“Some Gay For You, Little Man”
One of the perils of playing MMORPGs as a grownup is that they’ll let any random 14-year-old riff-raff into those things. And sure, you can choose your associations, but eventually you’ll wind up in a guild or corp or whatever with some too-young boys who are annoying as fuck. They typically don’t last — not if you’ve chosen a good band of brothers to run with — but they do come before they go.
My latest cross to bear in my favored internet spaceship game is a guy who is so young, he still thinks “gay” is the cool all-purpose negative adjective. He loses a fight? Gay. The other guy runs from a fight? Gay. They patch the game in a way he doesn’t like? Gay. A game item doesn’t have the stats he thinks it should? Gay.
Gay. Gay. Gay. Every third sentence. Gay.
Last night I told gay-fixated-boy “I don’t think that word means what you think it means.” Classical movie reference. Totally before his time. Went right over his head. Gay.
So I found myself totally wanting to rickroll him with some real gayness. I didn’t do it though; I’m not sure if he’s a legal adult or not, and the players are expected to support this particular game’s “T for Teen” rating even if it is boldly disclaimed that “Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB.”
But I figured, you know, something from Bound Gods. Maybe something like this:
Gay. Totally. 100% organically-grown San-Francisco-certified pure gay. But not, I think, what this boy has in mind.
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I’m an odd bird in at least a couple ways – 48 year old woman who plays CoD, lesbian who loves gay men’s porn. You gave me my guffaw for the day, thinking of rickrolling that poor boy with teh Real gay – definition: very sex positive, very hot, very much not-for-the-underage!
I work with a 22 year old girl who still talks that way. The kids these days. Maybe I should rickroll her in real life with one of my Mapplethorpe books.
Now Bacchas, Bound Gods is not just your typical “Gay” either. Hot as Hell, but definitely not archtypical gay anymore than say “Training of O” is typical heterosex…
One would not want to confuse the lad more than he is…
Perhaps one could privately suggest that some of the other players may in fact be gay and he should research what that means himself?
I had this issue with my 14 year old. Apparently, they are not really using the word gay in a sexual manner. Maybe the word is changing again.
you know in the 1920’s-late 30’s; ‘having a gay ol’ time’ , ‘we will be gay’ , ‘this party is gay’ etc etc meant having fun, avoiding prohibition and doing the jitterbug.
Kinda makes you wonder when, where, and how the meaning of the word changed.
Wash his mouth out with soap.
Brent, they’re using it as a synonym for lame, but does that excuse it?
I had a co-worker who did the same thing . . . he stopped after I started following up his “Gay.” comments with my own comparisons (“Gayer than cum on a mustache.”, “Gayer than Elton John’s sequined fanny pack.”, etc.).
The kids today definitely have a new use for the word. It’s not what it meant maybe 80 years ago. It’s not even what it meant 20 years ago. I’m not even sure it’s what it meant 5 or 10 years ago.
Kids have their own language and understandings of words (…just like “bad” can mean “good”).
Sometimes it’s even used in place of the word “awesome”.
http://www.urba...90399
Kids are mostly using it “generically” to describe anything that’s unfortunate, stupid, annoying, retarded, or sucks. I think many of these kids even have close, out-of-the-closet homosexual friends, and may use the term around them in much the same way as rappers use the “N” word.
The result is sometimes that it seems to take the sting out of the word, but other times I think that though one’s intention isn’t necessarily malicious, it’s use may be at times inappropriate nonetheless.
The definitions of kid’s slang may have fuzzy borders. If “dandy” meant merely “fine”, “admirable”, or “excellent”, why did kids change it to “super”, “swell”, “nifty”, “keen”, “neat” (or “neato”), “ace”, “fab”, “hip”, “smashing”, “groovy”, “chic”, “cool”, “solid”, “boss”, “rad”, “fly”, or “hot”, which supposedly all had the same meanings? Is heavy metal just electronically amplified popular music, with a strong aggressive beat, played by bizarrely costumed musicians? …or is there more to it that defies definition?
That said, I’m equally confident that there are a good number of young people out there who have NO idea of the “panacopia” (a word not found in the dictionary, meaning a copious panoply, an endless array, or a combination of the words panorama and cornucopia?) of what the gay lifestyle can often entail, and yes, it would be fun to therapeutically rickroll some of them…
The guy you’re writing about seems like he’s abusing the word in quantity of use alone, if nothing else. The interesting thing might be to write and ask HIM what he means in using the term… and WHY…
Bacchus, I feel for you here. I also know someone in that game(could be the same someone maybe) that also seems to like using the word for just about anything. He does mix it up sometimes using the the word “fag” instead. Unfortunately, this guy is a little older than 14 but alas, when did mental age ever follow physical age?
I get that too in the online game I play. **Sigh**
That picture, though, is totally gay. SQUEEEEE! ^___^!!
I am a teacher and calling something gay is a very good way to get squirmed in my class: meaning to have the teacher FORCE YOU, UNDER PENALTY OF INTERVENTION BY COUNSELORS OR SCHOOL SHRINK, to explain what the hell that means until the light goes on, you apologize and you reduce the number of times you say it.
Speakers, including young people, who use ‘gay’ as all-purpose negative, know exactly what it means, and how hurtful it can be when used that way.
By constructing ‘gay’ as this awful ‘other’, they fearfully – that’s the fear part in homophobia – pronounce that surely there can’t be any gay person among the very group of mates they are talking to. (Including themselves.)
Maybe ask this internet nuisance if he doesn’t know any gay or bi people? That’s what I do when I hear someone using our word ‘schwul’ in a negative manner.
By the way, ‘That sucks!’ is another one of these. Isn’t this expression in English a shorthand for ‘sucks cock’? If so, isn’t it time to reclaim it for more positive connotiations? I like sucking my partner’s cock. I don’t believe that particular sex act ‘sucks’ at all.
Also, hot hot hot Boundgods picture!
I am a female straightish late 30s (at the time) MMORPG player. This launguage suddenly appeared on my screen by a new player. Being annoyed was not enough. Trying to explain that this wasn’t cool was not enough. Peter Grimm’s suggestion worked a treat – I inferred I was homosexual/gay/lesbian and didn’t appreciate his trivialisation and negativation of my sexuality – all in open chat. I’m not sure if it was the use of big words or the fact that he was made to look like a prat. Regardless he shut up. Go on, send him a linky – since he loves his gayness.
Some great feedback, people. Thanks!
Ranai, I’m with you — the “kids these days” know exactly what it means. It often strikes me that they are using it in preemptive homophobic fashion to reassure themselves that they remain safely in a gay-free zone. And the funny part, little do they know it, is how often they are wrong…
I’ve heard this all before as well, being an adult gamer, and it annoys me as well. In addition, why is it that in the relative anonymity of the computer, racism is suddenly accepted as well? It seems that any slur is somehow OK, and often overlooked, just because it is typed into a screen and not stated. Penny arcade said it best with their “Greater internet dickwad Theory” where normal person + anonymity + audience = dickwad…
Off topic, but is your space MMO eve? I play eve myself, it seems to have an inordinate amount of jerks. I just left an alliance because I couldn’t put up with the amount of stupid stuff they said.
Yeah, subtle. I call it “my internet spaceship game” because I don’t want to turn ErosBlog into a gaming blog and because gamers talking about their favorite game get boring in a really fast hurry to non-gamers and people who play other games. Also, a word to the wise is sufficient — what other internet spaceship game worthy of note is there? ;-)
In my experience EVE attracts a higher percentage of internet dickwads than usual, but it mostly rewards and retains players who are capable of behaving in a mature fashion consistently over time. So, the longer you play, the better the player experience gets, because most of your long-term in-game contacts will be fairly easy to get along with.
Reading this arcticle was nearly followed by me falling out my chair. I couldn’t stop laughing.
I agree that those kids (and not kids) are annoying. One tactic that was found successful was to confront the kid upon first usage of the word. Be straight up serious and let him/her know that you are in fact gay (regardless of your affiliation) and don’t care for them using that term. Never give up that ruse until they go away. Kids who are truely anti-gay will be uncomfortable being even in virtual proximity to an actual gay person. I’ve heard a conversation go something like this;
‘hey kid, I’m actually gay blah blah blah…’
‘haha, you’re gay.’
‘yep, I am. what are you going to do about it?’
‘…(silence)……………..(exit stage left)’
Depending on the game, either there isn’t anything they CAN do about it if they wished to enact game damage, or its simply not worth the long term effort to continue to pester you. Of course this doesn’t always work, but worth a try on occasion.
My understanding is that gay was in the past used as a purely derogatory term, and to older folks it still carries a strong meaning. But here is an alternative idea. If kids have grown to use the term so freely for describing such mundan and repetitive things as what happens in most games, then the term sure seems to have morphed into a less negative connotation. Perhaps those kids kids will use the term to refer to things that are good or happy. Who knows. ‘Fuck’ sure has a lot of meanings these days (thank you George Carlin).