Little Jimmy Smith is a good kid, he gets decent grades in school, does all of his chores when asked, eats all of his vegetables at dinner and is a generally a well likable 12 year old. This all changes the minute little Jimmy is allowed his nightly time on Xbox Live. For when little timid Jimmy becomes xXTeeBaggurXx all of that goes out the window. Little Jimmy is now a racist, sexist, deep throating mic abusing, singing, horrible human being that all of us hate to have on our teams. Most of these annoying attributes can be handled with a simple mute, but the one that I hate and wish I could kill people over the interweb for is…

RACISM

Most of the annoying behaviors that one can experience over Live are forgivable. To me, racism is not one of those. Luckily most of the games that are so prevalent on Live or on PSN have built in mute. When someone annoys me I can just mute them. However when someone starts saying racist things, I escalate it.

Microsoft was nice enough to include a feedback and an ‘avoid a player’ system in its architecture for people like me to use. As soon as I hear some ignorant person rattleing off the N-word or any other racial slur, I leave the game and provide negative feedback. Hopefully enough people out there are doing the same thing so we can potentially weed some of these undesirables out of what should be a positive experience.

I am not an uptight person, nor a person of any discernable cultural background. I am a mutt of the human race who identifies himself as a gamer. With that being said, I grew up hearing the N-word used to describe people and have seen firsthand how much it can hurt someone being called that. I know that old saying that “words can never hurt me” is complete bullshit, wars are started over words.

To help remedy this and avoid all potential upset, I try to live by one simple rule when it comes to online activity, if I would be embarassed to have my mom read it or hear it, then I should probably edit it. Generally I play all online games without my headset unless I am playing with buddies. Not only is it a good way to for me to keep my composure, but also helps with keeping my concentration in the game, where it should be, not on little racist turds that wouldn’t have the balls to say that to someone in real life.

While I’m on the topic, as a soon to be parent, I know that my kids are going to hate me for not letting them play games that aren’t in their age group. Where are the parents when their kid is online? Where are they when the kid wants to get an M rated game? I guess this all would be a non-issue if parents did their job a little better. I know for a fact that if I ever hear my child utter the N-word, he’s going to have to call Uncle Demetrius and explain himself.