Recently there was a sponsored tournament for Marvel Rivals (free to play online "hero shooter" type game), coinciding with the addition of Deadpool to the roster. Top prize: $40,000.
Real quick, a few of the most relevant
dramatis personae:
Kingsman265: Top-tier player. College student who could use some extra cash.
Cece: Team captain who invited Kingsman to play in the tournament. Girl gamer.
Zazzastack aka Zazza: Another member of team Cece. Girl gamer. In fact Kingsman wound up being the only male player on the team. Let's see if that plays into how things turn out.
Zazza insisted on playing Black Widow, a character Kingsman believed to be bottom-tier and likely to get repeatedly picked off by the opposing team. Here's a screenshot of the impact that had on the tournament:
Zazza at this point has 0 kills, 0 assists, and 5 deaths. Basically had no more impact that had she gone afk. Possibly more harmful than just not being there. Kingsman speaks up at death number 5, calling back to his warnings about her character's vulnerability and asks her to switch. He is audibly frustrated but does not insult or belittle her. Immediate response from Cece: "First of all, like, deadass, Kingsman, shut the fuck up." Blood is now in the water and the rest of the team activates meangirl mode: "You're doing too much." / "You're only getting value because four of them are after her." They then continued to shut down his attempts to reverse course until Cece reported him to the tournament organizer, which resulted in Kingsman being banned from the tournament. For trying to win.
Cece was not satisfied with this and continued to shit talk him on stream and in comments after the fact, calling him a "loser," saying that he didn't have social skills, saying he can't take no for an answer, etc. Unfortunately, everything that happened was being streamed for all to see and rather than kick off another Gamergate, Kingsman gained thousands of followers, Zazza's name is a complete meme among Marvel Rivals players, and the whole thing escaped containment and the would-be girlbosses got mulched up into commentary fodder by the wider Internet. When Cece's last ditch attempt to defend herself in a video where she called Kingsman a "metaslave" and had her voice pitched weirdly high (probably going for 'uwu I'm just a girl pls no bully') gained no traction, she put up a PR-speak apology on a post with restricted comments.
This is already way longer than I wanted to be and really only hits
most of the highlights. More to be seen in the
Marvel Rivals thread