What do you get when you combine Xbox Live with a batch of bad gamers and invite Fox News to come and watch?
A worn out stereotype.
Had this report been fair or balanced, it would have given equal time to good gamers who aren’t bathed in [oh, how did they say it?] “racial slurs, anti-Semitic rhetoric, and homo-phobic chatter”.
This blogger was well impressed to see that Fox News took umbrage with such things. I know that many gamers are upset by it. The majority of them do, in fact. Even the test subjects of this inquisitive expose – the ones portrayed as lambs being herded to the slaughter of their immortal souls – seem to get the picture.
“You learn to ignore it.”
That’s damn right, kiddo. You learn to ignore it. You pay it no mind – just the same way you learn to ignore leaky faucets, the loudest guy in any public place, or Fox News. Just play your game and speak your lesson true.
Watching this story, some poor uninformed soul could get the wrong idea. They might walk away from this hard-nosed investigation thinking that every gamer on the grid [that is not your angel of a son] is a seething predator who hides a red banner of war in that old box of “memorabilia”. These could-be gamers might not join us in the best thing on television, because they fear the boogey man that lives there.
To make this article fair and balanced, it must be said that you don’t have to sample Xbox Live too many times to hear that sort of thing. But you learn to ignore it. It must really chap the ass of a reporter who blazes a path to a potential threat to the very fabric of our civilization!, only to find out the noise being made by the fools is something to which we do not pay attention.
The newsdesk editor might have followed our example, but it’s fun to bleep out potty words on television. You have to run something. You checked a camera crew out for the day and bought them lunch. “We are looking for ratings on this one, Jenkins, and MSNBC is running something on E3. Better lead with the trashmouth kids…”
It makes it more interesting when there is something we can’t hear or read. One can’t help but think “Ooooh, what am I being protected from?” Nothing. Good luck finding a corner of the world where there is not someone making an ass of themselves. Every town has its drunk. Every village has its idiot.
You don’t usually prop those people up and put ‘em on the news though. I mean, that would just be creepy. Wouldn’t it? In fact, wouldn’t the rest of the world be a better place with a mute button? Why pick on Xbox Live for being any number of places where ignorant people act like bullies? It seems like our clubhouse is more sorted than most.
Here is a message for all those gamers who behave in a way that lends fodder to Sinclair Broadcasting: You should be careful. You never know who is listening. They might be coming for you. Yes, you! You heard your voice in that piece. Maybe you even sent the sweet link to your kick-ass bros.
What have you done? Didn’t you hear that inspector with the scary mustuche lament the fact that he didn’t have a silver bullet he could use to kill all of you? Is there anyone outside your door? Go and check. Just pray they didn’t bring the monkeys…
Oh, who am I kidding? Those guys stopped reading this site a long time ago.
I can remember XBL when I first joined in 2004. PGR2 was my game, mixed with Rainbow Six 3 and Crimson Skies and the social interaction was always pleasant. You’d have 1-2 random guys every few games that let you know their I.Q’s.
Think for a minute WHY FoxNews wanted to present such bad publicity toward XBL. MSNBC is one of FoxNews’ biggest competitors, taking anything from MSNBC is going to be Fox’s primary goal.
No one really cares about presenting the real news to people, they care about ratings and who can “Wow!” you better.
That was a very well written blog deej. Unfortunately it is both sweet and sour to have the safe havens of xbl (TTL, GG, SG, etc…) mentioned on the news or in mags because they get overrun with new registrants. While you don’t want to lock the doors, you do want to protect your safe haven and keep the riffraff out.
I also have to agree with Mudshovel. In the news world, the best news is bad news.
I would give anything to go back to the friends and family beta. The balanced carbine, the new maps, keep it all Bungie. I just want a secure group of gamers.
Indeed the best solution to this problem (and it is indeed a problem) is an active parent. Although LIVE is full of kids that use hate as a weapon behind their headset, there are also adults that sadly never learned any better. So what do we do?
I think LIVE owes it to it’s users to do a better job of policing the community for hate and abuse. I have several ideas on how to do this but there is not space are time to convey them. Is there a “silver bullet”? No, never will be but we do owe it to the community to keep the village idiots supressed.
Step one: Shame on any parent that buys a console connected to the internet for a kid that they are clueless about. Let’s start there.
Out of all the good that comes from XBL, it is this that Fox focuses on. Typical.
If you attempt to shelter your children like this, imagine when they join the real world. “Mom! He just said sex! Bad word!”
I play Halo 3. Never heard the Jew hate or anything. (Only Halo 2, but hey) Fox either deliberately picked THE WORST YOU CAN FIND or they recorded it in their studio.
Parental involvement. Fox solved their own problem – hit the mute button. On the offender’s gamercard profile, theres a little option that says “Mute.” Use it. Halo 3 makes this even easier.
But no, Fox just forgot to mention that.
And to pick on Halo 3. Low.
I wonder if this is why Fox Pictures pulled funding for the Halo movie. Were they afraid children would walk up and say, “Give me two $#*%*^ tickets to mother ^*%$&*% Halo, you %$*#&-@$$, pasty $#!#%#, before I pwn you with my L33t tea-bag skillz!”
Probaly not.
Strangly, considering the source, I think this might be some sort of defense for “Halo in church.” Surely such language won’t happen at a Holy-Lan.
It is interesting that media contantly attacks other medias that they do not own, and always focus on the negative of a story. Would it not be fair and balanced if they spoke of the pros of XBL, such as a fairly cheap form of entertainment (that gets cheaper as you play), improved dexterity, muscle memory, and the stress relief provided from such activites?
Sadly, this horse has been beat by many others prior to this, for many years now, and it will only get worse as technology gets better.
That was really onesided. The news just seems to become more blind to the other sides of stories as the minutes tick by. Granted there was a huge problem with the language used in most of the games I was in. My user name was Fraggit286 and I was accused of being gay and other such things before the game had even started. There was one game where they asked me if I was a girl. the funny thing is I am. When I answered that boy he didn’t bother saying anything else. I have found that when most of the people who had such things to say to me found out I was a girl gammer they couldn’t find much else to say. Espcially when I was getting anywhere between first and fifth in most of the games I played. But there were just as many polite gamers as there were gamers flinging insults. Besides there is just as much rabble in the outside world on the streets and in shcools, how are you going to censor them? It’s not like you can hit the mute button for the other people around you.
For all of you guys blaming corperate fox… please dont. This was a local station doing local coverage… This was not the national Fox News station, so therefore it would not be in response to MSNBC (Mudshovel’s Comment), or a story done by corprate producers. My dad is a techincal director/director at Fox News DC (national cable station), most of these bits that get put on TV are on local stations, and local producers and reporters control the content. In this case it was a local Milwaukee affiliate of Fox.
Indeed.
Please be careful with things like this. You’re coming across as doing the exact thing you’re condemning: berating someone based on incomplete information. You all claim to be above such actions – and I can testify that you usually are – but not so much in this case. I totally agree that the guy missed the real issue…much of the media does with every issue. Don’t tarnish your rep over something like this.
Tarnish my rep? I have a REP? Holy crap! Hey Fellas, I have a rep!!!
In all sincerity, I appreciate the word of caution. While this was an opinion piece – as are most of the articles you will find at TTL – it is hard to be anything but one-sided. I regret the perception that I am operating from a standpoint of incomplete information. All I really meant to say was that Xbox Live, just like any other social environment, has unsavory elements. We can choose to ignore those elements, or we can blow their impact out of proportion.
Or were you commenting on the Monkeys?