Do you kiss your mother with that mouth?
Back in May, Oddsseeker completed a study on what video game communities on Reddit have the most toxic potty mouths. It also shows who, among the fanbases, has the best vocabularies, particularly when it comes to variety and profanity. So, that’s important.
This is certainly not a scientific study, but it is a fun one. It looks at “366,904 Reddit posts from the last year across 25 popular video game subreddits,” and pulls data to show who are the most toxic. So, let’s take a look.
That’s an interesting thesaurus
The first bit of data that Oddsseeker divulges is the use of unique words. They frame this as being “intelligence,” but I’m not sure that’s a reliable one. I have a reasonably agile vocabulary, but I navigate this world with the deftness of a bad guy from Turok: Dinosaur Hunter.
Nonetheless, the reveal demonstrates that League of Legends players stretch their linguistics the furthest, while Grand Theft Auto V players use a staggeringly sparse vocabulary. They also mention that Grand Theft Auto V has one of the most popular subreddits, which makes the fact that they only use 13,496 unique words almost impressive.
Meanwhile, when it comes to console owners, the report suggests Nintendo fans have the most diverse lexicon. Numbers are pretty close between all platforms, however. I’m just surprised PC isn’t on top, considering how much that fanbase talks about things like FLOPS.
On the topic of vocabulary, the study also covers vulgarity. For this section, they chose to compare the frequency of curse words against the population of the subreddit. Particularly, their charts demonstrate the number of swears by 10k subreddit users.
What it shows is that, by a wide margin, Hogwarts Legacy fans seem to be the most vulgar. It’s not even close here. Next is Call of Duty: Warzone followed by Starcraft and Grand Theft Auto V. At the bottom is Animal Crossing, Pokemon, and Minecraft.
Weirdly, however, Hogwarts Legacy users seem to prefer the word “piss,” which is a pretty weak swear. I don’t know, I didn’t play Hogwarts Legacy. Maybe there’s just a lot of pissing in it. Meanwhile, the Nintendo Switch community liked the word “screw,” and I’m not sure if whatever they used to parse the forums can differentiate the difference between its vulgar and literal use. Like, there’s a difference between “unscrew the back of your Joycon to check and see if your battery is starting to bulge” and “screw Nintendo for their drifting Joy-cons.”
You’re toxic, I’m slippin’ under
The study also talks about toxicity. To find these statistics, the team “analyzed the sentiment” of posts to check how many of them were negative. Judging the tone of a written piece isn’t always accurate, but these numbers don’t seem all that hard to believe.
At the top are online game communities like Apex Legends, League of Legends, and Call of Duty: Warzone. At the bottom are Nintendo’s fandoms for Animal Crossing, Pokemon, and The Legend of Zelda. Considering that the list bottoms out at 14%, that’s still a lot of negativity.
Meanwhile, for consoles, Nintendo (and separately Nintendo Switch) are at the bottom. Once again, however, the numbers are pretty close across all platforms.
What are the odds?
If I haven’t made this clear, you probably shouldn’t take this study too seriously. Oddsseeker is primarily a sports betting site, but they lay out their methodology in a transparent manner, and it doesn’t seem to be in any effort to support a bias. With that said, there are some notable omissions.
They say they take data from 25 subreddits, which leaves out some notable fanbases. Anecdotally, as a writer, I’ve been most harshly abused by the Sonic the Hedgehog and (weirdly) Suda51 fanbases. I also stopped playing Red Orchestra 2 back in the day because every match seemed to become the commander of the losing team venting their frustrations at their teammates.
Likewise, while these statistics are fascinating, I don’t consider a large vocabulary to be indicative of intelligence. Likewise, I personally don’t think that the use of profanity suggests a lack thereof. However, it may say something about the friendliness of the community. I can give my personal experiences with certain fanbases, but actual metrics paint a more reliable picture.
The bottom line is that you can learn from this study, but don’t take it as the gospel. The only thing you, personally, can do is try to be the best person you can possibly be.
Besides, we already know that Destructoid has the best community on the internet. We use all the best vulgarities.
