Australian centrists also suck:
In terms of the video games themselves, yes, that’s stupid.
But I do think that a great many of the communities based around these video games are toxic and could have led to this kind of result.
I’ve seen similar white supremacist rhetoric from people who don’t game - jocks and farm kids. While there is a lot of toxicity in gaming spaces, and yes, even entire Nazi clans, the average casual gamer is more likely to run into your usual brand of toxic masculinity and homophobic behaviour.
This isn’t just a games issue. It’s a male culture problem.
Oh, absolutely.
There just seemed to be an undertone there of “The fact that he was playing video games is a completely irrelevant data point, why are you bringing it up?”
My point was just that if that became his primary medium of social interaction, it’s likely that that’s where he was indoctrinated, and that there’s enough people there who share the beliefs he was spouting who could have done it.
Sure, every community needs to drive white supremacy from its ranks, and every community can do better. But, if we can trace one attack back to where the radicalization is happening, why shouldn’t we pressure that community in particular to clean itself up?
After the Pittsburgh shooting, a huge backlash descended upon GoDaddy to suspend Gab’s services.
After Heather Heyer was murdered and the Daily Stormer mocked her, they were driven off the internet a dozen times because any service hosting them was bombarded with bad publicity.
After the Toronto van attack, Reddit was pressured into banning the incels subreddit.
Facebook was convinced to ban Alex Jones after he explicitly threatened the life of Robert Mueller and posted the videos there.
…And so on.
Let me be clear: I have no idea if the games in question are the actual source of radicalization here. The shooter might have been radicalized through YouTube or 8chan or any one of a dozen sites. My entire point is that, while “shooting people on his computer made this asshole shoot a bunch of people in real life” is patently absurd, the fact is that he spent a lot of time in these communities, so they’re good places to look for influences that could have radicalized him. If that turns out to be the case, this should be a wake-up call to those communities and the games’ developers to deal with their problems, the same way that the other communities I mentioned have received wake-up calls due to evil actions undertaken by their users.
But right now, it’s only a single point of correlation, not worth more than “Hmm. That should be looked into;” I just wanted to register disagreement with the idea that the communities he frequented shouldn’t be looked into as possible sources of radicalization.
My focus was less on the gamer aspect and more on this:
See also “Bernie’s too old!” vs “how dare you mention Pelosi’s age! Ageist!”.