Internet Death Threats, or "Like This Post Or Else!"

Great Debates
1

I’m trying to avoid this becoming a simple ranty-type complaint against the Internet denizens for whom threatening death is as mundane as eating potato chips.

This morning, I happened across this gaming blog. Not my usual reading fare, inasmuch as I’m not really a video gamer. (I play Pokemon, and… er…other versions of Pokemon). But his account of a promotional event in West Hollywood caught my eye:

But then the story takes an interesting turn:

Apparently further investigation showed that the girl was represented by a local entertainment agency, and someone dug up a casting call for actors to serve as shills – the inference being that the gameplay was actually being done by a more skilled player behind the scenes, resulting in many legitimate players being beaten, and several shills were there to ensure that even if the skilled player lost, it would be a singular event, since the multitude of shill losses would cement the actress’ supposed reputation for skill at the game.

Sorry for the detailed background, but I felt it was necessary to establish the scene, as it were. Here’s what prompted this thread:

At first I was going to post this in the Pit and inveigh against the practice of threatening death over the Internet when things don’t go as you wish them to. (See, also, rape threats when the agent of your thwarted desired outcome is a female).

But then, rereading the offhand recounting of the event, it occurred to me… the author doesn’t really much care. He mentions death threats, yes, and certainly in a censorious way, but without any great heat or urgency. He seems to regard them as de rigueur; more silly than worrisome.

Is he right? Are these kinds of death threats so common, and so unlikely to lead to actual physical harm, that we’re past even noticing them with anything more than pursed lips of disapproval?

So that’s the topic for debate: internet death threats: who even cares anymore? At the risk of being a old-fashioned Luddite, I can’t get as comfortable with ignoring a death threat as the trend seems to be taking us.

2

It was a Super Smash Bros. tournament. Most of these death threats probably came from 11 year olds.

3

I agree. And I think it has nothing to do with being a Luddite, and everything to do with recognizing that all communication is basically just energy moving in wave-patterns through matter. The Internet is neato, no doubt, but when it comes to what you say, there’s no fundamental difference between saying it by vibrating air and saying it by exciting electrons.

The primary difference is the Greater Internet Fuckwad Theory–the Internet allows for a lot more anonymity than most in-person communications do, and so people are willing to do ugly things that they wouldn’t do if others could see their faces. And frankly, historical analogues to people who hide their faces in order to do ugly things ain’t kind.

4

Yeah. Death threats, and the far more common rapey sort of threats aren’t really noteworthy in the context of gaming. Sadly, that’s just the way it is.

I play Starcraft II and I like to take opponents out early if possible in certain matchups. I don’t cheese, but I am aggressive and when my tricks work it can really piss people off.

I’m always pleasant, but the threats against me, my mother, my family, etc always fly. I always respond the same way: Great game. Rematch?

I don’t want to be swatted, so I don’t talk any shit.

5

Maybe.

But I can’t help thinking about “Gamergate,” the huge debate over sexism in gaming circles that was sparked recently by…well, by stuff I won’t lay out in detail here.

One of the refrains of Gamergate was that female authors involved both in the initial fracas and subsequent commentary thereon were reward with rape threats. Undoubtedly many of them were from younger kids as well.

But I can’t blame those women if they reacted with fear or at least concern over those threats.

And if an Internet rape threat of that nature is a legitimate basis for fear or concern, then a fortiori so is a death threat.

6

Well, next you’ll be telling me that professional wrestling is fake.

7

I defer to those with more expertise than I, but in my view, this is not a fair comparison. It’s a matter of general knowledge that pro wrestling outcomes are not genuine.

But the event the blogger described isn’t in that same category. Before learning of the fakery, I would have had no reason to suspect it was anything but real.

Maybe that simply reveals my own naivete.

8

I don’t think he was referring to the event itself, but the lack of surprise at douchebaggery on the Internet.

Well, no argument there. I’m not saying that people who take Internet death threats seriously are wrong to do so. I fully defend (global) your right to pursue legal remedies against people who threaten you, whatever the medium involved may be.

All I’m saying is that I don’t find it odd that people don’t. I suspect if you talk to Bricker Jr. about the sort of stuff that is commonly said on the playground (or used to be, since he must be in his teens by now) you might take this sort of thing less seriously too. I may, in my youth, have told one or two ruffians that I would break one or more of their extremities if they didn’t get the fuck out of my face.

9

Sure, but if those death threats happened in person, face-to-face, in front of adults, someone would have been directly reprimanded or disciplined or kicked out right?

The point is that there should be consequences, and if it’s a kid, the consequences should be appropriate for a kid.

I like the idea that one victim of rape threats online executed recently—she found out who the kid was and told his mother.

10

Wow, at first I really misread the meaning of “executed” in that last sentence.

It does seem to me that a white-hat group of hackers could do some real good in the world by making a habit of unmasking death-threaters and reporting the identity to parents and/or school (depending on who owns the computer), or to police if it’s an adult.

11

Second this motion. It’s more an inchoate worry than anything particularized, but I feel like this trend of shrugging and ignoring death threats does nothing but normalize them.

12

I’ll admit that when I was a kid, I can remember plenty of fights in which there were prepubescent shouts of “I’ll kill you!” being freely thrown around. If there were no adult in the vicinity, we’d take it up a notch and threaten to “fucking kill” our opponents. The fact that we were more concerned about being caught swearing than being caught threatening to kill people shows how non-serious those threats were.

13

That is consistent with my experiences.

14

You call those Internet death threats?

Now these are Internet death threats (note the Facebook posts).

I would hope they are being take seriously enough for authorities to finally get involved, particularly as they’ve escalated to the bomb threat level.

15

Much more than the outcomes are fake in wrestling. The pain is largely a matter of acting, and the blood is well-known to come from self-cutting. Yes, there’s a lot of acrobatics skill and atheleticism in the rolls, throws, dives, flips, and so on, but the vicious smashes to the face are so damn fake, you can often see the air-gap between fist and nose.

The similarity to internet death threats is that they, too, are fake. Do you figure some eleven year old gaming geek is really going to go and ram a knife up someone’s keister, the way he just said he would? It’s imaginary.

I believe it should still be illegal, and, every now and then, a case should be prosecuted fully and punished appropriately. “To encourage the others.” Ahem: to put some mild deterrence against the act. But, really, the death-threat language in gaming is like the racist language in…um…an unnamed internet forum well-known for trend-setting. It’s just trash-talk for the sake of trash-talk.

16

The difference being, the gamergate jerks went farther than just mouthing off on the Internet - they doxxed the women involved, there were threatening phonecalls, hacked email accounts, even a bomb threat at an event Sarkeesian was supposed to show up at.
Hence the involvement of the authorities.

Extreme shit-talking in itself is generally ubiquitous in gaming (or, really, in The Internet - see:YouTube comments) and while I’m not myself part of it, I’m given to understand that the Smash Bros community is known for its eeerrr… particularly vigorous, energetic spirit. Also for the fact that some people apparently treat a silly party game that’s in no way, shape or form balanced or formatted for competitive play as Serious Business.

But regardless, should the gaming community be more policed than it is for that sort of thing ? Weeeell, I’m torn about this. On the one hand, it’s obnoxious as fuck and I wish it would stop. On the other hand, any legislation would come from the pens of non-gamers at best, the Jack Thompson brigade at worst. And any enforcement would take the physical form of people for whom the concept of “humour” (or “internet culture”) is as alien as astronomy to a fish. So… yeah.
Stick to throwing the book at people who actually *do *things IMO.

17

I think for a threat to be taken seriously it has to have a reasonable potential to be carried out. If you threaten to kick someone’s ass so hard their head will be in orbit I don’t think that’s very serious. If you say that they live at 123 Main St. and you’ll be there at 10 waiting for them to go to class in their red 2005 Honda Civic that’s a whole lot more threatening.

That being said, with some games, the object of the game is to actually “kill” your opponents. Saying versions of “I’ll kill him, I’ll kill you, I killed him, You’re gonna die, etc” is expected.

I will give props on the viral marketing. It makes me wonder how many other viral campaigns were successful and undetected.

18

There’s a spectrum to death threats. On the one hand, a certain amount of hyperbolic violent trash-talking is sort of expected in some venues (like in the heat of a sporting event), and no one really takes them seriously. On the other end is stuff like Gamergate, where people are sending emails specifically to communicate fairly detailed threats, often with the victims address or other personal information, and the purpose if pretty clearly to intimidate them.

I think most poeple are OK with the former, think the latter is bad (and should probably lead to criminal prosecution if the sender can be tracked down). But in between can get a little hazy.

Plus I think people don’t think about what its like to be a target of a large number of these at once. If your used to tossing of humourous death threats, you might not think about tossing off another one aimed at whomever the internet-villain of the week is. But to someone whose on the receiving end of dozens of similar threats all at once, it can end up being a lot more threatening then any one sender intended.

19

I’ve been playing video games since my parents bought my sister and I an Atari 2600 way back in 1982. You know, the one with the faux wood paneling! But despite playing video games for a little over thirty years now I’ve never really been a part of gaming culture but what I’ve learned in the last few years is that it’s pretty toxic. I realized this when I watched a video of some fighting tournament a few years back where the male player was telling his female competitor that he was going to rape her.
Apparently this kind of “trash talk” was normal in competitive fighting tournaments. It might still be normal for all I know.

You want to know if this kind of thing, death threats and what not, are the norm? Yes. It’s unfortunate but it’s true.

20

I’m not sure that sort of behavior is exactly the norm, so much as the outcome of a small, but extremely loud, minority.