The other day, a XBox 360 user by the name of Grant was banned from using XBox Live after his gamer tag “theGAYERgamer” was reported as being offensive by fellow gamers. Grant of course was somewhat stunned about this decision, so he tried to get in contact with Microsoft XBox Live customer support to inquire on the matter. There he got in contact with a customer representative by the name of Roxy, who could tell Grant that the greater XBox community found his tag offensive, but she herself admitted that she didn’t find it offensive.
We all know from online gaming that we at times find offensive and downright abusive players, and most games and servers has the ability to filter these elements out. If a player is offensive over voice comms, many games gives you the ability to mute the player in question. If a player continues to be abusive, most servers have server administrators that take the necessary steps to get rid of the unwanted elements. Unfortunately, there will always be disturbing elements as long as you have human players. Humans are per definition self destructive and abusive, but not everyone. And then comes the question of tolerance.
In the civilized world that we live in, being gay has become socially acceptable. People don’t look down upon gay people and frown upon their existence, at least not most people. When I look at a gamer tag like “theGAYERgamer”, I assume that the person behind the tag meant to be humorous and not offensive. Would people find tags like “theHAPPYgamer”, ‘”theHETROgamer”, “theSADgamer” or “theLONELYgamer” offensive? I rerckon not, and I find it sad that people have to be so petty as to report tags like ‘theGAYERgamer’. Seriously, don’t you people have better things to do?
I’ve seen far worse gamer tags than that, that are both discriminative, racist and offensive that are allowed and which are still allowed to use XBox Live. This is just plain stupid, let Grant play! And people, get a life! Remember, it’s only a game!
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