As far as I’m concerned video game fans are the worst

Back when I was young, the idea of a nerd just meant you were unpopular, uncool, and a bit of a swot. The idea of nerd culture didn’t really exist back then and while it was assumed you probably liked Star Trek and video games and comic books, that wasn’t really given much thought – you just weren’t one of the cool kids and that’s all that really mattered.

Nowadays though nerd culture is mainstream and while it’s still not exactly cool it’s obvious that it has a huge influence on general pop culture in a way it never did in the 80s and 90s. I think it was because once the internet became so important to society it was kind of accepted that the things nerds are into (because the internet existed for decades before that) did have value.

Of course, absolute power corrupts absolutely and so now that they do have influence they use it to hassle and harangue people online, treating things like whether a superheroes’ costume looks right, or a trivial point of Star Wars continuity, as if they were the most important issues in the world today. Petitions, death threats, endless online complaining… it almost seems like the less important an issue is the more people fight for it.

I haven’t mentioned video games yet but I’m sure you can already recognise a certain strain of gamer in what I’m talking about. I was inspired to write this feature because of the story during the week of people trying to rewrite the Wikipedia page for Silent Hill 2, because they were upset that it reviewed well.

They were calling it ‘woke’ and at first normal people couldn’t work out what they meant. I’m still not a 100% sure but I think it’s because minor character Angela is more attractive in the original than she is in the remake. And that’s it. That’s why people got so riled up they tried to deface a Wikipedia page and convince other people the game’s review scores were lower than they were.

We get these sorts of stories all the time though. Remember when people got upset because the main character in Stellar Blade was wearing very slightly more clothing than she was in the original trailers? 40,000 people signed the petition against that. You really couldn’t make it up.

Death threats are commonplace, as are stories of swatting, and petitions to change things or cancel things or otherwise try to tell a developer what to do. Here’s a life hack for you: if you don’t like something don’t buy it. That will send a very clear message to the developer and publisher.

The logical conclusion of this is if I don’t like that particular type of gamer then I should just ignore them. And I do. They only seem to exist online though, as I’ve never met anyone in real life who acts in anyway similar or talks about games, or anything else, with that level of hate and anger. But I do often wonder who they are. Is the seemingly normal person I’m talking to at the pub secretly a vitriol-spitting antisocial gamer?

For my part, I never tell strangers I’m a gamer. If someone asks me what I’m into I’ll never mention games, because I don’t want them to think I’m that sort of person and I don’t want to find out that they are. There’s far too many negative connotations attached to being a gamer nowadays and I think that’s sad.

Although it’s ironic really, that we’ve come full circle. When I was a boy I wouldn’t have said I was into games because I don’t want to seem nerdy and uncool. Now I wouldn’t say it because I don’t want to be mistaken for an online psycho with an enlarged sense of entitlement. I honestly think things might be worse now than they used to be.

By reader Rolo