A post over at The Consumerist has a tale of customer disservice that involves Xbox Live, homosexuality, and the fun that always results when they intersect. A gamer has found that Live has banned his gamertag, “theGAYERgamer,” and will not reinstate it despite his pleas to Microsoft. The gamer in question is, in fact, gay (whether he is gayer cannot be proven without a basis for comparison, however), but this is somehow irrelevant. The excuse given by the customer support supervisor is that his tag is offensive to the “greater Xbox community.”
Really? The greater Xbox community finds “gay” offensive? You’d think, given how they throw it around with such enthusiasm, that it was part of the accepted lexicon by now. The argument to be made in Microsoft’s favor, of course, is that this is likely done to prevent hate speech in gamertags — chances are, nobody would blink twice if the tag “IKillGays” was banned, and with good reason, but the downside is that the filter catches reasonable use of the word as well.
There’s also some who are asserting that Xbox Live — a community populated by young children — is the wrong place to proclaim your sexuality. What can we proclaim when the children are around, I wonder? Would “TripleAmputee” be okay for a handicapped gamer? Would “DeathPenalty” be all right for a gaming politico? Might “CampingForChrist” offend the wee atheists?
You know those private Xbox Live servers they’re setting up for children’s hospitals? We need a few of those for the general public, Microsoft. You can make one for parents to choose for their kids, where gamertags are screened heavily and no damaging nicknames need assault their delicate eyes.
And give this guy his damn gamertag back.
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