What Grinds My Gears: Girls VS the Stereotypes, and Internet Trolling

My friend, PJ aka NineMoons (see the first Featured Blog of the Day), recently posted a particular blog entry that got my original thoughts in check, and it was dawning on me for a very long time:





http://geninemoons.blogspot.com/2008/09/homage-ninemoons-and-one-about-ge-gamer.html (Besides that, please do check out the whole event in conjunction with L'Oreal XD)



So, you know what grinds my gears?


- You see, I, for the life of me, cannot understand why some people consider women to be pretty stereotypical when it comes to them and video gaming. I seriously believe it's awesome to have girls join in the fun when it comes to them being involved in video gaming. And why shouldn't they? There is a reason why a gaming community is called AS SUCH. So I find myself being left with a bad taste in my mouth when women are being stereotyped from being able to do anything men can, for the matter. I don't know, but haven't they learned anything in the course of human history? Let me put it this way:







See? That's called incorporating history with gaming! She's an example of women who have made a difference, and I'm glad to see a game to feature such a historical figure, even if the story of the game does have a bit of an anime-ish and fantasy feel to it. Regardless, women are to be respected in every way, bank on it. And if they can beat you in fighting games, so be it, and be happy for it.

- I have a bit of mixed feelings with Internet Trolling. I mean, for whatever it's worth, they did help innovate a lot of internet memes over the years, which is fun. But I simply do not like the discriminatory aspect of it. Again, it seems a bit funny at first, but in the long run, I just don't see it as a perfect topic to talk about in real social situations. Homophobic and racial slurs, and all that jazz are the things I don't like about this phenomenon. And what's worse, gamers tend to say a lot of these things, thinking that they would sound a lot tougher if they say words like n#@!$r, "f$@", and what have you. And as a result, this is just ruining the fun of not only hardcore gamers, but casual gamers as well. And if that happens, who knows how these people will view gaming with misguided gamers being like that. There is a fine line between acting tough (or being tough), and being a total a$$.



Keep playing!