Offensive language and spreading hate
7 years ago
Virginia, USA

I'm referring to the large problem of certain community members spreading hate and fear through offensive language. And I don't mean things like "fuck," because, as many people know, I don't mind me some curse words. I'm instead referring to the broad racism, anti-semitism, homophobia, and more that has been increasing as of late. To be specific: https://i.gyazo.com/2c8f783a75934cde0e51ec69264b5c64.png

(I will be using the word "you" frequently here. I am not referring to any single individual, but rather the collective group of people behaving in an unacceptable manner.)

This is not ok. I have thick skin, I don't even care that I was attacked personally here (amidst WILD misinformation and assumptions). The fact that the immediate reaction by someone was to spread hate instead of talking to me directly extremely pisses me off, to be curt. Attacking any person, race, gender, or group is NOT OK. The large trend of "subtweeting" instead of talking to people directly is NOT OK. Making your TeamSpeak signoff comment this https://pbs.twimg.com/media/ChVZKRbUgAE82Rq.jpg is NOT OK. This https://i.gyazo.com/fcf48c4c4c2ec8b15b1257329723dcc4.png is NOT OK.

I recently referred to myself as part of the KH speedrunning community and was instantly filled with disgust rather than pride, which was a saddening realization. Inside jokes and playful shit talking are all good and fun, but when your "jokes" aren't causing laughter and instead causing long-standing, respected community members to leave, it's far past time to realize you're not only contributing to the problem, but deliberately causing it.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Virginia, USA

If anyone gets personally attacked as a result of the names being posted in the screenshots, let me know and I will remove them (although maybe then you will understand how you've made others feel). I'm leaving them for now though to hopefully keep a sense of urgency to this matter. I recommend this thread be removed if and when the situation is considered completely resolved.

Aberdeen, Scotland

As someone who is (at least now is) a complete outsider to the community, now that I've pretty much stopped running KH games, I'm fairly disappointed in this whole situation. When I started speedrunning, I started running some fairly crap games, but the first game that I started to properly invest myself into running was 1.5, and I was immediately made to feel welcomed into the community when I started, and I loved it. Eventually I started to move onto other games, and didn't run games in the series as much, but even when I wasn't running as much, and more recently at a not at all sort of level, I've still felt like I'm part of the community, whenever I stop in peoples streams, or whenever I see people in my chat.

What the fuck happened, guys? We used to genuinely feel like one big happy family, like when KH had it's first major appearance at AGDQ2015, the teamspeak was absolutely off the chain, and it was great.

But now everything has gone to shit. Long standing members who have been running games in the series longer than I've even been streaming have started to leave the community because of this sort of thing, and the itch I've had to come back to running this game has gone pretty much purely because I'm not entirely sure if I want to be involved in a community that I can't be okay with people I work with or know coming across by accident.

I know I'm not even particularly relevant in this community at all anymore, but I just wanted to put in my two cents, and tell everyone and anyone who thinks it's okay to discriminate against people because of their race, religion, sexuality, lifestyle, gender, that fuck you and grow up.

I'm out. I've said my piece, and I hope that even though I'm no longer relevant to the community, that maybe something I've said here will make it clear that shit like this is not cool, it's not funny, and it's not clever.

ArisCarroll likes this

You're overreacting to people being dumb on the internet.

boon, gamebrain and 9 others like this

I'm in the same boat as Rory is. Haven't really been a part of the main community, but recently heard of this and I just want to say that this is literally blown up to stupidly huge proportions. And of course, things like this are not OK in the slightest but that doesn't mean this has to be posted on speedrun.com, in my opinion.

edit- posted this to elaborate on this whole problem http://pastebin.com/LA2i3WXG

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Grig, iiSalad and 2 others like this
United States

Some of the people that post the offensive type shit are so used to saying those types of things that it becomes second nature to them, which is unacceptable. I'm not saying I hate the people who post the offensive things at all, but people need to understand that those words HAVE meaning and words can have a strong effect on people. Also the thing with Pain could've easily been resolved in private and he did NOT need to lash out like that. I believe in the end though that this will bring the community closer together. We have lost an amazing member of the community to this bullshit, but maybe that was the sacrifice that had to be made. Hopefully all of this is resolved soon.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Oregon, USA

So it's occurred to me this doesn't contribute to the hate spreading and offensive treatment issue at all. It is, however, a valid topic, so rather than derail this, I've put my former post in it's own thread. Please discuss that there and keep on topic here.

Edited by the author 7 years ago
Grig, Bl00dyBizkitz and 6 others like this
Virginia, USA

To whom are you referring SoraMount? Because if you mean me I can assure you you're mistaken.