Not even
video games
are safe from the all-encompassing and increasingly unhinged culture war over
LGBT
issues. Recently, a streamer and gaming personality known as “Nickmercs” faced widespread backlash
online
and even had his merchandise deleted from Call of Duty in response to some seemingly innocuous comments about LGBT-related issues.
Here’s what went down.
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Earlier this month,
violence erupted
between activists on opposing sides of a controversy over a Glendale, California, school board and its decision to embrace Pride Month celebrations. Another prominent gaming personality, “Puckett,” commented on this news on Twitter and said, “Americans are in a sad place right now. Let people love who they love and live your own life.”
Nickmercs replied to Puckett’s tweet and said, “They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue.”
They should leave little children alone. That’s the real issue.
— FaZe Nickmercs (@NICKMERCS) June 7, 2023
That’s it. That’s all he said. For this supposedly egregious remark, Nickmercs was pilloried on social media and condemned by countless gaming industry media outlets. Here’s a sample of headlines that show how it was portrayed:
“Call of Duty removes Nickmercs skin following streamer’s anti-LGBTQ tweet” —
Polygon
“Call of Duty removes streamer’s skin after homophobic comments” —
the
Verge
“Call Of Duty Removes Nickmercs DLC Over Anti-LGBTQ Tweet” —
Gamespot
In response to this controversy, Activision Blizzard, the company that owns Call of Duty,
removed
Nickmercs’s “skins” — aka digital merchandise players can buy with real money for their in-game characters — from its in-game store. The Call of Duty Twitter account
said
, “Due to recent events, we have removed the ‘NICKMERCS Operator’ bundle from the Modern Warfare II and Warzone store. We are focused on celebrating PRIDE with our employees and our community.”
(As a side note, Activision Blizzard clearly isn’t that committed to LGBT pride, seeing as it has
repeatedly
censored pride flags
from appearing in the Middle Eastern versions of its games.)
If you’re scratching your head wondering what about Nickmercs’s tweet was so “offensive” or “homophobic,” I can’t say I blame you. But after poking around, I realized that critics were fundamentally misunderstanding what Nickmercs was trying to say. In their eyes, he was peddling in a false anti-gay trope with a dark history: that gay people are trying to “groom” your children and are more likely to sexually abuse minors. Yet that’s not actually what he intended at all.
By “leave kids alone,” Nickmercs was referring to the increasingly prevalent push to celebrate LGBT pride in the classroom and teach lesson plans on gender identity or sexual orientation. In a
stream
discussing the controversy, he explained that what he was trying to say was that parents should be the ones to talk to their children about these sexuality-related issues, not schools or teachers.
“We want to be the ones to talk to our kid about things like [sexuality],” he said in his stream. “I just don’t think it’s any place for a teacher or a school. I don’t think it’s a place to speak about things like that … and it’s not that I think it shouldn’t be spoken about. I don’t have any quarrel with anybody.”
Nickmercs further spoke to his audience in a
tweet
and said, “Friends are created in good times, but families are built through adversity. Appreciate all of you that have my back, understand my position as a new father & recognize the love I have for all. Ain’t no hate in this heart.”
One can agree or disagree with his stance on this issue. But as a gay man myself, I assure you there’s nothing inherently hateful or homophobic about what Nickmercs has had to say here. That he has faced such widespread online backlash and even professional consequences over such a nothingburger of a “controversy” shows just how out of control the cancel mobs have gotten.
We must be willing to tolerate good faith differences in opinion, even on the most contentious of issues, without trying to “cancel” each other or stretching to frame our opponents’ views as hateful or illegitimate. A society without this basic degree of tolerance is doomed to fracture into a million pieces, with that fractiousness seeping into even the most seemingly apolitical of realms until Americans of different beliefs have nothing in common anymore. That’s not something anyone, gamer or not, should want for our country.
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Brad Polumbo (
@Brad_Polumbo
) is an independent journalist and the co-founder of
BASEDPolitics
.
