Dox Attacks, Death Threats, and Insults Hurled in Halo Subreddit
People feeling passionate about what they love is something everyone is familiar with. There are some people who love sports, some people who love cross-stitching. And there are people who love video games, like Halo.
And sometimes, despite, and because of their love, people can take things too far.
This happened with the Halo main Reddit, r/Halo, this weekend. There was a pleasant surprise of Halo Infinite multiplayer possible to play and download on November 15th, 2021. So people started to play. And, just like with any game, people had feelings on whether Halo Infinite was good or bad, and…well, things have quickly gone downhill from there.
People who loved the game were trying to defend it, people who hated the game hurled insults at other people and the developers behind Infinite, and while that wasn’t great, it could be handled.
The problem came when both sides started to threaten and dox attack those they did not agree with or did not like. (For those who do not know, dox attacking is the attempt to find and collect private information and then show said information publically). Apparently, it was bad enough for the mods of the r/Halo Reddit to lock down the entire subreddit until Monday, December 6, 2021.
r/Halo mod, 343 Guilty Spark wrote of the matter in a Reddit post. “On all sides, this has absolutely gone on long enough and spiraled out of control. The amount of toxicity on the sub from both sides has made it impossible for people to have civil discussions, which is what the mod team strives for regardless of opinion. Some users on the sub have even been responsible for doxxing and death threats. We’re temporarily putting the sub on lockdown so people can hopefully settle down a bit and we can hit the reset button before launch. At the end of the day, this is a video game and this level of vitriol is unwarranted.”
There’s no word as of yet whether the lockdown will continue past the weekend if people don’t cool off. But maybe, people will remember to take a deep breath and remember one thing: if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.