Hey Razer, let’s chat.
I want you to understand why memes like this hurt gamers like me.

I’ve been a gamer since I was 7 and taking turns playing Crash Bandicoot with my dad and my brother. When my best friend killed herself in college, gaming went from hobby to obsession. Starcraft 2 came out that summer, and it defined my life. I was shit at that game to start (0-10 into Bronze), but I was determined to improve. I climbed to Diamond and, and as weird as it sounds, Starcraft 2 taught me what it meant to work for something. Shortly thereafter, I discovered League of Legends, a game which has been one of the only constants in my life since. I made a living writing about League of Legends – first balance/design, then esports – and after a stint as a playtester, I now work in Comms. Without gaming, I might not be the functional man I am today. I might not even be alive. Instead, I have a job I love working alongside the designers of a game I love, and I have a kickass community around me. Well, sort of. The hurtful stereotypes of black people in games has always made me feel distant from the community, something I’ve written about before (yeah I know, my first website sucked haha): Old video games didn’t really have black people, and the few were always stereotypes: comic relief, violent brute, and so on. Over time, this has changed, and games have made beautiful art. When Sazh(FFXIII)…ok no spoilers, but I sobbed and couldn’t play the game for weeks. But here’s the thing. There are those in the community who aren’t very happy with the progress we’ve made. During #GamerGate they harassed women and people of color who just wanted to feel included. I and many people I know were threatened, doxed, and swatted. And since then we’ve seen that subset of gamers cling hard to their offensive racism and misogyny, doubling down on memes intending to mock and belittle women and people of color. I don’t want to say that everybody who uses this meme is a racist, that’s dumb. We’ve reduced racism to simplistically to a thing that people *do*, when really it’s a system that is applied to people. Simplistically, it’s poking fun at an African accent. I’ll bet you most people couldn’t identify Ugandan from Rwandan before this meme began. They ain’t got beef with Ugandans. But in the context of the history of video games, it’s just another piece of media making black people the butt of a joke. But for some people it’s more. Yesterday in discussing this very meme, a troll ultimately admitted that his goal was to “make fun of you and your kind”. It’s people like that who make me second-guess how much I really belong in the gaming community. And when things like this happen again, whenever we have another example like PewDiePie saying ni**er, it makes it harder to ignore. Yes, for many people it’s just a dumb, ill-thought joke, but it provides cover for people with hate in their hearts. I play games. I write about games. I watch esports and in my spare time I annoy my friends talking about game design. But am I a gamer? I don’t know any more. If “gamers” is a community, far too many of them have made it clear that I’m not super welcome here. And so when I see a meme this from a company in my industry, it hurts. It hurts not just because of the meme itself, but because amidst controversy around this meme, you have chosen to say “hey, those feelings you might have? We’re going to use them for PR.” “Controversy around racism in the gaming community? How can we use this for branding?” That sucks, Razer. I moved into a new place recently and I haven’t unpacked my computer yet, and now I have to wonder… Do I stick with the Razer keyboard? Or when it eventually gets gross and dirty and old, do I vote with my dollars for a company that isn’t willing to joke about the very real problem of racial alienation in the gaming community for some Retweets?