If this happens to a celebrity posting about a 20 year old Nintendo game system, I can only imagine what it's like for your average female logging into modern competitive shooter.

Gamergate never went away. It was the precursor to the youthful fadcisti, in many ways. We need women in these spaces to help diffuse the malignant culture. They'll remain targets of harassment tho, so it's up to everyone to police misogyny, and racism for that matter, too.

You know, growing up I always thought it was super odd for the 'gamer guys' I knew to talk about gaming as a hobby that boys and men are into by default and girls, and especially women, just wouldn't understand.

They mentioned or assumed it so casually in all kinds of contexts, as if it was just a fact about the world everyone knew or agreed upon.

Meanwhile, most of my girl (and later, women) friends played games. And not just the type of games the guys would look down upon, like mobile games, but established major gaming franchises like Final Fantasy, SimCity or Legend of Zelda. They wrote fan-fiction about Sephiroth, they snuck their little DS lite under the school desk to finish a section of Majora's Mask, or they spent weeks at a time meticulously crafting a storyboard in Sims 2. I never understood why the cultural image of gaming at the same time only included guys and maaybe one pick-me-esque 'gamer girl', when most girls and women around me actually were super into some games.

I eventually realised that these 'gamer guys' just never interacted with the girls I knew. Their entire world view came from the internet, from movies and other cultural sources. That was an eye-opener.

It makes me angry and sad to see games with a traditionally female userbase, such as The Sims, to be lumped into 'casual' genres, when I never knew a single Sims player who had a casual relationship with that game. They were typically much more intense about these games and fandoms than your average male FIFA/Call of Duty/Battlefield players, but the latter count as 'real gamers'. It's really just misogyny.

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.

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!

ok forgive me for being old but they're saying "larp larp larp" like they're saying she's "Live Action Role Playing" being a "gamer" cause she took a photo of her old DS? am I right on that one?

Misery loves company.

Whenever I see stuff like this online that's the first thing I think of. These people are all miserable, depressed, and alone. The most basic and simplistic forms of joy from others sends them into a "woe is me" rage. They then MUST ensure said person or whomever defends said person be brought down into the same misery hole they dug for themselves.

And you can't just say "oh just ignore them" I'm sorry but no, you can't. I'm sure OP has tried taking that route several times but again these peoples entire lot in life is to ensure you become as miserable as they do. so you can't ignore them.

So what do you do? you keep living your life. Enjoy whatever the ever living fuck you want to enjoy, post about it online, let the miserable cunts try to knock you down, post more. post A LOT more. infuriate them, let them attack you. respond to their posts with a simple "k." or "cool story, bro" or "thank you for the feedback!" kell em with kindness or just an out right virtual pat on the head. "great post champ!" all that. Show them that you're happier then they are and will ever be.

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.

What losers. This is why there are safe places online. All it takes is one weirdo too. Social media, Reddit, even here. Theres a reason you should never reveal your real name on the internet. And aparently gender jeez. Wtf. Gateeeping is strange people. Its a fun thing to do for everyone.

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.

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.

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.

socially inept incel gamer boys feel threatened by girls and women entering "their" space, and communicate in the only way they know how: by lashing out with gamer shittalking. it's barely a step above toddler temper tantrums. unfortunately no one can force anyone to grow tf up, especially when part of their core identity is as some kind of someone within the anti-woman circlejerk. best practice is to just block them and move on. angry reaction is what they want. fuck that.

also, wtf is this new "larping" business?

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.

Growing up, PCs and video games were very much a boys thing and every time I saw someone outed as a girl/woman playing games, I was like "Nice! A unicorn!".
And every time they played better than me, I was like "Wow, that's amazing! Carry me, mommy!"

So my toxicity went the other way, as in too enthusiastic. Or a simp as some might call it. "Don't be mean to this rare, mythical creature or she might run away!"

Now that I'm older, I've been tempered somewhat. No longer do i simp biasedly. I can yell out both "Carry me, mommy/daddy!" shamelessly.

Thank you for sharing names. Easy blocks and reports. The irony was clearly lost with this guy and his concept of “compassion”.

Good read! Thanks for sharing your work.

The comment section (in part) quickly becomes less about the device or shared memories, and more about performance: who is “allowed” to be associated with gaming culture, and on what terms.

Yuck, disgusting reddit behaviour.

I'm glad to report that my experience here in the fediverse has been quite plesant as wimmin folk with an interest in discussing games. ! I have to give a shoutout to my favourite comm !soulslike@lemmy.zip and our wonderful ~~overlord~~ mod @v4ld1z@lemmy.zip and the folks over at the community for creating a cool and welcoming environment for everyone.

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.