computer. These types see a non-male has entered a section of the internets, and will start posting very disturbing messages - some public, some private. I know it happens, I've seen it on this forum. I've seen it on other forums. My tumblr inbox is a cesspool at this point. Yeah, he or she (yes, she) might be "joking" with the off-color posts, but if anyone new to the community, or just lurking and wants to join, sees those creepy posts and decides to give up on it, that's a loss. No hard data on that, obviously, but I wouldn't blame them for leaving.

So now that I've got that off my chest --

• Am I the only one that has witnessed this?
• Were you affected by communities with members who acted like sexist d-bags on a consistent basis?
• Did you have to deal with creepers at any point in your internet community life?
• Were you one that "took the mask off"? If not, did you jump in as you were and hoped for the best?
• To those that jumped in, did you face anything almost immediately? How did you deal with it?

I hope this can be a civil discussion, so, if we all could refrain from mega-large winking emoticons, purple dildo spam, and general threadjacking, that'd be great. I know the urge may be strong, but you can fight it, brotha.

Spoiler:

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Note: before someone posts "But csonig u forgot about the trans community", no I did not. This scenario also applies.

It used to be that in unrelated-to-doom chatrooms of different topics that all used a single account with an avatar, i was constantly assaulted by male users being creeps in PMs because i had an anime girl as my avatar, at first i took the chance to expose them on public chat to get a laugh out of it, but then the fun part of that stopped, because i realized these people probably were very sad in life and i was destroying their image on the only place they get to be someone.

I remember this one actual girl that actually was annoyed by them but didn't do anything about it, thus she stopped visiting that chat and came with me and friends to skype instead, she has said that these behaviors from other members were having an emotional impact on her but she has never said which kind of impact it was.

The way i see it, some men just grow to be creeps and then they bring that behavior to the web, they are sitting in front of a screen writing messages to a "woman" that's probably several kilometers away, while in real life they can barely have a conversation with an actual girl without having to conceal a boner or shake like a dancing squidward.

This post probably makes little sense because i suck at wording things.

Additional forum reclusivity. Abandoning IRC. Privating Twitter.

best decisions ever

however adminning my own board i've noticed a trend of several user self-editing their own entire post history entirely in protest for some reason manufacturing their own "opressed by admin" drama. Still not sure if gender played a role in that but it certainly made me impose editing time limits.

Also be aware that Doom is a masculine fantasy gateway so its popularity will suck in the usual aggressors. and there's been women doomers for decades (Felicia Day included)

The sad fact - and this isn't just limited to sexism or racism, either, but to online prejudice in general - is that, to some people, there are no consequences for being That Creep or That Jerk. Even if they get banned, oh well, they can go show up at whatever other community that doesn't give a crap, or doesn't want to know about their past drama, or even (in the case of Twitter and youtube) basically does no enforcement whatsoever, letting them continue being their shitty selves.

For an extended period of time I put on a female persona on the Mystical Forest Zone for a full year (as a moderator, which should be noted) to get an inside idea about how they get treated. I guess because 1: I was a fucking moderator, 2: I was dealing with younger people (general age range of 13-16), and 3: it was the Sonic community, I didn't get the results I was expecting. I noticed an almost complete lack of misogyny over there.
Your mileage may vary, basically.

Not to discount the entire rant you have at all, because I know it still exists. It's permeated too well into our Internet society as a whole, and I'm frankly quite tired of it. I worry for my fiance pretty much every day because of it.

Csonicgo wrote:

Spoiler:

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I know another who didn't leave, and she still gets crap about it, despite being a talented programmer, artist, mapper, musician, you name it - all that's thrown out the window when the narrative surrounding her is "haha it's a man bby lulz XDDDD" by a few select idiots (I should name names here, but I'm not) that couldn't help themselves. To those who still cannot let this go, and have botnets at the ready to mass flag everything she posts on social media, I pity you. It's been over a decade, and you're still mad about absolutely nothing.

Were you referring to anyone in particular? Because swap out some of the talents in that set and you could get pretty much any female Doomer that's still active, today.

Not a single one of us doesn't have rumors abound about us being men, or trans, or what have you. Not a single one of us haven't had to put our social media on private, or at least restrict certain posts, so that people couldn't take it out of proportion. It happens in all gaming communities, actually, even in MMO's where more females are to be expected. (Just wait till one of them uses voice chat - then it gets even worse)

For the most part, they're easy enough to ignore, except the ones who try to hack or DDoS your stuff. Other than that, I don't give them the time of day because I have nothing to say to them - and I know I am better than they will ever be. I don't care if that makes me sound arrogant. The problem isn't that they're being beat by a girl - the problem is they're setting such a low bar that's easy for anyone to pass.

Indeed. When I spoke on TF2, I got "shut up kid", and did earn a stalker from the competitive TF2 community. I've only recently learned this particular stalker allegedly passed away a year ago. (and this is just one of many I've had over the years)


I don't even post about my game much on Free Software communities because total dbags exist unscathed. I've only had positive feedback and critique on the WIP thread here of all places.


however even here there is still some creepy behavior. like someone obsessively paraphrasing my replies in a more useless manner as their own post content in the same thread, sometimes with a dash of sexism

I don't think think I would be so quick to suspect misogyny from people if not for the fact that practically growing up on the internet has taught me that I'm usually right when I suspect misogyny from people.

Just in a server on Digital Paintball 2 less than 5 days ago a female user was playing, and shit slowly devolved to "pix nao" and "make me a sammich" and shit. It's not only obnoxious to see spammed every god damn second, but it's just plain asshole behavior that just needs to stop.

I've noticed that this seems to be a mite less prevalent in European regions. Hell, most obnoxious behavior is toned down in European regions, especially in games. I have a female friend tell me after a few rounds of Overwatch that the EU community is miles ahead of the NA one simply because nobody insults eachother on a regular basis, or lost their shit over the fact she's a girl that owns a microphone and plays video games.

That is true, actually. Having traveled I can attest to that.

From my own experience, Europeans have a lot more friendly physical contact, and are quite a bit looser on standards and restrictions than Americans are.

I've gotten my fair share of shitty treatment for being trans in many places. It's either the "you're not really a girl stop faking" reaction or the "you're a disgusting monster" one, sometimes both at once.

I don't know if it's just on the internet or it also happens irl, since, well, there I have to "live with the mask on" at all times due to a rather unsupportive family.

People treat you differently based on gender IRL, too, but exactly what happens is too complex to explain in a simple post.

Suffice to say: It's not unusual for people to whistle at you, grope you, be a lot "friendlier" towards you, just because you're a woman.

It's the same as the internet though: If they don't respect you, don't give them your time. And in your case, that includes respecting both your identity and your situation.

Rise above. Never doubt that you're better than they are. That's exactly what they're afraid of, anyhow, but it doesn't matter because their jealousy alone is what makes them so insignificant that they hold no meaning to your life. As long as you remember that, they can't hurt you no matter how hard they try.

Trolls will be trolls.

That's all I can say.

MJ79 wrote:Trolls will be trolls.

That's all I can say.

Trolls will get what's coming to them.