This boils down to “bad people are everywhere” which is universally true, to the point that it’s barely worth mentioning. You will find shitty takes and hateful people everywhere if you go out looking for it.
The question is whether the bad people are running the show, or if the bad is endemic to the culture. I don’t think you can say that of every fandom, or of gaming enthusiasts in general in 2023. And specifically I don’t think it’s fair to compare to the Valorant fanbase to something like the 2004 Smash Bros Melee fanbase.
There’s still progress to be made and bad eggs to be found in every basket, but I think there’s been enough mainstream attention and a hot enough crucible of scrutiny that we are for the most part beyond the era of “this tournament brought to you by actual rapists and chomos, don’t forget to bring your racist slurs, misogyny, and homophobic taunts to the stage for everyone to enjoy”
Lots of “this not all Germans are Nazis bullshit” vibe you got going suggests you may need to look in the mirror a bit more before posting your rants.
Nah, they are an avid gamer, too. A German themselves, in your analogy.
This is just what Twitter poisoning looks like. Full visibility and obsession of the negative, completely blind to growth, improvement, and positivity.
Some of the top eSports representatives in the world today include people like SonicFox, a gay black furry, and Scarlett, a trans woman. Still operating at the peak of their arenas and with huge fanbases of their own. And that’s only two examples; the FGC in particular has recently seen an almost comical amount of LGBT+ folks getting comfortable enough to finally reveal themselves. But instead of celebrating that, or even just celebrating any incident in which Musk gets booed, we’re still talking about that one time a journalist was slut-shamed a decade ago.
