Miserable CoD gamers use tragic LA fires as excuse to show off disgusting lack of humanity 

The ongoing, awful situation in Los Angeles where wildfires have spread and destroyed tens of thousands of houses and forced over 100,000 people to evacuate has been a harrowing start to the year for countless people.

Watching it from afar is terrible enough, but to those being displaced, and those who have died or lost their entire houses and livelihoods, it’s a life-changing and serious situation that cannot be understated. Unfortunately, the internet’s anonymity allows anyone to comment on situations such as these, and as you may expect, some from the gaming community have once again let us all down.

A Reddit thread from the morning of Jan. 9 started out innocently enough, with the original poster shared an image of the fires spreading towards city of Santa Monica where Black Ops 6 developer Treyarch’s studio resides.

“Here’s hoping the fires can be controlled and stopped before even bigger areas are lost,” they said. “The situation in the LA area is insane at the moment.” And it could have been an opportunity for players to send well wishes or consider donating to disaster relief. Instead, unfortunately and unsurprisingly, it became a rallying cry for those who reside in the cesspool of humanity. I’ve been on the internet and in the CoD community for decades, but even I was shocked to see some of the comments.

“I can offer them a bundle in this time of need,” one throwaway account said. “Perhaps some double XP tokens in this time of need? Consider it a free gift,” another replied. “Burn it all to the ground,” one particularly sad soul said.

Even more comments were much, much worse, downvoted into invisibility, and there were plenty of other fire-related jokes within the thread that make my stomach turn just looking at.

The community sentiment around BO6 and Warzone right now is very low, which is understandable. The games are having repeated issues with hackers and server problems galore, and players are right to expect more from the franchise. But comments like these have no place anywhere in the world.

Words like this are unacceptable. A thought process like this is unacceptable. Empathy is an underrated human ability, and it seems like it’s completely lost on some people within the CoD community. Lives are being destroyed, upended, or even taken from these fires, and there is so much more going on than a video game that you use to pass the time. The fires are still burning and approaching even more buildings and people that have already been left in its wake.

The video game you play is much different than the real world where real people are being affected. Video games are not your life, and if they are, then consider yourself lucky, because many lives have been changed forever because of these fires. Everything that people have saved up for and built is now gone in an instant, family pets are dead or missing, and more.

CoD players, and gamers in general, I am begging you to grow the fuck up. Be better than this. If the game you play every single day makes you so miserable, do something else with your life. Log off and stop using your energy to put such negative, disgusting vibes into the world. We’ve got enough of that already.

Be angry at the game all you want. But if you ever consider to make comments or have thoughts such as these, take a step back and think really hard if this is how you truly feel. And if you still do feel this way, then seek help.

If you’d like to offset the abhorrent behavior of some gamers, you can donate to charities like the American Red Cross, LA Fire Department Foundation, or California Community Foundation.