Tiresome "Prank"

SJW's can and will suck the fun out of anything if they can justify it by "raising awareness" - see Owen Benjamin's gag around 24 minutes in on Cultural Appropriation":

So yes, suck the fun out of anything... even a day dedicated to practical jokes and clever spoofs like April !st. Which brings us to Reddit. Apparently, and this is utterly serious as far as I can tell, they shut down r/games for April 1 to raise awareness of a lack of diversity and inclusion.

This April Fool’s, we decided to take things a little more seriously and shed some light on a growing, pervasive issue that has affected the community of r/Games and gaming communities as a whole. In recent times, it’s come to our attention that what has been intended to be a forum for the potential spread of knowledge and involvement in video games has instead become a battleground of conflicting ideas. Ordinarily, this isn’t an issue; discussion by its very nature is certain to bring argument, but when that argument descends into vitriolic attacks between individuals on a regular basis with no chance at deescalation, that’s when, put simply, something’s got to give.

Though certain memes (such as “gamers rise up”) surrounding gaming are largely viewed as a humorous interpretation of a mindset, at the core of the humor is a set of very serious issues that affect all gaming enthusiasts. By showing disdain or outright rejecting minority and marginalized communities, we become more insular. In this, we lose out on the chance to not only show compassion to these people, but also the chance to grow our own community and diversify the demographics of those involved in it. Whether it’s misogyny, transphobia, homophobia, racism or a host of other discriminatory practices, now is the time to stymie the flow of regressive ideas and prevent them from ever becoming the norm.

At r/Games, our community is becoming increasingly responsible for perpetuating a significant amount of these combative and derogatory schools of thought. We remove those comments, we ban the perpetrators, but the issue still persists at a fundamental level: the notion that it’s okay or acceptable to ridicule and demonize traditionally disenfranchised and marginalized members in the gaming community. This is not just an issue in r/Games or on Reddit alone; this is an issue deeply embedded in the ranging depths of the internet, frequently in communities that center around the discussion of games.

This would normally be just another case of outrage porn, "look what those SJW's did!", and I wouldn't care enough to pass it on. But I decided to follow through to where the moderators had posted "NSFW" screenshots of the horrible, horrible hateful things they have to deal with each and every day.

What's remarkable to me, outside of the squickiness of the topic in two comments in the first screenshot, is how utterly banal they are. There may be one I skipped that said "about time Europeans fought back" in relation to the Christchurch shootings, which I don't consider out of bounds either, but if these screenshots are representative by their own choice as the "worst" of the "hateful" comments the moderators have to quash - keep in mind, Ars Technica labeled the link to these screencaps "NSFW" - what a bunch of fucking pussies.

At least one comment in the Ars article that lead me to this lamented how much nicer and kinder the internet seemed a long while ago, and looking at these examples I can only wonder what boards he was visiting because even on boards with strong no-asshole policies discussions would get far more heated and personal. There's a reason "flamewar" is part of the hacker lexicon.

They hate us, and want us dead, gone, never to be seen. Our mere existence hurts their feelings.

Ok, borderline CP apologist aside, we've got the crime of "noticing" that a minority is acting like he can do no wrong, and a race-based slur used in a heated, but otherwise fair description of how Chinese history looks to westerners. Because China does have in many ways a culture utterly alien to ours.

Noticing, noticing, don't be so thin skinned, and hey, can you stop shoving your "values" in my face please? Oh, wait, he likes the wrong values.

Hatefacts, insufficiently inclusive of handicapped people, used a non-inclusive slur, noticing, and "Just because I don't like mustard doesn't make me mustardaphobic" is hysterical.