Ninja believes parents should be parents to their children

Popular Twitch streamer Tyler “Ninja” Blevins has a few prime words for parents in an interview with The New York Times: Listen and, more importantly, teach your kids.

The post asked Ninja several questions about a number of things in his life, from his plans to transition into voice acting to his comments a few years ago about not playing games with women. One question, in particular, centered on the behavior of children who frequent its live broadcasts. When asked what could be done to alleviate the often infantile and inflammatory comments made in the chat, which inevitably tend to turn into derogatory or racial slurs, Ninja said that “it all comes down to parenthood.”

“But it all comes down to parenthood,” Ninja said. “You want to know who your kid is? Listen to him when he plays video games when he thinks you aren’t. Here’s another thing: how does a white kid know he has privilege white if his parents never teach him or make him talk about racism? “

Ninja went on to say that it was not his job to teach children about culture or race related topics because his first instinct was to assume he was being trolled in the chat.

“If they’re playing 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? ” Ninja asked. “Is it my job to have this conversation with this kid? No, because the first thing that happens in my head is that this kid is doing it on purpose to troll me. If someone says a racial insult on the stream from someone else, he can potentially ban that streamer. It’s horrible, but that’s the first thing I think of. “

At the same time, however, Ninja noted that the Internet’s illusion of anonymity encourages people to “say whatever they want.” However, Ninja still believes parents should get involved.

“I don’t think it’s gambling. I think it’s internet culture. People are behind the screen. They say whatever they want and can get away with it. You are completely anonymous. Your information and data is valuable and should be kept private, but it sucks that there are kids out there who can say racist things and be incredibly aggressive and threatening to women online and have no repercussions. It would be great if when someone ‘one would say something threatening, you might be like,’ Let me look up this guy’s player tag on this website ‘- if the law could do that, not a normal person – and then boom: “It’s Jimmy. He said this. Let’s call his parents. ‘”