Rat Race

I spend a lot of time on the WoW forums over at IGN's Vault Network. It's not so great for gameplay discussion, but there is some quality trolling to be had. Attached to the WoW boards is a thriving off-topic community, called the Asylum, and it's loaded with some extremely disturbing people. We're talking near-constant casual racism; they're all pretty radically conservative when they get around to talking about "policy," but the frequent sprinklings of bigotry never fail to shock my sheltered sensibilities. Here is one gem from yesterday:

(Talking about Ike)

Poster A: "where are all the stories of mass looting? where's the people bitching about George Bush hating them? Texas got severely messed up"
Poster B: Everyone in teaxas owns a gun, looters have been taken care of.
Poster C: also, texas doesn't have the massive mostly black slums that new orleans had.
Poster D: No, they have the third? highest population of mexican immigrants in the country. Same difference IMO.

Another little flourish I see now and again is using a monkey face smiley as a stand-in for "black":

9/14 5:18 AM: yes. fat bitch who thinks the usa owes her for what they did to her people 200 years ago. always looking for a freakin handout. lazy as a piss ant. dumb as a rock. asks a million stupid questions and she's been doing the same job i do but has been at it since before i was god damned born.


This is a forum about a very popular video game; all the people there are gamers, though most have quit playing WoW and hang around the boards to talk with their friends. And this is the kind of stuff that you see up there on a regular basis. I don't really have anything more to say about it; I just couldn't help but react to that thread after seeing it last night.