To have a sense of empathy and relativism towards your fellow human being is to try to understand the world that contextualises them as people, to have an approximation as to who they may be based upon extrapolated and speculated personal experiences, and to understand their feelings and how they express them, and to understand and respect them as much as possible as an individual.
I believe being empathetic is to see both sides of the same coin at any time, applying a deduction of an individual’s own relative perspective where required and being able to also apply reason to both their perspective as well as your own.
In gaming, I feel that some people have lost and/or haven’t been introduced to these concepts, either through the influence of neurological disorders, the doctrine that they have been brought up to believe, simply not giving a damn or perhaps just not been enlightened to such perspectives yet.
As you read this, you may be coming up with all sorts of presumptions and/or assumptions about me based upon your own person subjectivities, projections and expectations. Am I bellowing my obnoxious voice to the masses to follow my ideological beliefs? Nope–that’s just a interpreted projection you may have placed on me.
Do you know what obstacles, experiences and hardships I’ve been through to morph me into the person I am today? Of course you don’t–all I am to you is just some random “journalist” with an opinion, whose name just so conveniently happens to be in the byline.
Yet, without all that contextualization, I am just another nameless “thing” to whomever deems me so (and that’s being optimistic about it), whose words are a few among others like various other “activists” or “extremists” just because I’m seemingly writing a “high-horse” opinion piece. Most people are guilty of that, I believe, myself included sometimes.
What does this have to do with videogames? A fair amount actually. I’ve seen, heard and have been subjected to experiences of verbal abuse and harassment just because of not reaching the expectations of the assailant, who has interpreted a mistake or a series of mistakes as being utterly and completely subpar to anything and everything, and therefore–by their logic–you should uninstall the game you like playing just so they will have the satisfaction of removing another stain from the face of their relative perception of the world and the universe around them.
Ever had a bad day? Yeah, we all get those. Some days go on for a lot longer than others, and those bad days can influence how we interact with the world around us, be it with a heightened sense of hostility and/or aggression, or burying your sorrows in food and/or drink, or interacting with people whom you know will cheer you up. Bad days are when mistakes happen, when you already feel like your performance in everything is already subpar enough as it is. The last thing you want is some random player in the game you’re playing criticising you because they perceive you to have the worst skill next to whatever they deem as a low echelon of life.
I don’t know if you may have experienced this yourself, but the sheer amount of horrible verbal abuse another human being can through at the hands of another is just astonishingly appalling, but it’s frighteningly easy to do. I mean, you wouldn’t hurl all sorts of expletives at some if you knew there’d be repercussions to it, right? But there aren’t all that many repercussions on the internet, so it becomes very easy to dehumanize a person for who they are and/or what the they do or have done. Most people are “open targets” for everyone on the internet, it seems.
To all those who have ever hurled abuse at someone because they didn’t reach your expectations, or because it was “for the lulz” , or because you yourself were having a bad day, or because of whatever reason you deemed adequate enough to act upon, let me ask you this: have you ever taken a moment to think about the other side of things during the haze of your frustration, hate, anger or trolling manner, throwing complete disregard to whatever contextual reasons are influencing them?
Have you thought about just how hurtful the following words you’ll type and/or say will be on the other person(s)?
Would you have considered how emotionally damaging what you’re about to say could be to them, sending their self-esteem into a downward spiral and thus hindering their own self-confidence and self-worth?
Would it have even crossed your mind that what you have said may have been the final straw for someone to take their own life?
That got pretty dark, didn’t it? The sad thing is, though, is that actually can happen.
Would you like to be that person who goes to play a videogame that they enjoy (perhaps you bring a couple of friends, too), and through one or a series of mistakes be subjected to an onslaught of abuse and harassment?
Would you like to be on the receiving end of words that could truly cut you deep? Like, so much so that you would stop playing the game, the game you enjoy the most and play frequently–because it gives you joy and escapism–because the experience was emotionally traumatizing for you?
Would you like to be that poor person who commits suicide because of the emotional distress you have been put through on top of what is already troubling you severely, even with the fact that you’ll still have several years ahead of you to enjoy life and be happy, but aren’t able to see it because all you can dwell upon is how worthless you feel and much of a waste of space you are on the world at large?
Would you like that? Somehow I don’t think so. So, why do it? What compels you to be that person? Why do you find it so easy to consider a human life to be lesser than yours because of whatever subjective reasoning you apply?
More to the point: why do you get a massive ego boost from it (further conditioning yourself that you’re better than anyone else ever)?
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