Toxic is a cheap political correctness word from Tumblr made as a catchall for anything anyone ever disliked ever that’s used to ostracize and even censor opinions and styles. If you don’t like the community, just say that instead of calling them ‘toxic,’ because doing that just makes you look bad. All calling Overwatch or its fandom ‘toxic’ does is convey you dislike them so much that you’d imply that being part of them in itself poisons you and that they poison other people. This in turn serves as a rallying cry to censor, punish, and ostracize people often for simply acting different rather than legitimately unethical. It’s like how when you disagree on the Internet you’re called a troll or if you post differently from other people it’s called a sh**post -it’s just anti-user lingo that only caters to ostracizing people. For that matter, if the game’s design is incorrect or uncomfortable, just specify as much or say it’s Poor or Bad. When you call games ‘toxic’ for not pleasing you, that leads people to lump the game itself with ‘toxic’ posters and ‘toxic’ masculinity and in turn makes them think like censors and social justice warriors rather than like players or game designers. It’s like, if you call someone toxic over and over, eventually they’ll act that way because you and others conditioned them to think and act that way. If we keep talking about and spreading accusations of toxicity, that in itself becomes a greater toxicity than anything else.
Stop calling things related to Overwatch toxic; doing so is inherently toxic.
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social consequences is a thing that won’t go away. the reporting system is even themed on it.
Nah, I do not care about what someone who does not understand what the word toxic means thinking less of me for calling something toxic. That is to be expected, in fact.
The game itself is not toxic, it is the community enabled by the developers. That is just a fact. In this day and age, there are so many people that disagree with objective reality that you cannot have a standard conversation without Twilight Zone-esque implications, but there is absolutely a problem with this game that has not been addressed and I find it disturbing that you are more concerned with how other people use a word you do not enjoy rather than the actual problem they are attempting to address.
It says a lot.
Toxicity is a catch-all term that equates to “being a total douchenozzle”.
You can get away with a LOT of stuff. But your tone is what makes something considered “toxic behaviour”.
You can go like this:
“Hey, for this map a Widow might not be that effective. You up for a switch?”
Or you can go:
“Widow. You useless trash b*tch. Switch now or I will report you for gameplay sabotage lol.”
Both are rooted in the same argument. Same goal. Same criticism. But it’s the way in which it is said that matters.
I don’t support anyone who would call the first example “toxic” simply for making a suggestion.
Overwatch Community used Toxic!
Everyone was badly poisoned!
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One of my favourite videos on this
I have extensive experience with the word toxic’s usage online and thoroughly understand the meaning firsthand among numerous communities such as IGN, Reddit, Discord, IRC chats, Overwatch, and Call of Duty to name the ones most core to my recent memory. I find it interesting how those all have a forum/game theme, similar to how we’re also dealing with another problem of the word toxicity being applied to our forum/game. It’s almost as if users on a large scale or misusing and abusing the word across games and forums in an effort to censor and attack anyone who plays or acts differently.
The game itself has team-oriented social experiments that people call toxic because it leads to negative interactions in certain circumstances which cause real-life social and personal problems. This is caused in large part to imbalances, individually good players getting bad scores because of bad teammates, set-in-stone metas, and convictions that there’s only one way to play Overwatch held by numerous members of the Overwatch community. However, the term toxic has a history of being used as a basis for censorship and social justice warrior punishments, and that is dangerous when applied to any community. It is doubly dangerous when applied to Overwatch, a game well-known for its thematic and design emphasis on social justice, which could easily be guided down that path of abuse.
‘In this day and age’ by the way, is a popular preface used by Redditors when they try to reach the most upvoted post, and usually prefaces a post concerned with a sense of morality, political superiority, and all-knowingness. Though pointing out as much might be construed as passive-aggressive, similar to other passive-aggressive statements in the Overwatch forums used to circumvent swearing censorship. For instance, saying ‘It says a lot’ as a put-down to a person’s opinion against a word being used as a basis of censorship and ostracization of other users.
It says a lot.
Passive-aggressive remarks and lingo built explicitly to ostracize or censor people through social justice acts are emotionally harmful and detract people from enjoying Overwatch. Thus, we need to unite in showing an open act by users against the term toxic, in order to detract this passive-aggressive social justice which if brought to its logical conclusion, will only make players feel angrier and more isolated.
I am the least likely person to censor someone. I was just in a thread where people were flagging someone for swearing and find it ridiculous, and I was in another thread where I claimed that Doomfist was falsely suspended despite some people already saying, “glad he was suspended for saying a naughty word.” So, if you are implying that me pointing out the objective fact that Overwatch is the most toxic experience imaginable because the developer is doing nothing about it is because I want to censor someone, you are grossly misconstruing my perspective, fam.
Oh, and I hate social justice warriors. To prove it, I believe people have the right to be homophobic, there you go, something one of those people would never comfortably spout. So that is not it either. But at a certain point, you need to take a step back and look at the state of this community. If you genuinely do not see the problem, you are very likely part of the problem.
So now you are hypocritical? I offended you so much that you tried to use my own passive aggressiveness against me and you are implying that I am the SJW. Seems fake, but okay.
If they fixed the report system, the toxicity would definitely be mitigated. LoL made some changes, and they are no longer the most toxic community to anyone that has bothered to check in the last 2-3 years. I will agree that it has become a buzzword; however, in the case of Overwatch, it is pretty obvious that this is a severe detriment to the team. Saying that this community is literal poison is an understatement, as far as I am concerned.
The word’s associations are still attached regardless of who you personally are. People collectively have experience with the word’s usage and feel the meanings connected to it. When those meanings range from “you’re horrible” to “you should be censored and mobbed against” and when you then use the word on top of the numerous abuses of it already being done, that conditions people to act even more toxic and is in itself a social attack that in itself is toxic. Swearing at someone more often than not causes less problems than calling them toxic in the present Overwatch fandom based on experience; that’s how big a problem this has become and why I’m pointing it out.
This wall of text was toxic (on my eyes).
That sounds like a “you” problem and I could care less about your assumptions of my intent, I was just clearing it up because I love it when people are wrong. The phrase, “offense can never be given, only taken” comes to mind, almost all the time, ironically when dealing with SJWs.
I am a pretty vanilla person myself, I just use the base definitions of words, or within proper context use of words. When I say this community is toxic, I do genuinely mean that the interactions are poisonous and infectious. There is just an oppressive smog that makes most players leave or regret joining and I wish the game was in a better state.
Yep. I am fully aware of that. Essentially, you have toxicity, and you have provoked toxicity. In that range, you could probably allude to differences as “hard toxic” and “soft toxic” but I am not here to classify all of the different types and it is subjective, regardless. I am just here to keep it real and claim that everything surrounding this game is toxic. The only people who can save it are the developers and as long as they adhere to this same censorship toxicity that you are worried with, the game will remain in this state. Ya jive?
Would you agree that if the game were less toxic, less people would “misuse” the word? Because if so, we more or less want the same exact thing.
Even stopping toxicity seems to be toxic. This just shows how over-used and abused the word is.
Huh? That is what you got from my post? I, as someone who believes the game is toxic and wants it addressed believes that addressing it is toxic? Really? That was the best you could come up with. What a joke.
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