I'm not much of a gamer, but I have quite a few friends who are. I never fail to be unnerved by some of the stories they share about toxic personalities who give the gamer community a bad name. Did you know for example that women often have to deal with misogyny and abuse while playing online? Blatant sexism can turn something as simple as enjoying a videogame into an emotional minefield for women.
After Redditor TerribleVanilla3768 asked the online community, "Gamers of Reddit, what's the creepiest or scariest thing you've ever heard someone say into their mic?" people shared their stories.
Content warning: Some sensitive material ahead.
"Someone walked into their apartment..."
Playing WoW years ago (12 or so years ago when this happened) with long-time guildies. The raid leader was talking and giving instruction and then cut out with:
"What the f*** was that? Hey, who are..."
And then the mic went silent. 40 of us just sat there wondering what happened. No one knew the Raid leader in person (or where they lived), so we tried contacting Customer Service to report it. I don't remember what they/Blizzard did (it was like twelve years ago), but the Raid kind of fell apart that night. I think the cops did get sent because they eventually made it to the Raid Leader's apartment.
The next day, Raid Leader was on and apologized. Someone walked into their apartment and went into their bedroom. Turns out a senior neighbor (I think it was an older lady, but, again, 12 years) got "lost" and thought they were on their floor. They walked into the apartment (RL forgot to lock the door) and got startled in "their" bedroom when he shouted out. The Senior were very confused as to who this loud person was in their apartment but ended up feeding Raid Leader cookies (his own as it turned out) until the police came and sorted it out.
No charges and Raid Leader thought it was funny, and had a nice conversation with the other person and then the police walked them back to their own room and did a wellness check. I guess the senior was living with an adult child, but wandered off and got lost.
So it ended up being a happy story, but hearing your friend/associate get cut off in mid-speech and then going AFK/timing out of the game while shouting "who are you?" was the creepiest thing I overheard. Half of us were sure they just got jumped by someone, the other half thought it was a bad joke. I also was just a year out from my own B&E incident where I was held up at gunpoint and robbed, so I was having a bit of a panic attack too.
This is thankfully a bit more lighthearted than other stories here.
Dementia is no joke.
"I was doing a Destiny 2 raid..."
I was doing a Destiny 2 raid and a guy started violently beating his kids. Like we could hear the sound of a belt in the background and the screams of the children. He then came back and was all chipper like "All right, sorry for the noise, let's get back to it!" And all of us were dead silent.
"A few weeks later..."
Was playing Destiny 2 on PS4 a year ago, when I met some people from a clan. I wanted to do some raids so I joined.
A few weeks later one of the clan leaders told me, in a cold and absent voice that he once killed two people in an accident. He then proceeded that he now works in a warehouse, driving a stapler all day and that he constantly speeds, because people should pay attention where they walk and it's not his fault if they get run over.
I didn't play with them from then on and soon left the clan. I don't want to know what's going on in his head.
"Mostly..."
Mostly people threatening to come to my house and attack me.
One time on Siege, I was in a party with some folks I just met. A new guy joins, and he knows the girl in the party, her address, and starts texting her stuff like which room she's in. We dealt with it quickly.
"The worst..."
Normal crap you hear being a chick on the internet. Lots sexual harassment, etc. I've gotten to the point where it doesn't even register in my head as anything but background noise.
The worst was probably when I was twelve, playing on my iPad. A guy on the text chat threatened to doxx me and followed me around the game world, right behind me, claiming we were "having sex". I just wanted to play a fun PvE zombie game, yo. Dipped pretty quick, couldn't sleep that night. Creeps online don't remember it in a week, but that f**** with me as a kid.
The fact that this is just the reality for so many women...
...is depressing.
"It was 2008..."
It was 2008 and my Xbox 360 was brand new at the time and a birthday gift. I eagerly set everything up and the first game I decide to play was a pre-installed demo called Lost Planet: Extreme Conditions. For a demo, this allowed online team matches and headset usage. This was also the moment when my fellow players found out that I was a girl.
A guy with the username "KillaMan" messaged me almost immediately and pressed why a girl decided to play a game clearly made for guys. I forget exactly what I wrote, although I said as much as I'm there for the same reason everyone else was. Well, he kept on messaging me, only his messages turned into explicit ones about me "willing to do more than play a shooting game," among other things. I ignored them, then he went so far as to say that he could find out my home address no problem. Even if he was bluffing, I was still freaked out and decided to block and report him. His handle registered as non-existent when I went to look him up.
Weeks went by and I get a message from a gamer tag that sounded vaguely familiar. It was that guy again, but this time he was accusing me of reporting him and threatening me that I "needed to prove I was hot". I said no, then he came back and asked for naked pictures in return for an Xbox Live gold membership. I shouldn't have even entertained him, but I decided to play along. I replied to his message that if he was serious and the code was real, send it to me. If the code didn't work, he wasn't getting nudes.
Guy sends the code and it was legitimate. I thanked him and told him to stay by his email for his "surprise". Once again, I reported him to Xbox and blocked him for good measure. Never heard from him again.
"I was playing with my friend D..."
I was playing with my friend D. We were playing Minecraft with a couple of our other friends and D said something stupid and I told him to shut the hell up and he said, "Keep talking to me like that and I'll bring my Glock to school and take care of everybody who keeps bullying me starting with you."
We know he was joking but this happens a lot.
Does D know that this stuff is not funny?
Seriously.
"This one guy..."
This one guy told us about his "poop bucket" that he used when gaming for too long so he didn't have to go to the toilet.
And this wasn't in some random lobby, we were all part of the same gaming website and were pretty familiar with each other.
Still to this day I don't know if he was trolling or serious.
"Somebody tried talking to me..."
Somebody tried talking to me using my real name and city. To this day I have no idea how or why he doxxed me.
Sadly, there are some gamers out there...
...who seem intent on ruining things for the rest of the community. If you hear something, say something.
Have some of your own stories to share? Feel free to tell us about them in the comments section below!
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