Twitch Chat Racism Changed Hearthstone Pro Terrence Miller's Career

Kotaku:

"Terrence Miller loves card games. Long before he took second in the Dreamhack Austin Hearthstone tournament earlier this year, he competed in games like Yu-Gi-Oh and the Pokemon TCG. Unfortunately, many people know his name because he got showered with racist Twitch chat abuse during Dreamhack Austin earlier this year. Last weekend, it happened again."

[I3loggs24]

Twitch chat already has some good auto chat mods in place which will delete/ban for spamming, and using certain words.
IP banning sounds like a good idea too, give streamers the option to filter out racists/trolls with there dashboard, so anyone who has been reported to Twitch admins and tagged for racism etc, can be auto banned from viewing streamers who have filtered out those tagged accounts.
For the big Esport tournaments etc, the chat should be in sub only mode, trolls arent paying $5 just to spam swastikas and be insta banned.

[thejigisup]

sub only mode for chat makes perfect sense. I don't understand the need to stoop so low and resort to racism, we should be far beyond this. It's society in general, watching the dnc and rnc this year has been full of awful chat comments. Gets even worse when it comes to gaming for some reason.

[Tetsujin]

Being black I can say I've experienced both sides of the whole racism garbage.

I've had gamers respect me because it's one more person to play certain games with, and since I actually have knowledge through experience. I have my differences in games and consoles, but we are all gamers with the same goal in common - sticking together.

I've also had certain groups of people call me derogatory names because "non white or Japanese people play video games to the extent like I do." I encountered one person go as far as to say racial remarks because I can read better than they can, and actually have a college degree while they are living off the system.

A lot of the racism I've dealt with online are people who didn't get disciplined enough growing up, and/or not enough attention from their family. Since I'm older, and have more experience with online gaming, I just mute those who go to the extreme, and report if they really go overboard. I don't have the time, patience, or drive to even argue back with someone ignorant enough to start trash with someone over the mic.

At the end of the day, I'm a gamer, and I respect those who respect me as a gamer.

[rainslacker]

At the end of the day, it shouldn't really be surprising that most of the people that throw out racial slurs on the internet tend to be less educated.

When it comes to things like racism, sexism, homophobia, etc; it's the easiest thing to attach to someone, because there is not much else there for them to really attack. If there were, then it's highly likely they would be able to identify it anyhow, and even less likely they'd be able to express it in an intelligent way....because intelligent people mostly realize that not everyone is perfect, and that diversity exists within all humans, even if they share the same attributes.

Game on though. There are more people that don't act like immature twats than there are that do. Which is why it's such a shame that so much attention is given to said twats, or that people allow themselves to lose enjoyment over something they enjoy. I wish more attention would be given to the "good guys" instead of this constant focus and highlighting of all the bad seeds as if they are representative of the majority.

[Tetsujin]

I agree 100%, especially with the less educated being more racial. If they spent more time and effort to be more positive than trying to be an idiot, they would have more positive moments.

The ones I really question, "I'm all alone. No one loves me. I'm hated. etc." yet spend so much time online being an idiot. Go figure though.

[bluefox755]

Headline should be renamed to "Trolls caused him to change his career". Trolls pick the easiest insult, the thing they think will have the most power over you, with black people it's easy for them because as a society, we've literally made certain words off limits. When you tell people "you can't say something", you're giving that word power, and shouldn't be surprised when trolls use it against you to get a reaction. I'm sure there are some cases of legitimate racial supremacy sprinkled in, but I'm willing to wager that most of it's just trolls hitting an easy target. By backing down, you let them win. Being black is obviously nothing to be ashamed of, so why would their insults hurt you?

Also, saying racially insensitive words doesn't make one racist any more than calling a woman c*nt means you hate all women. Often people (like the aforementioned trolls) go straight to the word they think will hurt or anger you the most. It doesn't mean they believe in racial superiority (though it certainly doesn't preclude it either). This might seem like a minor distinction, but the way "racist" get's banded around these days as a reaction to almost anything, dilutes and takes away from cases of actual racism.

[rainslacker]

A words power is only significant in how it relates to what the word means within society.

A words power over the individual is entirely up to the individual at who the word is aimed.

No one should allow unknown people, or even people they know, keep them away from something they want, enjoy, and are good at. If that happens, not only have these people won whatever it is they hoped to accomplish, the individual turned away only gives more power to the words going forward. Basically, the trolls or bigots in cases of actual racism, have legitimized themselves, and controlled the individual at which the comments or actions were aimed....and that latter part is the really sad part, because I personally would hate to think that someone else I care nothing about controlled me in some way to make such a huge change.

[Eonjay]

You are wrong. Its completely physiological but you don't just sit down and take it either. It should bother the person when they are called a n*gger because it congers up extreme actions of violence like lynching and this:

https://www.youtube.com/wat...

So the connection is that when this is said to you they mean to do you harm. It should bother you. Everyone has a right to self preservation. You don't know if someone is being stupid or they really mean to do you because they are filled with hate. So, it is not to be tolerated period.

[rainslacker]

I am not one to throw around racial slurs, except maybe occasionally with some friends who understand it's not meant negatively, but even then pretty rarely.

But even with what you speak of, the power the word holds over the person is entirely upon the person it's being directed to. It can conjure up emotions, it can even be pretty bad for some people depending on their history or whatnot, but allowing it affect one's personal self in a negative manner is entirely on them.

I'm not saying that people shouldn't stand up to real injustice or radicals out there who like to throw around actual hate speech because they mean it. That shouldn't be ignored. But when it comes to internet trolls, allowing oneself to become so affected, and lash out in their own way to someone who is using it as a form of control or trying to make up an inadequacy serves no purpose except to give said troll pleasure.

You take away the pleasure of the troll, you take away their power, and your life goes on and you don't have to think about it ever again.

When it comes to trolls, and I'd say sometimes outside the internet, you just have to rise above it. We can shake our heads at any number of stupid things we see people do or say every day, and never think twice about it, but we can never seem to apply that notion to ourselves a lot of the times.

While I agree you don't know if the person lobbing insults is filled with hate or whatever, but addressing anonymous people on the internet, particularly within entertainment related communities, is not the place to fight that fight. You know as well as I do, that people will believe whatever they want on the internet, and rarely are they looking to be convinced otherwise, and anything that people say or do is only used to try and be thrown back at people fighting the good fights when it becomes suitable. All logic goes out the windows, and rational debate is not going to happen with these kinds of people.

The best example i can relate the above paragraph to is this very forum, where this is the norm, rather than the exception. Just the arguments are not racially motivated.

[Christopher]

***It wasn’t long before shit hit the fan: the panel was meant to be a place to confront these issues in a constructive way, but hecklers were still able to break through and spam chat with racist comments. Again. Many comments were deleted by moderators after they appeared, but that only stemmed the tide. It did not stop it.***

My life in a nutshell.

[rainslacker]

Keep fighting the good fight.

While most don't agree with me, Moderation to curb trolling is not a bad thing, and think more moderation would actually be beneficial to the internet as a whole so long as that power isn't abused to try and sway the discussion in particular directions.

OTOH, it means that most of the forums out there would become barren wastelands for comments....kind of like we see in places where the is no actual console war to be had.