edit: nsfw tag and CW for transphobia

  • CyberEgg ( CyberEgg@discuss.tchncs.de ) 
    73·
    3 months ago

    One of the most problematic parts of this horrible game is the ability for players to upload their own “skins” – essentially, each player can create a character for themselves in simple photo editing apps such as photoshop. This means that the selection of characters is limited only by the players’ imaginations. On the surface, this seems to be a positive of the game, but it turns out that it is not.

    This unlimited customization dangerously blurs the boundaries of gender and sex, and, especially considering the predominantly young player base of Minecraft, can be very confusing in terms of gender. One of these confused young people is my son, now 21 years old, who, it turns out, had been using the default “girl” skin of Minecraft, often shown in marketing alongside a more fitting masculine character. While this is not concerning on its own, having done so since the age of 11 will surely have contributed to his gender confusion.

    I guess every game now has to have a male protagonist. Because if playing a female character confuses young boys’ genderes, surely playing a mal characte will certainly not confuse young girls in their gender identities.

    Or maybe all video game characters have to be androgynous.

    Or something, idk never understand ppl like this parent.

    • psycotica0 ( psycotica0@lemmy.ca ) 
      33·
      3 months ago

      I love how the paragraph opened with how anyone can upload their own skins, and use simple photo editing and have unlimited creative freedom. But then in the back half of the second paragraph they reveal that their kid has been using the default female character the whole time. So none of that customization stuff anyway, the game said “boy or girl” on boot, they picked “girl”, and that’s that.

    • BremboTheFourth ( BremboTheFourth@piefed.ca ) English
      19·
      3 months ago

      I hope this doesn’t come across as too semantic, but I dunno, I bet you can understand them. They’re just stupid! They will do anything to avoid blaming themselves, accepting they were wrong, or simply accepting their daughter. It’s gotta be that got dang vidya game’s fault! Everyone knows that games have been indoctrinating children into devil worship since at least as far back as the invention of D&D!

      Understanding them is easy. It’s empathizing with them that is damn near impossible

    • Hadriscus ( Hadriscus@jlai.lu ) 
      12·
      3 months ago

      I’ve been playing Tomb Raider since I was 7. First TR2, then TR3, and TR4. Lara Croft led me by the hand through middle school. It took years of watching her wiggle her butt in cramped spaces for the spell to take effect. By the time I entered high school, the vicious kuffars at Core Design had a hold of me : I was certain I was a murderous bourgeois british girl loosely based on Indiana Jones. I even asked my mom to make me a costume, complete with foam guns.

      Then I started playing Crash Bandicoot …

    • EldritchFemininity ( EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
      7·
      3 months ago

      Because if playing a female character confuses young boys’ genderes, surely playing a mal characte will certainly not confuse young girls in their gender identities.

      You see, that’s the neat part: this would never even occur to them. The thought that there could potentially be such a thing as trans men doesn’t even occur to these people. And when it does, they think of them as poor misguided victims, because of course women would jealously desire to become men, the superior sex. Everybody wants to be a man, obviously.

      One of the reasons that they’re so obsessed with trans women is that the very concept that someone would actually prefer to be a woman shakes the foundations of their patriarchal view of the world and its rigid gender binary.

      • JPAKx4 ( JPAKx4@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
        2·
        3 months ago

        It has toggles to change to third person in the front and the back, and your skin is shown in the inventory. Additionally you see your hand when not holding an item. The hand has two thicknesses for the “Steve” model and the thinner “Alex” model (they are not called male/female, you can make your skin to fit with the one of your choosing).

    • craftrabbit ( craftrabbit@lemmy.zip ) 
      2·
      3 months ago

      The obvious solution is introducing a gender verification system next to the age verification system (obviously also has to be implemented by a private for-profit company with minimal oversight because anything else would be socialist and evil).

      Then, kids could either upload their government id or a picture of themselves naked. Those pictures have to be kept around indefinitely because security and analytics and feeding them into an ai model.

      Then (because genitals always 100% identity someone’s real sex and everybody has a real binary sex) the kid can only select the appropriate character! Simple as that!

      (This is probably the worst thing I have ever written. But it doesn’t feel implausible that someone would actually suggest this, which I think is testament to how bad the situation is.)

  • [object Object] ( panda_abyss@lemmy.ca ) 
    39·
    3 months ago

    This deserves the shame of becoming a copy pasta.

    In 2014, my son started to ask for the popular sandwich known as “peanut butter and jelly.” Later that year, my wife and I decided to get said sandwich for him, and he loved it. He constantly showed us its partially eaten and decaying state.

    Little did we know, this seemingly innocent sandwich was a gateway drug to cross-sex hormones, wrong-gender pronouns, and a replaced name.

    What awful parents. “My kid used imagination and discovered creativity and it ruined how WE wanted them to live their life”

    Yeah, that’s parenting.

    You make a kid and every parent on earth will tell you they’re born with their own unique personality. But as soon as it’s not something you want it’s something or someone else’s fault and it’s wrong.

    • alapakala ( alapakala@quokk.au ) English
      8·
      3 months ago

      In 2016, my daughter started started to ask for the popular mobile phone game known as “Pokemon Go.” Later that year, my third husband and I decided to get said game for him, and he loved it. He constantly showed us his latest pocket monster and his team.

      Little did we know, this seemingly innocent game was a gateway drug to ballots, MAGA hats, Awoos, and a pedophile con artist.

    • TotallynotJessica ( TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) OPEnglish
      15·
      3 months ago

      I’m convinced that a fully automated item sorting system that handles every item in vanilla Minecraft is basically impossible. Even the best ones require a ton of prep work, and you’re still fucked if you get a block variant that you didn’t already have in the system. Until we can properly filter by general categories rather than matching, I don’t see how most of them aren’t as much trouble as they’re worth.

      • apotheotic (she/her) ( apotheotic@beehaw.org ) English
        6·
        3 months ago

        I have to assume it must be possible to automate “storage module assignment” for items that flow into your unassigned bucket, since so many computationally tricky things are possible already.

        Its just, I assume, a case of whether it is worth doing instead of manually assigning a new module for any new items added in updates.

        On a tangent, I sort of appreciate the fact that a lot of this automation stuff isn’t an inherent function of the game, they give you very low level components and you build the logic yourself. It makes those monumental technical Minecraft builds such a cool vibe. If things like filtering were more trivialised I think a lot of the magic might be lost

        • TotallynotJessica ( TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) OPEnglish
          6·
          3 months ago

          On one hand, I get where you’re coming from and it’s probably the reason they haven’t added that functionality. On the other, inventory management just wastes so much time in modern versions of the game. With so many unique items, the time spent rummaging around in shulker boxes in the late game has gotten absurd. At the end of the day, it’s just constant tedium that would probably require an enormous redstone computer to address with current technology.

      • Daisy (she/her) ( TechieDamien@lemmy.ml ) 
        5·
        3 months ago

        If you like automation, try the applied energetics 2 mod. You get a “chest” that can store all your items, automatically craft anything you need, including prerequisites, and can even interface with other mod machines with generic input/outputs for maximum ore multiplication etc.

        • TotallynotJessica ( TotallynotJessica@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) OPEnglish
          1·
          3 months ago

          I basically need to use some sort of storage mod at this point, as inventory management starts to get on my nerves within 24 hours of playtime. I prefer Tom’s Simple Storage right now, as the items are still stored in vanilla inventories rather than nebulous virtual storage.

      • GalacticSushi ( GalacticSushi@lemmy.blahaj.zone ) 
        3·
        3 months ago

        I generally just set it up to sort basic blocks and items that I end up with a lot of (cobblestone, ores, etc). It’s also pretty useful in stuff like mob farms to automatically organize the handful of items you get into their own chests.

      • webpack ( webpack@ani.social ) 
        2·
        3 months ago

        it is possible just very annoying. with cubicmeter’s copper golem design u only need to get 1 of literally every item ever to sort in categories for chests. also you can even sort unstackable items now with allay.

  • Evkob (they/them) ( Evkob@lemmy.ca ) 
    31·
    3 months ago
    Full text from article (warning: transphobia)

    In 2014, my son started to ask for the popular block-building computer game known as “Minecraft.” Later that year, my wife and I decided to get said game for him, and he loved it. He constantly showed us his latest creations and buildings.

    Little did we know, this seemingly innocent game was a gateway drug to cross-sex hormones, wrong-gender pronouns, and a replaced name.

    You see, while it may seem like a healthy outlet for creative expression, Minecraft is actually a very popular game among so-called “trans-identifying children.” The reason for this is because the game allows for expression of dangerous ideas, and has little to no moderation, being primarily singleplayer.

    One of the most problematic parts of this horrible game is the ability for players to upload their own “skins” – essentially, each player can create a character for themselves in simple photo editing apps such as photoshop. This means that the selection of characters is limited only by the players’ imaginations. On the surface, this seems to be a positive of the game, but it turns out that it is not.

    This unlimited customization dangerously blurs the boundaries of gender and sex, and, especially considering the predominantly young player base of Minecraft, can be very confusing in terms of gender. One of these confused young people is my son, now 21 years old, who, it turns out, had been using the default “girl” skin of Minecraft, often shown in marketing alongside a more fitting masculine character. While this is not concerning on its own, having done so since the age of 11 will surely have contributed to his gender confusion.

    However, this dangerous, confusing option is not the only element of Minecraft that contributed to my son’s gender confusion. You see, while Minecraft is most often single player, or on large-scale “mini-game” type servers – essentially giant online arcades made in the block game, it can also be played in the traditional “survival” mode in multiplayer. While multiplayer games are an excellent way for kids to interact with each other, it can also provide a way for them to communicate dangerous ideas without the guiding hands of their parents.

    Ever technically minded, my son set up a multiplayer server to play with his boyfriend when they were 14 years old and just started dating. Unfortunately, due to Minecraft’s neglectful failure to include any filters or safeguards against dangerous and confusing ideological statements, it served as a funnel for the two of them to encourage each other in their “transitions.” Yes, that’s right – my son’s boyfriend is also gender confused. What’s worse is that these two, who are perhaps the worst possible people for each other, are engaged to get married in a “lesbian” wedding later this fall. I, of course, was not invited. Heaven forbid I try to save my son from his horrible confusion.

    This other boy, I suspect, is the reason that my son is so confused as to his gender. And if another confused youth, with no malicious intent, was able to confuse my son through the game of Minecraft, imagine what maliciously intending adults can do to children whose parents are less vigilant about who their children are connecting with online. Not everyone has as much time for supervision as my wife and I had. And even then, we failed to save our son.

    So, this is a warning to parents to be very wary of Minecraft, and other such online games without strict parental controls. And if your child already has Minecraft, as it has become much more popular in the past few years, be sure to check what “skin” they are using, and to have a talk about the possible confusion that could arise from using one that does not align with their gender.

    Sincerely, a forgotten father.:::

  • stephen ( stephen@lazysoci.al ) English
    27·
    3 months ago

    Parent gives child video game and admits they do not supervise the child playing the video game. The child finds a safer space for questions and expression within that video game than within the relationship with their parent. I read this as a “person with a child” more than a “parent”. Sounds like they don’t have a good relationship with their own kid, and then blames a video game for how their kid is turning out.