Being a gamer: A stigma of our own making.

Can one sit there with dry eyes and still proclaim to be a gamer with love for the hobby? Can one maintain such without having a poisonously bad aftertaste in one's mouth after the recent events unfolding in the wake of the EA-access Mass Effect: Andromeda promotion? If we maintain that we're gamers still, then aren't we responsible for the events too given that reason and measured opinion is totally absent from what's going on in the community today?

Isn't it so that the forces that lambaste the gaming community for being toxic and at the very least unsavory are factually right? Isn't it so that these forces are proven right time and time again? Isn't it so that gaming community lacks critical thinking, self awareness and any hint of moderation?

If you tell people that you're a gamer in this time, you might as well say that you're a racist, sexist and bigoted motherfucker whose only mission in life is to sit there and harass people on social media with no other aim than to destroy them fully and completely. Because that's what a gamer is nowadays. A cretin. Worthless. Imbecilic. Inconsiderate. Entitled.

I'm not okay with that. Wanting the hobby to be an eternal rose garden is foolish. So many people, so many voices. But I'm pretty sure that there must be an another way to be a gamer and communicating with those who provide the hobby with new experiences. At the same time, I'm not exactly feeling the need to pick up the spear and lead the counter-phalanx. I would frankly be pissing against the wind and seeing the total lack of any action contrarily to blindly lashing out in the most destructive possible isn't very inviting either.

Its certainly time to face it; gamers are assholes and when you still call yourself a gamer after the current events, you willingly don the trappings of being an asshole of the highest order by association. If you still call yourself a gamer then by proxy you condone the latest events.

For as far as I'm concerned being a gamer comes with the stigma of being a lowly social outcast. A stigma of our own making which we, to make matters worse, wear as a badge of honor. Not for me. I'm distancing myself from all of it and am going to watch the world burn. Its not because I lack the courage to do otherwise, its because I would be fighting a fight that can't be won. Its painfully obvious to me that those who want change aren't legion on top of that.

I call myself lucky that the gaming-hobby is just one of my interests as the dark year of '14 broke my enthusiasm for it to be my sole hobby. I branched out, reacquainted myself with old interests like miniature strategy gaming and discovered new ones like writing short stories and illustrating. I have made friends outside the gaming-hobby in that time as well and joined a movie-club (Even though it's not that easy to go to movies with them as a disabled person.). So I haven't been a true gamer for ages.

I have no qualms to sever the last ties to the gaming community at large and to pick from the hobby that what interests me the most. The experience and joy of playing a game itself. Because whatever happens, I'm not about to let the community take that away from me too.

All of the above had to be said. No regrets.