Tyler “Ninja” Blevins doesn’t believe that teaching important life lessons to those in his audience that might be children is his own job. Instead, the content creator thinks that parents need to more carefully be teaching their children to have more decency and respect so that those lessons translate to online experiences.
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In a new conversation with The New York Times, the popular Twitch streamer was asked whether or not he could somehow mitigate the negativity that is often found on the internet. Blevins himself had previously in the conversation talked about how his chat on Twitch is sometimes distasteful. Despite not being a fan of this constant need to say mean things for attention, he believes that it’s not his own responsibility to fix the problem directly. “But it all comes down to parenting,” Blevins said. “You want to know who your kid is? Listen to him when he’s playing video games when he thinks you’re not.”
Blevins ended up taking the point even further and said that parents need to also be educating their children when it comes to even more problematic matters such as racism. “How does a white kid know he has white privilege if his parents never teach him or don’t talk about racism?” Blevins inquired. “If they’re gaming and their first interaction with racism is one of their friends saying the N-word and they have no idea what it is — what if it was on my stream? Is it my job to have this conversation with this kid?”
The world-renowned Twitch streamer went on to make clear that he doesn’t think it’s his own job to be the one to have these conversations with people while he’s on camera. More often than not, he also said that he thinks that when these topics are being brought up in his chat in the first place, it’s a mere attempt at trolling. “No, because the first thing that’s going on in my head is, ‘This kid is doing this on purpose to troll me,’” he explained. “If someone says a racial slur on someone else’s stream, it can potentially get that streamer banned. It’s awful, but that’s the first thing I think of.”
On the plus side, Blevins did also make clear in this interview that the majority of his audience is by no means children. Based on his own information, Blevins said most of his viewers are between the ages of 18 and 27. And with that in mind, the onus definitely falls less on Blevins to teach people how to properly act.
At the end of the day, Blevins is clearly going to do what he thinks is best for himself, but given the fact that he’s such a popular figure that’s recognized around the world, some are surely going to think he could do more to help with the problem. What do you personally think about these comments from Ninja? Be sure to let me know either down in the comments or over on Twitter at @MooreMan12.
[H/T GameSpot]
