I really took for granted how rough girl gamers have it. I've often considered in game abuse messaging to be an issue blown well out of proportion by games newsites on slow days. Five minutes of exposure to the Fat, Ugly or Slutty website trawling the absolutely disgraceful remarks players have fired off to a complete stranger just because they believed it was a girl is more than enough time to make me feel very stupid. Being a girl and a gamer must be a horrible experience and the anonymity of the internet is being abused like a free pass to epic levels of despicable douchebaggery by male gamers.

The general response to FUS and complaints about unpleasent gamer msgs is that, 'everyone does it, get over it'. To this I can only say screw that noise! Antisocial and general nasty behaviour in games benefits no one and presents a real hurdle to gaming getting more widespread appeal. It's not part of the 'gaming culture', it's not the price you pay for choosing to play games on line,  the only reason it happens with such prevalence is that people who do it get away with it. Simple as that, it's a crime that goes unpunished. The masters of the house, be they Microsoft, Sony or Blizzard, do a poor to nonexistant job persecuting people for the kind of messages that would get a person fired from their day job on the spot. Everyone has suffered nasty messages from other players, especially if your posion are the more popular franchises like Call of Duty and Halo. Receiving the message and sending a complaint off through the popular channels feels hollow and impotent. I've filed dozens of complaints for abusive and threatening messages and received no reply and never seen any of my abusers receive any kind of punishment. The community stepping up and filling the void and doing the policing sounds like a graceful solution.

This is where Fat, Ugly and Slutty comes in, posting and shaming the gamertags and the messages they send might go some way to giving the average griefer a moment of pause before he fires of a poorly thought out, spiteful, grammatically nightmare of a rant. I don't think we should stop there though, more forums to name and shame antisocial behaviour should be created, more shame and pariah status heaped on douche gamers!

I don't mind trash talk, friendly hassling between team mates is part of any competitive activity. But the posts on FUS, these are way beyond trash talk. These are awful messages from people with deep emotional problems who shouldn't be allowed near any communication device. Thoughts? Am I wrong to dream of a game world free of homophobic and sexist abuse?