You Don’t Look Like a Gamer: On Toxicity, Gatekeeping, and Women Who Share Their Gaming Lives Online (my article)
2026-05-02 23:04 UTC
Replies (40)
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@mesamunefire@piefed.social 2026-05-02 23:46
What losers. This is why there are safe places online. All it takes is one weirdo too. Social media, Reddit, even here. Theres a reason you should never reveal your real name on the internet. And aparently gender jeez. Wtf. Gateeeping is strange people. Its a fun thing to do for everyone.
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@manuremy@sopuli.xyz 2026-05-03 06:14
I grew up hearing that what ever game I enjoyed, "was not a real video game." And this was IRL, from people I knew and thought as my friends, at the time. If I tried to continue, it turned verbally abusive and my fave games got properly shitted on. So I learned to stay quiet and play only offline games, just play my lil games alone. These days I got real friends who'd like to play with me, but I'm too shy to go online.. Like I want to, but just too afraid. It's really fucking dumb.
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@U7826391786239@piefed.zip 2026-05-03 00:11
socially inept incel gamer boys feel threatened by girls and women entering "their" space, and communicate in the only way they know how: by lashing out with gamer shittalking. it's barely a step above toddler temper tantrums. unfortunately no one can *force* anyone to grow tf up, especially when part of their core identity is as some kind of someone within the anti-woman circlejerk. best practice is to just block them and move on. angry reaction is what they want. fuck that. also, wtf is this new "larping" business?
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@anna@retrofed.com 2026-05-03 21:33
You know, growing up I always thought it was super odd for the 'gamer guys' I knew to talk about gaming as a hobby that boys and men are into by default and girls, and especially women, just wouldn't understand. They mentioned or assumed it so casually in all kinds of contexts, as if it was just a fact about the world everyone knew or agreed upon. Meanwhile, most of my girl (and later, women) friends played games. And not just the type of games the guys would look down upon, like mobile games, but established major gaming franchises like Final Fantasy, SimCity or Legend of Zelda. They wrote fan-fiction about Sephiroth, they snuck their little DS lite under the school desk to finish a section of Majora's Mask, or they spent weeks at a time meticulously crafting a storyboard in Sims 2. I never understood why the cultural image of gaming at the same time only included guys and maaybe one pick-me-esque 'gamer girl', when most girls and women around me actually were super into some games. I eventually realised that these 'gamer guys' just never interacted with the girls I knew. Their entire world view came from the internet, from movies and other cultural sources. That was an eye-opener. It makes me angry and sad to see games with a traditionally female userbase, such as The Sims, to be lumped into 'casual' genres, when I never knew a single Sims player who had a casual relationship with that game. They were typically much more intense about these games and fandoms than your average male FIFA/Call of Duty/Battlefield players, but the latter count as 'real gamers'. It's really just misogyny.
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@rozodru@piefed.world 2026-05-03 13:40
ok forgive me for being old but they're saying "larp larp larp" like they're saying she's "Live Action Role Playing" being a "gamer" cause she took a photo of her old DS? am I right on that one? Misery loves company. Whenever I see stuff like this online that's the first thing I think of. These people are all miserable, depressed, and alone. The most basic and simplistic forms of joy from others sends them into a "woe is me" rage. They then MUST ensure said person or whomever defends said person be brought down into the same misery hole they dug for themselves. And you can't just say "oh just ignore them" I'm sorry but no, you can't. I'm sure OP has tried taking that route several times but again these peoples entire lot in life is to ensure you become as miserable as they do. so you can't ignore them. So what do you do? you keep living your life. Enjoy whatever the ever living fuck you want to enjoy, post about it online, let the miserable cunts try to knock you down, post more. post A LOT more. infuriate them, let them attack you. respond to their posts with a simple "k." or "cool story, bro" or "thank you for the feedback!" kell em with kindness or just an out right virtual pat on the head. "great post champ!" all that. Show them that you're happier then they are and will ever be.
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@GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 2026-05-03 02:49
Good read! Thanks for sharing your work. > The comment section (in part) quickly becomes less about the device or shared memories, and more about performance: who is “allowed” to be associated with gaming culture, and on what terms. Yuck, disgusting reddit behaviour. I'm glad to report that my experience here in the fediverse has been quite plesant as wimmin folk with an interest in discussing games. ! I have to give a shoutout to my favourite comm [!soulslike@lemmy.zip](https://lemmy.zip/c/soulslike) and our wonderful ~~overlord~~ mod [@v4ld1z@lemmy.zip](https://lemmy.zip/u/v4ld1z) and the folks over at the community for creating a cool and welcoming environment for everyone.
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@lath@piefed.social 2026-05-03 05:33
Growing up, PCs and video games were very much a boys thing and every time I saw someone outed as a girl/woman playing games, I was like "Nice! A unicorn!". And every time they played better than me, I was like "Wow, that's amazing! Carry me, mommy!" So my toxicity went the other way, as in too enthusiastic. Or a simp as some might call it. "Don't be mean to this rare, mythical creature or she might run away!" Now that I'm older, I've been tempered somewhat. No longer do i simp biasedly. I can yell out both "Carry me, mommy/daddy!" shamelessly.
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@christian@lemmy.ml 2026-05-04 12:53
Obviously this is not a representative sample, but it's hard not to notice that the three redditors in these screenshots that are gatekeeping gaming all have female-presenting avatars. It makes me think of an article I read two or three years ago written by a black man saying he gave his son advice that in an emergency white cops were a significantly safer bet because institutionalized racism gives them a lot more leeway to show empathy towards minorities without being ostracized for it. A woman actually trying to fit into a misogynistic culture is going to feel more pressure to consistently prove her belonging, and can end up being more ruthless in enforcing the misogyny and more effective because her gender allows a cover of legitimacy.
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@warmaster@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 01:45
People on the internet discriminating around the most irrelevant details. You know what grinds my gears? Tooling doesn't help. In communities like reddit or lemmy, downvotes mean your content will be more hidden. When a dumb-wagon is formed the good content goes to hell. And people use the downvote as a disagree button. It's annoying.
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@TacoEvent@lemmy.zip 2026-05-03 16:42
Thank you for sharing names. Easy blocks and reports. The irony was clearly lost with this guy and his concept of “compassion”. 
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@clifmo@programming.dev 2026-05-04 11:49
If this happens to a celebrity posting about a 20 year old Nintendo game system, I can only imagine what it's like for your average female logging into modern competitive shooter. Gamergate never went away. It was the precursor to the youthful fadcisti, in many ways. We need women in these spaces to help diffuse the malignant culture. They'll remain targets of harassment tho, so it's up to everyone to police misogyny, and racism for that matter, too.
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@HexesofVexes@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 01:23
Gaming is one of those weird spaces; it mainstreamed in the smartphone era, with a lot of folks who previously mocked it embracing it. It's picked up the toxic manosphere infection as it transitioned ("casual gamers" Vs "real gamers" facilitated that boxing off). The onlyfans "egirl" revolution painted a skewed picture of girls as gamers in the worst possible way (doing it for attention to make money), and the manosphere has amplified this to the detriment of gamers everywhere. Gaming also focuses a lot of moral outrage, and that hasn't helped matters. It's given some men a ghost to fight against ("the big bad feminist trying to ban waifus"), whereas the reality is far from that! The reality is gaming is for everyone who wants to game; the best question to ask another gamer is what they've enjoyed playing (for the Ds, the Etrian Odyssey games are amazing!). Not every game is for every person, except for Super Smash on the GameCube, because that game was high art.
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@brbposting@sh.itjust.works 2026-05-03 04:21
That’s too bad people can’t behave. Mind if I share where I’m grappling with the following from a privacy perspective?  I can imagine a privacy hawk making that comment with a deep concern for others and desire to force a very difficult social change. I remember someone complained everyone in their life said “I’m not even really on Facebook! …I just use it for ” Maybe I am a bad person to judge because the underlying concern resonates with me, so I can be sympathetic and treat it as hyperbole. _(edit: lol it’s so wrong on its face, IG like world’s most popular platform or almost)_ Thank you for your analysis and reporting here!
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@billwashere@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 15:46
I mean what does a gamer look like? 35 year old neck beard? I mean I’m a 55 year old dude that’s been playing games since I was 6 years old. Do I look like a gamer? Find somebody playing a game. Look at them. That’s what a gamer looks like. FFS it ain’t that hard.
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@Erna_muse@lemmy.zip 2026-05-04 00:24
I think the root of the problem is a pathological need for social control. Excessive wealth accumulation, sexism, racism. The piece of information that makes me choose not to engage in this behavior is understanding the value of my own life and by extension the lives of others. Psychology doesn't consider a lot of this a mental illness because the behavior confers benefits to the person performing them. But if I assume abusing women online is irrational. Then this is a child development problem.
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@LyingCake@feddit.org 2026-05-03 07:07
Hey dash! Cool article on an issue worth writing about. Thank you for sharing your own work here. I have a question about something that surprised me: did you consider censoring user names of the people you used as examples of negative internet culture? From a perspective of journalistic best practice, I personally feel like this would have been better, mostly since you are making a point about general culture, not specific people. This became noticable to me with the reference to mastodon (less with reddit). Maybe because mastodon feels like more of a personal, less anonymous platform. Also, @f... (no thank you voyager, I won't tag him here, even if you autocomplete the handle) is more singled out. What I want to express is that I feel like that _not_ censoring names detracts from your point of 'online spaces are bad' to 'these people are bad'. This is especially true if the bad actor is a single person, as in the mastodon / 'shut up about instagram'-section. This is the case in addition to the risk of people reaching out to the posters in question to worsen their day.
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@MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 13:19
Gaming gatekeeping is just the old tribalism rearing its nasty mug. It's all over the place in all sorts of environments.
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@GhostFace@lemmy.today 2026-05-04 11:03
I love billie so much, she's such an icon
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@Impractical_Island@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 14:22
I remember when I used to play video games. Yea, I was your typical window masturbator with kilobytes of child porn and may have killed a dog. Then I got MKULTRA'd and got taken advantage of by a cult that reprogrammed my dopaminergic potential with oil changes n cheese cloths to then escape by cutting into my arm to do acid again to realize I was a woman to spiral into homelessness while traveling the country and creating a sex cult built around incestuous necrophilia that would get me v& by the FBI for accidentally advertising it on the Roblox subreddit. And also obscene terroristic threats to a prominent US senator. Obviously, I just talked my way outta it, and thank God I got taken advantage of by that cult cuz I woulda still had them kilobytes while playing Dragon Age or some shit for the sex scenes, cuz that's what mattered when *I* played video games.
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@baines@piefed.social 2026-05-03 04:52
wait is this article really complaining that someone said they don’t care about her complaining about shitty people on Reddit? presumably the point of leaving for some of us was so we don’t have to hear about stupid shit said by its remaining users like giving a fuck about what’s left on X anyway my wife has more console games than I ever had and most cater to her demographic over mine what a dumb thing for the original reddit users to try and gate keep in this day and age it’s not the 90s, women game in mainstream that said the whole lying by rich and famous people for pointless gaming cred is real, just look to moron Elon and Path of Exile
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@ElectricMachman@geostationary.orbiting.observer 2026-05-03 20:55
As someone who would admit to their identity being shaped by video games: I also play the Sims a lot, which (in the eyes of your typical gamer bro) isn't a real game
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@psycotica0@lemmy.ca 2026-05-03 02:53
I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding who you're replying to, or if I'm misunderstanding you in this reply, but I don't think they're saying "all gamers are incels who don't like girls", I think they're saying "all the shitty people reacting poorly are the remaining socially inept incel guys"
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@Wrufieotnak@feddit.org 2026-05-03 04:36
> how he inadvertently tried to exclude a family member when she started playing the game better than him. Yep, that is a big part of the reason. There was a study where they showed: the top players weren't as misogynistic as the bottom players when a woman played with them. So the conclusion is that to a lot of people they are really fragile and lash out because they aren't as good as they like to be and fear losing 'status' if women would join our hobby. Sadly I can't find the study at the moment.
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@GrantUsEyes@lemmy.zip 2026-05-03 04:44
Thanks for sharing this! It's good to also hear men bring these issues up.
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@redsand@infosec.pub 2026-05-03 18:42
Years of playing multiplayer have taught me why girls play muted. And I do what I can but often that's just getting some sweaty dude at the bottom of the leaderboard banned. It's so often the same ones that are silent until the match is over and they're blaming everyone but themselves.
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@Madzielle@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-04 14:49
I too, hate boxes.
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@baines@piefed.social 2026-05-03 09:05
which point? I’m sympathetic about her complaint over reddit but nothing with mastadon had anything to do with her being a woman
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@NostraDavid@programming.dev 2026-05-03 17:38
> and naturally they tend to be male dominated because people keep gatekeeping and being misogynistic for no reason. Why does every male-dominated space need to become inclusive? Why does the same not happen with female-dominated spaces? Why does this only happen in one direction?
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@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 20:54
Yeah, it's not a clever or new observation to point out that the men who are mad they can't meet women are the same ones who make being a woman in nerdy spaces suck, especially online gaming (but also plenty of irl spaces, my ex was a female magic the gathering judge and oh boy did she get treated poorly). But it is something still worth mentioning. This also gets worse when genuinely nerdy women are anything other than the equivalent of the worst stereotypes of nerds. When you ask the question why wouldn't some women of all sorts have been Tolkien heads or been playing ttrpgs since they were teenagers (or have always wanted to try), or been gaming since they were kids, then this behavior gets even more absurd. If led Zeppelin could be super into Tolkien, why can't Billie Eilish be a gamer? If Henry Caville can be as nerdy as he is, why can't a similarly attractive actress be equally nerdy? If some of the guys at the game shop grew into their face and got into working out, why should you assume that that's not a possible story behind a pretty woman who decides to come in?
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@FosterMolasses@leminal.space 2026-05-04 15:45
This but unironically. A lot of this behavior is actually outlined in the lesser discussed Fearful-Avoidant aka Disorganized Attachment Style. From my understanding, people with this style of attachment are more likely to lash out even when presented with the ideal safe relationship environment due to past abandonment trauma.  The way I specifically heard it described once is even after a caregiver returns to a child who needs emotional consolement after separation anxiety, unlike the other children who will immediately calm down, the child with a Fearful-Avoidant style will continue to cry, almost as if perceiving the sense of danger or emotional upset as permanent.
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@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 00:04
Ope sorry if it came off critical, I meant it in a form of "this has been said many times and yet it continues to bear the repetition that you engaged in and I'm about to"
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@YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2026-05-04 12:11
I like this place precisely cause of people like you two!
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@captainlezbian@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 14:06
Totally fair lol, I too can get a little over sensitive to online comments for similar reasons.
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@Feathercrown@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 19:38
It can't be larp if it's real
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@YiddishMcSquidish@lemmy.today 2026-05-04 11:59
I thought it was PoE he was caught paying to farm. Still a bitch move no matter the game though.
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@nek0d3r@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2026-05-04 12:39
I mean, I'd imagine that you wouldn't know those kinds of people. But it's very much real. While it no doubt encompasses celebrity gatekeeping, it's at least as much about women in gaming as well. Gaming was associated with boys as part of a campaign to bring it back from the brink, and that's manifested a culture of misogyny since. Gamergate's continued smoldering is evidence of that
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@UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 13:02
> Personally I’ve never seen or heard about anyone’s disbelief in women being gamers. Rule 30 of the "Rules of the Internet"
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@MithranArkanere@lemmy.world 2026-05-04 13:18
The only celebrities I trust to be gamers are those like Henry Cavill who have the bills to show it. Not because what gender they happen to be.
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@Katana314@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 00:14
[This guy](https://youtu.be/DAE8QIu4pdQ) had a great analysis video, complete with interviews with victims, of toxicity towards female entry into male spaces. He goes historically into how video games were first age-neutral, then Nintendo made them "toys", and toys were for boys, slowly leading to the space having a toxic exclusivity problem. One of the best bits (which I unfortunately don't have a timestamp for right now) is when he talks about his own experience as a kid, and how he inadvertently tried to exclude a family member when she started playing the game better than him.
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@galaxy_nova@lemmy.world 2026-05-03 04:58
I fucking hate dudes like this. I’m someone who has “nerdy” interests and such and naturally they tend to be male dominated because people keep gatekeeping and being misogynistic for no reason. I’d love to have to partner with similar interests in this regard but it’s made harder by the fact that the men in the spaces are the way they are and it’s hard to engage in that way without making the person uncomfortable because there’s a precedent for all sorts of weird behavior. And then these same incels complain they are unsuccessful, well please stop ruining it for the rest of us as well. Even in a non dating context having a more diverse hobby means a more diverse experience.