Race and Identity

The digital world is where people there communicate with each other through avatars or created characters. Most of these created worlds are made for gaming purposes. Due to the vast interaction of users, there is a sense of society with the worlds. It is referred as imagined communities in the paper. This is somewhat similar to the idea of disconnected urbanism where people are communicating with each are other but they are not there fact to face or places that are far away from each other. These gamers are part of that virtual world. They play with other players but those players can come from anywhere in the real world. The main point of the paper is that these virtual realms have different social behaviors and norms than the real world. It can be seen in both race and identity aspects of players. Since it is hard to monitor online play, there is a lot of grief action against other players. Trash talking is inevitable part of the game but however, stuff does get harsh. This is where microaggression can be seen. I think that is cause by gamers being competitive and being intense.

People do question people’s sex as the avatars can be created at the users’ discretion. Gamers can be harassed for being a certain sex and be questioned about sexuality. Racial and stereotypical comments are bound to be said during game play due to certain games that create tension between players. Racism, itself, can manifest by the developers of those games. Depending on the type of game play, race can be stereotyped in the game’s narrative. For example, an urban gangster type of game would most likely stereotype African Americans or Latinos. In my case, I do have many characters in the World of Warcraft. My main one is actually a female character. It ended up that way because I enjoyed playing the class that the character was.

Professor Nakumura talked about Danny Montaner and the heated conflict with another player online. Was there a moment when you played online with other players where got it really abusive in words?

-Vircell