Just saw some random Euro say "nice Mordor language" to people chatting in Russian in a GTA lobby
I've been playing GTA Online again after a couple of years away and the game chat is absolutely brimming with casual Russophobia. GTA Online has always been a giant trash fire due to the toxic nature of the game and the fact that the vast majority of its players are children and maladjusted adults, but it's interesting to notice how hostile Europeans have become to Russian players, randomly calling them orcs or animals and asking them why they haven't been sent to die in Ukraine yet.
Of course, because everyone playing the game is an asshole, most of the Russian comebacks are snide remarks about Europe having a lot of African immigrants, but it's almost always NATO-brained Westerners picking fights with players with Russian names and not the other way around.
I'm sure the situation is very similar in most other multiplayer games, but to me it's interesting how Russians have taken the place Chinese players used to hold in GTA some years back before they were region-locked into their own servers as otherised enemies whom you vomit random talking points you picked up on the news at
Shoulda seen the ridiculous thread I unfortunately participated in yesterday on a federated instance. Achtually Frodo was the bad guy for destroying the ring or something I dunno fash arguments are lost on me most of the time
pretty immediate realisation why that never happens when you remember the skin tone of the uruk-hai in the movies (well, the descriptions in the books too, but yeah)
I mean, Temuera isn't exactly the whitest Maori of all time, but kkkrackoids can oddly sympathise with the Maori clone wehrmacht over the eugenically-bred orc warriors with literal black skin and it rlly makes u think
Does it ever occur to them that pretty much every Hobbit apart from Bilbo and Frodo and crew are depicted as brainless feckless backstabbing greedy gammons who waste absolutely no time in clearing out Frodo's house and distributing his shit amongst themselves because he was gone for like half a year?
My most recent exposure to GTA Online was stumbling across a stream of someone RPing as a cop and complaining about somebody else being autistic, repeatedly telling them to "just get over your disability".
Even if you're completely nato-brained, or even just think the Putin regime is made up of assholes, the Russian language is actually quite beautiful. I love singing Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninov.
I'm convinced every euro is a nazi until proven otherwise at this point. The racism and fascist beliefs are so ingrained I'm genuinely surprised when a euro isn't either of those things.