It seems like every time white men get criticized in any domain they behave as if criticism was invented purely as a weapon against them.

Against my better judgement, I am going to reply to this because your reply makes my point for me. I am addressing this reply not to you specifically but to the audience who may not understand why this is important to me.

You don't know me. You don't know what I look like, my life experience, or anything about me. I say the same about you. One of the beauties of the internet is that what you look like means nothing; on the internet in a forum like this we are all text. But I am going to tell you a story so you know where I am coming from here.

One of the things that I do to make the world suck less is working with a childhood cancer center. I got hooked up with them through Child's Play more than a decade ago after the whole Jack Thompson thing. We started with Play Station 2's, then got a few XBOX's when they came out and then went out and got games that we thought the kids would like. We were going to shell out for some Wii's but as most of these kids have IVs and Chemo ports, the hospital did not want them using something that was so active and had them swinging arms etc around. A few years ago we raised some cash, built some PCs and put a bunch of free games on them so that the kids could play games while they were hospitalized for treatment. When Minecraft came out, we bought Minecraft for each machine, now about ten or so, and holly balls those kids love Minecraft. The age of these kids is from nine to about 14-15 and we knew Minecraft was going to be big but I never exepected it to be this huge. And I'll tell you, watching these kids be happy for the hour or two that they got to play on the in-hospital server with the other kids was amazing. These kids also love watching twitch and Minecraft people online. They build castles and all sorts of crazy and amazing things and I get the satisfaction of making some people happy if for a few hours.

One of the things I found out when I came out here, that still makes me mad, is that when I tell people I do volunteer work with kids with cancer, people get funny. Some christian sects see cancer as a punishment for sin, and when I was looking for work way back, my work in a cancer ward was seen as a negative. Since I believe that we have a duty to help those in need, I had to tack my volunteer work in another 501(c) so that I can say "Volunteers with sick kids" and get the tax write-offs. Which brings me to the point of this reply. People suck.

The one thing I have asked the staff to do to help these kids is to not allow commercial television. Nickelodeon and the Cartoon Network are fine but they also show the news and things like Letterman and other Late Nite people; I think this is mainly for the staff, not for the kids. But adults forget something; kids are more aware of what is going on than people realize. The kids get to stay up late (some of them are on a six hour schedule where they have treatments every few hours). These kids saw that show. Then they spread that around to the others. Now you have a bunch of kids who are in the hospital, love Minecraft and are being told by the man on the TV that they are idiots, morons, and whatever else he was saying to make fun of gamers.

This rant is not directed exactly at you, but I am going to ask you specifically. What would you tell a group of 10-13 year old cancer patients who want to know if they are bad people for playing games? How do you comfort a group of kids who are being mocked for enjoying the one thing in their immediate lives that is not being sick?

Gaming has not been a "white male" hobby since the PS2 and XBox made gaming mainstream more than a decade ago. Everquest, WoW, Ultima Online brought more women and girls into hardcore gaming roughly a decade ago. Yet this stereotype exists whenever people either try to grab a part of my $100 Billion a year global hobby or see it as a threat. Online, in a game, nobody really gives a shit about anything but your skill. A poor kid in the bad side of town and a rich kid in a private school can and do play games together but that does not fit the narrative and is ignored.

People make fun of the kardashians ruthlessly.

Like all people who are famous for being famous, I am more upset over the media's role in creating these empty celebrities than anything else. The Karashians themselves? I am in FUCKING AWE of them. They are going to make more in interest today for being a functional net zero to society than I am going to make all year working a 3000 hour a year job. They manipulated the media to keep them in the news, they got paid and people still eat this crap up. I don't hate them, but the people who help make them famous I hold in low regard and I will not feel ashamed for saying that. But to bring this back to gaming, have you seen the Kardashian mobile game? They raked in almost a BILLION freaking dollars. That is GTA level cash. Have you ever looked at the game? Its evil. I'm not saying that to be out there either. The game makes the player into a woman who is nothing more than a coat rack, and you as a player are judged and advance in the game solely on how much money you spend to look good. The goal of the game is to make you into a vapid celebrity. It is everything that you don't want to teach women and girls, that they exist to shop, buy things and look pretty and nothing else. You think I'm kidding? Another review And yea, bad games making money makes me upset just like bad movies making money makes a film nerd friend of mine angry.

You haven't been singled out, and you aren't a victim.

I don't care what people say about me personally. I've been there done that and wear the scars proudly. I've lived long enough to see my hobby grow bigger than Hollywood, television, music and theater, COMBINED. You can't shame me, mock me, or make me feel bad/weird/troll-lol-lol/whatever about being a gamer. We have been here before with comics in the 40's and 50's. We've seen this with Rock and Roll in the 60's. We saw this with D&D in the 80's. I'm worried about the people now entering gaming and how they are being treated because I do not want them to go through what I did.