Parents advised to be vigilant over summer holidays to risk of offenders using in-game live chats to target their children
Bruh as someone who used to play a lot of video games this article is 15 years too late. I remember neo nazis attempting to recruit me as a teenager in the early 2010s and they were not subtle. This shit is why we’re losing the war against fascism, the so-called “experts” don’t even know where the war is being waged and don’t even show up to the fight.
I think i have seen articles like this also 15 years ago. I also remember tv “documentaries” about “killer games” in Germany from almost 20 years ago, where they tried to paint everyone playing FPS games as Nazis too. One argument was that there is call of duty mods that allow to show the original graphics, where WW2 Nazis have swastikas on their uniform, which have been censored in the German version.
Extremists trying to recruit teenagers has been an issue since forever. As the “space” where teenagers spend their time moved online, so did the recruiting efforts.
The problem is real, but it should not be tied to games, or to rock music or to sports or to any particular hobby. It is a problem encompassing all of society. Parents need to talk with their children and know what is going on in their lives.
I agree on one hand, but I also feel like video games and other online spaces are kind of unique because parents don’t really think about their kids having one on one conversations with adults on them. If your kid is going outside they are mostly talking to other kids and not other adults. If an adult in your kid’s life IRL starts telling them Hitler was right you will probably catch wind of that much more easily than if it’s online. If a guy on an obscure medieval combat simulation game starts telling your kid Hitler was right (not a hypothetical - this happened to me as a teen and thankfully I saw through what was happening) you’re probably not going to even know about it unless you’re really engaged with your kid and what they’re getting into. I agree that’s on the parents but a lot of the kids these guys are resonating with are the ones whose parents aren’t particularly engaged with them or what they’re doing. I think there’s nothing wrong with acknowledging that this does happen and is an intentional strategy from the far right, and I think trying to pretend that there isn’t a problem that is specific to games and the broader gaming community is harmful.
It’s crazy how much right wing became able to influence kids, and making nazi cool again. Because of course if a teen worries that your parent may be evicted or a young adult can’t find a job, it’s the fault of immigrants and feminist, not at all because of capitalism
The oligarchs who finance the content, media, news, and information the vast majority of workers consume — the people commanding the capital — do everything in their power to divert the workers attention away from the systemic issues.
“The entire government, regulatory, and political system has been corrupted by capital? It’s clearly the immigrants and trans fault.”
It helps that public education has been gutted, so they don’t understand just how despicable they are for associating with Nazis.
Gamergate’s effects are still echoing and doing damage today.
I think we are giving them far too much credit. The article is written as if they are deliberately and systematically recruiting young teens. The reality is that these kids are looking for the unmodderated spaces where these sickos dwell. These kids arent stupid, they know that the content they see is filtered and when we dont talk to them about why and just tell them “because its bad” they go out and find the content themselves.
From that point its pretty much a flip of a coin. They are either disgusted at what they find or the look for more, THEN yes they will find the sick people and befriend them due to similar interests in gore, beheadings, r*pe, suicide etc. This sends them down the undesirable rabbit hole.
This is all because parents are too lazy or afraid to communicate with children and teens about these serious topics. But will instead allow them to reicieve moral guidence from a incel living in his mothers basement regularly masturbating to this foul content.
Ive litterally watched this happen and attempted to stop/ get these kids banned. But these teens genuinely think they know better and sometimes the mods themselves are sickos or children that think its okay to have shared spaces for people under and above 18. Minecraft(java), VR chat, Rust, any mmo, roblox, gmod, gta, tf2 im sure there are 1000s more. all games with minimal modderation. Kids and teens should just be banned from social media and social gaming. they only serve to harm themselves and the unmodderated safe spaces for adults to fuck around.
Kids and teens should just be banned from social media and social gaming.
Disagree on the second part, more like limited, or better - separated. There’s no harm in playing games with friends or strangers, as long as there’s actual moderation or it’s just a chill community.
I don’t think it’s the fault of those games themselves, but the trends in videogame development and support (extracting as much money as possible with little support). And also there’s barely any enforcement when it comes to age ratings so it’s a double whammy.
You’re right, the devs arent going to put millions into modderating, it wouldnt be profitable so its definitely not on them sorry if i implied that. I genuinely believe kids would be better off gone regardless. There are probably “chill” communities out there but Its still dangerous because you have to trust every single user to not be a creep. I just think as idividual adult communities we need to just kick these kids out of servers, discord channels, twitch chats Etc. And imo label anyone who thinks that its okay for kids to be in these spaces weirdos.
Not very sigma of those teens to follow trends like sheep.
I’m not on the popular parts of the internet often but when I do get a glimpse I’m shocked at how much extremist content is just out there completely in your face.
It didnt used to be like that 10 years ago. The algorithms are being gamed to push extreme right and extreme left content to young people. It doesnt strike me as organic. I dont think majority of the audience have an interest in these topics.
Ive heard people repeat a “meme” and I have to stop them and be like where did you hear that why are you saying that thats a meme used by white supremacists to dogwhistle about mass killing events.
The internet is fucking wild. It may be more censored than ever but the content on there is still crazier and more extreme than it ever was. People have learnt to avoid the censorship, dont swear, don’t use slurs, dont post gore or nsfw content after that you can pretty much say whatever you want.
Yep an opinion isnt editable. What scares me is the misinformation, extremist groups churn it out at a frightening rate
What scares me is the organization of the extremist groups. It makes me feel like something has to be done to counter their influence. But I dont know what can be done because things are so cooked right now.
You can watch openly nazi pol boards where they sift through news stories and craft a narrative and then see the president of the US echoing it less than a week later. It used to take years for that stuff to filter out into the mainstream if it ever did. X is so bad for this stuff because news outlets treat it like a source of information so all you need is a bunch of fake accounts and you can make anything seem like news. Then news outlets report on it, then the next layer picks it up and echos it out to their audience and so on.
Yep it’s terrifying, they’re highly organised and sophisticated. There’s just so many of them it’s an impossible task
So they all suck right? Genuinely, Nazis in every game are nonexistent around diamond. The best of them are hard stuck plats and those are rare.
