In the article “The meanings of racist and sexist trash talk for men of color: A cultural sociological approach to studying gaming culture” Stephanie M. Ortiz studies how gaming culture is shaped by trash talk according to men of color. Ortiz argues that trash talk is a way of creating boundaries that recreate racism and sexism in gaming culture.
Ortiz conducted this study by way of in-depth semi-structured interviews on Skype and ooVoo. Respondents were recruited through ads on social media sites Facebook and Tumblr. Ortiz wanted their respondents to be people of color living in the United States, who had experienced trash talking while playing online on Xbox Live. Xbox Live was chosen to continue the work of previous studies of understanding racism in anonymous multiplayer gaming.
The reason Ortiz didn’t want to recruit respondents on Twitter was to avoid additional harassment, although it might have made the sample size bigger. Nevertheless, during her study, Ortiz was contacted by 16 white men who felt obligated explain that trash talking was not common nor problematic and continued to harass Ortiz after being told that they did not fit the criteria to be recruited. The final sample size consisted of 12 heterosexual men of color with varying ethnicity. Ortiz notes that this sample size does not represent the huge Xbox Live network of millions of players, but it provides the grounds for additional analysis.
The interviews lasted from 45 minutes to an hour. Respondents were asked about their experiences with Xbox Live: how long they had played, with whom, how frequently and what kind of trash talk they had experienced or overheard while playing and who they discussed about these experiences with. At the start of each interview, the respondents asked about Ortiz’s experiences on Xbox Live and their ethnicity. Ortiz pondered whether her being Puerto Rican made the respondents more comfortable with talking about racism they’ve encountered online.
It was found that sexist trash talk was justified as something that is part of gaming culture because of its frequency and that it is not seen as something that is wrong. Sexist trash talk is often used to distinguish between weaker and stronger players, no matter the gender of the players.
Racist trash talk was not found to be about asserting physical domination like with sexist trash talk, but rather about white people releasing their built-up anger against people of color in an online setting, where they remain anonymous and are not seen by the victim and vice versa.
The respondents discussed whether Xbox was doing enough to protect players from trash talking and ban those who harass other players. By not doing much, the respondents thought that Xbox itself is shaping the gaming culture, which includes trash talking and making it something one has to enter at one’s own risk.
In conclusion, racist and sexist trash talk shapes gaming culture in ways of showing dominance, distinguishing between “them” and “us”, and having a platform that does very little to moderate the amount of racism and sexism.
Featured image is downloaded from Pixabay. https://pixabay.com/photos/gaming-stay-home-lock-down-apex-4970616/
The original article:
Ortiz, S. M. (2019). The meanings of racist and sexist trash talk for men of color: A cultural sociological approach to studying gaming culture. New Media & Society, 21(4), 879-894. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444818814252
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