Sunday, September 30th, 2007
Issue: 42   Editor: MadamNyxxie


Racism within Bootleggers MikaVerLeth
Racism, something everyone is to encounter sometime in his/her life and something that is nasty, mean and even pathetic. People that discriminate or judge people by sex, religion or whatever prejudged reason are low. Yet we live in a world where those kind of people are and we have to cope with them. But in games, places where the real life world seems far away, we aren't quite used to encountering racism. And even if it's encountered it is dealt with.

Here, in the world of Bootleggers racism is against the ToS. To quote the ToS in this:

Quote:
You agree to not use the Service to:
1. Upload, post, email, transmit or otherwise make available any Content that is unlawful, harmful, threatening, abusive, harassing, tortuous, defamatory, vulgar, obscene, libelous, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, or racially, ethnically or otherwise objectionable. When a user is reported doing so, appropriate measures will be taken. Verbally abusing players and staff is considered poor etiquette and measures can be taken without notice or explanation.


This also includes, but of course is not limited to, racism.

Yet, we do encounter racism within Bootleggers. And quite frankly it's not so hard to pick your target. Everyone knows the 'Proud to be' pictures that can be encountered in many player profiles. Having one of these pictures on your profile could make you a target of racism. The only response towards this kind of thing is creating a Help Desk ticket: Report ToS Violation. Any other way of responding would only do more harm then good. Most of the time at least.

This week, something happened regarding racism. Some people decided to make a stand against it and literally shot some people that had discriminated them. I am speaking of the kills made by MortaL. Using a total of 419,889 bullets he killed 14 players, two Legendary Dons, one Respectable Don, nine Dons, one Legendary Godfather and one Respectable Boss. Most were said to have discriminated Palestinians in the past and were killed for doing so. MortaL's profile referred to MeCaRbInE AKA CaRbInEs, former official recruiter of TRF and Evo, the player that had arranged the shootings.

His profile explained about the shootings saying: “People who died today are the people that made the racist hitlists of me and other Palestinians, their dupes and some of their friends.” Thereby proving his point that discrimination is unacceptable. It turned out that his real life brother, LoGiC, had been threatened because of his nationality, Palestinian. LoGiC also kindly gave me information regarding the event. Allowing me to write this article. “My past accounts were only shot because of where I'm from,” said LoGiC “I came back with LoGiC and went underground, adding to my profile that I was Italian because my shooters were still looking for me, and killing every crewless Palestinian with the pic 'Proud to be Palestinian' on his profile. I was hoping I deliver my message before my LoGiC account dies. Unfortunately, I was a victim during M.I.N.D wipe-out, losing 220K bullets and some cash in federal. Then my brother, CaRbInEs told me he'll carry on the shootings, because I had to quit and leave to California for college.”
The threatening of his brother became CaRbInE's motivation to rank and also to arrange the death of the people responsible for discriminating.

Every action calls for a reaction. And of course also this action got a response from players. And these were to say, divided. However most of the posted replies to the action were positive it was certain there were also negative responses. The biggest surprise for me was to find a player who admitted to know some of the killed in real life but agreed with the action. This proves, again, that racism is something to be fought by everyone regardless of nationality.

And then to think that this might be only one case of which there may be many. It was about Palestinians this time. Next my be the Dutch, British or even American players. Players that are simply proud of their nationality and are not afraid to show it on their profiles by using pictures. Let us learn from this for it may never happen again.

Racism and discrimination are wrong, no matter what the reasons are. This is a game, a place for people to relax and maybe even to forget some of their real life problems. Don't be the person that brings some of that real life hassle to this game. We all play this game, regardless of nationality, we are all equal. Let us stay that way and all enjoy this game because it is not meant for anything else.