My polycule recently got into Sea of Thieves!

I've had this game for years, but I never really played it, because it's much more fun with friends. Well, now I have friends to play it with. I've already got a sloop and a brigantine! But since I live in Australia and My polycule are American, I'm often alone in the afternoon, wanting to play but having no friends online.

So I hopped onto the Sea of Thieves discord. Now, My first experience on this discord was a lot of fun and very educational, but not very cozy. Three boys joined the lobby and acted like, well, boys. One of them made jokes about "oh my god it's a gamer girl!", while another put on a rural English accent and told a lot of questionable jokes. That particular boy persuaded us to sail for the Reapers (the player-killing faction), and attack another ship of players. We lost miserably, and then he went to bed for the night. Sigh... boys. My ship is covered in damage now. And then we sailed right into the middle of a ghost armada!

The next day was a lot more chill. I saw someone in LFG chat say they were getting back into the game, so I invited them aboard My sloop. When they arrived.. they sounded like a woman! They asked if I was a woman. I explained that I'm nonbinary trans, and we shared a bit of mutual grieving over the state of the man community. Then we set sail and found a bunch of treasure!

The day after that, I didn't go to the Sea of Thieves discord, or any other LFG group. I played with My new friend. She's nice, and we understand each other, and we have fun doing the same sorts of things. We don't need the pub lobbies anymore. We'd rather play with each other, than put up with boys doing boy things.

I think I know why there's this culture that video games and tabletop games are a "boy thing", and all the public spaces are full of boys. I noticed the same thing years ago when I ran a tabletop RPG for a bunch of girls from the quadball club. It's that the boys who need to go to these LFG spaces aren't very good at making friends, and women don't want to be around them. They'd rather just play with friends.

There are millions of "gamer girls" out there. And they're having a great time playing with their friends.

Unfortunately, the man community has a genuine problem with women. And it's not women's job to fix that problem, it's the man community's job. The man community needs to elevate good role models who can teach young men good values and behaviour. And right now it's not doing that very much.

I want to have fun playing video games, I don't want to fix the man community's problems. I didn't have a bad time playing with those boys, I just prefer a chiller environment.

I am sorry, but I disagree. In my ~40 years old of life, I've met enough women online who are toxic, extremally rude/swearing, highly sexist, too, and many nice or awesome men who are polite, gentle, and friendly, and vice versa.

Please don't be sexist, too. People are different, and there's a whole infinite world out there.
What I would recommend is changing your environment, and please do consider travelling, too!

No time to bend
We had space in the end...

~ Asymmetry - Wayside (if interested, the band has a woman on strings)

Beep boop

I'm not talking about sex. I'm talking about a community and culture. The good people in the man community aren't the man community's thought leaders. The thought leaders in the man community are people like Elon Musk.

@artwork I just read a detailed report from @Grail about gaming experience and it seems like a troll move to comment an sexist experience with an accuse of sexism. the "recommending" on top of that seems intrusive and goin with mansplaining vibes since I didn't read that @Grail asked for advice

@tuell @artwork @Grail@multiverse.soulism.net I’ve never even posted on mastodon except once to speak to Tim Berners-Lee lol. Blocking you, bot!

I am not sure who was talking about sex, but not me. I was talking about people.

Wait, who are you?

@Grail@multiverse.soulism.net oh they must have tried to tag you.

Mastodon is weird. You sent Me a ping and didn't realise I was here, that's strange. I like getting replies from Mastodon users, but the way y'all talk is strange sometimes.

@Grail@multiverse.soulism.net I literally have nothing to do with you you fucking asshole. You’re clearly the dude that person tried to ping, now stop dragging me into your gay drama. I’m blocking you.

I relate so much.

I play scp secret lab mainly for how goofy the community is, sometimes half the lobby just ignores the game and forms a cult where they collect flashlights or similar.

But just yesterday a woman talked on voice chat and it was bothering how far these people went. This has been happening semi-regularly too.

I get that the "joke" is meant to be ironic, but it stops being ironic after they repeat it 15 times in 30 seconds.

I hate gamergate culture. Just ruins anything whimsy and fun.

Secret Lab was great fun before My transition. One day I'm gonna introduce My polycule to that game, and I hope it isn't horrible!

@Grail sry, just found your answer with the official mastodon app. my usual app doesnt show it...what app do u use? it seems its somehow connected via activitypub but not really working together?

I use Voyager.

@Grail I guess I created some weird chaos here I'm sry. its really weird. I can see the comments only in mastodon and if I use my sh.it.works acc which would be better to handle that lemmy format, I can't see the comments. and then I pinged the wrong grail and it seems this person is a troll. any way thx for the story time