Did anyone actually get teased for playing video games?
Posted by _TenDropChris@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 121 comments
I've heard some of the retro game reviewers talk about how video games used to be something for the nerds and geeks. And that they got made fun of for liking them.
I was NEVER teased about liking video games. And just about everyone I knew played them. My brothers, my friends, and everyone at school back in the day would play video games, so I'm wondering if this was a real wide spread problem, or it was just a few individuals that got ridiculed.
Frazzlefart@reddit
I've never once experienced a negative comment about it, there were arcade machines set up in the pizza shop, we had cool movies like The Wizard and the local video rental always had a massive game rental section, which I used every weekend. Had massive stack of Nintendo Power magazines that I read in school in spare time. Met friends in junior high later who were playing Wolfenstein and such.
No one cared at all, it was fine. I was also confused by people saying they're bullied for video games.
Not where I lived, not in my time.
Dry-Astronaut-8640@reddit
Growing up, video games - especially computer games - were strictly for nerds. I never knew of anyone being explicitly picked on for that, but it sort of went without saying that only nerds played computer games.
The same thing for the internet when it first started gaining traction in my area (circa 1995). Only nerds used the internet.
bgregory1004@reddit
Not for playing them but as a kid/teen you wouldn’t be caught dead wearing a shirt or backpack repping your favorite game or anything considered nerdy/dorky. The “Pokémon kid” definitely got made fun of at my HS. Now days kids seem to accept and embrace each other’s inner nerdiness. It hasn’t always been that way…
Cameront9@reddit
I got judged for not liking fighting games and sports games.
2099AD@reddit
I didn't get picked on for playing games in general, but at one point in High School, I was practicing for an upcoming Street Fighter tournament (that I ended up not being able to go to), and one of the boys in class was like, "You play Street Fighter EVERY DAY!?!"
It wasn't insulting, but it was pretty dismissive.
That said, years later, I've won a couple of local SF tournaments and gotten top 4 and top 8 in a handful of others. So it wasn't completely wasted time.
Miz_momo82@reddit
I tease my significant other all the time for playing needy video games 🤷🏽♀️
Hour-Pressure-3758@reddit
We called them Nintendo freaks or Nintendo nerds
jojotherider@reddit
I never got teased for playing videos games. But growing my observation was that the console gamers didnt get teased, but the pc gamers did. Friends of mine got me into pc gaming and i still call them my nerd friends.
Traditional_Entry183@reddit
Oh yeah absolutely. And not just in high school or college, but even in middle school. There was absolutely a significant group that tried to be a lot older and more advanced and called us babies for being into Nintendo. Both guys and girls.
By the time I was an adult, nearly anyone five or more years older than me saw games as a total waste of time and something that was for kids. Total core Gen X attitude. One of the reasons ive always been friends with more people younger than myself.
_ism_@reddit
I got teased for NOT playing them or wanting to. We were poor and I had to cope so I decided I wasn't interested in games and caught hell for it
GhostJelly13@reddit
Only get teased now by the wife, not a problem!
Intelligent-Camera90@reddit
Not at all. I come from a nerdy family. My mom was a OG gamer and used to play Super Mario more than us kids.
My school friends were from a ton of different groups, so everyone knew I played games, but I only got into them with the others who played. In my 20’s, when I was deep into EQ and WoW, my dad thought it was super cool to interact with people from all over and play with them.
I’m sure some people who were “cool” might have - a few years ago, I was at a work conference for our Finance department of ~300 people. In an icebreaker, where we had to tell each other a fact that might not be believable, one guy said “I play Call of Duty a couple of nights a week”, like it was a dark and dirty secret to play a game that like 20 million other people play. I rolled my eyeballs so hard, they’re still a little loose.
JackBlackBowserSlaps@reddit
Yup, was defi a ‘nerd thing’
EricRShelton@reddit
Video games were so popular that we th Super Mario Super Show, Captain N, and featured Suoer Mario Bros. 3 heavily in *The Wizard*.
I don’t believe for a second that anyone was bullied or mocked for playing games.
KnifeFightAcademy@reddit
Only as an adult.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Yes, big time. I was convinced most people didn't play them until PS2.
Calculusshitteru@reddit
No never, and I'm a girl. Almost all of my school friends were boys and they respected me as an equal. If anything being a girl gamer made me more popular. We all absolutely were nerds and geeks though.
Skulls_of_Ink@reddit
Atari to NES era I def got picked on. Girls and the "popular" guys especially seemed to find it a target to pick on the "nerd". Crazy part is, years later some of those same guys started hanging out with my friends so we could all play Goldeneye on N64 when we were in high school.... I still held a grudge and mercilessly smoked them everytime.....
ProduceEmbarrassed97@reddit
I did. I was a 'massive nerd' for preferring to stay in and play games than play football (which I hated and was shit at).
Still do, to be honest, but now it's 'I can't believe you 'still' play video games'.
Significant_Dog412@reddit
Not from people my own age. But older people could be condescending as they had the image of games as being strictly for kids and that teens/adults who played were a bit backwards.
Rahawk02@reddit
I still get teased because I'd rather stay home and play my ps5 like a "kid" than go spend 100s of dollars sitting in a bar getting wrecked like an "adult"
CMDR_Jeb@reddit
https://youtu.be/ObKV5zVIocE
HopelesslyHuman@reddit
Joke's on you. I play games at home drinking a $28 bottle of rum and chatting with friends. I cover all of my bases.
...but really, you're right. Took me too many years to realize the bar is a scam.
I still go sometimes.
But I'm more cognizant of it.
Ancient-Eye3022@reddit
I am a RN and play video games heavily with my wife. I watch my co-workers go to bars, spend hundreds at concerts and sports games...to each their own, but damn do I have a lot more money when a 60 dollar new game gives me hundreds of hours of play (or even some cheap indie games!)
Minouris@reddit
Ugh. Yeah.
I was at a celebration for an old school friend about five years ago, and he had a guy there from his work standard issue, puffy red face, braying laugh and beer belly, felt the need to insert rugby into the conversation every few sentences.
At one point, Google entered the conversation, and people were talking about how rich the guys must have invented it must have been, and this ballgoblin chimes in with:
"Yeahnah, but how does it feel to look in the mirror and still see some computer nerd? Fnah! fnah! fnah!"
Pretty fucking good, ball boy, it feels pretty fucking good...
TiEmEnTi@reddit
Haha I did reply it only happened once but I was only thinking about when I was a kid. But this triggered a memory of this one skanky girl who did make fun of us for this same thing in college when we were all sitting around our apartment with playing GTA. We kinda let it slide because we were too poor to go to bars lol
MagnumPIsMoustache@reddit
No, everyone thought they were awesome
Balthierlives@reddit
No but I also never talked about gaming with people. I don’t think I ever talked about final fantasy with anyone even my best friends
It wasn’t until the internet (neogaf) thst I ever had conversations about it and wasn’t just reading magazines or internet articles about games
I had a social life and played sports and music. But never had a social circle to talk about gaming. Still don’t not in real life anyway
SignificantApricot69@reddit
Not really but I think there was an expectation that it was a kids’ thing (and your parents playing with the kids) for awhile. For me personally I mostly stopped when I was a teenager but it was more due to priorities and how my brain works. I wanted to play sports, have a job, and talk to girls (and still try to do all those things) so that left little time for other things and gaming never really picked back up for me as a hobby since I’ve always preferred other things but I’ve never looked down on it.
wykkedfaery33@reddit
Oddly enough, I got teased more for my choice of video games by my fellow nerds; the danger of being a nerdy girl who was almost exclusively friends nerdy boys. Anyone else had better reasons to tease me, at least in middle school; I was a weird kid.
Rombonius@reddit
No one got teased for video games generally, arcade games were all the rage
but dorks were still dorks, just like weebs today
TheOsirisOfThisShit_@reddit
Nintendo sold 60 million NESs.
PSN-Colinp42@reddit
“Super no-friend-o”
Professional-Loss743@reddit
Not at all, shit I know foos that grew up to reputable gang members that were huge video gamers. Where I lived if you didn’t have a NES/SNES or Sega you got made fun of for being video game-less
Ditzy_Davros@reddit
Being a gamerchick... girls would roll their eyes and eventually get jealous. Guys would come hang at my house to game.
Kryptin206@reddit
Never got teased for playing games, only for what games I was playing.
boner79@reddit
I don’t remember being teased but I did have a sense of shame about playing videogames until college when I realized everyone played them.
Zsirhcz1981@reddit
Been playing almost 40 years. Back then playing VG felt like being in fight club.
capthazelwoodsflask@reddit
I got teased because I didn’t have the current system. We got an Atari when the NES came out and and NES when the Super Nintendo came out.
Skittleavix@reddit
My wife used to say she found me unattractive when I played video games. So I moved my console from the living room into my office and told her I found her unattractive when she watches Love Is Blind.
WhosYourPadre79@reddit
It depended on the game. Mortal Kombat? You were cool. Final Fantasy? You were a nerd. I played all of them and still do
ResurgentClusterfuck@reddit
I played Dragon Warrior before Final Fantasy and had to talk my friend's dad into letting me borrow them because he didn't think a girl would like them
Classical_Fan@reddit
That's what it was like for me, too. Everyone played Mortal Kombat, and almost everyone played Street Fighter. Only nerds played JRPGs.
ResurgentClusterfuck@reddit
Yes, but I'm a woman. I got told "girls don't play video games" so often that I think I got good at some of them just to piss the guys off
But I am a nerd, kinda proud of that
RJRoyalRules@reddit
Only my own experience here, but console games there was never any teasing. My friends and I all played console games together regularly.
PC games a different story, I was big into Sierra adventure games and those were definitely considered nerdy.
TSGarp007@reddit
I was going to say playing computer games was considered nerdy. Pretty dumb but it was. Everybody had or wanted the Atari, NES, SNES, Sega, etc. Well at least seemingly all the boys did.
s-multicellular@reddit
I would share it from this perspective, I didn’t play video games as a kid. I was a musician, skateboarder, and other extreme sports stuff. Even though video games were not something my groups of kids did, I never heard any of them talk bad about gaming/gamers. Ive heard about that stigma in TV or movies, but I never saw it first hand.
Alternative-Light514@reddit
I guess if you made it the basis of your personality, I could see that.
I don’t think I knew any kids that didn’t like playing video games, though.
Be the only kid on the bus to summer camp in ‘89 with a gameboy and see how many of the other kids think you’re a nerd (hint: every single one of them would play a round of Tetris if you let them)
LotharOfHillPeople3@reddit
Absolutely. Only the outcasts like me played video games, none of the popular kids. They were all into sports instead. With just a few exceptions. Everyone in school was into Street Fighter 2 and Mortal Kombat. Really shocking at the time, Final Fantasy 7. For like one month, popular kids were talking to me about Final Fantasy 7.
RamenRoy@reddit
I was walking home from work one night and there was a house party I had to walk by. A few people on the porch saw me and invited me in. I was all dirty from work and tired and just wanted to get home. I said no thanks and then they said ok go play video games alone fuckin faggot. Haha how the heck did they know that's what I was going to do?!
russ257@reddit
There was one kid we called turbo thumbs it might’ve even been a nickname he gave himself, but we didn’t use it positively. He was constantly missing school to stay home to play video games because I don’t think his parents cared. In fact I think he was threatened with repeating a grade because he missed so many days. one time he came to school with a giant blister on the palm of his hand because he had played Mario party so much.
dewihafta@reddit
No, it actually upped my popularity as one of the rare nerdy females.
I feel that the prevalence of home video game systems was really the beginning of the current “nerdy is cool” trend.
BeardiusMaximus7@reddit
Yeah it depended on what games from like the psx and xbox era on. If you weren't playing a sports or fos game you would catch hell for it. So like, playing Zelda or Final Fantasy instead of Halo, Madden or GTA you would hear about it.
I've always played all the things anyway but that was certainly a "thing" that sorta started during those generations of games.
tacosandtheology@reddit
The punks around me used to call the Nintendo, the No-friend-o.
We were too busy sneaking out to get in trouble to play video games.
Mind-of-Jaxon@reddit
Girls would tease jocks would and parents
Puzzleheaded_Race_90@reddit
I feel like it's kind of a "depends" type of situation. Partly it depends what games you're playing, but also, if you're a kid getting picked on, everything is fair game, so yeah, you're gonna get picked on for playing video games.
Inevitable_Pride1925@reddit
Video games are for nerds, video games are for boys, video games are… Video games were something that was not supposed to be for me. It was always described as something I was wasting my time by doing or something that was not right for me.
But I was never made fun of because I played them just judged negatively.
TakashiMifune85@reddit
Being a nerd wasn’t cool when I was growing up.
morganalefaye125@reddit
I don't ever remember being teased for video games, but I sure was for books and comic books
zoosha2curtaincall@reddit
Yes, absolutely. Late 80s New England. I can’t be the only one who remembers “Nofriendo.”
Kids were real dicks then. I have a theory they were raised by dads who all got fucked up in Vietnam, but whatever the cause, there sure were a bunch of real assholes.
wonderful_rush@reddit
Man I got bullied hard for being into anime and games in school. Kids would take my comics and destroy them in front of me, push me over etc because I was "the weird kid". I also had blue hair back then and I'm a girl so maybe that contributed. But yeah I totally got bullied. Now that stuff is fkn everywhere! Sometimes I wonder if my bullied think about it and are like "shit we made that girl miserable and this stuff is mainstream now" lol I stopped going to school because of it.
djsynrgy@reddit
I think this functionally predates us, going back to the dawn of the arcade era, well before the NES was released. I never personally experienced it, anyway. 🤷🏼♂️
Like, Dragon's Lair came out in 1983. I was 3, at the time; wholly unaware, and by the time I have vivid memory of, it was already gone from the arcades.
Think about Stranger Things: There were the kids like Dustin at the arcades, but there were also the kids more like Billy, who bullied the kids like Dustin.
whoisbill@reddit
I literally make video games for a living. 17+ years of experience and have worked on some of the biggest franchises.
And my aunt once told me "so when are you gonna get a real job?" Not sure if that counts haha
notoriousrdc@reddit
No. I was teased for not having a Nintendo, though.
acromantulus@reddit
Sometimes. Not very often but my friends and I were well known for it
SlackerDS5@reddit
Only time I got teased was for being behind on the game systems. Most people were considered poor if they didn’t have the newest system. My parents just didn’t like me playing games so I barely got a NES when people were getting their Super Nintendos.
I had to do a damn dissertation and show my grades didn’t slip in order to get anything
Isiotic_Mind@reddit
I never got teased but they weren't "main stream". Popular kids (jocks cheerleaders) didn't play them. It just wasn't cool. Now they may of been closet gamers but there really wasn't much fanfare to being a gamer.
Not like today.
The types of girls that stream with their cleavage hanging out to get viewers weren't playing video games.
Mr_Perfect22@reddit
*may have been
luxtabula@reddit
Video games still were niche in the 90s. Most guys were able to get away with discussing it in the open, but girls still couldn't talk about it without being ostracized. I remember one girl who used to talk to me about games as if I was a drug dealer. I don't remember games being openly embraced by women until the YouTube era when they could openly talk about it with little push back. At least until gamer gate.
dejour@reddit
People got teased, but I think it was more like just another thing to mention while you were already making fun of someone who was nerdy. Also more likely if it was an obsession.
Like some people got made fun of for obsessively reading fantasy novels. But a popular well adjusted kid who happened to be reading a book wouldn’t be mocked.
Also parents were often very dismissive of video games.
testmonkeyalpha@reddit
Maybe if I talked to the "cool" kids about video games they would have made fun of me, but I hung out with other gamers.
draculasbloodtype@reddit
Same as you, 46F, I've been playing since I was *little* as my parents had an Atari. When Nintendo came out it was EVERYWHERE. I got a Gameboy for my 10th birthday, I still have it and it still works. I am honestly surprised when people my age *aren't* gamers because it's like, what were you doing in the 80s if not playing Mario? I still game pretty much every day as an adult. I never got teased for it, I got teased instead for being a major Trekkie and anime fan.
Deep-Interest9947@reddit
Maybe for gen x “computer dweebs” but definitely not xennials. Im a 1980 girl and while I played both computer and Nintendo games as a kid/tween and didnt get into it much, all of my friends in high school played video games. I was very social and my friends included the skaters, the gangsters, the jocks, the band nerds, the theater kids. Video games knew no bounds.
Red_Car_Singer@reddit
One year younger but this was my experience through school and with video games as well.
Hatecookie@reddit
Never, and I'm a girl. Or, maybe because I'm female, it was regarded as extra-cool. Now I make video games for a living, so playing them is like, competitor research, right? I have to, for my job.
Shabbadoo1015@reddit
No. Cause everyone, as far as I was aware, was playing video games in some fashion or another.
Maybe in some communities or circles, it might have been looked down upon. I was also a young boy and a probably half my friends were boys. So maybe that colors my experience? I also grew up in the inner city and lower class and that was the case for probably a majority of most of my close peers. So I think we probably had a different reverence for gaming (it really being a luxury) than maybe someone from an upper class background who had maybe other opportunities for hobbies and interests we didn’t. So to make a long story short, no one was making fun of anyone playing video games in my neighborhood, school or just general community on general.
Ok-Somewhere-2325@reddit
I got made fun of for playing th same games as other people. Same as I got made fun of by a kid for liking power rangers , said kid was wearing a power ranger shirt
nipslippinjizzsippin@reddit
I play wow, so yes
MetalEnthusiast83@reddit
Nope. Reddit myth.
StephInTheLaw@reddit
O don’t remember anyone getting teased for playing video games. It was just a normal thing kids were doing. Now TTRPG, they were getting teased.
haunted_patient@reddit
I really don't see how anyone could be teased for playing video games growing up in our generation. Everyone was into videogames! From the math nerds all the way to the "jocks"...it was pretty ubiquitous. The only difference were the the types of games people played
AstuteStoat@reddit
As a woman, yes. But not much and not enough to stop.
WritingNerdy@reddit
As a woman? Oh yeah.
ZzzSleep@reddit
It’s never direct teasing but some people still act like they’re just for kids.
LeakyAssFire@reddit
Yes. I got teased when I was coming up for being a computer gamer in the 90s.
freshleysqueezd@reddit
As an adult, I've had people tell me video games are for children. So yeah I guess so
FatReverend@reddit
I was never popular enough as a kid to get teased over playing video games. I got picked on for plenty of things but the other kids didn't know me well enough to even know to dive into the video game area.
Then in high school I was a wrestler and hockey player, so didn't matter anymore. Apparently being good at sports doesn't exactly make you super popular but it does negate other things they might pick on you about.
thebookofswindles@reddit
I’d say there was a big difference between the perception of console vs PC games. “Computer games” were for nerds.
CSWorldChamp@reddit
Only by my wife. Lol
Ancient-Eye3022@reddit
Definitely got teased a lot. Middle school was late 80s early 90s for me, I was into coding and video games. It "wasn't cool", so I got into sports in high school. Did fairly well, but not good enough to get any scholarships in college. You know who did do well? All the nerds who kept up with coding and IT stuff. le sigh
NoInvestment3870@reddit
Depended on the area you lived in, I encountered it in Arkansas & Oklahoma after we came back to the states as a teen. I was a military brat who hadn’t hit his growth spurt yet & those were the dirt poor areas we lived in without access to living on base.
In thinking about it, it’s more that bullies would find just about any aspect to target, playing video games just happened to be the excuse for the time in that area.
More-read-than-eddit@reddit
I think if you were playing text-based games or MUDs or similar, during the gap between the Nintendo/Genesis era and the GTA era, that was considered dork central. Same later with something like Myst where there was no shooting or similar.
Minouris@reddit
Not specifically for playing games, but definitely for being into computers in general. Relentlessly. It kinda just blended in with the general bullying for being into books and non top-40 music, though.
Two occasions stand out that amuse me now - one when I was about 10, and a girl taunting me about "not wanting to go home because you won't have your com-poo-ter" in a ridiculous baby voice (wtf?) and another when I was in first year uni and carrying my PC to another girl's room before going home for the mid year break, so she could use it to study while I was away, and having some boofhead sportsjerk sneer that I "couldn't bear to be without my precious computer for a whole week".
Both incidents in isolation were annoying and brush off-able at the time, since they were so patiently ridiculous that I couldn't take them seriously, but taken together I find it hilarious that a man so obsessed with his hobby that he even carried his ball to lectures couldn't come up with anything better than the childish insult of a preteen ten years earlier...
6thBornSOB@reddit
Not from kids my age, but the older neighborhood kids would lose their shit if you didn’t want to stop playing your game to do whatever outside.
kabbage_with_hair@reddit
I just had an angry boy come at me "GIRLS DON'T PLAY VIDEO GAMES!"
We'll here we are Paul 🖕
VinylHighway@reddit
I grew up in the 80s. VIdeogames were cool.
Ltimbo@reddit
I did in middle school but not much before or after that. I went to a particularly rough middle school though.
SeaSkimmer2@reddit
Never, except from my grandfather just giving us a hard time about taking over the TV from football. 😆 He is absolutely missed.
Yeah, all the kids and young teens played (boys and girls), all knew how to warp in Super Mario Brothers, we later had Super Mario Kart parties, etc etc. Hell, even many adults that weren’t elderly played…My mom and aunt called eachother to discuss Zelda strategy, my dad bought the NES Arcade controller and Top Gun for himself (Air Force Vet), and there was that one always-shirtless middle-aged smoker dude who roomed in a house with an older friend/single mother that had his own NES in his room and played it all day.
At some point, the girls moved away from it as they started “developing” and gaining the attraction of older teens/young adults (who brought them into more mature situations and places quicker than equal-aged boys), so it began to be seen that boys/teenage males who still played video games at that age were “nerds” or “geeks” because they weren’t already out “having fun” in the more mature situations and themes that the girls at the same age were being introduced to.
That stigma has carried to this day because to this day, that imbalance of attraction and earlier introduction to mature themes for one sex versus the other still exists.
Curious_Instance_971@reddit
Nah that was something rich kids had
TiEmEnTi@reddit
Once, when I was on a week long school trip and was playing my Game Boy on the bus. To be fair the guy would have bullied me about just about anything it was just convenient.
talrich@reddit
Was I called a nerd for playing computer games?
Only by my dad and my gym teacher.
superhex12345@reddit
No. All of my friends played video games. I don't remember anymore getting picked on for playing.
napalmthechild@reddit
Nah I was picked on for being an Asian kid who liked nu-metal lol
Cross_22@reddit
Teased? No, though my parents did not like that I spent a lot of time playing them. Turns out that was the best move though since I became a game developer.
16Shells@reddit
i _wish_ i still had time to play video games enough to be teased about it.
but no, all my friends game more or less, same with my cousins who are slightly older than me, so anyone in my life that has an opinion i actually care about doesn’t look down on gaming.
HandWashing2020@reddit
Yes definitely especially if it was on the computer
UbiquitousBot@reddit
Not to my face, only online. The dudes in my high-school were so impressed I had a PC and knew what unreal tournament was. Got invited to LAN parties (that I did not attend). Then I'd log in to an online game and get straight misogyny.
ptindaho@reddit
There was definitely antagonism towards games by some folks when I was a kid in the 80s/early 90s, but it wasn't awful. Video games were considered a little nerdy, and I remember aome people at my school trying to get the term VIdiot toing, but it never took off. Most of us played some levels of video games.
thatotherguy57@reddit
I certainly did.
Comfortable-Loss2785@reddit
I was picked on for just about anything I did when I was a kid, video games included. At school at least, kids that lived close to me knew I could help them map out TMNT for NES.
Klutzy-Delivery-5792@reddit
Nah, I was chubby and had coke bottle glasses. There was plenty to pick on besides video games.
Twanlx2000@reddit
I'm with you. Of the hundreds of reasons I was deemed uncool, playing video games was not one of them. If anything, my prowess in certain titles was the one avenue through which I held a certain amount of status outside my crowd of geeks.
ennuiismymiddlename@reddit
“Sucks to your ass-mar!”
CalmDownReddit509@reddit
Never.
yinchanvo@reddit
Older generations did not understand why I was "wasting my time" playing video games. Then again, I actually had a teacher who didn't believe in TV except PBS, and thus looked down upon comic books and video games.
All my peers enjoyed Atari/NES/Genesis. But, yeah, I guess there was a stigma about video games being for nerds, i.e. they weren't for girls if you know what I mean. For example, some guys who prioritized getting laid over beating Final Fantasy on SNES. To be honest, video games were normalized by at least PS2/Xbox and for "everyone" with Wii....
I feel Millennials normalized adults playing Nintendo, i.e. not even trying to be edgy like Sega anymore.
LunaticMuse@reddit
Relentlessly so. Add in the fact that I always had a book that was some kind of horror, fantasy, or D&D-adjacent? Oh yea.
So, so much. School was hell, but wasn't about to change to be popular and hang out with people who were such obvious assholes.
sandglider@reddit
My older brothers, who were about 10 years older. They had Atari around 12-15, so it was late for them while I basically grew up on it. Nintendo came out when I was 8 or 9 and it was a massive improvement. By this point they were in late high school or college, so I got teased. I distinctly remember one of them called it "no-friend-o"
ennuiismymiddlename@reddit
When I was in junior high school, around ‘92, I lived in a very small town in South Dakota, population around 600. There was absolutely a small group of boys who were all super into sports and rodeo. They made fun of my friends who were into video games, books, and music. Basically they bullied any boys that didn’t fit into their little clique of jocks and hicks (as we called them).
AndrewInMN@reddit
Not until I was an adult. In 2007ish I was relatively new at my current place of work and left a copy of EGM in a bathroom stall. It was a subscription so my name was on it. Well, some dipshit found it and started giving my crap like “get a real hobby” in the lunchroom in front of other people and wrote some stuff on the cover of the magazine. I barely knew the guy at all. Legit felt like middle school bullying. I had an ex or two give me shit for playing video games as an adult. My current gf plays with me.
blueyedwineaux@reddit
Yes. My brother did too, but it was worse being a girl.
bfume@reddit
What do you mean past tense? I still take shit to this day for playing games.