Kids who grew up in an environment where anonymous interaction is the norm (such as kids who have anonymous social chats at school, or do in-game chats etc) have grown so accustomed to it that I don't think they even see it as sexist, racist, bullying etc. Most would probably never say any of this to someones' face, not out of fear of consequences but simply because they know better. Yet in anonymous contact they don't think twice about it.
It also doesn't help that these interactions are ephemeral. Tomorrow you play against someone else, or chat with a different person. What you said yesterday doesn't matter, you may not even be the same persona. So as far as human relatoins go, they know that the chat interaction isn't a human relation, it's a short anonymous interaction.
So I think the important thing for us parents to convey is that being an asshat isn't ok just because you are anonymous. It might help to explain that everthing typed anywhere online is usually recorded forever, and that true anonymity doesn't exist either. That, and of course that real people deserved being treated like real people, even when anonymous.
As a kid I grew up playing video games. Around the age of 13 I switched on to online video games.
I spent too much time on games like w3/wow etc. As a kid being exposed to such an environment wasn't good at all.
After years, now being in my 30's I can totally understand how online gaming changed me and my interactions vs people that haven't played online games etc are completely different. I used to have a complete disregard about anything in life, I wouldn't mind saying to someone 'get cancer', which is quite awful. Only now that I grew up and reduced my online presence by a lot, also understood that life is life and games are games, I understand how awful of a thing is to wish cancer to someone or even joke about that. People losing families and friends over that thing and I used to just have it as a word.
I can't blame it on my parents either. They tried their best and they gave me everything they could. If it wasn't for them I would be a total loss I guess. Its just that they couldn't stop me from playing videogames or convert my life into videogames. That thing was like a junk during my teens.
That said online games definitely helped me mature as well, I mean its not all bad, I definitely got some good values out of interacting in online video games, and some bad.
Just wanted to bring my personal experience on the matter and what you commented.
Honestly, I feel like you might be overestimating the degree to which this is specific to video games.
I certainly recognize the sort of behavior you're describing, and it makes intuitive sense that online gaming would worsen it with anonymity and dehumanized opponents.
But in practice? As a teenager I watched people say "I hope you get cancer" or worse on the field, in the locker room, or even in the cafeteria. Or jump straight to knowingly personal mockery, or just beat somebody up because it was fun to hurt them. And it doesn't necessarily go away when people get out of school. "That guy likes a different sports team than me, let me tell him how he should die painfully" is something people think and act on every day.
It's still quite possible that online gaming sparks this behavior from times and moments it would happen otherwise. I certainly don't mean to presume anything about you personally - you know your own story better than any generalization.
But as a social pattern? I worry that we're mostly upset about online gaming and cyberbullying because they're new and different. We tolerate an amount of cruelty and violence outside of those settings that I think we're very slow to acknowledge that maybe the digital harm has just made more visible something we've been dealing with for a long time.
I think a plurality of kids in middle and high school go through this phase whether they play video games or not. It's a normal part of growing up. You've got lots of new hormones and frustrations in life. It's a time of testing all sorts of social boundaries. I wonder to what extent gaming increases this phenomenon from the norm, or whether it's just a different avenue through which these things are expressed.
I have a rather vivid memory from age 15 of someone tossing off a "your mom" joke to someone whose mother had just died. It was, obviously, a terrible moment.
And it was far from the only thing of that sort that happened. I remember really upsetting people on a couple of occasions because I thought about the likely, harmless consequence of what I was saying, and didn't consider whether it could cut some people much deeper.
None of us were taught to do this by gaming online. Honestly, I'm doubtful that gaming teaches cruelty any more than team sports or school cafeterias do. I get that it's depersonalizing and people say cruel things, but it feels like a boogeyman given how much actual violence gets ignored at that age.
It's worth noting that all of this behavior is normal and healthy. It's part of socialization to learn how far you can push. Some back and forth teasing will be better for you and enjoyable for everyone, too much will make you an outcast. Additionally, this is a part of establishing or figuring out your position in the social dominance hierarchy.
I believe this comment is turning an issue of sexism into an issue of impoliteness that's developed around the culture of gaming, and I think that's a particularly toxic viewpoint.
Rather than addressing the real fact that women are treated as sexual objects by men generally, whether in thought or anonymous action in message chat boxes, this sort of comment turns it into an issue of "polite conversation". To me it seems as an (although it seems inadvertent) attempt to divert the attention from the real issue towards a non issue of "poor taste in jokes".
I still like particularly dark, demented, and a "punching down humor".
I've always felt a certain level of dishonesty amongst individuals who use polite discourse as a means of communication. There also seems to be a hint of classism in maintaining polite discourse.
I really dislike comments like this because all it’s doing is counting “isms” that are subjective and vaguely detectable, in response to someone sharing their personal story. It adds nothing to the conversation other than to shame and make people clam up and not share anymore, which doesn’t help anyone. It’s bullying.
I wasn’t counting isms, the article is about the treatment of people in anonymous chats based on gender, where women and particularly good looking women are treated more poorly. This Is about sexism, not about gamers learning to be mean to all people online.
I’m accurately identifying what the article’s subject is, how the commenter’s comment is only tangentially related, distracting and really missing the point. It’s a valid critique of the comment. Critiques can’t be expected to be padded, because it might make someone feel bad that they were wrong. This is illogical and anti-science.
I partly agree, but it's also a bit of a cop out, to be honest. Anyone who has been in such an anonymous chat environment (game or otherwise) and has dished out such abuse has undoubtedly received it too and know how it feels. They do it because it illicits a reaction on the other end and they too have felt that reaction and decided they would rather be on the other end of it.
I also see some pretty terrible behavior in Facebook comments on news sites/blogs right next to people's names, employer and a photo of them with their kid.
Yea, this is pretty useless information unless you can provide a source for these claims. I find it very hard to believe that the complete elimination of anonymity on a social media platform resulted in exactly 0 improvement in measurable behavior.
I Googled both your anonymity and your fascism claims and couldn't find anything, but I'd love to learn more.
Or they are so desensitized that they assume others are too. It is outrageous that anyone faces abuse like this, and it should not be a norm, but at the same time it's one of those things that you quickly become rather immune to.
And I question whether anonymity is really the root of this behavior, or if it's just the bravado of crowds. The negativity and bile spouted on Facebook never fails to astound me, and people say things that would be exile-worthy in any normal conversation.
The female identity has been harassed while the male identity was treated with respect. I don't see how anonymity has anything to do with it, the visitors were equally anonymous in both cases.
I was more trying to make a general remark around e.g what kids do in social media when anonymous.
The reason only the female is harassed I think has a very simple explanation, only men behave this way.
Why the same men don’t behave e.g racist or otherwise harassing the male identity can’t say. Best guess there is that these men are simply threatened by women, especially those that are attractive or successful. But I’m way out of my comfort zone of even man-guessing now.
I didn’t intend to detract from the fact that these men are assholes or say sexism isn’t the issue here.
I think you hit the nail on the head, anonymity can bring out the worst in someone, especially when they feel there is zero repercussions. It’s partly why I hate the throw away accounts here.
> In fact HN is a lot nicer than a number of verified name forums.
HN is relatively niche, it's not mainstream. Even if a troll posts e.g. sexist or Nazi crap here, it will get no attention due to a lack of fellow Nazis to upvote and engage like on Twitter/FB/Reddit, and in addition both the userbase and the mods are quick in removing trolling, thus further reducing the "profit" that a troll can have from trolling.
Also, HN lacks notifications. No matter if upvotes, downvotes, replys, flags - you have to look yourself in your own thread history. This prevents the rapid heating up of discussions - and the lack of a character limit allows users to properly express what they're thinking, unlike Twitter, thus preventing misunderstandings.
Of course there is karma whoring, I won't deny that - but there's no way you get thousands of karma points/likes/rts/claps/whatever for a simple Fuck Trump/Fuck Clinton. For gobbling up karma on HN one has to write either high quality content or be the lucky one who first submits a link to a SpaceX success or a critical security issue.
edit: Oh, there is one other thing which explains "nicer" for me. HN definitely leans towards the leftie-libertarian side. Usually, hate speech, offensive insults, derogatory vocabulary, discrimination, pointless trolling and other aspects associated with "unpleasant environments" are found on the right-wing/authoritarian/alt-right/gamergate/masculist spectrum.
Perhaps we have different definitions of sexist - I think that HN is generally quite supportive of the “free-thinker” type of sexism and racism exemplified by James Damore.
Ugh. Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and don't take HN threads into off-topic flamewar hell. If you haven't had enough Damore flamewars, the search box at the bottom of this page will give you enough to last the rest of your life.
edit: Oh, there is one other thing which explains "nicer" for me. HN definitely leans towards the leftie-libertarian side. Usually, hate speech, offensive insults, derogatory vocabulary, discrimination, pointless trolling and other aspects associated with "unpleasant environments" are found on the right-wing/authoritarian/alt-right/gamergate/masculist spectrum.
Reducing credibility of right minded folks by categorizing them all as authoritarian
You can be right wing And an upstanding citizen
Woah there granddad, how did you get on the computer ;)
I imagine he meant in the normal distribution sense, where 25-40 comprises ~70% of the userbase; entirely anecdotal but I get the feeling that's a reasonable assessment.
To some degree I think it's more the nature of Internet style communication (text / typing oriented with no face to face interaction) in itself. Facebook after all is not anonymous and is not 100% free of this sort of thing.
Honestly, though, there are some corners of real life (especially in those early teen years as you allude to, but even among full grown adults that should know better) where you will find people with this sort of personality. These type of reactions are not surprising in that context. Social media does seem to do something to amplify raw vulgarity and classless behavior though.
> The user's age on HN is in the ballpark of 25-40 years old, as it's a tech website.
Exactly the target audience when we are discussing <topic> in tech, isn't it?
Edit: I misread / didn't read. My broader point is there is a lot of talk about how bad tech is, and yet here we are on a very technical and at the same time reasonably civil forum.
The average age of any large group will be somewhere between 25 to 40.
HN has users well outside that range though, it is probably under-represented on the lower end and I would suspect over-represented on the higher end based on my IRL interactions with a fairly large number of HN'ers.
The people who shape this forum are mostly not anonymous. Most of the people at the top of the leaderboard use their real name or some portion of it. In many cases, you can find articles about them or profiles on an employer's website or other third party verification of their identity that is far stronger than Facebook insisting I go by Doreen.
Furthermore, you have to have a handle here to apply for YC, the incubator that owns this site and has fostered companies that include Reddit and AirBnB. So being an asshole on HN can be a great means to guarantee you will never have a shot at a successful startup.
The stakes for participating here in good faith can run into the millions of dollars. Anyone with any sense at all will make some attempt to restrain themselves, plus the most influential community leaders will set a better example than you are going to see on most forums that lack such table stakes.
There are plenty of people that don't realize any of that. I seem to be the only person who ever points that out. But the fact that it seems to go largely unrecognized in conversation here doesn't mean the effect isn't there. People who would never state that money is a big part of why they behave here will, nonetheless, behave here because of the serious consequences that can occur if they don't.
Paul Graham has written articles about the YC "don't be an asshole" rule. They are quite open about the fact that they don't want to work with such people. So anyone who has any aspirations whatsoever of applying to YC and 2 functioning brain cells is going to try to not be asshole here.
That has more power than what your public handle is. And I am completely fine with it.
Please reread what I posted. I didn't condone, propose, or even mention "verified name" policies. I am opposed to being forced to use my real name if I don't want to.
> I think you hit the nail on the head, anonymity can bring out the worst in someone, especially when they feel there is zero repercussions. It’s partly why I hate the throw away accounts here.
It's a tradeoff. There are both good and bad things with anonymity and real name policies:
1. Anonymity: people can express themselves without anxiety, but that gives space to assholes to be assholes (barring other control mechanisms).
2. Real names: lots of people will hold back due to anxiety that what they say may come back to haunt them years later [1]. The more timid assholes will inhibit themselves as well, but not all assholes are timid. The main people who will participate (asshole and non-asshole) will have the personality types that DGAF.
In short: anonymity is somewhat more favorable to assholes, but also more favorable to good discussion. I also prefer it, because I'm the kind of person who will just shut up in a deanonymized space.
[1] In ways they may have never even imagined at the time.
Please reread what I posted. I didn't mention/propose/condone "real name" policies. Folks using "handles" are perfectly fine, but I am tired of seeing more and more brand new users with the name "throwaway####" making comments with little to no value.
Exactly. There is no serious consequence for their actions. If it was more common to be permanently banned for such language, people would probably think twice.
You are pretty anonymous if you walk into a bar and don't tell anyone your name. (Depending on the bar) They will kick you out and put your picture on the wall if you start talking aggressively to the civil regulars. More than that there is the immediate risk of a fist to the face.
Just like bar owners ask themselves what kind of patronage they want, online operators should ask themselves the same question.
Agreed. This problem is closer to "online graffiti" (every text box is the canvas) than sexism, racism, etc. The assumption that a bot may be on the receiving end further encourages the behavior. These kids know better, though I do think a healthy "fear of consequences" or reality check can help.
I'd expect the rate of abuse to decline fairly significantly with the simple addition of the text "This conversation is being monitored by a supervisor", appearing a few moments after the first message is sent.
The added wrinkle to this is that the internet hides age....
So if you go to The_Donald, a bunch of the views expressed are just teenagers being awful (or normal teenagers basically), but the adults who line up with their views don't realize they how many of their peers are children.
It can definitely normalize that viewpoint and spread into the wider adult conversations. I also have noticed a few times on Reddit when someone says something insanely terrible, I will check their history to see if they are a White Nationalist or what else they are interested in, and dozens of times every post in their history is about video games. And the only time the venture out of the video game bubble it is with bizarrely hateful political commentary.
Maybe its an anomaly and if I clicked all the good posters history's they would be about video games too.... but it's starting to feel like there may be a genuine and unique culture developing around gaming that is distinctly racist, homophobic and celebrates almost any form of cruelty.
And I say that as someone who is in their 30's and still LOVES video games.
I don't think that changing the environment inherently reveals someone's "true" character. You're just revealing how they behave in that environment. We are just too complex to be reduced to such a simple experiment as "anonymity" to discover our true nature.
> Kids who grew up in an environment where anonymous interaction is the norm...
I generally agree that the kids should get off my lawn, but the G.I.F.T. meme was created in 2004, and Usenet was a rough neighborhood even back before most posters here were born:
I think it may be relevant that more and more people are growing up with easy access to computers and pseudoanonymous social networks today, even if the trolls of yesteryear were crueler.
It’s sad to see that the top-voted comment is one of those bemoaning general uncivilized behavior, when the story convincingly shows that we’ve created a world where women’s lives are made impossibly difficult, and men are treated with respect.
That wasn’t my intention, I think most of the asshattery I refer to definitely end up as sexism, and is directed towards women. And I have no idea why that is so. But it’s a problem, most definitely.
My point is merely that anonymity simply magnifies the same things we would see in non-anonymous settings.
I was as amazed as Jakob[1] how much the overwhelming HN response to this story is self-serving defensiveness and rationalization, and very little acknowledgement. But I took solace in the fact that his comment was voted to the top. When I came back 20 minutes later it had dropped to #3. Three hours later it is #4, with the top-two trivializing this as just trolls not misogyny, and the third in support of women but in a way that doesn't offend the HN community's collective ego.
The #1 comment, the one I'm replying to, expresses the belief that what someone does anonymously does not reflect their character or their underlying attitudes towards women. It's just an "asshat" "short anonymous interaction". Boys will be boys. This isn't real. Don't read too much into it! Women, a bit too sensitive are we?
I looked through the 101 sub-comments to #1, and nearly all trivialize this as issues of "anonymity", "kids", "jokes", "gaming" "trash talk". One even said "It's worth noting that all of this behavior is normal and healthy." He (I think I can safely assume he is a he) also added "Additionally, this is a part of establishing or figuring out your position in the social dominance hierarchy." Yes. Male social dominance.
I did find four sub-replies (out of the 101) that focused on what this meant for women[2].
> Most would probably never say any of this to someones' face, not out of fear of consequences but simply because they know better. Yet in anonymous contact they don't think twice about it.
What you do when you don't think twice is a reflection of some truth about you (your character, your biases, your raw attitudes, your inner values, your insecurities and inadequacies) or about the culture you are a part of. It's usually both. The comments Julia received are not random insults. They are misogynist. Misogyny doesn't appear out of thin air.
> It might help to explain that everthing typed anywhere* online is usually recorded forever, and that true anonymity doesn't exist either.*
It might be more helpful to explain that it is deeply oppressive, injurious and misogynist.
As with police killings of black men, it is important that all this is recorded forever. Because without records, the oppressed are never believed by those in the same class as the oppressors. But as HN is proving right now, they are still not believed.
Many comments claim that Julia's experience is the result of some small number of trolls, not reflective of the vast majority of men, or of male tech culture. The volume of HN comments coming to the defense of men rather than women doesn't do much to bolster the "just trolls" theory. The comments here are a reflection of HN readership, and it is a good thing that this and all the other overwhelmingly dismissive comments on many other similar posts are recorded forever. They are the perfect example of what women have to live with. Trivialization. Dismissal. Ridicule. Sexism. Misogyny.
Man having a comment upvoted and scrutinized really makes me wish I had written a more thought out post. Sometimes you write something in 2 minutes, in a language that isn't your first language, and only later come back to realize it was voted up and now had an expectation of actually being insightful.
> expresses the belief that what someone does anonymously does not reflect their character or their underlying attitudes towards women. It's just an "asshat" "short anonymous interaction". Boys will be boys. This isn't real. Don't read too much into it! Women, a bit too sensitive are we?
That's not at all what I was trying to say! I genuinely do believe that the attitudes expressed are genuine. My point was that the anonymity is what lets these guys get over the treshold of expressing them (so why anonymous chats seem more full of misogynist assholes than elsewhere). And I do believe their attitudes towards women is so bad that they don't even understand how bad it is. And that's a sad reflection on society. I didn't mean to express that as a "boys will be boys"-excuse on their part.
> What you do when you don't think twice is a reflection of some truth about you (your character, your biases, your raw attitudes, your inner values, your insecurities and inadequacies) or about the culture you are a part of. It's usually both. The comments Julia received are not random insults. They are misogynist. Misogyny doesn't appear out of thin air.
Yes. This is much closer to the point I'm trying to make. This should be the top comment. Were were you earlier?
(I have not missed the irony of my parent post being written quickly and anonymously and obviously without afterthought, so it must reflect my character and biases then...)
> Many comments claim that Julia's experience is the result of some small number of trolls, not reflective of the vast majority of men, or of male tech culture.
Whether these interactions were in fact a small number of people I think wasn't clear from the article but I'm willing to bet that statistically it would look the same if repeated. You could make all kinds of statistics (like were the bad guys more willing to interact at all, etc) but I don't think it makes a difference to the point of the article.
I think there are huge problems with male/tech culture. I'm going to argue that the vast majority of men would never behave like this regardless of what beliefs we hold. But the fact that even a few behave like this is of course a problem that not only lies with a few. All of us create a culture which in turn creates these assholes. So even if we think we aren't assholes ourselves, we more than likely are part of making a culture of assholes.
Thanks for following up. I had to reply to your words, because of all the votes it was given and all the replies conforming my interpretation of your words as true for many and the effective burying of the real problem, even if you didn’t intend it. I’m VERY happy to know my criticism doesn’t apply to you, but it still applies to the thread.
> Where were you earlier?
Finding time to write a thorough and thoughtful reply to such an important subject. ;)
> But the fact that even a few behave like this is of course a problem that not only lies with a few. All of us creates a culture which in turn creates these assholes. So even if we think we aren't assholes ourselves, we more than likely are part of making a culture of assholes.
I didn't realize until you had posted that a large fraction of the upvotes were probably because my post had a dismissive tone. And I was feeling good about the upvotes until you pointed that out D:
But now I'm confused. How did your comment go from being #1 for many hours, and then drop to #31, behind a bunch of nothing-special comments? Did you suddenly get a bunch of down-votes? Did the YC team come in and penalize your comment to make this forum have better optics? Also, there were 101 sub-comments to yours, and now there are 86. Smells fishy.
You're being way too light on these people. This is how they'd act if allowed IRL. The anonymity just gives them more protection than they'd enjoy IRL. These are, at best, sick people, who need need.
OPSEC is hard. Even people for whom it's a matter of life and death fail at it routinely. Angry trolls even more so. Your first message may be anonymous, but by your third message there's a good chance someone dedicated could find you if they cared enough.
VPN providers keep logs even when they say they don't, your browser transmits an often unique fingerprint, vulnerabilities allow disclosing real ip, and so on. Even darknet market operators with all the reasons for trying to be anonymous and paranoid get outed. It's just a matter of how much resources it takes.
Why would a VPN provider disclose customer info to a random third party? Why would you assume that the majority of VPN providers lie to customers? Why do you think people who want to stay anonymous don't know how to throw off browser fingerprinting?
VPN providers often don't run their own networks, but instead run on other ISP networks.
Those underlying ISPs have data that can be used to correlate (with a scary amount of accuracy in a remarkably short space of time) your flow to the VPN server against a flow from the VPN server to a remote host.
Without exaggerating, lives have been saved through this technique. Once the technology exists for one purpose, it can be repurposed very easily.
You buy it from one of the vendors that tracks people...
There are literally businesses out there that gives you a snippet to embed in your site, and then they employ all the tricks of tracking to give you email, name, address, etc.
It's not perfect every time, but probably more that you would like. And I wouldn't be surprised if incognito mode or VPN isn't always enough to disappear.
Like I said, all existing tracking methods can be fooled. Poisoned data isn't worth much. People who want anonymity know how to completely throw off commercial trackers to the point where they are useless.
When I play online games, in this example PUBG, I think a part of the fun is to be rude and aggressive before the match starts. You're about to virtually shoot them in the head so saying something rude to random online gamers doesn't feel at all bad. Other people often respond back, just as rudely and I think it's hilarious.
It can't be just me who thinks and acts like this? Context matters a lot in my opinion.
Although, I am never rude to someone IRL or even on a more serious note outside of online gaming. It's nice to vent and I don't think other players in PUBG care at all.
> You're about to virtually shoot them in the head so saying something rude to random online gamers doesn't feel at all bad. Other people often respond back, just as rudely and I think it's hilarious.
Examine what you're saying here. You're saying because YOU don't feel bad when you do it to others, it's okay. And because people retaliate, that makes your initial act of rudeness ok, as if that's what the other party wanted.
Just because someone returns your behavior doesn't mean they LIKE that sort of behavior, or are even okay with it.
> It's nice to vent and I don't think other players in PUBG care at all.
The whole point is for the other side not to like it and get knocked emotionally off-kilter and lose focus, giving you a competitive edge. It's part of the metagame.
It is also generally considered unsportsmanlike and in most cases does not contribute to the game or sport. It reduces the competition from, "Who is best at game strategy and mechanics?", to "Who is best at heckling away any real advantage their opponent actually had?"
For most online games I don't see how the latter could ever be considered an improvement to the game.
People have trash talked their way to millions of dollars in poker tournaments.[0]
You can "regulate" this away as a tournament organizer/gamedev company if you wanted to (i.e. allowing allied team only chat or allowing players to disable chat visibility altogether)
Most fun I ever had online shooters was Unreal on Wireplay. Everyone was respectful, complimented one another on shooting them in the head and got to know one another with time.
These days I don’t bother because everyone’s a jerk.
In some contexts competitive back-and-forth insulting is a baked in part of the culture, and is mutually enjoyable. You're only a jerk if you can see that the other person is no longer enjoying it and you continue anyway.
You cannot see the person you’re insulting in an online context so you cannot see if they are “no longer enjoying it”. Engaging in such behavior means you’re a jerk.
Trash talk is also not the same as engaging in trolling. Telling someone you’re going to kick their ass is perhaps reasonable trash talk in some cases. Calling someone racist or sexist epithets is not.
Even in text, it can be pretty clear when you've crossed the line and it's time to stop.
Please don't take my comments to mean that insulting/mean behavior is OK, though. IME many commenters across the web are far to quick to hurl insults in situations where they have no idea how they'll be received.
I was called racist, even in person. It was always for fun from both parts. So it might be ok, although in 99% of online "bad behavior" is actual bad behavior.
I'd never accept anyone being even mildly trashtalking or rude in voice. Being mildly trashtalking in chat is fine. I wouldnt' even switch someone off, I'd voteban immediately (and if the game/community/server is ok more people would).
In the game I play when someone joins who is annoying they are generally called out as "whoa did you just arrive from CoD?"...
I know what you mean, it's that dark kind of humor when you know the person you are directing it to thinks it's funny (because it's so obviously wrong). However I don't think that applies to these messages which just look like plain trolling to me.
Although this thread is so loaded it seems that any suggestion of the possibility of a benign explanation is met with being downvoted into oblivion like you... so let me finish with "this is terrible and all men are bad", there I think I've covered myself.
> When I play online games, in this example PUBG, I think a part of the fun is to be rude and aggressive before the match starts. You're about to virtually shoot them in the head so saying something rude to random online gamers doesn't feel at all bad.
You're right about how in some context trash talk is expected & part of the game, but maybe it'd be better to play games in which one doesn't practise insulting, mocking & killing others. Maybe it'd be better to play games which encourage our better virtues rather than our worse vices. Maybe the world would be a better place if we pretended to love one another rather than hate one another.
So I think the important thing for us parents to convey is that being an asshat isn't ok just because you are anonymous. It might help to explain that everthing typed anywhere online is usually recorded forever, and that true anonymity doesn't exist either. That, and of course that real people deserved being treated like real people, even when anonymous.