This post is from one of several previous incarnations of this site and probably doesn’t quite fit the current format. In a former life this was a group blog and a tumblelog before it became a static jekyll site. If anything looks broken or is worded oddly that could be why. Pardon the dust.
So there was this mini brouhaha last week over trash talk on xbox live, and homophobic or discriminatory trash talk in particular. It was kicked off by a video posted on gaygamer.net of someone with the gamertag “xxx GayBoy xxx” playing Halo 3 multiplayer. Naturally, the air was turning blue around him. Despite the shocked tone of gaygamer’s post, however, commenters have remained admirably measured in their response and note that the video only contains a couple of instances of full-fledged hate speech.
This week I finally got around to using a couple of trial days of gold membership on xbox live. A chance to see what it’s like in the online multiplayer mirror-world. And a chance to find out what people think of my spectacularly unimaginative gamertag, “Matt and Katie”.
I chose it because I signed up for a silver account just minutes after I unpacked my shiny new console and was in a rush. I chose it because I wanted to include Katie on the fun (although we later realised separate profiles make more sense where achievements and save games are concerned). And I chose it because “cool” screen names are kind of annoying.
So it turns out quite a few people think it’s ridiculous. I’ve had sneers, jibes, jokes. But for the most part it’s just talk. And it makes it all the more sweet when a loudmouth is calling you out as lame in the lobby at the start, and you end up above him in the rankings in the lobby at the end.
And really, who’s to blame them when there’s so little to go off. Much like a prank caller flipping through a telephone directory, a list of names is all the grist they have for their entertainment mill. If you have a gamertag that dares to stand out, dares to stray from leetspeak, dares to be something other than “armyguy420”, then you’re the only thing worth talking about.
To quote one of final trash talkers in gaygamer’s video: “Who’s leaving? GayBoy? Nooooo… dude! You’re the life of the party!”