[Rant] Why should we tolerate abuse in virtual environments?

A lot of the things they speak of in this article is a bit to the Extreme. Talking about things like personal safety and kids growing up with improper values and what not are total BS. First off, I'm sure that parents have a lot more influence in a kid's life then a game, and if not then there you're problem right there. There's no excuse if your kids are growing up thinking that they can act the same way in life as they do in online games. Same thing goes for the violent videogame arguments going on in other camps.

Secondly this "maximum of safety" thing is really far out there that I don't think I need to explain as to why.

Lastly this whole thing can be ended right here, "We don't have to take online abuse. I wouldn't put up with it in the real world." well then turn off the damn game if you don't like it so much. And if you don't think that that's fair or right, I think that they'd probably be in the minority on that one. Sure everyone has their challenges in online communities and that, but when you have hundreds of thousands of people interacting with one another what the hell do you think's going to happen? Sure as hell not going to be all PG stuff that's for sure. So if this author has that big of a problem with the situation then be productive and do something about it instead of writing about it because I think most people have a good idea of what online communities are as it is without these extremist's writings.

Jam it back in, in the dark.

I don't really have these problems, pretty well every game has a mute function, so if someone is bugging you that much take the two seconds and mute them. It's the best of both worlds, you don't have to hear them but you can still kill them.

Skexis: To answer your question stuff like that to me in a day of gaming may happen two or three times however I usually only play games along with a couple of friends so all I need to do to shift the power from the moron to myself is a joke degrading them or something and I have the whole game laughing at them, this usually sends them out of the game or at least makes them shut up. I know that this may make me "on their level" at times, however you can only fight a numbskull with something that they understand, and that's usually by competing with them on their level, to rationalize or to take "the high road" is just too much effort and time to waste on each encounter.

I'm not advocating my ways for others to use, however you at least know a bit about my experiances and where I'm kind of coming from. And really, are there even intellegent paople playing Halo? lol, jk

There's nowhere I can't reach.

I'm not one of many counter tactics for sexist gamers, however in the group of people that I play frequently with on XBL there are a couple of girl gamers that I play alongside of a lot from Gears of War to Halo 3 and usually people tend to shut up when they start getting their asses handed to them by one of our femfatals or when they find out that these girls have some friends along... perhaps one who's even the host. Trip to Italy anyone? lol

This thing is sticky, and I don't like it. I don't appreciate it.