Extremism Finds Fertile Ground in Chat Rooms for Gamers
There are rules people must agree to before joining Unloved, a private discussion group on Discord, the messaging service popular among players of video games. One rule: “Do not respect women.”
For those inside, Unloved serves as a forum where about 150 people embrace a misogynistic subculture in which the members call themselves “incels,” a term that describes those who identify as involuntarily celibate. They share some harmless memes but also joke about school shootings and debate the attractiveness of women of different races. Users in the group — known as a server on Discord — can enter smaller rooms for voice or text chats. The name for one of the rooms refers to rape.
In the vast and growing world of gaming, views like these have become easy to come across, both within some games themselves and on social media services and other sites, like Discord and Steam, used by many gamers.
The leak of a trove of classified Pentagon documents on Discord by an Air National Guardsman who harbored extremist views prompted renewed attention to the fringes of the $184 billion gaming industry and how discussions in its online communities can manifest themselves in the physical world.
Source: The New York Times
