I Blog With My Face

You might know of a professional gamer known as Destiny. Steven Bonnell has about 27k followers on Twitter, and a very active presence in several Reddit communities, as well as a popular website. He truly is a professional gamer, and by that, I mean he makes a living through streaming, advertisements, endorsements, and gets to play video games all day.

Which is good, actually. We need more professional gamers if we want to be treated more seriously as a culture. But professional shouldn’t just mean that you’re able to make a living from it. Like in “real” or perhaps “mundane” sports, if we’re going to hold these people up as examples, we need to actually hold them to a higher standard than your typical flamer, troll, griefer, or 12 year old boy in a 23 year old’s body.

About 3 months ago, a female fan of his going by the handle “Bluetea”, was exposed to a few of Destiny’s fans. He had shared naked pictures of his with two of his friends.

This was uncool.

In retaliation, she gained access to his Twitter account and shared pictures of his dick to all of his followers.

This was also uncool.

But here’s where the real crux of my problem: In response to the beginning of this drama, what Cloud Nine Labs, one of Destiny’s major sponsors and the designers of his website said, was largely “That’s just Destiny being Destiny.”

“The principals at Cloud Nine Labs, including myself, remain in support of Stevens PR decisions. Furthermore, we encourage his brutal honesty, snide remarks, controversial comments/subjects, humor, etc. as it brings a uniquely dynamic and highly entertaining element to the streaming experience. His strong personality is what makes him Destiny – one of the most successful SC2 streamers of all time. Other SC2 personalities should take a cue from Mr. Bonnell because the SC2 pro circuit is not just “gaming”. It has become a powerful industry that can be monetized by establishing a strong, widely talked about brand which Steven has managed to accomplish.

In short: stop bitching, change your tampons and up your game”

Contexual language aside, this is really disappointing to me. Not in a sexist way (though it is) and not in a greedy sort of way (it’s that too). It’s disappointing is that this is what we want our role models to be. Snide, arrogant, assholish, and proud.

While admitting that we’ve got a way to go, I’ll also point out that in mundane sports, we don’t accept this behavior. Manny Ramirez, OJ Mayo, and even Mike Tyson aren’t people who we hold up for the next generation to be.

We should be forgiving of flaws of character. We should understand that people have lapses, and people are jerks from time to time. I talk about people behind their backs, I gossip, I carry opinions of people that are less than favorable. You do too. We all do. But we don’t encourage that sort of behavior, and we shouldn’t. It’s certainly not the kind of thing we should hold as an ideal.

So what do you think? Are we hopelessly doomed to being assholes forever. or can we step up our own games? Lemme know.