Before starting this topic, you have to say something. We all know that video games have one of the most passionate fandoms. Emotion and participation are pleasant, but irrational fanaticism is not. Recently, Laura Bailey, the voice actress for Abby in The Last of Us 2, has recently experienced outrageous bigotry. She recently shared her experiences on Twitter.
Video games provide the perfect momentary escape from our everyday, mundane life. For a period of time, we are lost in another world. Being fans of such a shocking medium, we are really excited about our games. Everything is nice and innocent until fans end up blurring the lines between reality and the game.
Read more: The Last Of Us Part 2 Director open about hateful comments
Laura responds to The Last of Us 2 fan hate
Laura Bailey put on a wonderful performance as Abby in The Last of Us 2. This is not a surprise, as she is a talented voice actress and has worked on some high-profile games from Halo 5 to Batman: The Telltale. Now Abby has received a lot of hatred from certain sections of the fans for various reasons and that’s perfectly fine. But sending threats and hate comments to the voice actor of a fictional character is simply overkill.
Of course, many other voice actors showed their support in this tweet, and thanked each of them. But such incidents are bound to leave a scar on anyone.
Man. I try to post only positive things here … but sometimes this gets a little overwhelming. I deleted some of the words because, you know, spoilers.
Marginal note. Thanks to all the people who sent me positive messages to balance it. It means more than I can say .❤️ pic.twitter.com/kGyULWPpNu
– Laura Bailey (@LauraBaileyVO) July 3, 2020
Read more: CS: GO Pro receives death threats for cheating charge
This is not what rational fans would do now, is it? Again, we have an example of how certain fan bases can become toxic (again, not all). Such toxicity is generally limited to multiplayer titles due to the high stakes generally involved. In any case, getting to the voice actor who played the role of a character he hated doesn’t seem like a very mature thing.
Toxic fan bases still prevail in games
Not long ago, a certain section of CS: GO team fans, MiBR, sent death threats to a sixteen-year-old opposition player on a cheating charge. There are many reasons to take video games and games seriously, but spreading hate in this way is really unnecessary and not needed.
