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Blizzard of GLBT gaming policy questions: “Sara Andrews thought it was a big misunderstanding when she received an e-mail from a game master in Blizzard Entertainment’s popular online role playing game ‘World of Warcraft’ citing her for ‘Harassment – Sexual Orientation.’ [. . .] Andrews’ original posting read: ‘OZ [the name of her guild] is recruiting all levels ? We are not ‘GLBT only,’ but we are ‘GLBT friendly’! (guilduniverse.com/oz)’”

(Via AMERICAblog.)

To quote that paragon of modern societal criticism South Park, this is some fucked up shit right here. Let me get this straight: 1) group that is historically a victim of harassment is protected by company in on-line game (good); 2) companies policies maybe at least partly encourage group members to feel safe enough to establish social cliques inside on-line game that are wholly or partly based on this group membership (neutral); one such clique advertises itself with very common acronym for this group, but is clearly open to all players (good); company threatens clique with suspension for harassing traditionally harassed group (HUH?)

How does this make sense to a reasonable person? To me it really feels like a teacher coming upon a bullying. Rather than punish the bully, the teacher punishes the bullied student for provoking the bully by being too nerdish or too wimpy or too whatever. Blizzard needs to hire someone with half a brain to set this right.

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justice, computers, software, gay rights, Warcraft