Gaming, Evil, and the Virtual World

Having recently read a blogosphere exchange about whether or not gaming can be art, several recent moments of online unpleasantness cause me to wonder if gaming can be actively evil.

As a pastor and a gamer, I try to steer away from games that are overtly negative. Meaning, I don't like games that require me to steal, or games that require me to harm innocents, or games that so deeply revel in horror that you can't play 'em without indulging in a fantasy of darkness. True, I do indulge in plenty of..err...aggressive games, and now and again wonder if my diet of simulated violence is entirely healthy.

Lately, though, I've been struggling with how to deal with my encounters with rather more concrete forms of gaming evil, namely, human beings. When you play online, you encounter all manner of blighted souls, and filtered through the medium of a game, it's a bit difficult to know how to respond to them.

I've played a little bit of a free online game called UMAG (follow the link, and you'll lose a few hours. You've been warned). It's a turn-based artillery game, in which folks fire shells at one another whilst texting comments that appear in little thought bubbles above your tank. It's simple. It's goofy. It's fun. Or it usually is.

Two nights ago, as I dropped into a game, the guy in position to strike at me texted the following to those around him:

[sumbuddy help me kill this Jew]

Suddenly, the game wasn't fun at all. With two Jewish boys and a Jewish wife and an extended Jewish family that I love more than I love myself, that kind of hatred tends to evoke a blind rage response. I took the guy out, of course, digging him into a hole and then dropping a MIRV on him. But that wasn't satisfactory. That sort of thing goes far beyond smacktalk, and into a dark place where play is no longer possible.

That was not the end of this week's online encounters with antisemitism. Last night, as I played through the delightfully frenetic FPS Battlefield: Bad Company 2, I found myself face to face with an opposing player whose avatar was named JEWSLAYER14.

Again, I took him out, with a fusillade of well placed rounds from the main gun of my BMD3 light tank. But again, that wasn't enough. Things were no longer fun. Someone who would choose that for their online identity is a person with whom I can't play, or have conversation. They are the Enemy, in a very spiritual way.

Electronic Arts, which publishes the Bad Company series, makes a point of booting such folks from their servers. Their Terms Of Service explicitly state that hate speech will get you thrown out...but folks like that still pop up. My hope is that my second encounter doesn't have 13 friends, but is number 14 because they've been kicked 13 times.

It does raise several conundrums about confronting virtual evil. First, it's very easy for evil to hide and reform and resurface on the interwebs. Removing a user for TOS violations is no more effective than deleting a spam email. They'll be back, with a different and equally offensive name, spitting out the same hatred they were before. There, I think folks in the gaming community are responsible for enforcing a community ethic. If someone goes beyond mocking you for your pathetic noobness and is expressing racial hatred, they're ruining the game for those around them. Gamers need not to tolerate that in their online friends, and if you're hosting a server and encounter someone who is eager to engage in pointless hatred, ban or block or kick them.

The difficulty comes with point number two. The "gaming community" is a pretty wildly diverse place. I've been on servers in the online game Warhawk, for instance, where everyone is screaming in Arabic, and the gamertags are things like jihad4ever1972. My suspicion is that a gamer with a tag like JEWSLAYER14 might not be booted from such a server.

Here, the question becomes how deeply a for-profit entity is willing to stand by the values of the culture from which it springs. The deep hatreds that have lead to such horrors in the meatspace world should be resisted wherever we encounter them.

If Electronic Arts and Microsoft and Sony and Nintendo put serious effort into keeping their games...you know...games...then gaming will remain a playground on which we can have all kinds of fun.

Westboro Atheist Church

I keep my RSS ears on in the atheistic blogosphere, mostly because if there's an issue or a challenge confronting the faith community, that's a great place to read about it. In particular, I listen in over at the friendlyatheist, a blog written by humanistic math teacher Hemant Mehta. Mehta's the guy who once famously "sold his soul on eBay," meaning, he took bids from churches in return for a promise to attend their worship.

Over the last few days, there's been some debate there about the "Smut for Smut" campaign on the part of an atheistic student organization in Texas. In the event you haven't heard of this one, it involves a pretty simple transaction. If you bring a sacred text to the table the group has set up on campus, they will happily let you trade it in for the pornography of your choice.

Their point is simple: religious texts are filthy, nasty, dirty things, and are essentially the same thing as the "smut" that religious people find so bothersome. Therefore, atheists can to show theists just how misguided they are by being as intentionally offensive and insulting as possible.

I'm not sure quite how many Christians have been dissuaded from their faith by this event. Given the dynamics of human nature, I'd say, oh, probably none. Folks have taken offense, and many may have gotten into a lather about it. Look at these UNBELIEVERS! DESECRATING GOD'S WORD!

Honestly, though, I'm not bothered by it as a Christian. Measured against the vastness of the Creator's work, it's an entirely meaningless thing. Yeah, pornography creates a deeply unrealistic and ultimately destructive view of human sexuality. Yes, it's an intentional effort to offend. But it is no more philosophically meaningful than that dude at the county fair dunking booth who hollers insults at your wife. It's just an attempt to get attention, and it does that quite effectively. I don't care what you say, clown-boy. I'm saving my money for the funnel cake.

Mmmm. Funnel cake....

But as a reasoning person, it bugs me. There is so much of value in humanistic ethics, so much that could be positively expressed. Screaming insults and intentionally offending others might be atheistic, but it is not rational or humanistic. Yes, it gets attention, in the same way that everyone gathers around a fight in the school cafeteria. As a means for changing either individuals or culture, though, it is profoundly counterproductive.

This sort of monkey-poo stunting is the dark psychotronic performance art specialty of the Westboro Baptist Church. It is a form of self-expression that calls attention to itself, but not with the purpose of changing the perspective of the other. It exists to exacerbate and heighten conflict with the Enemy, whoever the Enemy happens to be. In doing so, it reinforces the bright line boundaries between the Us, who are correct, and the Them, who are horrible in every way.

Across the little flicker of screams and swords and shouting that is human history, this approach has never, ever, ever worked. Jesus people, at least those who pay attention to what he taught, already know this. But rational folks know it too.

How Do I Hate Thee? Let Me Count The Ways

Westboro Baptist is unquestionably insane, but as I've spent a chunk of time going over their web presence in anticipation of their arrival in my neighborhood, I'm struck by a few things.

Their infamous signage, for one, is mostly remarkable for it's stark and iconic simplicity. It's a potent meld of basic primary colors and washes, coupled with brutishly simple messages that articulate their dark vision of the universe.

Second, as someone whose spent a small chunk of time recently trying to revamp the web presence of my own tiny little church, I can say that they've...well...got an impressive new media presence for a church their size. The Westboro website is clean and well designed. It gets right to the point, letting any visitors know in no uncertain terms that no matter who you are or where you're from, they hate you.

They've got an array of blogs, which express the viewpoints of a variety of different members of the extended Phelps family. Though each is somewhat different from the others, they all are remarkably good at staying on message. You've got current events related hate. There's a "Dear Abby"-esque hate-advice blog. There's a blog that angrily discusses their current schedule of hate-related picketing. Even more impressive, the folks at Westboro seem utterly committed to open-sourcing their material. Every page on their site boldly announces that there is no copyright on the text. Anyone can use it in any way they see fit. Why one would want to is beyond me, but I'm sure with some thought I could come up with some entertaining options.

As I've dug my way through their single-minded sea of festering bile, I've found myself wondering if it might be possible for a little church to become the Bizarro World Westboro Baptist. Could a congregation of 35-40 individuals be as intensely monomanaical in their expression of God's grace to the world as Westboro is in expressing their pathological hatred? Would it be possible for a small church to become as notoriously joyous as Westboro is notoriously horrid? Such a church would have to be more than a tiny bit insane, sure.

But it'd be a good sort of crazy.