The Overwatch League is facing increasing allegations. Recently, it was accused of having racist tendencies. It involves controversial internet memes. What is the truth behind these allegations?
It started with the Pepe meme, which is unfortunately often associated with ideologies on the extreme right. Viewers displayed a banner featuring the well-known meme during a Dallas Fuel game.
The Pepe banner was confiscated, and the whole issue could have been peacefully buried. But that was just the beginning.
The “Ugandan Knuckles” Case
However, a whisper went through the OWL-affiliated internet when the first shirts and banners featuring the Ugandan Knuckles meme were spotted in the audience. Additionally, three teams used the meme in tweets: Dallas Fuel, San Francisco Shock, and the Los Angeles Valiant. These tweets have since been deleted.
It seems there was little awareness of the negative associations of both memes. Players from San Francisco Shock referenced the meme while the entire audience could witness it live.
“What’s so bad about it?”
By nature, Ugandan Knuckles does not appear racist at all. Created as a parody of the Sonic character Knuckles, it appeared well in Gregzilla’s video .
The one-liner from the Ugandan action parody “Who killed Captain Alex?” is not racist in context.
However, when connected and placed in the wrong context, it can take on a different side. When an African accent, and thus a specific ethnicity, is deliberately associated with harassment towards women, inappropriate behavior, and jokes about Ebola, then the otherwise harmless meme takes on an unpleasant nature. In particular, it gained popularity in this form within the game “VR Chat”, spilling over into other communities.
The Reactions
As often, there are two sides:
- Those who celebrate those who use the meme.
- And those who condemn it and cannot respect any team that associates with it.
The fact is, the teams listen to the criticism. The tweets have since been deleted.
Dallas Fuel also expressed itself upon request to Kotaku: “We will no longer use the meme on our social media channels and will no longer engage with it.”
This once again shows the problem that the OWL is still young and that there seems to be a lack of awareness regarding the impact and reach in public. Some topics are very sensitive to handle on the internet, whether one stands behind the criticism or not.
Guddy states: “I believe many players and viewers do not realize what the use of the meme can express – even if one is against racism. It’s difficult to look into others’ heads and know what they associate with any meme. Therefore, I consider condemning individual teams at this point to be rather premature.”
A player from Dallas Fuel has already been banned for homophobic remarks.
