A couple of years ago, my friends decided to start getting into “League of Legends.” If that doesn’t make you throw up in your mouth a little bit, it should. I held out for about a month, refusing to join them. Eventually, the frustration of being excluded from conversations because of game communications taking priority over everything else got to me. I became the worst possible thing you could ever live to see yourself becoming: a “League” player. On top of having no experience with the MOBA game genre and my friends’ lacking attempts to explain the game to me, the most frustrating part of the experience was dealing with the game’s toxic community. Having played my fair share of online multiplayer games, I was no stranger to toxicity in video games by this point in time, but there’s a reason “League” has a reputation for it. I had a fantastic time getting spam-pinged and flamed by random, seething teammates for every single decision I made that went wrong, while the enemy team gloated about their victory like they were the hottest thing since sliced bread. The one thing they could come together to agree on by the end of each game, however, was that I was absolute trash — the gum on the bottom of their shoe. To be honest, it was a beautiful kind of truce to see in such a demoralizing moment. And it’s not like they were wrong. I’m Iron — the lowest-ranked group in the game — so they might just be on to something.
So, what’s up? Did I write this article solely to rant about how I got my feelings hurt on the internet? That would be pretty funny, but no. I wanted to figure out just what it is exactly that makes online gaming such a toxic environment. I mean seriously, there are plenty of clips on the web of sweat-encrusted men with anger issues smashing their keyboards to dust, but when you’re playing Uno with friends, they’re not tearing the deck to shreds because you hit them with a Draw 4. It’s a combination of game mechanics, competitive environments and beginner-unfriendly learning curves that cultivate a specific “gamer” identity. In a way, frustration and rage serve as an embarrassing gateway to gaming.
So, is it competition? I was never really much of the competitive type — never got good enough at anything to be. Trust me, the most competition you would find on my junior varsity soccer bench was who could annoy the coach the most. But when I would watch or hear stories from my friends in higher levels of sports, it was entirely different. Audience members whipped up into a school-spirit frenzy would shout insults and taunts from the crowd, equally as anonymous as if they were concealed behind a username and a screen. Seeing brief fights erupt among opponents, pushing, shoving and throwing sloppy punches would always activate the neurons in my stupid, caveman brain. All that was missing was someone shouting, “Worldstar!” As adrenaline is coursing through players’ veins during the fast-paced, back-and-forth games, you can feel the testosterone emanating from the field. Video games, in contrast, are less physically intense. When you’re sitting in a chair, actions are simulated with the press of a button, yet you’re still feeling the blood pumping after clutching up a round — it creates a weird emotional and physical dissonance. Yet the intensity and aggression are still there.
This aggression may be a result of the lens of masculinity in a competitive context. Men are stereotyped to be dominant in any position that allows it to be possible. Climbing the corporate ladder, participating in romantic and sexual exploits and playing sports are all different environments, but they all offer an opportunity for men to prove their dominance over other men. Gaming also has a pretty serious sexism problem, and it’s a fair assumption that this — in combination with sexual misconduct — is the result of the hypercompetitive masculine ideal that has been pushed so hard in our current society. Anger is not exclusively a male trait, and the rage that can come from the cocktail of inferiority at the game itself and the taunts of opponents is a universal experience. However, I believe this response is more amplified for men, who may be responding to a subconscious thought that to lose is to be emasculated. The times I have faced my most humiliating defeats are times I have felt serious disdain toward myself for being weak, for not being a man — getting significantly worse grades on high school assessments and letting in 20 goals in my first and last chance to be a goalie, to name a few. Defeat is no longer simply an outcome, no longer a learning experience, but rather a source of shame as a man.
Once players in both the digital and physical worlds start developing an audience, conduct quickly shifts. Most conflicts between professionals can be chalked up to banter, and the expectations of sportsmanship are more strict. Of course, how sportsmanship is defined varies widely with which sport you’re talking about, but the respect is universal. In both professional sports and esports, if there is a wide gap in skill between competitors, then the expression of dominance doesn’t extend past the play of the game itself. I think we can all agree that it’s generally frowned upon for a pro to mock their opponent about the results of their match, especially if it’s directly afterward.
Games can be frustrating and contain competitive aspects but still have a relatively tame or even welcoming community. Dark Souls, a franchise well known for its refusal to coddle newcomers, is a good example of this. The Souls series is mainly a single-player experience but has multiplayer PvP options. The PvP portion of the game, while mostly an additive part of the experience, has a thriving community behind it, especially since it adds a new dimension to the game. Players with different builds, combat toolkits and strategies at their disposal will provide a more nuanced fight than a boss who is designed to be beaten. There is a huge emphasis on respecting your opponents in Dark Souls PvP and ensuring that everyone has a fun and fair experience, with various unspoken rules to follow so you don’t end up completely outclassing your opponent or frustrating them with strategies that would be considered dishonorable. This Reddit post provides a comprehensive guide to the etiquette behind Dark Souls PvP that has been agreed upon by a large portion of the game’s dedicated player base. I believe there are two things that have made this game free of toxicity: the first is that the game’s genre and competitive nature both promote slower-paced combat and attract a more serious, dedicated crowd. The second is that you can’t verbally communicate with other players; the most you can do is perform a gesture from the game’s fairly limited selection. All of the verbal communication is saved for after the fact, in forums and discussions in person, when all of the competitive tension has long since dissipated.
Compare that to a game like “Clash Royale,” which is also a game involving one-on-one competition and no options for direct verbal communication within the match. However, “Clash Royale” is a real-time strategy game that is much more fast-paced and much more casual due to it being a mobile game. There is much less expected etiquette between players — it’s pretty much guaranteed that when you lose, you’ll hear that iconic laughing emote: the boisterous and arrogant “hee hee hee ha!” that lives in my head rent-free. While it’s impossible not to laugh at the goofy nature of these interactions, it’s a decent counterexample that lack of communication does not stop toxicity. A famous example of mocking your opponent — teabagging — is simple: repeated crouching up and down, no words required. The gesture was popularized through the Halo games, and its influence is seen in every game with a crouching mechanic.
Maybe — due to the nature of interactions through a screen — we are doomed to destructive clashes of online personas where egos are inflated and our pride is that much more fragile. Screens don’t fight back, after all. A screen won’t puff out its chest and take a swing at you for jabbing at its insecurities. When a screen hits you with derision that leaves you reeling, you can take your time to methodically craft your response, no quick wit required. You can even ask other people to do it for you, like Sneako did. It’s no secret that the anonymity of the internet brings out the worst in us. Hate accounts very rarely broadcast their names when they want to slam the object of their disdain. 4chan, an online forum that has created a culture of referring to users as “anon,” has some of the vilest, hateful content you’ll find on the internet, simply for the joy of being contrarian and baiting reactions out of others. Even something seemingly harmless, like a password, can be an example of people online indulging in their ugliest bits in the shadows. The Wikipedia page for the 10,000 most common passwords is sprinkled with edgy words and phrases — anything from “fuckme” and “bigdick” to literal slurs. It’s a disappointing window into who people are when they think nobody is watching. It’s hard to imagine not feeling shame at having to remind yourself of your shallow immaturity every time you type in a slur as a password.
When I was in my pre-teen years and would make usernames my 11-year-old self thought were absolutely hilarious, like “justaname666” for my Snapchat, I thought I was setting myself apart from the rest. “The devil’s number attached to such a casual name will really make those uppity god-fearing oldheads clutch their pearls!” he thought to himself. I thought I was contributing to some identity for myself when my real self was too early to be developed into anything worth considering. But pre-teen me started to fade as I grew into who I am today, and it was apparent that these attempts to be edgy were easy to see as desperate. It did me no favors, and the moment I learned I could change it, I did it in a heartbeat.
The part that disappoints me the most about the passwords, though, is that you don’t think about your password when you type it in. It becomes mind-numbing repetition — a set of movements, mechanical and automatic, that are as unconscious as breathing and blinking. The shame I felt from having to tell a new Snapchat contact my username is no longer present, that feeling of humiliation pounded into my head over and over again is lost when a password is reduced to a pattern of button presses. I think toxicity in video games and digital interactions as a whole reflects this behavior. Completely dropping any facades of politeness and immediately going for each other’s throats has been repeated so many times that it’s like emotional muscle memory. In many online spaces, hostility has become the path of least resistance, and it takes effort to be patient and respectful.
Then again, I could just be overly sensitive. I’m not the type of person who has thick skin. Maybe I just need to touch some grass; rude behavior is hardly exclusive to the digital world. Plus, who even writes an article to analyze how they got their feelings hurt on the internet? I’m hardly providing an objective view here, but when speaking on such an emotionally charged topic, it’s difficult to stay completely objective, especially when it’s a topic I’m so familiar with. People’s digital personas are irrationally hostile sometimes, and that’s not up for debate. Whatever the case may be, if we do end up encountering each other through the screen, I hope you try to choose to be kind. I’ll try too.
Daily Arts Writer James Johnston can be reached at johnstjc@umich.edu.