Discussing how the media we consume represents the best and the worst of us.
Racism, Hearthstone and Twitch (by Colin Campbell)
Racism, Hearthstone and Twitch
Terrence Miller is going to remember last weekend for a long time. It was the first time he enjoyed any real success on the Hearthstone competitive circuit.
polygon.com




As someone who is also black and is a PC gamer I feel you, except I don't have it nearly as bad as him because I am not someone who does this for his job and is exposing their identity to a bunch of unfuckable hate nerds daily who just harass him constantly. I don't even know what to say about this anymore.
Twitch has the issue, that participating in the chats for the larger streams, especially tournaments, is like screaming into an enormous crowd. So people tailor their messages for impact, and easy parsing. Apart from being disgusting as fuck, racism is has both those criteria in abundance.
I really hope that the overwhelming racism on Twitch is, at least in part, due to this structural issue because then at least these people aren't impossible to convince of how horrible the shit they're doing is. Hopefully, most of these people don't actually consider themselves racists in the Stormfront vein (even though you pretty obviously are racist if you're willing to spread racial abuse online) but think of themselves more as trolls, free-speech absolutists making a point, or just provocateurs. Because while those things are childish and selfish and super tone deaf, they're at least things that can be grown out of with relative ease. But who can tell, really? Even the Klan now claims to be "pro-white" rather than racist against black people, so clearly it's just not possible to get anyone to admit to racism nowadays, no matter how foul their beliefs.