” Hey!” a voice boomed from my speakers. ” Hey you retard! You need to make a white man, you hear me? A. White. Man.”
[Note to readers: I would not normally use the word “retard” in my writing. If you were shocked by it, so was I. I will be using Mad-Lib style brackets for the rest of my story, leaving it to you to fill in the blanks.]
I sat stunned for a moment, looking confused around the living room. Had Bethesda implemented some ” white man only” policy that I was unaware of? No, of course not. This was simply the voice of some other Fallout player who also happened to be making his character, being piped directly into my home through the magic of Fallout 76.
” No!” the awful voice continued. “That is not a white man! That is a [swear word] [derogatory term for someone of Middle Eastern descent].”
” It’s not!” the voice of a young child insisted. My heart froze. ” It’s not a [derogatory term for someone of Middle Eastern descent]. It is a white man.”
“That is no white man!” the older voice insisted. ” Boy, you might as well make a [swear word] [swear word] [derogatory term for someone with African heritage]. Do you want to be running around this [swear word] game as a [swear word] [derogatory term for someone of Middle Eastern descent]?”
“No, Daddy”, the little voice said quietly. I couldn’t tell if it was a boy or a girl, but the child sounded like they were crying a little. It was absolutely heart breaking.
My jaw on the ground, I began fumbling around with the controller, seeking a way to mute the awful scene that was playing out in a living room somewhere else in the United States. I did not know if the terrible man that was haranguing his poor child was aware that everyone could hear him. I don’t know if he would have cared. I did know that my wife had my kids in the next room watching Trolls on an iPad, and I didn’t want them hearing this.
“Get that hook nose off of there,” the world’s worst father hollered into my home. “He looks like a [swear word] [derogatory term for a Jewish person].”
It quickly became apparent that there was no way to mute other players from the character creation screen. I was going to have to mute my sound system to keep this cretin from screaming more obscene horrors into my home.
“No, you [upsetting term for someone with mental disabilities],” the voice yelled. ” He has [derogatory term for people of Latino descent] eyes!”
Sighing, I picked up the remote and muted my sound. I dejectedly created my bogus-looking character in about 90 seconds, and entered Vault 76. As soon as I was able to, I entered the options menu and silenced the other players so I could turn my sound back up. I kept them silenced for the duration of my four hour play period.
