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In recent times, we have a few blogs about bad manners (BM) in sc2. This is NOT a blog about BM. This is a blog about cultural understanding and the way that sc2 has impacted upon that. People like to call soccer ‘the world game’, and the game that brings to world together like no other sport has. So I’m going into this blog with a clear mind. I haven’t sat down and thought about this at all, I’m going to be writing what I think as I think it. This is the way that I tend to do things in my work as a scientist as well. I just start somewhere and see where the data takes me. Planning things out too far in advanced tends to lead with people ending up where they want to go, rather than where they need to go. /preamble

I think it’s prudent at this stage to give my background in both areas, so that the reader can judge my relative expertise for this topic. I came to sc2 about 6 months after commercial release. I came to sc2sea.com about 6 months after that and I came to join mGG a few months after that. I have been playing and watching soccer since about 1997 when I was in year 7 and started playing it for sport at school. I don’t really watch that much anymore. Not since the international matches were taken away from SBS – I can’t afford pay TV and think it’s ridiculous that the sport is now inaccessible to such a wide audience. But that’s another story for another time. As a result, personally, I feel that I am quite involved in the SEA scene of SC2 (I don’t pay that much attention outside of SEA to be honest, just what I hear in conversation with others) and not really that involved with soccer. This is likely to colour my thoughts quite a lot, so bear that in mind.

So I guess the most important thing to consider when trying to answer this question is the mechanism by which each sport (sc2 and soccer) create a ‘world game’, or more correctly, how they promote cross-cultural understanding. Let me begin by considering how soccer has led to me being involved in other cultures. Well… I play soccer, let’s start there. Whether it’s at school level or at a post-school level, playing has led me to have interactions with people I wouldn’t otherwise; both as team mates and as opponents. People who stand out in my head have been Scottish (a training partner from Glasgow who broke my shoulder, leaving me with a large scar from an operation and often a bit of a sore shoulder each morning), Egyptian (65 year old hero who once played goalie for Egypt), Indonesian (lots of school mates, some I got along with well, others I hated), and gay (he got called a fairy lots in school, but he had the hardest tackle in the team). So I guess that’s reasonably diverse.

Now considering sc2. I play. And I play on both the SEA and the NA server, though significantly less since moving internet to iiNet; their connection to NA has low ping but massive instability and lag. Go figure. I’m part of a sc2sea.com – a forum which boasts people from all around SEA as well as some people from North and South America and Europe. I don’t use TL. So again kind of diverse. But more importantly than playing with/against people, is that sc2 allows me to be social interacting with people. You can get to know someone reasonably well by spending 90 minutes on a field with them, seeing the actions and reactions when under pressure, when tired, when sore, when past the breaking point. But you don’t get that to same level in sc2 I feel. Perhaps if you are regularly attending international LAN events, where money is on the line you would, but not on ladder. In terms if allowing people to interact, ladder is probably not particularly useful. In a ladder you are concentrating on the action, there isn’t much room for assessing the mannerisms of a person you can’t see. Seeing as 80% of communication is body language, it’s no surprise I guess. Team games are a bit of a different matter. They are often less serious, people are significantly more likely to interact (both allies and opponents) and there is nowhere near the same amount of focus on performance. More so than in 1v1, people are playing teams for fun. I believe this scales as well, with 2v2 being almost as serious as 1v1, but 4v4 being completely about fun and making troll builds work.

More than that though, sc2 is built upon socialising in a way that soccer is not. When you watch sc2, you are watching a stream with people from all over the world. Asian, Americas and Europe are all tuning in at the same time and interacting in the same social medium of the stream chat. And this is not the only instance, we have forums that span the globe, we have clans that span regions and the globe (Hi Muex, over there in Canada). Whilst soccer certainly has its online forums as well, on a per person basis, soccer cannot, in anyway, compete with the global interaction that sc2 facilitates.
I think there is one very obvious thing that always happens when ever cultures start interacting - friction. This is medium and time independent (as in, this is true for all the centuries up until and including now). I’m a big fan of the idea that learning comes through mistakes. If you’ve gone through life without making mistakes, then you are either living under a rock or completely delusional about your own success. Mistakes are mandatory. Everyone makes them and you can’t possibly advance as a person without them. In this I believe that mistakes and cultural friction are the same thing. Western culture, Asian culture, South American and European cultures are all very different in lots of ways. Because of this, there will always be friction and misunderstandings. But it is only through these events that learning can be had. And through learning, tolerance.

Tolerance is an important word to understand as well. Promoting tolerance is not about getting people to agree with your ideas, or getting them to recognise your way of doing things is the right way. Tolerance is about not beating up a person because they think differently to you do. I don’t have to embrace your way of doing things. Tolerance is accepting that you will do things your way, and I’ll do them mine. True tolerance is people agreeing to disagree, and not letting it affect other aspects of their relationship.
In a way it comes down to censorship. The only thing worse than promoting authoritarian censorship (i.e. someone with authority over you telling you what you can say or feel) is promoting self censorship. This is when someone comes in and says that you can’t do something because they find it offensive. A beautiful example can be found in the book, ‘You can’t read this’, by Nick Cohen. In it he explains that the Quran has nothing at all inside saying that you can’t draw pictures of Mohammed, but this practice started relatively recently by extremists wishing to make an Islamic world.

So far this all seems a bit disjointed. Speaking about cross-cultural understanding, tolerance and censorship, without drawing any lines between them. But there is a very clear and recent example which brings them all together. There was very recently yet another blog about some behaviour which was deemed to be BM by the recipient. Before I get into that, I want to make an observation about some cultures. Something that is highly prevalent within Australian and New Zealand culture is ‘piss-taking’ or taking the piss out of someone. Essentially, this is light-hearted abuse directed at people you know with humourous intent. For example, yo mamma so fat jokes, jokes about how ugly or stupid or clumsy a person might be. These are comments, that when directed at someone you don’t know, can be offensive. But when directed toward a like-minded individual, is perfectly acceptable banter with good intentions. In my experience this behaviour is most prevalent in Australian and New Zealand culture, fairly prevalent in British culture and somewhat prevalent in US and Canadian culture. My experience for these cultures consist of a mere handful of people from each, but over the course of 1-6 months with each. What I have also seen is that this is almost non-existent in many Asian cultures. During school, when we had many Indonesian kids in particular move to Sydney for year 11 and 12, Asian students would slowly adjust to the banter and come to accept it, but it was few people who were able to give the banter as well as receive. So when someone comes out and says that (in a sc2 game, and I paraphrase here), “your pauses are being smited by god because you touch yourself at night. ”, I can immediately see that this was said by a westerner who is attempting to be humourous through ‘piss-taking’ banter. Within western culture, I believe that the majority of people would not be particularly offended by that (that’s not to say there wouldn’t be a significant minority though). But in an Asian culture, where this form of banter, and especially sexual banter, is unheard of and taboo, I can easily see how it would be taken as highly offensive. This is the perfect time to undergo some cross-cultural understanding. The Westerner, somewhat understandably, does not understand how it could be construed as offensive. The Asian, equally as understandably, does not see how it could be interpreted as anything BUT offensive. This is where tolerance comes from. The Westerners need to tolerate and respect the idea that some cultures are far less sexually open and their Asian counterpart needs to tolerate and respect that some cultures are far more sexually open.

The question becomes, where is the line? Where do we place the balancing point such that both parties are making the same level of sacrifice in order to tolerate each other? To say that the Westerner should not make sexually oriented jokes may well come to the lips of many. I would say that this borders perilously close to self-censorship. If this is part of their culture, then it is not appropriate to suggest that they may not expose others to that culture. By the same token, it not necessarily correct to say that our Asian friend needs to learn to accept sexual conversation whenever it is directed at them. This is also a form of self-censorship; here we are expecting someone to not inform us, that in their culture, sexual conversation is not appropriate. In this context I want to use another Australian euphemism; both parties need to eat some concrete. I do not mean to direct this at either party in the example above, but merely to say that the next time this situation arises between you, the reader, and someone else, keep the concrete in mind. Let me explain. To eat concrete is to harden up, or to grow a thick skin. It means do not let offence be the only emotion you feel (telling someone to not be offended in the first place is a ridiculous notion). The trick is to ensure that you question your emotion of offence, rather than just accepting that you are offended and someone must pay for that. These people are on the internet, perhaps several thousand kilometres from where you are. They cannot hurt you in anyway, unless you allow them to by taking their comments personally.

Next time someone says something that you don’t like, respond with, “please don’t speak like that. glhf”. The correct response to this is, “sorry. glhf.” If this is not the response you get, press the F11 button, click on the person to block them, and enjoy the rest of your game, and forget that that person ever existed.

TL;DR

SC2 is probably the new ‘world game’, in that it facilitates a greater interaction between people from different cultures (in terms of number of people) than any other sport in the world. As such, it is quite possibly the greatest tool for learning about, understanding and (more importantly) tolerating other cultures that I know of. But what is missing from this equation is understanding by parties of what tolerance actually is. Tolerance is achieved through interaction and through recognising that self-censorship can in no way help anyone achieve anything. It is not okay to feel like you need to create a drama because someone offended you, anymore than it is to deliberately go out and try to offend people. Feel free to express yourself in your natural manner. Learning about other cultures cannot take place if those other cultures don’t interact with us in their normal fashion. But if you do happen to be offended, express that offence in a respectful manner and move on.