I queued with two guys in a video game Wednesday morning who spouted that line. I was taken aback. How do you effectively respond to someone who says that? I didn’t handle it well, but I have thought about it a lot since it happened. I remember playing with shock humor when I was in high school, but that is beyond the pale.
Sometimes asking them to explain the joke will be enough to get them feeling embarrassed. If there’s multiple guys throwing this shit around that tactic could easily backfire, though.
I have found that calmly locking eyes with someone that says something like that and asking them what that means tends to completely shake them. If it’s a group of them, it may work, or they’ll just resort to throwing lines that have been prewritten for them back and forth. Still, even then, asking them to explain what that means tends to blunt all their fun.
The key part is to not show any kind of emotion - innocently ask them what that means. Maybe even a slight smile. It totally ruins it for them. They want to feed off of outrage.
Exactly. I play lots of games (anything with a story and decent ratings), but haven’t bothered with multiplayer in probably a decade. Too many children and terrible people that will ruin the experience.
Related: I wish more people would simply choose to abandon every fucking thing that is infested with abuse, trolls, propagandists, bots, or just has terrible moderation. (I recently tried Bluesky and was amazed by the innovative user-controlled moderating tools, which puts all others to shame.)
I queued with two guys in a video game Wednesday morning who spouted that line. I was taken aback. How do you effectively respond to someone who says that? I didn’t handle it well, but I have thought about it a lot since it happened. I remember playing with shock humor when I was in high school, but that is beyond the pale.
Sometimes asking them to explain the joke will be enough to get them feeling embarrassed. If there’s multiple guys throwing this shit around that tactic could easily backfire, though.
I have found that calmly locking eyes with someone that says something like that and asking them what that means tends to completely shake them. If it’s a group of them, it may work, or they’ll just resort to throwing lines that have been prewritten for them back and forth. Still, even then, asking them to explain what that means tends to blunt all their fun.
The key part is to not show any kind of emotion - innocently ask them what that means. Maybe even a slight smile. It totally ruins it for them. They want to feed off of outrage.
I stopped playing online games some years back because this sort of thing was far too common. And I bet it’s even worse now.
Exactly. I play lots of games (anything with a story and decent ratings), but haven’t bothered with multiplayer in probably a decade. Too many children and terrible people that will ruin the experience.
Related: I wish more people would simply choose to abandon every fucking thing that is infested with abuse, trolls, propagandists, bots, or just has terrible moderation. (I recently tried Bluesky and was amazed by the innovative user-controlled moderating tools, which puts all others to shame.)
Tell them about Lorena Bobbitt. Modern women can learn a lot from her failure to dispose of the dick properly.
(The tactic is to shock them right back)