Here we go again: “researchers” are calling gamers Nazis

Gamers: the cornerstone of everything wrong with society.

The gaming community is far from perfect. Toxicity is the biggest knock against gamers, and it’s a fair critique.

Toxicity breeds true misogyny, racism, and homophobia along with “gamer words” that don’t give the community the best appearance when looking at it from the outside.

BUT, does that mean that these people are actual, real life right-wing extremists?

I now understand why Valorant queues are so unbelievably toxic. You got one of the most popular streamers on YouTube IShowSpeed saying crap like this and getting nothing but praise and laughs. Crap is whack pic.twitter.com/grEghVotUF

— Jake Lucky (@JakeSucky) April 6, 2022

Extremist content or “gamer words”?

Once in a while, an outside observer comes in and makes wild accusations of extremism in gaming.

That’s what we have, now, with multiple news reports picking up on a report from the Extremism and Gaming Research Network.

Surprise, surprise, the organization (founded in 2021 btw) found extremism in gaming.

Far-right extremists are a growing presence in gaming, researchers have found. The industry’s hidden metrics, lackluster content moderation and head-in-the-sand attitudes get in the way of assessing and combatting the problem. https://t.co/Q2j2plmE42

— Axios (@axios) April 27, 2022

The report is incredibly vague and doesn’t point to any specific examples – nor does it say what the EGRN classifies as “extremist content.”

The report is filled with gems like this: “Techspot reported over 120 million “active” Steam users per month in 2020, many of whom may be exposed to radicalization or extremist content.”

Basically, it finds that there may, possibly be some “extremist” content within certain corners of the gaming community.

Does that impact the 120 million active Steam users a month? Who knows, but let’s throw that in there to make it seem like it does.

To me, this whole thing seems identical to the “weed is a gateway drug” argument.

Sure, most heroin addicts probably smoked weed at some point in their life. That doesn’t mean that smoking weed led them to heroin.

Similarly, psycho extremists who live online probably also play video games. That doesn’t mean that all gamers are psycho extremists.

First fitness, now gaming

The war on normal people continues https://t.co/baWjHo5ggk

— Saagar Enjeti (@esaagar) April 27, 2022

I’m not too worried about what any of this means for the future of gaming.

Gamers and video games have been attacked from all sides throughout the history of gaming. I doubt that this one will move the needle too much.

Still, it’s worth calling out these normie fucks trying to take down our hobby.