fuck

UPDATE: And they're back!

One thing that is readily apparent when playing any sort of multiplayer FPS - Halo, Counter-Strike, etc. - is that in the frequently testosterone-fueled world of gaming, both online and off, there exists a good deal of homophobia. Sure, a much of it is arguably somewhat unintentional and even good-humored, the jacked-up teenager calling his competitor a faggot after getting fragged for the umpteenth time, but at the same time much of it is truly mean-spirited and does significant disservice to the "hospitable" environment that should be proffered in virtual worlds that promote not just competition but camaraderie as well. And while this homophobia is a fact of life, or, more specifically, of gaming, that isn't going away anytime soon, what happened over the past few days, to put it in layman's terms, pisses me the fuck off. Starting on last Wednesday, website GayGamer.net began receiving small waves of denial of service attacks that caused occasional timeouts on the site. After working with their provider to block the IPs from which originated the DOS attacks, their forums were flooded Friday night with all manner of hate speech and huge images meant to bog down the server. The messages were deleted but over the weekend the DOS attacks continued and the site's host took down GayGamer until the attacks could be permanently blocked, which is where they stand right now. Now I understand that stuff like this happens all the time, that it may seem silly to be blogging about this when there are people being beaten and killed for their sexuality, but, well, as anyone knows me can attest, I fucking love me some video games, so this is bound to get me riled up. Not to pull the fag card here, but for reasons mentioned above and others I'd rather not get into at the moment, the world of gaming isn't entirely gay-friendly, and while I have never been a frequent reader of GayGamer, I not only greatly appreciate its purpose but its owner, Flynn de Marco, as well, who as weekend editor on kotaku.com established a gay presence on what's easily my favorite gaming website. But in the end there's not much more that can be said, only to wish GayGamer the best of luck in reestablishing their web presence and in avoiding further attacks, to hope that it was nothing more malevolent than just some idiot teenager attempting to assert his masculinity, and, perhaps most importantly (and lamely), to keep on gaming. Godspeed fellow homos :)

Gay Gamer Target of Hate Crime
(322 comments at time of posting, the most I've EVER seen on the site and more than double the amount generated on any given post addressing XBOX360/PS3 exclusivity - might not mean much to most people, but take my word, it's fucking impressive as hell)