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In the last few days, there& #39;s been a trend of kids photoshopping me into video games. It& #39;s uncomfortable for me: I& #39;d prefer it wasn& #39;t a thing. But I know it& #39;s meant in good faith, it& #39;s likely legal under fair use, and I made similar things when I was young. Here& #39;s the odd thing:
I was actually planning to do a video in Minecraft a couple of months ago. It would have been about publicity stunts, media fact-checking, and how a good story can often have a great impact even if it& #39;s not true.
The video failed because of the players.
The video failed because of the players.
The Minecraft world in question was set up by a charity — I won& #39;t name them for obvious reasons. So I got a copy of Minecraft, set a screen recorder going, and joined the server.
15 seconds after I connected, the first racial slur appeared in the server chat.
15 seconds after I connected, the first racial slur appeared in the server chat.
I spent about 45 minutes connected, and I saw every stereotype about unsupervised kids on video games, every cliché about what happens when you give anonymity and an audience to people with undeveloped empathy.
All on this charity& #39;s server, which they claimed was "moderated".
All on this charity& #39;s server, which they claimed was "moderated".
I can& #39;t ignore that. I can& #39;t point people to a server where that& #39;s happening. So the whole video fell apart.
I did ask the charity about it, and they said — rather brusquely — that they had a limited budget and couldn& #39;t be expected to moderate their server all the time.
I did ask the charity about it, and they said — rather brusquely — that they had a limited budget and couldn& #39;t be expected to moderate their server all the time.
