Call of Duty has a problem in South Africa, it has one of the most toxic and revolting communities in gaming. While Activision is trying hard to fix the racism problems in text chat, in SA the issue is growing out of hand. This mainly due to the fact that South Africans have their own words they use to spread hate. Unfortunately, these words don’t get detected by the game’s profanity filter when turned on. I don’t need to go into detail here as you know what words I am talking about.
Read: Arriving on Netflix in July 2020 – Umbrella Academy, Cursed and More
Keep in mind that this article may be offensive to some readers
UPDATE – Another video was sent to me and has been added below.
We know these issues exist however, the Call of Duty South Africa community has been recently suffering from an issue equally as bad. Female COD players have started calling out players who insist on sexually harassing them in voice and text chat. These conversations are extremely vulgar and while many of these gamers have spoken up, there are still hundreds who remain silent.[perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”Male COD Gamer” link=”” color=”#222FAD” class=”” size=”21″]”I hope they get killed in a farm killing”[/perfectpullquote]
Don’t get me wrong, this sort of nonsense happens every day across hundreds of games. This article is not a social justice post. Instead, I want to highlight an underlying issue here in the community and how the COD gamers are taking a stance against it. I spotted a few of these issues on some Facebook groups last week. I see dozens of different complaints from different gamers every week. We also see these types of things happening all the time, I myself often deal with it too especially in homophobia. As the days went on, more and more reports came to light from female COD players being attacked online.
Some of these are extremely bad. One particular one relates to some male gamer telling a female player he hopes her “father rapes her”. Another one comes from a female gamer who suffers from anxiety. She was told he would rape her and leave her to bleed. Another shouted at the top of his lungs that he hopes a said group of female gamers get raped by a word I will not use. I have seen some bad things online but this disgusting. It speaks volumes of the amount of hate being spread in video games especially in SA. Sad to say, it is mostly male-driven and Afrikaans. Out of the 30 reports I received, 30 of them were caused by male gamers and the majority of them were Afrikaans.
It is extremely upsetting to watch these video clips and listen to the things that these guys are saying and texting to female gamers. Who, by the way just want to play the damn game. They are not there to cause trouble or “seek attention” as many of the comments go on to say. We play games to enjoy them. It is a hobby everyone is allowed to have regardless of gender, race or sexual orientation. However, South African white male gamers think otherwise.
If it is not rape comments, it is derogatory gender-based comments like “go make me a sandwich” and “all you are is a dishwasher in a kitchen”. Things like “white tramp”, “come suck my dick”, “I will fill your stomach cum”, “go ride a dick”, “how much for a BJ” and much more. It was hard to go through all this content sent to me from the Call of Duty South African community.
We then have the male COD gamers who defend the rude comments with the usual “you are seeking attention” comments and “what are you going to prove”. Unfortunately, this is a common response when something does not affect you. It is not a problem until it is my problem. You know what I mean.
So what are the local female COD gamers doing to help the situation? Well, they are joining together to create the Pink Movement. While it is still small, it aims to bring together female gamers, and who are supportive of the group, and create a safe place to play together. You can join the group here. In addition, they aim to name and shame the toxic COD community in SA by sharing video clips and screenshots of their behaviour. Let’s be honest, there’s nothing better than some ass getting exposed for being the worst human on the planet. At the moment, if you see local gamers in Call of Duty: Warzone wearing pink outfits and rocking pink weapons, know that they are part of the movement. [perfectpullquote align=”left” bordertop=”false” cite=”Girls of GOWZA” link=”” color=”#AD3B22″ class=”” size=”21″]”hope ur mom gets cancer or why don’t you just go kill yourself.”[/perfectpullquote]
Fundraisers and community events are also kicking off soon to help spread positivity and allow these female victims to enjoy the game without the worry of being attacked online. If you want to get involved, just head to Facebook and search for #PinkMovement in the Call of Duty and ZAPA groups. The Pink Movement was started by Gerhard Cronje in collaboration with the Untamed Beasts.
Other large local South African gaming groups such as ZAPA and Call of Duty: Warzone South African are also helping by reaching out to these problematic gamers in an attempt to educate them and at times inform them of what their fellow clan members are doing during matches. D.J, owner of ZAPA took action and called the player who told the female gamer he hopes her father rapes her. He was apologetic and seems to have taken action to break down his COD clan and rebuild it with extensive interviews before accepting anyone. However great that is, there’s still a lot of work to do. [perfectpullquote align=”right” bordertop=”false” cite=”Girls of GOWZA” link=”” color=”#22AD31″ class=”” size=”21″]”I game for fun, not to waste my energy on a 12 year
old boy verbally attacking me purely because I’m a woman.”[/perfectpullquote]
Even male Call of Duty gamers suffer from some terrible interactions. A particular group who use the tag [BOER] (I don’t know why you would proudly say you are a boer given the stigma in SA gaming and how most of these issues stem from Afrikaans male gamers. It is just asking for people to watch out for you.), enjoy telling people they hope they get killed in a farm killing. This is a serious issue in our country where innocent people are murdered every day. Even if they pass this off as a “joke”, it is hate at its finest. Thankfully, many of the COD players claim this said clan are really bad at the game anyway. Hopefully, that makes you feel better. Perhaps they will get bored and move on soon.
Of course, Call of Duty South Africa is also littered with racism to the worst extent.
Hopefully, this article helps shed some light on the ongoing issues in COD SA and beyond. Along with the submissions, I even received some disgusting CS: GO videos too of local gamers being complete neanderthals towards female gamers. It is a problem everywhere but in SA, more and more gamers are getting away with it due to Activision’s lack of local profanity filtering especially. You won’t get away with using American derogatory words and you should not get away with terms like “kill the boer” in SA either. Hate is hate is hate.
Feel free to use this post to share the issues you may have had with the community. I would like to thanks Bonnie O’Callaghan for helping support this post with content.
