Howdy, my fellow Sherdoggers. Just wanted to get something off my chest tonight.
I've been gaming since the 90's, been playing playing multiplayer games since the mid 2000's (I'm in my late twenties if you must know). I've noticed a trend as of late -- I should say as of late loosely since it's been the last several years, maybe decade. But this trend is of increasing vitriol and just general meanness in multiplayer games. Now I'm not talking about shit-talking or trolling or even just being an asshole (go fuck yourself, you suck, eat shit noob, etc), I'm talking about personal attacks directing a person to go kill themselves, and it's getting out of hand.
I'm a grown ass man with a family and a good life, so saying that shit to me means nothing -- I mean obviously it bothers me, thus this post -- but imagine if I was a young teenager who was going through some shit? Imagine if I had clinical depression and today was just a bad day at the end of a long string of bad days? What if someone telling me to go kill myself was the last straw and I did it?
I hate the "do it for the children" argument that is too often the basis of weak arguments, and I'm a free-speech absolutist. I love me some good shit-talking, and the last thing I want are gaming companies over policing their forums or chats and killing their community. But telling someone to go kill themselves is not free speech, it's akin to yelling "fire" in a movie theater. Yes we should all be mentally strong enough to brush off someone saying "KYS" and just move on, but should be is not necessarily reality, and I don't want some 14-year old floundering on the edge of depression slitting their wrists because some jackass in a video game told them they sucked and should go kill themselves.
In Massachusetts there was a case recently of a girl who told her boyfriend to go kill himself and he did, and now she's going to prison, so there is now precedent for legal action against people who tell others to kill themselves and they go ahead and do it.
I guess what I'm asking is, if you have the urge to flame someone, just be a regular asshole about it. Tell them they suck, tell them to uninstall, whatever, but don't tell them to kill themselves, that's playing with fire, because if they DO kill themselves, they're dead, and you're now guilty of involuntary manslaughter.
That is all.
TL;DR: Don't tell someone to kill themself, it's like shouting "fire" in a theater, and you could be criminally liable if they commit suicide.
And in b4 "go kill yourself"
ing everything in sight, motherfucking the driver, boasting into the air unbidden about getting their dicks sucked and calling everyone in the area a
