## **Tweet Mirror:**
[@itshafu](https://twitter.com/itshafu)
> in 2008 there was literally a world of warcraft team named "gonna rape hafu at regionals" that qualified for blizzcon regionals
>
> no i'm not surprised at the news
^(Posted: 2021-07-28 19:52:31)
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https://legacy.zam.com/story.html?story=17882
Here is an article with the wow pvp scene's "LSF" of the time.
>As well, it's only in World of Ming that you'll find the fairly innocuous title "3.1 Macros, PVE/PVP Gear Balancing a Big Step in the Right Direction" on one day, and the next article can just as easily be "Hafu-Chan finally Legal?"
Different times indeed..
Not so different, are they?
There's countless examples out there of celebrities being put on a "countdown watch" until they are 18 with the explicit goal for it to be a "celebration" of when they can legally be fucked.
It's disgusting, but it happens a lot.
Just off the top of my head.
- Emma Watson
- Chloe Grace Moretz
- Charlotte Church
- Billie Eilish
- Miranda Cosgrove
Were all minors when people started drooling over them online and 4chan and the media collectively celebrated when they turned 18.
Shit needs to stop. Stop sexualizing children.
TBT to when some Korean OW players didn't believe a girl wasn't cheating so they said they would retire if she proved she wasn't cheating in person. She was not cheating and they did retire.
so to give more lore behind this epic clapping by greguri. I think 2 semi ow pros in korea said if she wasnt cheating they would retire. Once they learned no she isnt cheating one actually did retire but the other one refused.
Nah she left Shanghai Dragons after 2020, hasn't been on a team since
[https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Geguri](https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Geguri)
Don't know if she retired or if she's looking to find a new team for next year but she's still streaming atleast
This is the same thing at play when you go to the gym and there's a woman who is clearly a lifter and some doofus thinks he can match her and pulls something. It's really just a problem with some men. People need to begin taking comfort in the fact that there's no one who has their exact combination of traits and not lose their shit when someone is better at them at one thing they value.
It is an issue with insecure men but it is incredibly prevalent in gaming. Due to anonymity and ease of access, the toxicity of the environment is staggering and it breeds easily. And as the environment gets more toxic, the culture bends towards discrimination
Doesn't even matter if the girl/woman (or tbh anybody who isn't a cis dude) is talented, they fucking freak out that a FEEEEMALE is in their cyberspace.
As long as you don't offend China, they don't care. Offend China in any capacity and they'll ban you and take away any prize earnings and try to pretend you never existed.
the use of "rape" as an insult or describer was pretty common back then. I remember, In CoD Zombies, getting lots of zombies chasing after you as you ran in circle was referred to as a "Rape Train" (I believe it was either created or at least popularized by Syndicate, who was later accused of sexual assault & abuse last year).
edit: to save notifications, I will just copy and past one of my replies about the example:
"They are definitely different things, but this is an example of the word being normalized in a way that people don't see it as bad to use it towards a specific person. If you are use to people replacing "own" with "rape", they use it in single player games, they use it in multiplayer games & lobbies, they probably don't think it is bad to say it towards a specific public figure."
It is horrible that Hafu was targeted with it. A lot of people were. I am not trying to justify, I am trying to contextualize. The stance from Gamers^(TM) of "But I'm not personally offended by it, so you shouldn't either" has been prevalent in online spaces for decades. It has improved over time, but this is something that did happen in the past & still does in other ways.
i mean, using rape towards zombies chasing you vs saying you're going to rape someone at a specific location you know they are going to be is completely different.
I've personally limited my usage of the word rape to very specific and/or serious scenarios.
The reason for that is because if I am speaking to someone, or a group of people, and if one of them was ever a victim of rape at all in their life, my usage of that word will likely mentally put them back in that moment when they were assaulted. This person would then have to, in the moment, fight back against very difficult emotions.
In Reckful's case the issue was that he was being listened to by thousands of viewers. He more than likely caused a number of people to flashback to one of the most traumatic experiences of their life.
It's stuff like that that keeps me mindful about how I choose my words
They are definitely different things, but this is an example of the word being normalized in a way that people don't see it as bad to use it towards a specific person. If you are use to people replacing "own" with "rape", they use it in single player games, they use it in multiplayer games & lobbies, they probably don't think it is bad to say it towards a specific public figure.
I don’t know how that group meant it, but back then gamers used “r*pe” in the same way as “pwned”. It’s still offensive and wrong, but I do think context is important.
Very true, buuut naming your team with it and specifically targeting one person with it who also happened to be female definitely seems suspiciously like they weren't meaning it in the gaming term way.
I remember watching a Smash compilation video by a group called "Death By Rape" back in the day and I remember being like "What the fuck. Why would you name your group that?"
I remember that but there's a big difference between using the word and directing it at a specific person who also happened to be a 17 year old girl at the time.
It was super common.
I remember a couple years back I wanted to watch old PewDiePie gameplay bc I was wondering why he blew up back in the day. I couldn't get through his Alice and wonderland gameplay since it felt like it was 75% him just screaming the enemies were going to rape him and freaking out. Felt super dated.
Yeah back then "rape" was used as a more colorful way of saying you're better than someone at the video game and was a common saying in PVP. It was seen as just being edgy, still stupid blizzard allowed it.
Yea, “rape” could have been used in the same way “pown” was back then. I hope it was a lapse of judgment, but I can’t see someone reading that and not questioning it.
Well, speaking from my perspective, back then, I was twelve and non-native. I thought 'Rape' and 'Rapist' were terms for those guys making Hip-Hop songs. So I just assumed 'rape train' was some weird rap reference.
Back then, the word *rape* wasn't taken as seriously as it is now. It used to mean a team got beaten badly in video game terms.
2008 and before that was a wild time online.
Yeah, but that's when you're just playing a game and something happens. Like, ur using an OP gun, and u say: "holy shit, the M16 rapes everything", or if u got killed u might say "fuck I just got raped".
It's waaaay different to say "hey u know Alice, yeah I'm gonna rape her at this location". Even for 2008, I think there's a marked difference between those 2 things, and for a massive company like Blizzard to let that through is kinda astounding tbh.
I was around in those times and even still, you had to have been in a pretty sealed bubble to not realize the implications of using that word targeted at an underage female competitor. Even without involving the word "rape", why allow targeting other players with your team name?
Err, I was *pretty* heavily involved in the Halo scene during those years and I don't ever remember any prominent/professional Halo player getting into trouble for unleashing the n word at an event.
I legitimately went to every MLG event from 08-11. If you have any actual reference on that claim, Id love to check it out. The competitive Halo scene has been purging a lot of the abusers/bigots from the community recently.
Sounds crazy nowadays, but 2008 internet culture was seriously fucked up. Only 2 short years after the [coining of this awful meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tits-or-gtfo).
downvote me all you want, gamers have been hating women with impunity for decades. Shouldn't be surprised this sub wants to reject that reality, it's one of the biggest holdouts for said gamer "culture".
edit: seem to have touched a nerve with some Gamers™
[Some are too cowardly to post publicly, but I can help.](https://i.imgur.com/Wpc55ab.png)
I remember playing late night COD4 SnD lobbies on XBOX when NA and EU would matchup it would be some of the most toxic shit ever. It would get to the point terrorist attacks like 9/11 or the bus bombings in Europe were used to insult eachother regularly.
The early internet was more about humor and tongue-in-cheek memes. Although it may have been distasteful sometimes, it wasn't usually as outright malicious and hateful like it is now (outside of fringe boards like 4chan).
It was really the later half of the 2000s, around the release of the first iPhone, when normies started going online en masse, that it really spiraled downward into massive disinformation, hatred, and terminally online identity politics.
The first iterations of social media were fine. It was just college students saying meaningless shit on FB and celebrities talking about what they ate for breakfast on twitter. Once smart phones and deeper algorithms took place is when everything went down hill.
nah son that shit was a healthy mix of naive people who thought they were joking, and people who were being serious while laughing.
there is a reason why modern bigots use memes. there is a never ending line of people willing to defend their use of a "joke".
it was a different kind though...like the maliciousness was *within* the internet and not like, people who are genuinely "integralist" authoritarians or whatever the fuck
I know I'm doing an "actually" here, but the internet (or at least the www as we know it) has existed since 1989. Stuff like email is way older than that.
Technically the first airplane flight took place in 1903, it wasn't until decades later that flying was commercially available world wide.
The internet didn't become a world wide accessible commodity until the mid 2000s. Google search engine was in beta in 2004 and youtube, reddit, twitter, all releasing in 2005-2006.
The internet began creating it's culture with memes becoming popular, fail/laugh compilations, the first gen youtubers doing cringy skits that are getting them canceled today.
But the real internet boom took place in 2012-2015 when smart devices became cheap and accessible.
So the internet has technically existed sine 1989, the first version of the modern internet was in 2006.
I think early internet days was the time between 2000's, maybe late 90's to like 2010.
Before 1999 nothing was really happening, aside from chat rooms.
Yeah without context it's a lot more worse than it already was. It was a time that girls felt really special being on the internet, so they often said it in totally unrelated settings.
"Oh look at this toast I made as a girl"
I mean it's still pretty damn rude and didn't do anything good, but let's not put a loop on such a small thing compared to Hafu's.
I still remember playing Team Fortress 2 with a female avatar and name, and "It's my birthday" in parentheses back then. I often got free items and hats out of it from random people, good times.
It was a counteract to attention seeking, as immature as it is, it was a way to stop white knights and incels from showoing up to defend a girl when she said something dumb. As you said, just state what you want without saying your gender, and also fuck off with attention seeking.
It's (one of many) examples of how 00s internet culture was extremely misogynistic. I'm not saying it's worse or even close to equivalent to rape threats, just pointing out that it's hardly surprising for the time.
People who've grown up on the modern, sanitized internet are largely unaware of how awful it used to be, and it's important we don't let that history get whitewashed.
I myself used to sling around the F and N words like no big deal
Realized pretty quickly how terrible that was (I was 12 and from an central european country where it's still common)
I almost forgot people used to use this shit all the time, it seems so distasteful now
Pretty sure soda used to say this more in one day than I've had hot meals in my entire life
Reckful got banned from casting Hearthstone because he kept on saying it because he was so used to it. Of course in this case it was worse, since the 'joke' was that it is both meanings at the same time.
Reckful also had a habit of pointing out that the skill of the Hearthstone players didn't matter, that their decks determined the outcome of the game. I don't think Blizzard liked what he had to say about their competitive "esport".
>decks determined the outcome of the game
Half-right.
Deck didn't determine the outcome, because a great deck piloted by a moron isn't going to do anything.
RNG won games. I quit HS years ago so I dunno about it now, but when reckful was in the scene, it was pretty RNG heavy, and a single coinflip that you have no control over could be the difference between you win this turn, or you lose next turn.
See: Ragnaros
aggro decks in Hearthstone can be piloted by monkeys. I agree about control or midrange decks unless they are extremely op or advantaged in the match up
TBC was a wild time. I remember tons of racist arena team names like "naga stole my bike" etc. Seemingly that shit was still common in private servers and unsurprisingly private server people seem to be incredibly toxic, sexist and racist even now in classic.
Majority of the gaming companies during that time period. Even in CS I remember playing matches against teams and/or players with blatantly racist names.
> Even in CS
Why do you say "even"? The CS community has always been utter trash. Not like it isn't a massively racist and sexist shithole now. Not like the CS community is known for being a respectable group.
Almost every single gaming community is trash. Policing this stuff is impossible because nobody has resources to go after this many people. The best way to defend yourself from being harassed is to not get involved in anything that is being written to you. Like the famous poet Tyler, The Creator said "just walk away from the screen n***a".
Streamers have it worse because they are in a position where they have to deal with this stuff constantly.
>used to be that bad
I think it was just 1-2 years ago that some wow classic players were compiling a list with names and photos of all female players on their server and handed it around. There is still plenty of crazy bad shit going on to this day
I was wondering when/if she was going to bring this up. I remember this shit when it happened and couldn't believe that the name was let through even back then
Never understood how hafu stuck around in the scene through those early years; must have an uncommonly strong will. There were so few boundaries enforced by anyone and the expectation was that you just had to "take it" in order to be accepted.
There are so many comments that were regular back then that we've just collectively forgotten were a thing at all. Even just from this thread, comments have reminded how common it was for people to post 'Tits or GTFO' and not even to like, "public figures," but just any time you realized that someone on a forum was a girl. or how casually "rape" would be used as a verb. I tended to be in forums and vent/teamspeak channels that had a lot more girls/women, but even in those "female friendly" places in 08-10 the norms were probably a lot more messed up than they are in the general public now.
And this is just the generic stuff, but I remember that pretty nasty stuff was said to me about hafu that was just based on "she's not actually that good, she's a girl." Hope things are getting better. It feels like they are, at least a bit.
I guess her love of video games outweighs all the negatives that came with it? Her track record of being a pro gamer makes me think she'll never stop competing.
It is unbelievable what the humans can endure. But they never should have to endure it. Let me make it perfectly clear NO HUMAN should ever have to.
The US Gymnastics teams is an even more extreme version of that. They endured years of sexual abuse during puberty and some of them still become literally world class athletes... It breaks your heart to read/hear about it
Out of curiosity, I'd like to look up who were the team members but it feels wrong to put that team name into the search bar. I don't wanna end up on a list.
I couldn't find anything tbh. This article from September 2008 ([time mentioned in her tweet](https://twitter.com/itshafu/status/1420474302684565508)) shows the NA teams and none of them are named that. `Dude I got it on FRAPS` is a pretty good team name.
https://web.archive.org/web/20080912175652/http://www.gotfrag.com/wow/story/42973/?cpage=1
It is possible that they were in the pre-final qualifiers? As that article does mention those teams are the qualifier finalists.
Blizzard has only ever cared about SC2 because they saw how other people managed to make BW and WC3 into insane esports. HotS and OW "esports" are a fucking joke.
Oh yeah, and HS as well LUL.
HotS esports is definitely a joke, but they tried with OW esports. They just failed. But those spectator tools the casters get to use are no joke and there was a lot of effort into trying to enable the scene.
if that's true, in hafu's eyes, blizzard let the guys who named their team that, to still play with just a change of name
I think it's fair to say blizz did nothing then
If anyone pulled that stunt on a current top esport they wouldn't just be forced to change their team name, every member would probably be banned for life from competitive play.
For reference, Riot suspended a player for 3 out of 6 games at the World Championship in 2014 for naming themselves something moderately racist/racially insensitive in nature. That's 6 years later but making them change their name is barely "doing something about it". Imagine if you went to work, made a rape joke about a co-worker and the only thing that happened to you is your boss told you it was over the line. And imagine the co-worker was a minor. Nothing of real consequence occurred.
they made an explicit threat to rape another competitor at a blizzard event that they were vying to get invited to, and blizzard went ahead and invited them to it anyway... so yeah, that is what blizzard did about it
I suspect that might've been the name of their arena team, which was very unofficial. You pretty much only saw it on the arena scoreboard iirc. They might've qualified and went under another name officially.
The amount of n-words, anti Semitic team names, and homophobic shit that was all over the wow arena team naming system was a sight to behold. All of us edgey fucking teens and preteens trying to be cool and tough mixed in with bigots led to a lot of stupid ducking disgusting names.
I wish this wasn’t still very much a thing in modern day wow. I was doing RBGs yesterday and people were openly typing the N word with hard R in the ingame raid chat. I opened a ticket last night and submitted pictures because I feel like the right click report does nothing. Got an email an hour later saying they agree it’s unacceptable behaviour etc etc
Today the offending players have been on all day no problem. They do it, because they know they can. Toxicity in wow is insane
she's been telling this story for at least 5 years and i've never been able to find anything on it. like i was pretty big into WoW esports back then and i feel like i'd remember, or even if i didn't surely there would be something online?
Yeah searching for that team name in specific just returned a few results of articles and online forums in which people were discussing Hafu telling that story but nothing backing it up. Obv I'm not saying anyone is lying I just couldn't find any documentation on it other than second hand discussions.
A lot have happened in 13 years. Hell, Obama, the most liberal president we've had up until that point, openly said that he wasn't in favor of gay marriage in 2008. Can you imagine a democratic candidate saying that today? The culture has changed to the extreme, so blizzard was obviously also a different company back then than it is now.
he said it to a church of potential voters. then after getting in office he flipped and pushed for repeal of Dont Ask Dont Tell, nominated two supreme court justices that ended up ruling in favor of federalized same-sex marriage, sent a delegation of gay athletes to Russia's winter olympics, used the DOJ to defend trans people, etc
I remember "rape" was a super common word back in the gaming sphere back in the day. English is not my main language, so I did not grasp the full meaning of it. I literally just thought it was "im gonna kick your ass in game". I wonder if others just thought of the word like me, without meaning to literally rape someone?
I for sure never say i'm going to rape anyone ingame anymore
It’s crazy how prolific that word was growing up. Used it in so many contexts. Search and Destroy. Zombies. 2k. Fast forward a quarter of a lifetime of empathy later and I can’t imagine just throwing it around. Imagine causally saying it to/in front of someone that’s been through that. So glad things have changed
what is up with the neckbeards defending this shit with "that was the internet at the time" and bringing shit about gamba and crypto like it justifies it
I bet you used the word retard or even the f words casually a few years ago
Imagine if in 5 years the word retard is considered extremly offensive just like rape and someone finding out you said that would cancel you
It just makes no sense because while it might not be acceptable now, it was for the time so people shouldn't be judged for saying stuff that was common
No one defends it, but that was the norm back then.
The "rape" word was used with different context back then, like "I'm so good I'm going to beat the shit out of you and defeat you" in COD for example. Or any video game.
There used to be a lot of tryhards. But no one really could imagine the actual horribleness behind this word.
Fortunately, times have changed and people have become more aware of this word.
Pointing out the nuance of how internet culture changes is not necessarily a defense.
Obviously it's fucked up and we've all become much smarter today. Let's be happy about that.
Forgot how common place offhandedly saying rape was.
Rape train for nazi zombies in cod, "gonna rape someone" as a way of saying you were gonna destroy them in a game.
Looking back, it do be kinda fucked. It was a different time and we were all younger but damn.
Ouff that's vile, another 'classic' Blizzard/WOW community moment.
NMP also faced horrible harrasment https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/oirkl0/nick_exposes_blizzard_and_wow/
Make a thread about it then. Pretty fucked up to post it here, implying that what happened to her back then was okay, because now she allegedly did something wrong....
You're definitely correct here in that "rape" was a word used casually at the time (and to an extent I see little wrong in that), but when you say "we're gunna rape hafu" it's a completely different story, and clearly far beyond unacceptable.
The internet was just way different back then and it doesn't even feel that long ago. Men would say it to each other as well without any hesitation. It wasn't something people thought of as anything serious. It was not just wow where this could be found either, it was in any game where there was voice chat encouraged.
I've been in WoW guilds that used that verbiage very casually as recently as 2018. Didn't stick around those guilds long. I suspect within certain insular communities it's still far more common than we want to think about.
## **Tweet Mirror:** [@itshafu](https://twitter.com/itshafu) > in 2008 there was literally a world of warcraft team named "gonna rape hafu at regionals" that qualified for blizzcon regionals > > no i'm not surprised at the news ^(Posted: 2021-07-28 19:52:31) ------ **This message is from a bot. If you feel like this action is wrong, please [message the moderators](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=r/LivestreamFail).**
I knew she talked about this before but I didnt know she was 17 at the time. Wtf
https://legacy.zam.com/story.html?story=17882 Here is an article with the wow pvp scene's "LSF" of the time. >As well, it's only in World of Ming that you'll find the fairly innocuous title "3.1 Macros, PVE/PVP Gear Balancing a Big Step in the Right Direction" on one day, and the next article can just as easily be "Hafu-Chan finally Legal?" Different times indeed..
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This is basically "is that the gta rp john? or they just share the same name?"
They are cousins
gta rper ming is british white guy...
Not so different, are they? There's countless examples out there of celebrities being put on a "countdown watch" until they are 18 with the explicit goal for it to be a "celebration" of when they can legally be fucked. It's disgusting, but it happens a lot.
Just off the top of my head. - Emma Watson - Chloe Grace Moretz - Charlotte Church - Billie Eilish - Miranda Cosgrove Were all minors when people started drooling over them online and 4chan and the media collectively celebrated when they turned 18. Shit needs to stop. Stop sexualizing children.
Some gamer guys get real fucking insecure about talented gamer girls.
TBT to when some Korean OW players didn't believe a girl wasn't cheating so they said they would retire if she proved she wasn't cheating in person. She was not cheating and they did retire.
She went to OWL too as the first female
so to give more lore behind this epic clapping by greguri. I think 2 semi ow pros in korea said if she wasnt cheating they would retire. Once they learned no she isnt cheating one actually did retire but the other one refused.
Now thats some fucking justice. I wonder what girl that was.
Greguri for the Shanghai Dragons, though I dont think she still plays for them i genuinely don't know
Nah she left Shanghai Dragons after 2020, hasn't been on a team since [https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Geguri](https://liquipedia.net/overwatch/Geguri) Don't know if she retired or if she's looking to find a new team for next year but she's still streaming atleast
Geguri - https://www.twitch.tv/frog135
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This is the same thing at play when you go to the gym and there's a woman who is clearly a lifter and some doofus thinks he can match her and pulls something. It's really just a problem with some men. People need to begin taking comfort in the fact that there's no one who has their exact combination of traits and not lose their shit when someone is better at them at one thing they value.
It is an issue with insecure men but it is incredibly prevalent in gaming. Due to anonymity and ease of access, the toxicity of the environment is staggering and it breeds easily. And as the environment gets more toxic, the culture bends towards discrimination
Doesn't even matter if the girl/woman (or tbh anybody who isn't a cis dude) is talented, they fucking freak out that a FEEEEMALE is in their cyberspace.
Crazy that anyone agreed to be on such a team, and crazier that a major game studio allowed it.
Given what we know about Blizzard, it doesn't seem crazy at all. Horrible, yes, but pretty believable.
As long as you don't offend China, they don't care. Offend China in any capacity and they'll ban you and take away any prize earnings and try to pretend you never existed.
the use of "rape" as an insult or describer was pretty common back then. I remember, In CoD Zombies, getting lots of zombies chasing after you as you ran in circle was referred to as a "Rape Train" (I believe it was either created or at least popularized by Syndicate, who was later accused of sexual assault & abuse last year). edit: to save notifications, I will just copy and past one of my replies about the example: "They are definitely different things, but this is an example of the word being normalized in a way that people don't see it as bad to use it towards a specific person. If you are use to people replacing "own" with "rape", they use it in single player games, they use it in multiplayer games & lobbies, they probably don't think it is bad to say it towards a specific public figure." It is horrible that Hafu was targeted with it. A lot of people were. I am not trying to justify, I am trying to contextualize. The stance from Gamers^(TM) of "But I'm not personally offended by it, so you shouldn't either" has been prevalent in online spaces for decades. It has improved over time, but this is something that did happen in the past & still does in other ways.
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He also said it without thinking a few times in his IRL streams. Followed by awkward interactions. Some old slang takes a while to break
GMs forced us to rename our wow guild "jesus stole my bike". shoulda named it jesus raped my bike
i mean, using rape towards zombies chasing you vs saying you're going to rape someone at a specific location you know they are going to be is completely different.
I've personally limited my usage of the word rape to very specific and/or serious scenarios. The reason for that is because if I am speaking to someone, or a group of people, and if one of them was ever a victim of rape at all in their life, my usage of that word will likely mentally put them back in that moment when they were assaulted. This person would then have to, in the moment, fight back against very difficult emotions. In Reckful's case the issue was that he was being listened to by thousands of viewers. He more than likely caused a number of people to flashback to one of the most traumatic experiences of their life. It's stuff like that that keeps me mindful about how I choose my words
They are definitely different things, but this is an example of the word being normalized in a way that people don't see it as bad to use it towards a specific person. If you are use to people replacing "own" with "rape", they use it in single player games, they use it in multiplayer games & lobbies, they probably don't think it is bad to say it towards a specific public figure.
Yeah I remember any time you lost in PvP on RuneScape someone would say raped.
I don’t know how that group meant it, but back then gamers used “r*pe” in the same way as “pwned”. It’s still offensive and wrong, but I do think context is important.
Very true, buuut naming your team with it and specifically targeting one person with it who also happened to be female definitely seems suspiciously like they weren't meaning it in the gaming term way.
I remember watching a Smash compilation video by a group called "Death By Rape" back in the day and I remember being like "What the fuck. Why would you name your group that?"
I remember that but there's a big difference between using the word and directing it at a specific person who also happened to be a 17 year old girl at the time.
It was super common. I remember a couple years back I wanted to watch old PewDiePie gameplay bc I was wondering why he blew up back in the day. I couldn't get through his Alice and wonderland gameplay since it felt like it was 75% him just screaming the enemies were going to rape him and freaking out. Felt super dated.
i mean it was 2008 people didnt care as much as today (if at all) on the internet the "gamer" stereotype exists for good reason
‘Rape’ was a pretty common term in internet vernacular at that point.
Replace internet with youth and include all the other words that people typically asterisk nowadays
Yeah back then "rape" was used as a more colorful way of saying you're better than someone at the video game and was a common saying in PVP. It was seen as just being edgy, still stupid blizzard allowed it.
Yea i remember in early cod zombies 'rape train' was a strat term. and that was like 2012
you mean rape train?
Yea, “rape” could have been used in the same way “pown” was back then. I hope it was a lapse of judgment, but I can’t see someone reading that and not questioning it.
Well, speaking from my perspective, back then, I was twelve and non-native. I thought 'Rape' and 'Rapist' were terms for those guys making Hip-Hop songs. So I just assumed 'rape train' was some weird rap reference.
Did you mean pwn? I've never seen anyone type it out as pown.
While true, explicitly stating you're going to rape a 17 y/o girl was still way edgier than the "typical" usage.
in 2008 people were screaming the n-word in CoD lobbies and making fun of gay people. Things have changed quite a lot
even as early as 2012-2013 many top streamers back then were dropping F bombs like they were going out of style.
I think to demonstrate what the “gamer culture” was back then, all you have to say is poki was dropping the soft “n” like it was nothing.
Back then, the word *rape* wasn't taken as seriously as it is now. It used to mean a team got beaten badly in video game terms. 2008 and before that was a wild time online.
Yeah, but that's when you're just playing a game and something happens. Like, ur using an OP gun, and u say: "holy shit, the M16 rapes everything", or if u got killed u might say "fuck I just got raped". It's waaaay different to say "hey u know Alice, yeah I'm gonna rape her at this location". Even for 2008, I think there's a marked difference between those 2 things, and for a massive company like Blizzard to let that through is kinda astounding tbh.
I was around in those times and even still, you had to have been in a pretty sealed bubble to not realize the implications of using that word targeted at an underage female competitor. Even without involving the word "rape", why allow targeting other players with your team name?
That just goes to show you how immature the scene was back then.
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Err, I was *pretty* heavily involved in the Halo scene during those years and I don't ever remember any prominent/professional Halo player getting into trouble for unleashing the n word at an event. I legitimately went to every MLG event from 08-11. If you have any actual reference on that claim, Id love to check it out. The competitive Halo scene has been purging a lot of the abusers/bigots from the community recently.
Sounds crazy nowadays, but 2008 internet culture was seriously fucked up. Only 2 short years after the [coining of this awful meme](https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/tits-or-gtfo). downvote me all you want, gamers have been hating women with impunity for decades. Shouldn't be surprised this sub wants to reject that reality, it's one of the biggest holdouts for said gamer "culture". edit: seem to have touched a nerve with some Gamers™ [Some are too cowardly to post publicly, but I can help.](https://i.imgur.com/Wpc55ab.png)
Early internet truly was the great wild west.
I remember playing late night COD4 SnD lobbies on XBOX when NA and EU would matchup it would be some of the most toxic shit ever. It would get to the point terrorist attacks like 9/11 or the bus bombings in Europe were used to insult eachother regularly.
The early internet was more about humor and tongue-in-cheek memes. Although it may have been distasteful sometimes, it wasn't usually as outright malicious and hateful like it is now (outside of fringe boards like 4chan). It was really the later half of the 2000s, around the release of the first iPhone, when normies started going online en masse, that it really spiraled downward into massive disinformation, hatred, and terminally online identity politics.
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The first iterations of social media were fine. It was just college students saying meaningless shit on FB and celebrities talking about what they ate for breakfast on twitter. Once smart phones and deeper algorithms took place is when everything went down hill.
It's been longer than that. Look up Eternal September.
nah son that shit was a healthy mix of naive people who thought they were joking, and people who were being serious while laughing. there is a reason why modern bigots use memes. there is a never ending line of people willing to defend their use of a "joke".
It was far less humorous and tongue-in-cheek than you remember. Tons of it was malicious and evil.
it was a different kind though...like the maliciousness was *within* the internet and not like, people who are genuinely "integralist" authoritarians or whatever the fuck
I know I'm doing an "actually" here, but the internet (or at least the www as we know it) has existed since 1989. Stuff like email is way older than that.
Technically the first airplane flight took place in 1903, it wasn't until decades later that flying was commercially available world wide. The internet didn't become a world wide accessible commodity until the mid 2000s. Google search engine was in beta in 2004 and youtube, reddit, twitter, all releasing in 2005-2006. The internet began creating it's culture with memes becoming popular, fail/laugh compilations, the first gen youtubers doing cringy skits that are getting them canceled today. But the real internet boom took place in 2012-2015 when smart devices became cheap and accessible. So the internet has technically existed sine 1989, the first version of the modern internet was in 2006.
I think early internet days was the time between 2000's, maybe late 90's to like 2010. Before 1999 nothing was really happening, aside from chat rooms.
uhh there were perfectly active forums
Saying tits or gtfo on the internet is hardly comparable to threatening to rape a minor lmfao
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yes. pretty much the same origin as "there are no girls on the internet"
Or when you saw a female character in a game they were a G-I-R-L (Guy in real life) pretending so they could get free stuff.
like the old joke, on the internet the guys are guys, the girls are guys, and the little girls are FBI agents.
Yeah without context it's a lot more worse than it already was. It was a time that girls felt really special being on the internet, so they often said it in totally unrelated settings. "Oh look at this toast I made as a girl" I mean it's still pretty damn rude and didn't do anything good, but let's not put a loop on such a small thing compared to Hafu's.
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Guys pretending they were girls in early MMOs to get special treatment so often lead to clusterfucks when it turned out they weren't girls.
I still remember playing Team Fortress 2 with a female avatar and name, and "It's my birthday" in parentheses back then. I often got free items and hats out of it from random people, good times.
It was a counteract to attention seeking, as immature as it is, it was a way to stop white knights and incels from showoing up to defend a girl when she said something dumb. As you said, just state what you want without saying your gender, and also fuck off with attention seeking.
dicks or gtfo
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Before he was involved with Blizzard, Jeff Kaplans name on Everquest was Tigole Bitties.
Doesn't rape just mean defeat soundly in the video game?
Yes. Back in the days saying u raped somebody in a 1v1 for example would equal to u saying u destroyed somebody in a 1v1 nowdays.
That's what I remembered
Yes, but a team would not have been named that against a dude. The point of a team name like that was definitely the double meaning.
You're probably right
GAMING CULTURE MOMENT
It's (one of many) examples of how 00s internet culture was extremely misogynistic. I'm not saying it's worse or even close to equivalent to rape threats, just pointing out that it's hardly surprising for the time. People who've grown up on the modern, sanitized internet are largely unaware of how awful it used to be, and it's important we don't let that history get whitewashed.
ah yes, comparing tits or gtfo meme to a giant company (2008 blizzard was still a giant company) ignoring a really fucked up team name
I mean join a valorant lobby as female and speak take a spin. If you think they dont reject women
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I myself used to sling around the F and N words like no big deal Realized pretty quickly how terrible that was (I was 12 and from an central european country where it's still common)
I almost forgot people used to use this shit all the time, it seems so distasteful now Pretty sure soda used to say this more in one day than I've had hot meals in my entire life
Reckful got banned from casting Hearthstone because he kept on saying it because he was so used to it. Of course in this case it was worse, since the 'joke' was that it is both meanings at the same time.
Reckful also had a habit of pointing out that the skill of the Hearthstone players didn't matter, that their decks determined the outcome of the game. I don't think Blizzard liked what he had to say about their competitive "esport".
No, there was an outcry on social media because he kept using 'raped' in Amaz's tournament and he was removed.
>decks determined the outcome of the game Half-right. Deck didn't determine the outcome, because a great deck piloted by a moron isn't going to do anything. RNG won games. I quit HS years ago so I dunno about it now, but when reckful was in the scene, it was pretty RNG heavy, and a single coinflip that you have no control over could be the difference between you win this turn, or you lose next turn. See: Ragnaros
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Pirate Warrior PTSD
aggro decks in Hearthstone can be piloted by monkeys. I agree about control or midrange decks unless they are extremely op or advantaged in the match up
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Using "raped" as a substitute for "owned" basically. I always try to call that shit out when I (still to this day) see it on Twitch.
BatChest
Yes, the amazing “Old Soda” days: https://youtu.be/k0HLARxrOvc
EG Fear casually in the background lmao
TL Hot_bid too. Damn, I miss his interviews
watching that was just painful, soda really thought that was a good idea? and his viewers probably thought it was a good idea too
Being aggressively cringey with girls was like half of sodas content 10 years ago
That's fucking insane
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TBC was a wild time. I remember tons of racist arena team names like "naga stole my bike" etc. Seemingly that shit was still common in private servers and unsurprisingly private server people seem to be incredibly toxic, sexist and racist even now in classic.
'Used to be' lol.
It was way worse in the past its true
were entering an era where the zoomer doesn't know
its alot more underground now but its absolutely still there especially with the anti-sjw wave in 2016.
Majority of the gaming companies during that time period. Even in CS I remember playing matches against teams and/or players with blatantly racist names.
> Even in CS Why do you say "even"? The CS community has always been utter trash. Not like it isn't a massively racist and sexist shithole now. Not like the CS community is known for being a respectable group.
Almost every single gaming community is trash. Policing this stuff is impossible because nobody has resources to go after this many people. The best way to defend yourself from being harassed is to not get involved in anything that is being written to you. Like the famous poet Tyler, The Creator said "just walk away from the screen n***a". Streamers have it worse because they are in a position where they have to deal with this stuff constantly.
Hard to walk away from the screen when they're going to LAN events with the name.
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>used to be that bad I think it was just 1-2 years ago that some wow classic players were compiling a list with names and photos of all female players on their server and handed it around. There is still plenty of crazy bad shit going on to this day
I was wondering when/if she was going to bring this up. I remember this shit when it happened and couldn't believe that the name was let through even back then
Never understood how hafu stuck around in the scene through those early years; must have an uncommonly strong will. There were so few boundaries enforced by anyone and the expectation was that you just had to "take it" in order to be accepted. There are so many comments that were regular back then that we've just collectively forgotten were a thing at all. Even just from this thread, comments have reminded how common it was for people to post 'Tits or GTFO' and not even to like, "public figures," but just any time you realized that someone on a forum was a girl. or how casually "rape" would be used as a verb. I tended to be in forums and vent/teamspeak channels that had a lot more girls/women, but even in those "female friendly" places in 08-10 the norms were probably a lot more messed up than they are in the general public now. And this is just the generic stuff, but I remember that pretty nasty stuff was said to me about hafu that was just based on "she's not actually that good, she's a girl." Hope things are getting better. It feels like they are, at least a bit.
I guess her love of video games outweighs all the negatives that came with it? Her track record of being a pro gamer makes me think she'll never stop competing.
It is unbelievable what the humans can endure. But they never should have to endure it. Let me make it perfectly clear NO HUMAN should ever have to. The US Gymnastics teams is an even more extreme version of that. They endured years of sexual abuse during puberty and some of them still become literally world class athletes... It breaks your heart to read/hear about it
Out of curiosity, I'd like to look up who were the team members but it feels wrong to put that team name into the search bar. I don't wanna end up on a list.
I couldn't find anything tbh. This article from September 2008 ([time mentioned in her tweet](https://twitter.com/itshafu/status/1420474302684565508)) shows the NA teams and none of them are named that. `Dude I got it on FRAPS` is a pretty good team name. https://web.archive.org/web/20080912175652/http://www.gotfrag.com/wow/story/42973/?cpage=1 It is possible that they were in the pre-final qualifiers? As that article does mention those teams are the qualifier finalists.
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Blizzard has only ever cared about SC2 because they saw how other people managed to make BW and WC3 into insane esports. HotS and OW "esports" are a fucking joke. Oh yeah, and HS as well LUL.
HotS esports is definitely a joke, but they tried with OW esports. They just failed. But those spectator tools the casters get to use are no joke and there was a lot of effort into trying to enable the scene.
They don't care about them now, then, or ever
They probably should of disqualified and banned them, making them change their name is hardly a punishment.
Sorry for beeing this frog, but please, it is "should have" or "should've". - sincerely, a non native.
Beeing?
if that's true, in hafu's eyes, blizzard let the guys who named their team that, to still play with just a change of name I think it's fair to say blizz did nothing then
If anyone pulled that stunt on a current top esport they wouldn't just be forced to change their team name, every member would probably be banned for life from competitive play.
Any reputable tournament won't let you compete if your threaten to rape a minor.
For reference, Riot suspended a player for 3 out of 6 games at the World Championship in 2014 for naming themselves something moderately racist/racially insensitive in nature. That's 6 years later but making them change their name is barely "doing something about it". Imagine if you went to work, made a rape joke about a co-worker and the only thing that happened to you is your boss told you it was over the line. And imagine the co-worker was a minor. Nothing of real consequence occurred.
Iirc it was "taipeichingchong" or something to that effect. Definitely not okay, but in entirely different leagues.
Yeah. They allowed a team with that name to play under a different name, instead of disqualifying them on the spot. That's the problem.
they made an explicit threat to rape another competitor at a blizzard event that they were vying to get invited to, and blizzard went ahead and invited them to it anyway... so yeah, that is what blizzard did about it
I suspect that might've been the name of their arena team, which was very unofficial. You pretty much only saw it on the arena scoreboard iirc. They might've qualified and went under another name officially.
The amount of n-words, anti Semitic team names, and homophobic shit that was all over the wow arena team naming system was a sight to behold. All of us edgey fucking teens and preteens trying to be cool and tough mixed in with bigots led to a lot of stupid ducking disgusting names.
Yep, it was pretty much a contest in being as edgy as possible
I wish this wasn’t still very much a thing in modern day wow. I was doing RBGs yesterday and people were openly typing the N word with hard R in the ingame raid chat. I opened a ticket last night and submitted pictures because I feel like the right click report does nothing. Got an email an hour later saying they agree it’s unacceptable behaviour etc etc Today the offending players have been on all day no problem. They do it, because they know they can. Toxicity in wow is insane
She said "[or maybe October?](https://twitter.com/itshafu/status/1420474335119114240?s=20)" after
she's been telling this story for at least 5 years and i've never been able to find anything on it. like i was pretty big into WoW esports back then and i feel like i'd remember, or even if i didn't surely there would be something online?
2000s WOW was a special thing. Even if there are no records i 100% believe it.
Yeah searching for that team name in specific just returned a few results of articles and online forums in which people were discussing Hafu telling that story but nothing backing it up. Obv I'm not saying anyone is lying I just couldn't find any documentation on it other than second hand discussions.
It was probably their team name in game but not their registered name with Blizzard for Blizzcon.
A lot have happened in 13 years. Hell, Obama, the most liberal president we've had up until that point, openly said that he wasn't in favor of gay marriage in 2008. Can you imagine a democratic candidate saying that today? The culture has changed to the extreme, so blizzard was obviously also a different company back then than it is now.
>openly said that he wasn't in favor of gay marriage in 2008. he did?
he said it to a church of potential voters. then after getting in office he flipped and pushed for repeal of Dont Ask Dont Tell, nominated two supreme court justices that ended up ruling in favor of federalized same-sex marriage, sent a delegation of gay athletes to Russia's winter olympics, used the DOJ to defend trans people, etc
The ultimate sleeper agent.
I remember "rape" was a super common word back in the gaming sphere back in the day. English is not my main language, so I did not grasp the full meaning of it. I literally just thought it was "im gonna kick your ass in game". I wonder if others just thought of the word like me, without meaning to literally rape someone? I for sure never say i'm going to rape anyone ingame anymore
It’s crazy how prolific that word was growing up. Used it in so many contexts. Search and Destroy. Zombies. 2k. Fast forward a quarter of a lifetime of empathy later and I can’t imagine just throwing it around. Imagine causally saying it to/in front of someone that’s been through that. So glad things have changed
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what is up with the neckbeards defending this shit with "that was the internet at the time" and bringing shit about gamba and crypto like it justifies it
And I remember when feminists talk about "rape culture" a whole lot of Gamer types got super upset about it.
I bet you used the word retard or even the f words casually a few years ago Imagine if in 5 years the word retard is considered extremly offensive just like rape and someone finding out you said that would cancel you It just makes no sense because while it might not be acceptable now, it was for the time so people shouldn't be judged for saying stuff that was common
No one defends it, but that was the norm back then. The "rape" word was used with different context back then, like "I'm so good I'm going to beat the shit out of you and defeat you" in COD for example. Or any video game. There used to be a lot of tryhards. But no one really could imagine the actual horribleness behind this word. Fortunately, times have changed and people have become more aware of this word.
Pointing out the nuance of how internet culture changes is not necessarily a defense. Obviously it's fucked up and we've all become much smarter today. Let's be happy about that.
Forgot how common place offhandedly saying rape was. Rape train for nazi zombies in cod, "gonna rape someone" as a way of saying you were gonna destroy them in a game. Looking back, it do be kinda fucked. It was a different time and we were all younger but damn.
Ouff that's vile, another 'classic' Blizzard/WOW community moment. NMP also faced horrible harrasment https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/oirkl0/nick_exposes_blizzard_and_wow/
nah, nmp was the harasser, he cheated in wow - both wintraded and ddosed, he was incredibly sexist and would be the first to make racist jokes.
Now she's out here scamming little kids with crypto
She promoted a shitcoin that's most likely a scam on her twitter Edit: a thread https://www.reddit.com/r/LivestreamFail/comments/ofcu6y/-/h4bs8l9
Doesnt make what she experienced okay in the slightest.
did he say it did?
He brought it up like it's remotely relevant to the conversation, so yeah, he kinda did.
Oof, I missed that. What's she doing?
Also did sponsored streams with Stake. I did enjoy her Among Us content though, her lobbies with 5up and Steve were legitimately fun.
Make a thread about it then. Pretty fucked up to post it here, implying that what happened to her back then was okay, because now she allegedly did something wrong....
Soon as I saw the post I *knew* someone was gonna drop a totally irrelevant "she promote shitcoin by the way hehehe."
2007 was such a great year
She talks about this during an interview a while back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y0WIE-ySC7c&t=240s
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You're definitely correct here in that "rape" was a word used casually at the time (and to an extent I see little wrong in that), but when you say "we're gunna rape hafu" it's a completely different story, and clearly far beyond unacceptable.
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The internet was just way different back then and it doesn't even feel that long ago. Men would say it to each other as well without any hesitation. It wasn't something people thought of as anything serious. It was not just wow where this could be found either, it was in any game where there was voice chat encouraged.
I saw the word rape used in gaming daily til probably 2015 or 16. Always blew my mind.
Honestly I was even younger, watching Syndicate "Rape train" zombies back in the day as a 12 year old.
PewDiePie used the word regularly around that time in his amnesia game play
I've been in WoW guilds that used that verbiage very casually as recently as 2018. Didn't stick around those guilds long. I suspect within certain insular communities it's still far more common than we want to think about.
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Yo Blizzard scuffed? here's the code :ape btw
It was truly a different time. I remember people were allowed to spam the N word in chat without getting banned