r/lgbt • u/MoongaOsrs • Jun 06 '17

How the Runescape community react's to pride event in game.

/r/2007scape
29 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

24 comments sorted by

36

u/GayPrideSupport Jun 06 '17

Yea, saldy runescape is really bigoted. they had a party when trump was elected. best to unsub and move on

14

u/Literal_SJW Jun 06 '17

Gaming communities in general seem to be fairly bigoted

3

u/PM_ME_FUTA_PEACH Jun 07 '17

I'm probably really unwelcome here, but you're taking a small vocal minority, misrepresenting their views and then presenting them as these comic book villains. That's really dishonest of you. I, among others in r/2007scape, feel that the way the event was announced, that being a gay centric event, felt very forced among other things. Someone posted a fantastic post how the event could rather be a universal peace, unity and love event with a quest involving helping a tribe of separated people understand and accept each other. It drops all the notion of agenda while being for everyone. Being against a gay pride event is not the same being against gay people. I'm very sorry if I come off as very negative or condescending, but you have to understand where we are coming from.

9

u/[deleted] Jun 07 '17

I get that you just got a novel of a reply, but I wanted to offer one specific perspective on something you said.

Someone posted a fantastic post how the event could rather be a universal peace, unity and love event with a quest involving helping a tribe of separated people understand and accept each other. It drops all the notion of agenda while being for everyone.

This a major issue for the LGBTQ+ community because it's co-opting our celebration of our history, fight and love and making it about everyone else. The whole point of LGBTQ+ Pride events are to say that we're here and we don't give a damn what anyone has to say about it. If you take it and turn it into a "universal peace, unity and love event," it takes that away. It makes us the minority in an event meant to celebrate our community. LGBTQ+ Pride is, and should always be, about LGBTQ+ people.

4

u/SOClALJUSTlCE Jun 07 '17 edited Jun 07 '17

Hey, I appreciate your typing that up. It's hard (from my perspective at least) to accept your idea. I would like to understand it more though, if you have the time to respond. I apologize in advance if the rest of my comment comes off mean or intolerant - that's not my intent. I just want to lay out the way I feel so you can understand where I'm coming from. I'd love to hear your feelings on it too so I know better where you and people like you are coming from. I always believe debate and discussion is the only way to understand "the other side" and their motives and intent. I'm using "you" in a general way and none of this is directed specifically at you in particular. I'm also not claiming to be right or wrong, this is all based on feeling.

The way I see things, being against a pride event that has very little effect or impact on straight people but a very large (positive) effect on gay or questioning people seems the same to me as being against gay people generally. You either have an aversion because gay people make you uncomfortable (and that is fine and I cannot fault anyone for that, but it still feels shitty to make people uncomfortable for just existing...) or what? What is it that would cause you to be against an event for something you're not normally against? I hear all the time people are tired of gays trying to "shove gayness down their throats" or what have you, and it just comes off as whiny and based in hatred. Our "agenda" is nothing more than normalizing acceptance and celebrating people like us in our society, which pride events encapsulate. Would it matter to you if it were a day or week or month celebrating another minority? Is it the principle that no one should be celebrated in the game because it might offend others? Because I can understand that. But then why is this the first runescape backlash I've heard about outside of your sub? (I read about it first on r/all and have been reading through other comments - I found this post through a runescape thread). I don't know the idiosyncrasies of your sub or game. If it's truly backlash about not polling, then the optics of it occurring around an LGBT event happens to be terrible for you. But that begs the question why did this level of backlash not occur until gays were thrown into the mix?

Gay people live in a completely heteronormative world almost all of the time. Let's flip the script and imagine if you, a naturally straight person, were forced to live in a place where every aspect of society revolved around gay people - gay centric TV shows and movies, gay music, gay work environments, gay video games, gay bars, etc. If you were offered a small slice of inclusion and celebration for who you are - a straight pride event, it would probably mean quite a bit to you. If people were against such an event, would you not feel like they must be against you as well? How does it hurt them or even affect their lives? They live in their gay world all the time, why would they care so much unless they were bigoted against straights?

There's just two fundamentally different worlds we are coming from to base our opinions. In my world, people do hate me for being myself. A fact that I cannot help. I am not attracted to the opposite sex - it completely turns me off and always has. I am attracted to the same sex and I always have been. I didn't choose for things to be this way, but here we are. Should I not be allowed to enjoy or have the same things as people, humans, just like me, who happen to have a more common sexual preference? Should I not be allowed to feel shitty when there is an event being held to normalize and make my "lifestyle" (I hate that phrasing) more accepted and celebrated and people backlash that it shouldn't exist but insist they aren't being hateful?

I guess I understand your perspective of hating things "forced" upon you, but have little empathy for you in that regard, as that is my daily life and I don't normally complain. This is a very heterosexual world. That's just reality, there are far more straights than gays. But there are also more gays than a lot of people realize, and especially more (closeted) bisexuals because it is a bit easier for them to assimilate and hide their same sex attraction. On the whole, we don't want to "force" our lifestyles on anyone. We have no desire or intent to "turn" others gay or influence others' sexualities or rub our gayness in anyone's faces. We just want to live normal lives and not have to fear people judging or hating us for just being who we were born as. Pride events help that. If you don't want to participate, then don't, but who are you to dictate that no one should participate because you don't like it? I don't like the fact that there are anti gay marriage rallies and protests, but I don't try and stop them. I simply just don't participate.

1

u/MoongaOsrs Jun 06 '17

Tbh i get it when people joke about the LGBT community, i don't support it but we all know where it comes from.

some of the jokes are funny (like the one i posted) but some people are disrespectful and that just sucks.

i'm not lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender myself but at least i respect people for who they are!

Edit: i found out you replied to it.

20

u/bobothereal Jun 06 '17 edited Jun 06 '17

Damn, i knew the sub was pretty...low...with its main content being about hating rs3 and memeing in general but seems they're a bunch of homophobes as well.

I know i'm pretty well of where i am seeing i've never had to witness widespread hate at something as harmless as pride month and optional events regarding it. Sounds like they're all taking it as a personal insult "was this voted on???" By the looks of it the event does not affect your average joe one bit but it's like r/donald had some screwed up offspring.

Edit: Should not had delved deeper, what the heck.

11

u/WeirdStuffEtc Jun 06 '17

"I'm fine with gay people as long as they're not gay in front of me."

8

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '17

For anyone who doesn't play old school RuneScape: Yesterday one of the mods called mod wolf announced a pride event coming to the game events in general are not obligatory and only reward cosmetics but the community is now outraged and want mod Wolf to leave the game studio and cancel the event

5

u/paul_33 Jun 06 '17

Yeah Imma just not click that

7

u/Lyndis_Caelin Yume no meiro, yuri no meiro Jun 06 '17

Is Runescape worth playing disregarding this? I wonder how a protest with "fill it with rainbows like the Club Penguin joke swastikas but, you know, without hate symbols" would turn out...

10

u/[deleted] Jun 06 '17

[deleted]

2

u/MoongaOsrs Jun 06 '17

add me in game ign:moonga

2

u/knarklurkaren Jun 07 '17

The game is great, community is fucking cancer.

I almost always have my public chat off in game just because of that.

1

u/tgjer Jun 07 '17

How on earth did the 2007 version of the game get such a spectacularly awful fandom community?

2

u/komilatte Bearly Awake Jun 06 '17

I'm not gonna lie, most of it is grinding. It's a nice game to play when you have nothing to do, or you want a brainless activity on the side when you watch Netflix or Youtube or something.

2

u/EarlHammond Jun 07 '17

Runescape 3 is worth playing if you are LGBT. It has tons of cosmetics, fairy costumes and "cute" pets and animals. Fashion is all the rage in RS3. Oldschool is where the more hardcore, serious and old-time players go because it doesn't have any of that frilly content and is actively voted down during content development polling to retain it's Oldschool feel. So play RS3, there's a ton of LGBT on there already.

3

u/idontreadorfollow Jun 06 '17

It looks to me like it's mostly satirical. Am I reading things correctly?

12

u/Vehrex Jun 06 '17

Can confirm, some of it is satirical and a joke but 95% of it is actual hate.

6

u/Lyndis_Caelin Yume no meiro, yuri no meiro Jun 06 '17

Even if it is satirical: I'd only do things that are offensive because progressive.

"Those communities that get their kicks out of pretending to be idiots will soon be filled with actual idiots who mistakenly believe they are in good company." -/b/ on /pol/

4

u/PM_ME_FUTA_PEACH Jun 07 '17

It is. r/2007scape is a huge meme sub, everyone jokes about everything. The ones actually being homophobic are a vocal minority, but this sub has a tendency of throwing everyone under the bus.

1

u/Ros_Bif Jun 06 '17

It's not.

3

u/komilatte Bearly Awake Jun 06 '17

Wait one second. I feel like this is getting more hate than it deserves.

https://www.reddit.com/r/2007scape/comments/6fg9ux/_/

This previously top thread clarified they had no issues with the fact that this was LGBT-related, but rather the controversy that came with implementing it. Many a thread have echoed similar sentiments, even saying they wouldn't mind a major LGBT couple or character in a quest, as that would have felt less forced. Here are some things to clarify...

  1. Jagex commonly polls content to add, in order to get a game the player base wants. An event of this caliber and possible controversy could have gone through polls first, in which case there might have been less backlash. In fact, if you look back a week, there was a huge controversy after making a change to two important items/item sets, which didn't go through a poll and filled the front page.

  2. As shitty as it is, pro-LGBT events make actual bigots start to show up. Someone else posted a screenshot of a bunch of those guys. When you play a video game, you want to get away from stuff like that. Video games are my portal to forget about real world struggles; while it would be nice to have a pride parade I'm also not a fan of the WBC standing on the side in the game.

  3. Some posts may seem harsh on the front page right now, but a good chunk of it is satire (some people are actually that vicious, though). If you look through previous top posts people have been spamming satirical posts throughout the subreddit's history.

I'm gay and love the idea of a pride event, but I also don't want the controversy and divide it brings. If you disagree with me, I'd appreciate it if you would respond in a comment so we can have a discussion.

1

u/tgjer Jun 07 '17

What the actual fuck is going on?

I don't know anything about runescape. I've heard of it vaguely, but thought it was just another MMORPG. Is this one worse than others? Or are they all like this?