English College Writing Video Games and Their Cultures

Question:-

Why do people lie, cheat, and/or troll? 

How can video games and their cultures enable, deter, and/or illuminate such transgressive behaviors? 

Answer:-

Trolling has been quite prevalent on the internet and the gaming industry has been on the forefront of trolling. Different authors have explored the cause and impact of transgressive video game culture.  Caitlin Dewey has explored the outrageous trolling on the personal lives of gamers at the Gamergate incident (Dewey, 2014). Lindy West’s personal experience with a hater who trolled her on twitter using her dead dad’s name, picture and a fake account and email-id (West, 2015) or the account of trolling subculture by Whitney Philips (Philips, 2015, p. 137) or even the context of cheating in video games explained by Mia Consalvo all point to the emotional damage that trolling can cause to the internet users and gamers (Consalvo, 2007, pp. 11-12). All of the incidents are connected with each other and shows that trolling is not a personal issue faced by the gamers, it is an integral evil of the entire gaming community both within the games and outside of it. These accounts indicate that trolling can be a result of emotional damage as well. For example, the man who trolled Lindy West was suffering from body image issues and could not accept the body positivity promoted by her because he failed to articulate the same in his life. The same incident also points out the role of empathy. It depicts the remorse, realization and apology from the troller when approached with compassion instead of more hatred and retaliation. The key takeaway from these readings is to understand the underlying reasons for trolling. Is it emotional, psychological, political or simply purposeful obnoxious behaviour?