G4 isn’t exactly some of the finest TV. But Adam Sessler has won my respect time and again. Now, he challenges the bigotry spewing gamers out there to account for themselves.

by Jeff Edwards, Game Channel Editor

In his segment Sessler’s Soapbox, Adam Sessler rants on the growing prevalence of hate speech on XBox Live. He reiterates what many gamers feel, that these self-centered latch-key kinder klansmen are trying to be cool and shocking as far as they know how, and that anyone with an ounce of real maturity sees they’re just being racist turds. He goes on to point out that the reputation for gamers is bad enough as it is, and these rotten apples are poised to ruin it for all of us and turn video games into an even dirtier word.

Anyone who’s played a game on the internet knows what’s going on: more and more, the young and stupid think that spewing hate speech makes them cool, witty, mature, and counts as effective trash talk.It doesn’t help that most of the “mature” voices in the game aren’t much older but sound adult, and encourage little kids to talk that way. It’s also a problem that a huge population of internet gamers are under the influence of a certain illicit substance that slows the activity of the mind and makes just about everything, including offensive and hurtful speech, seem amusing and enjoyable. Irreverence and the nature of communication from an anonymous source, common themes all across the internet, as well as the potential for all the world’s jerks to get heard without leaving their house means you don’t have to be stoned or an idiot to ruin someone else’s online experience.Sure, we’ve all had enough! I’ve even seen clips of Nintendo’s service succumbing to some people’s unwavering hunger to make everyone look at crudely recreated male genitalia, thanks to the innovative Mii creation system. But what can we do about it?

The systems in place for combating or punishing the behavior are very hands-off. XBox Live’s reporting system seems to expect people to talk this way, setting options for offensive speech under the player review tabs, which don’t apparently have much impact. Indeed, I don’t bother reviewing or formally reporting people caught being flagrant homophobic eight-year-olds because there’s just too many. Where are their mothers? Their fathers? This kid is screaming in my ear! Surely, someone hears this. Nintendo’s online apparently provides no recourse, but indeed offensive communication on their highly insular service is difficult and limited. PC games, provided as they often are on private servers, do little to self police.

All of this laxity points to a terrible expectation: that this talk is distasteful, but not wrong. Short of draconian and costly punishments, there’s little that can be done to dissuade people from vomiting brainless slurs. The people most guilty of this are the ones least likely to respond to polite requests and mild punishments. Honestly, anyone who’s been around the block knows that trouble children will just get more troublesome until someone they actually respect or fear comes along and teaches them a thing or two. It’s rational hedonism: they’ll get away with as much as they can and want until the punishment is too great to make the benefit worth it. As long as these kids can get away with it, they will. And many would rather isolate themselves than face the problem, muting everyone except their friends. But even these folks will complain about the problem they’ve worked to distance themselves from.

But what can we do, now? A private service like a PC game server can ban fools. Nintendo’s system does a good job keeping grief away, but it’s not water-tight, and is wildly frustrating considering Friend Codes and that no two games seem to match make the same way. XBox Live has the potential to punish these players with temporary bans or, technology willing, to have the privilege to communicate permanently revoked. However, such a system demands players police each other, and further demands that the cascade of reports be investigated to prevent exploitation.

It’s a terrible, difficult business. We have a right to freedom of speech, after all. But it was intended as free speech to challenge and question those in power, not to shriek insinuations about my sexual preference just because I got a lucky shot.