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'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?' THE CARNIVALESQUE GRIEFING
BEHAVIOUR OF BRAZILIAN ONLINE GAMERS
Suely Fragoso
Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul
Keywords: multiplayer online game, Brazil, spam, troll, griefer
Abstract
This paper describes and discusses the conflicts between Brazilian online gamers and the
players from other countries. Two questions are addressed: what, if anything is specific to the
disruptive behaviour of Brazilian players and how do they handle the association between
their reputation and their nationality. Answers to these questions are strongly interrelated:
Brazilian gamers often act in groups, and the use of nationality as their identity marker is
decisive in the quickly and spontaneous formation of these groups. Brazilian players take
advantage of the wide ambiguity of the comedic in multicultural environments and the
carnivalesque tone is probably its most remarkable feature of their behaviour.
1. Introduction
The presence of Brazilians on the internet has increased rapidly during the last decade. By the
end of 2012, the number of Brazilian internet users is estimated at 80.9 million (Barbosa,
2013, p. 166), who spend more time online, on average, than other nationalities (Ibope, 2006-
2013). The usage of Social Network Sites (SNS) by Brazilians is notoriously high (Dantas &
Dodebei, 2010; Chao, 2013; Mizukami, Reia & Varon, 2013), reaching 73% of the Brazilian
internet population. Despite not being as high, the percentage of Brazilian internet users who
play games online is not irrelevant: at 33% it represents more than 26.6 million people
(Barbosa, 2013, p. 485).
The fact that the most common uses of the internet in Brazil are entertainment and social
interaction is usually attributed to the sociable and good-humoured nature of Brazilians.
However, many records of the Brazilian presence on the internet contradict that image,
indicating instead a tendency toward conflict and aggression, particularly in their interactions
with people from other countries. The best known example of an online confrontation
involving Brazilians took place in Google’s SNS Orkut in 2004 and has been registered in the
Proceedings of a previous CaTAC Conference (Fragoso, 2006).
At the 10th anniversary of the Brazilian invasion of Orkut, the epicentre of the conflicts
between Brazilians and non-Brazilians appears to have migrated to multiplayer online games
(MOGs). The level of disruption and aggressiveness of groups of players that present
themselves as Brazilian has escalated to unprecedented levels. Identified by the use of
infamous memes, most notably 'HUEHUEHUE' and 'BR?BR?'
1
, these gamers (and their
actions) are the object of the discussion presented in this text. For convenience and by habit, I
will refer to the players as „the HUEHUEs‟ and to their actions as 'huehueing' ('to huehue' −
huehue, huehued, huehueing). The leading questions are:
is there a difference between the actions of the HUEHUEs and the modes or style of
disruptive behaviour perpetrated by gamers from other nationalities? (or, do
1
„HUAHUEHUE‟ is supposed to be the sound of a laughter and „BR?BR?‟ is a call to identify other Brazilians
in the game.
FRAGOSO
2
Brazilians misbehave differently from others?)
how do the HUEHUEs deal with the association between their online presence and
their national identity?
Examples are better suited to the nature of the discussion intended in this paper is than either
statistics or demonstrations. Data was obtained with a) an online survey responded by 511
internet users between 28 October and 28 December 2013 and b) cascading searches, starting
with the HUEHUEs' best known memes via Google and Reddit and in the forums associated
with Steam, World of Warcraft, League of Legends and Dota2. References to stigmatization
were obtained with searches by nationality in the same sources. More than 100 webpages,
images and videos were considered relevant and incorporated into the dataset. All URLs were
last checked in 04 May, 2014.
2 The HUEHUEs
The „Brazilian invasion‟ of Orkut was not the first or the last is conflict between Brazilian
internet users and users of other nationalities. One year before, two other confrontations had
already taken place - in all three cases, the main target appear to be users from the U.S.
(Kahney, 2003; Fragoso, 2006). The reasons for this eventual 'preference' involve a complex
set of socio-historical factors, which are beyond the scope of this text. A description of the
first of these events helps to understand the tone of the disagreements between Brazilian and
U.S. internet users.
In 2003, „serious users‟ of Fotolog, a photo-blogging and SNS, started to complain that
Brazilians were spoiling the service by posting a large number of bad quality pictures of
themselves. At first, the founders of Fotolog appear to have ignored these complaints and
considered the practice harmless (Kahney, 2003). However, the “artistic New York
photobloggers” were loud about their aversion to sharing Fotolog with the “sexy Brazilian
cam girls”
2
and their "saucy webcam portraits" (Kahney, 2003). Such stereotypical
references to Brazilian women are likely to have fuelled the increase in Fotolog's popularity
that is said to have made it impossible to maintain the service free of charge. When Fotolog
created its „gold camera‟ service and restricted the free use of the service to a single picture
per day and up to 5 comments, Brazilians members were upset and flooded the service with
protesting images and angry comments, which were responded to with angrier and even more
insulting pictures and comments
3
, in an escalating battle.
The other conflict from 2003 happened in a multiplayer game, Ragnarok Online (RO), where
some of the best known huehueing memes are said to have been created. It started as most
other such confrontations: with the Brazilians insisting on using Portuguese in areas where
other players considered that the only acceptable language was English. Brazilian Ragnarok
servers were created, but most players did not migrate to them. Servers that adopted stricter
rules about language attracted more English speaking players, who abandoned areas where
Portuguese (and, probably, by that time, also other languages) were used. By the beginning of
2004, players were being banned for using any language other than English in US-based
servers. Needless to say, many Brazilians were banned on the spot. A huge uproar in the
Brazilian community occurred. In a certain Brazilian forum (...) they would organize
raids and clans to fight English Speakers on english servers
Huge groups would reach max level and travel in packs on PVP servers and ask
"BR?"(…) If you failed to reply in Portuguese, they would camp you, sometimes for
2
http://gothamist.com/2003/06/04/fotolognet_revolution_volta.php
3
http://photodude.com/2003/06/09/the-defreeing-of-fotolog
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
3
hours speaking poorly worded english insults suggesting you log off. This led to an
intense hate of Brazilians on these RO servers. Huge clans would form anti-BR
Brigades and hunt down Brazilians. It became an all out war.
(GreenEyedMonster, 24 June 2012
4
)
The confrontation spread to other games
5
and continues to this day. It is unlikely that the
percentage of HUEHUEs is significant in relation to the total number of Brazilians who play
MOGs, but the relation between huehueing and Brazil became a stigma for Brazilian gamers.
The following conversation was motivated by a widespread cartoon that supposedly tells the
story of the invasion of RO by the HUEHUEs
6
:
Ugh I hate brazillians [sic]. If you've ever played a not so popular mmorpg, then
you'd know how annoying their shit American [sic] grammar is. Since they suck so
much, they ask for money and items. This is why I quit online games. Now it's come
back to haunt me (Anonymous, 31 December 2009
7
)
You should play some Valve games or something. I've only met like 1 non-American
in l4D, and he raped a tank with his eyes (Anonymous, 3 January 2010
8
)
At the time of writing, it is easy to find Brazilians who claim to have been insulted for minor
reasons, such as using BR as part of their names. Some respond angrily, others hide their
nationality. The comments below were motivated by a post in Reddit that links to a video in
which a monkey with the face of a HUEHUE teases a dog using the HUEHUEs memes:
I'm glad I am a brazilian, not a [sic] "american" (because the rest of the continent is
not american, right?).
Otherwise I'd be an obese redneck who thinks that the Iraq war was correct, or that
Jesus was real.
Brb: getting some Mc Donalds [sic] burgers.
Yep, stereotypes hurt, heh. (stephangb, 2012
9
)
I'm Brazilian and I was about to defend my fellow countrymen. until I remembered
how many times I told Brazilian players to piss off in both English and Portuguese.
There's a reason why I keep my nationality (and gender) a secret in games, mostly to
avoid the massive racist backlash which occurs when one discovers my nationality.
(nenssa, 2012
10
)
HUEHUE and BR? BR? are also used with pride. Especially after the publication of a brief
article and an infographic about the bad reputation of Brazilians in MOGs by the newspaper
Folha de S Paulo in May, 2013
11
, these memes appear to be spreading to non-gaming
environments. In October 2013, Sony announced that its newest console would be sold in
Brazil at a very high price. The news was received with jokes about Sony "shielding the rest
of the world from Brazilians online"
12
and Folha de S. Paulo re-heated its previous article
with a lamentable headline: “Foreigners commemorate PS4 prices in Brazil for keeping
4
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298
5
For example: Tibia, Lineage, Wolrd of Warcraft, DotA 2, League of Legends, DeadZ.
6
http://i0.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/000/135/593/brfw0.png
7
http://lolbot.net/index.php?content=viewer&vmode=random&id=2956#.UwqzwYXdeZo
8
http://lolbot.net/index.php?content=viewer&vmode=random&id=2956#.UwqzwYXdeZo
9
http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/wwi6u/so_i_made_a_toon_on_warsongus/c5h9sct
10
http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/wwi6u/so_i_made_a_toon_on_warsongus/c5h5wsx
11
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/2013/05/1280744-brasileiros-ganham-fama-ruim-praticando-assalto-e-
arrastao-em-jogos-on-line.shtml
12
http://www.destructoid.com/playstation-4-will-cost-1-850-in-brazil-263741.phtml#comment-1086305077
FRAGOSO
4
Brazilians away”
13
. The infographic was reproduced in various Brazilian game forums and
blogs, accompanied by criticisms of the HUEHUEs
14
or, less frequently, of the newspaper
15
.
The following are approximate translations of the names given to the actions attributed to the
HUEHUEs in the infographic, with summarized versions of their descriptions:
Virtual begging – asking for money or equipment ('gibe moni plox') instead of playing to
earn them;
Assault – threatening to report other players if they didn't give what was been asked ('gibe
moni plox' combined with 'I report u');
Creative begging – artistic performances (such as dancing or reciting) to be given money
or equipment;
Pillage – simultaneous robbery by a large number of gamers;
Friendly fire – joining a team to deliberately ruin its chances instead of collaborating;
BR?BR?BR? – repeatedly shouting or writing BR? or BRASIL? in the open chat to find
other Brazilians, independently of the disturbance caused to other players;
Racism – when other players associate their behaviour with their nationality, Brazilian
gamers accuse them of racism ('thas raciss')
To my knowledge this list remains uncontested and, in my experience, it is a reasonable
account of the behaviour of the HUEHUEs. However, a common complaint about the
HUEHUEs in specialized forums and blogs has not been mentioned in the infographic: that
Brazilian gamers don't know English
16
or refuse to speak English despite being able to
17
.
Creative begging, on the other hand, has not been mentioned by any other source and was not
known of by any player I had the opportunity to ask. It is easy to find references to Brazilian
gamers spamming open chat channels with their memes, begging, assaulting, letting their
teams down and then accusing others of racism for responding to their provocation.
There are several opinions about the reasons behind the HUEHUEs‟ behaviour, for example:
that it is a development of the hatred initiated in Ragnarok
18
; that the HUEHUEs are poor
children playing in public places
19
or who have “minimal computer and internet access for
free”
20
; that Brazilians are unable to play properly because of the geographic distance to the
U.S and low quality of the internet in Brazil
21
; that they are unskilled and not committed to
the team and the game. The behaviour of the HUEHUEs has also been associated to Brazilian
culture in general, with huehueing being said to mirror daily life in Brazil
22
. Curiously, this
last idea is popular amongst Brazilians. During an interview to Folha de S. Paulo, the CEO of
a Brazilian company dedicated to online games declared: “We can affirm that this is not a
problem that originates in the game. The player, in online worlds, is a reflection of how he
lives in real world"
23
. This assertion was reproduced in several blogs and websites as being
13
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/2013/10/1358688-gamers-comemoram-preco-do-ps4-no-brasil-por-manter-
brasileiros-longe.shtml
14
http://www.madjoystick.com/2013/05/a-ma-fama-dos-brasileiros-nos-jogos.html and
http://www.donasdecasawow.com.br/nao-seja-um-huehue-br-isso-nao-e-legal/
15
http://criticasobvias.blogspot.com.br/2013/05/o-brasileiro-na-internet-huehuehue.html
16
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298&page=2 06-24-2012
17
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298,
18
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298
19
http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/150vxe/is_anyone_else_frustrated_by_grouping_with_latin/
20
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298
21
http://www.awesomenauts.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=24685
22
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?s=&t=548941&page=2 and
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=2276298&page=3
23
http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/tec/2013/05/1280744-brasileiros-ganham-fama-ruim-praticando-assalto-e-
arrastao-em-jogos-on-line.shtml
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
5
the final word on the matter. Despite being true at one level (as online and offline are tightly
intertwined and inseparable), it can be dangerously taken at face value, as if Brazil were
populated by beggars, robbers and street gangs that shout HUEHUEHUE (or laugh like that).
One common point in all these opinions is that they are no more than that: opinions. None of
them is based on consistent evidence or on a sufficiently sound rationale. Some of those ideas
are even in contradiction with what is known about Brazilian internet users, who, for
example, are neither mostly children nor especially poor (Barbosa, 2013). More importantly,
none of these opinions has challenged the fundamental and unproven assumption that the
behaviour of the HUEHUEs is different from those of other gamers who participate in
disruptive practices. In this paper, I try to identify some similarities and differences between
huehueing and other patterns of online aggression reported by previous literature.
3 Spammers, Trolls and Griefers
Three styles of disruptive behaviour in online environments are directly related to the
behaviour of the HUEHUEs: spamming, trolling and griefing. Each of those has been
traditionally associated with a specific type of action, which previous authors have studied in
specific online environments, such as Usenet Groups (Donath, 1998), feminist forums
(Herring et al, 2002) or the Wikipedia (Shachaf & Hara, 2010). My choice to focus on the
HUEHUEs and their practices broadens the scope of the discussion: huehueing originated in
MOGs and remains heavily associated with Brazilian games and gamers. However, as the
examples used in this text demonstrate, huehueing spread from the gameworlds to forums and
sites dedicated to games and to other areas of the internet such as Facebook.
By structuring this section according to the division between spamming, trolling and griefing
prevalent in the literature, I do not intend to imply that the separation between them is clear-
cut or that they are mutually exclusive: the behaviour of the HUEHUEs is proof that, in
practice, they can be indistinguishable.
3.1 Spammers
Nowadays, 'internet spam' is frequently thought of as 'email spam', massive amounts of
unrequested email messages intended for physhing or advertising, usually spread by bots.
However, spam is not always distributed by email or even automated. In the context of
games, spam has been defined as “[c]opious amounts of unwanted text whose volume is so
great it renders its content useless or pointless”, and the action of spamming has been
described as "generating so much text that its sheer quantity is offensive regardless of its
content" (Hess, 2003, p. 29). This is the case of the repetition of HUEHUEHUE or BR?BR?:
the memes themselves are not insulting, it is the way in which they are used that is offensive.
Stivale classified the motivations for spam in a crescendo that goes from 'playful' to
'pernicious' spam. Between these two extremes lie „ambiguous spams‟ (1997, p 133). In this
initial sub-section, I will try to maintain the exemplification of Stivale's categories within the
limits of the previous definition of spam, but his own examples cover a very broad range of
disruptive behaviour and can be adopted to refer to huehueing in general. The least harmful
type of spam would be „playful spam‟, such as gamers teasing each other in silly and
innocuous ways, as part of a shared joke. On the other extreme of Stivale's categories is
'pernicious spam', in which the messages repeated are ostensively aggressive. Along the line
that crosses from one extreme to the other, spam become „ambiguous‟: jokes can be
understood as aggression and acts of aggression can be taken playfully. For example, it is
possible that (at least in some cases), despite being exaggerated, the repetition of BR? BR?
was not meant to be spam, but an attempt to locate other Brazilians in the game to form a
FRAGOSO
6
team. Another example is the playful use of the meme HUEHUE in game forums and SNS, a
joke that easily becomes annoying and therefore, on the receiving end, is pernicious spam.
HUE?
HUE? HUE? HUE? HUE? HUE?
hue hue hue hue hue
hue
hue
hue
hue
hue
hoehoehoehoehoehoehoe milliondollarhoes
(several users, 14 July 2013
24
)
The traces of interactions with HUEHUEs encountered in forums, blogs and SNS indicate
that replying to their spamming as if it is of the playful type (for example, with the same
meme) or ignoring them tends to interrupt the huehueing. This suggests that the HUEHUEs
crave attention, a characteristic often related to the concept of troll.
3.2 Trolls
Online references to trolls are commonly associated to legendary beings that hide under
bridges waiting for an opportunity to make some mischief. A different origin is reported for
example by Donath (1998), who recalls a 1995 message in a discussion list warning that a
participant could be „trolling a baited line‟ at the others
25
. The latter appears to be a closer
analogy to the current understanding of internet trolling as sending provocative messages (in
mailing lists, forums, SNS) with the intention to incite conflict. However, trolling does not
need to be a proper message: attacks on Brazilian players are often used as bait, and several
HUEHUE's memes are also basically baits.
Morrisey (2010) discussed the pragmatics of trolling in terms of three elements: the „high-
order intention‟, „informative intention‟ and „stimulus‟. The first (high-order intention) is the
troll‟s overall plan, that is, what the troll really wants to achieve by trolling. The second
(informative intention) is the content of the troll‟s utterance, i.e., what the troll effectively
says. The third (stimulus) is the strategy applied to achieve the high-order intention, the
provocation. Most of the time, the troll‟s high-order intention is to make others seem foolish
by taking the bait and reacting to it: this requires witnesses of the trolls' targets being made
fools of. Trolls seek attention (Herring et al., 2002; Morrisey, 2010; Shachaf and Hara, 2010),
and their intended audience can be more important for them than their victims. This is a
possible explanation for the existence of criticisms of Brazilians that appear to be no more
than bait.
In spite of trolls' preferences for easy targets (Herring et al., 2002), the more experienced the
deceived, the cleverer the troll appears to be. Fooling someone who is considered an expert or
authority would be particularly rewarding. The Wikipedia trolls, for example, are known to
contribute biased content to provoke other contributors with the high-order intention to report
their reaction and have them blocked by an administrator
26
. The HUEHUEs act similarly
when they provoke top ranked U.S. players asking for money or equipment ('gibe moni plox')
to induce violence against them and then report the other gamer to the moderators for racism.
24
http://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/1ia7ic/attack_of_the_huehuehuehuehue
25
“Are you familiar with fishing? Trolling is where you set your fishing lines in the water and then slowly go
back and forth dragging the bait and hoping for a bite. Trolling on the Net is the same concept - someone baits a
post and then waits for the bite on the line and then enjoys the ensuing fight” (Unidentified author, 1995, cited
in Donath, 1998).
26
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Don't_take_the_bait
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
7
Another motivation for trolling is that it is fun. The internet is seen by many users as a
permanently available entertainment venue. The trolls of (the Hebrew version of) Wikipedia
interviewed by Shachaf and Hara (2010) explicitly talked about "the joy they get from
vandalizing". Differently to other types of vandals who attack the Wikipedia, those trolls
didn't get much pleasure in damaging the encyclopaedia‟s entries: their targets are the people,
and they are motivated by “revenge on the community or on some members of the
community” (Shachaf and Hara, 2010). By attacking the community that gives support to the
existence of the Wikipedia, these trolls can cause the destruction of their own territory, as the
HUEHUEs have caused game servers to be shut down, or the blockage of Brazilian IPs in RO
and other games. Noticing this similarity is important as the findings of Shachaf and Hara
indicate that ways of trolling that can cause the destruction of the troll's own territory are
likely to be motivated by revenge and hate. This suggests that these can be some of the
motivations for huehueing.
A study of trolls in a feminist forum suggested that trolls who are driven by control and self-
empowerment would target vulnerable groups, and trolls who attack stigmatized groups
would be motivated by “hatred towards people who are perceived as different or threatening
by the troller” (Herring et all., 2002, p. 381). Thus, besides acting differently according to
their motivations, trolls can also attack in different ways depending on the profile of their
target group. The same authors foresaw the possibility that different trolling patterns could be
found if the target was a mainstream group rather than a minority group. They did not
consider that the trolls could be members of a minority group and their target a mainstream
group, as appears to be the case of conflicts between Brazilians and U.S. internet users.
Records in game forums and SNSs reveal that the HUEHUEs see themselves – and are seen
by other players – as a sociocultural and economic minority from a peripheral nation, whilst
the U.S. players are considered – and consider themselves – to be a dominant group.
The HUEHUEs preference for group action can be a consequence of this inversion in the
direction of trolling; a strategy that makes it possible for the minority (the weaker) to attack
the dominant (the stronger). It would also be an individual protection for each of the lower
ranked players attacking the higher ranked players.
One of the decisive factors that make it possible for the HUEHUEs to attack in groups is the
use of identity markers. Their memes, in particular, identify the HUEHUEs by nationality
(explicitly in BR? and implicitly in HUEHUEHUE). Combined with the insistence on the use
of Portuguese in English-speaking servers and corruptions of the language of the HUEHUEs‟
target group (such as 'thas raciss') converge with the recognition of language markers as “the
online world's most deliberate identity signals” (Donath, 1998). Through the use of memes
that appear to be childish or noob talk (such as 'gibe moni plox'), the HUEHUEs exaggerate
their supposed dumbness and ignorance and appear to be mocking themselves. The high-
order intention, however, can be different: the pretence of lack of intelligence and the
apparent impossibility of communication can be a strategy to ridicule the U.S. players who
complain the HUEHUEs cannot speak English and those who say that they are children or
unskilled players. If taken seriously, these memes can turn the power relation inside out,
victimizing the HUEHUEs and causing the U.S. players to appear arrogant, self-important
and unprepared to deal with the multicultural reality of the internet: a typical case of
successful trolling.
The strength and frequency of the HUEHUEs' language markers are decisive in the
construction and reinforcement of their sense of community. However, the literature on trolls
depicts them as loners: the gregarious behaviour of the HUEHUEs is more akin to that of
griefers.
3.3 Griefers
FRAGOSO
8
Griefer is a word more commonly used to characterize those who engage in disruptive
behaviour in MOGs. The high-order intention of a griefer is to spoil the game for other
players and, in this sense, griefers play their own game, one in which the objective is to
impair the pleasure of others and, at the limit, to cause pain. This broad definition implies that
griefing can be done in many different ways, including spamming and trolling.
Chen, Duh & Ng (2009) and Lin & Sun (2005) described griefing in similar terms to those
used by Folha de S. Paulo in relation to huehueing: begging, robbery, extortion and gang
formation. Achterbosch, Miller & Vamplew (2013) compiled many types of griefing actions
from previous literature and organized them in 15 categories. Those were the basis for their
study of the convergences and divergences in what is considered acceptable behaviour in
Role-Playing MOGs by players who see themselves as griefers and players who think
themselves victims of griefers. Many – but not all – forms of huehueing scored high in the list
of actions considered griefing by most players (perpetrators and victims): spamming, verbal
harassment, blocking, camping, scamming, and damaging their own team.
By 'hunting in packs', many griefers, as the HUEHUEs, take greater advantage of the relative
anonymity of the internet. In multiuser environments, the technological anonymity is
reinforced by the anonymity of the crowd. Chen, Duh & Ng (2009) studied the possible
associations between griefing, de-inviduation and "crowd behaviour", that is, the fact that,
when immersed in a group, an individual feels at the same time indistinguishable and visible.
This results in a reduction of the sense of responsibility and of inhibition, which in turn can
lead to deviant behaviour. In the context of online gaming, the technological anonymity and
the anonymity of the crowd can be reinforced by the supposedly well-defined boundaries
between the game and the real. The excuse that 'it is just a game' can be a facilitator for the
reduction in self-awareness and self-regulation. Thus, it is possible to say that online gamers
act within three layers of anonymity: the first results from the technological mediation; the
second from the crowd situation (each player is anonymous within his group) and the third
from the protection of the "magic circle" that supposedly separates the game from the reality
(Huizinga, 1970). The HUEHUEs group identity fills the gaps between those layers of
anonymity: each player remains anonymous in the crowd of HUEHUEs, but the HUEHUEs
are not anonymous in the internet. Therefore, each HUEHUE is at the same time anonymous
and identified in the game environment: the offline identity of a HUEHUE is far from
obvious, but a HUEHUE is not any gamer, not even any griefer; it is specifically a HUEHUE.
The nature of the identity markers used by the group imposes limits: for example, a 'real'
HUEHUE must know enough Portuguese to reply when asked 'BR?', and failing the test is
usually fatal for the character. On the other hand, an attack to one HUEHUE is an attack to all
HUEHUEs and can result in an incredibly quick and coordinated response by the group of
BRs present at the time.
Studies of disruptive behaviour in online environments are marked by a recurrent dichotomy,
which divides griefers from griefed, spammers from non-spammers and trolls from victims of
trolls. The underlying assumption is that human behaviour can be understood in dualistic
terms. Lin & Sun (2005) adopted a more refined approach in their study of the Taiwanese
griefers, called 'white-eyed'. They recognized that, in order to understand griefing, it was
necessary to take into account the complete social dynamics of the game. This led them to the
perception that the majority of players occasionally act in ways that are considered to be
griefing and suggests the possibility that the HUEHUEs are not typically low ranked because
of lack of skills or experience, but because players prefer to huehue with secondary
characters, preserving their more powerful characters for 'normal' play. Huehueing would be
the type of play that Lin & Sun (2005) call explicit griefing (as opposed to implicit griefing).
Explicit griefers (such as the HUEHUEs) are obvious to other players and recognize
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
9
themselves as griefers. Implicit griefers are not aware that their actions constitute griefing and
do not see themselves as griefers or their actions as griefing.
Once I was playing PW with my boyfriend (...) a new guy entered the clan and started
to brag about his char and insult everyone in all possible ways. Then my boyfriend
said (...) "You must be swearing like this because you don't do shit in life. You must
be a 13 year old wanker that does NOT have a girlfriend and spend the whole day alt-
tabbing between pw and redtube" (Survey Respondent #456)
The majority of players are capable of denying their own griefing through the construction of
a clear-cut difference between themselves (supposedly, non-griefers) and the griefers. The
positive identity of their own group is created and reinforced by the stigmatization of the
griefers: a typical strategy of "othering" that emphasizes the distance between the two groups.
This situation encountered by Lin & Sun (2005) in Taiwanese MOGs has many similarities to
the relation between Brazilian and U.S. gamers.
All strategies of othering encountered by Lin & Sun characterized the group of griefers as
weaker than the group of supposedly non-griefers. For example, the Taiwanese suppose that
the white-eyed are children. By characterizing the white-eyed as youngsters, the other players
reaffirm their superiority over them and, at the same time, find an excuse to forgive and
justify their disruptive play (children grief 'by mistake', because they don't know better). The
same logic appears to be behind the hypothesis that the HUEHUEs are children. In the case
of the HUEHUEs, the attribution of poverty adds to this otherness and inferiorisation: the
HUEHUEs are not only children, but they are poor uneducated children, who "lack computer
skills" and play on public computers:
My Brazilian friend explained to me why most Brazilian players on WoW are
annoying. It's because 90% of them are 8 year old kids playing in a cyber cafe.
(hard_to_explain, 2012)
Wow. If that is true, it really explains a lot. (deleted, 2012
27
)
In contrast to the implicit griefers, the explicit griefers recognise their actions as griefing.
They have deliberately rebelled against the game rules and are responded to by
stigmatization. In this, the cultural differences between the Taiwanese and the Brazilians are
evident: the Taiwanese gamers react to being characterised as white-eyes with a claim of
"professionalization", according to which there are rules to griefing and those who 'grief by
the rules' are not white-eyed (Lin & Sun, 2005). These players accept the evidence of their
griefing, but reject the stigma of white-eyed with the institutionalisation of their grief play
and the othering of another (weaker) group. It is a double layer of stigmatisation, in which
implicit griefers name explicit griefers white-eyed, and the 'professional' explicit griefers
refuse that denomination and transfer it to the unruled explicit griefers. As the Taiwanese, the
Brazilian griefers appear to have found a way to 'professionalize' griefing, but through a very
different strategy. The HUEHUEs deal with othering and stigmatization by reaffirming,
rather than denying, the separation between them and other players, notably those from the
U.S. They reinforce their status as griefers by insisting on playing on U.S. servers even after
the creation of servers in Brazil, and take possession of the stigma of being children or
lacking skills with their noob and child-talk memes.
The difference in the ways that the white-eyed and the HUEHUEs deal with their
stigmatization is a reflection of what is considered proper and improper behaviour in Taiwan
and in Brazil. The importance of this difference points to the fact that a proper discussion of
the HUEHUEs and huehueing must take Brazilian culture and ethos into account.
27
http://www.reddit.com/r/wow/comments/wwi6u/so_i_made_a_toon_on_warsongus/c5h74g3#c5h74g3
FRAGOSO
10
4 A Nation of Griefers?
Brazil is not the only nation associated with disruptive behaviour in games. It is easy to find
records of similar complaints about gamers from Russia
28
, Poland
29
, the Philippines
30
, etc.
However, there are peculiarities in the history of Brazilian online conflicts and in the patterns
of these events that need to be discussed. To this end, the next subsection presents a brief
review of some sociological theories about Brazil and the attitude of Brazilians towards
foreigners.
4.1 The Cordial Masters
A solid starting point for a review of Brazilian national identity and the relation between
Brazilians and people from other regions, especially North America and Europe, is the
inversion of the idea of „mongrelization‟ preconised by the white supremacists from the
Northern Hemisphere:
The Brazilian elite (...) accepted the doctrine of innate white superiority, but
they then argued that in Brazil the white was prevailing through
miscegenation. Instead of “mongrelizing” the race, racial mixing was
“whitening” Brazil. Miscegenation, far from a menace, was Brazil‟s salvation
(Skidmore, 1992, p.6).
Gilberto Freyre's book The Masters and the Slaves, launched in 1930, provided academic
strength to this theory and emphasized the positive value of the miscegenation between the
African slaves (and, on a smaller scale, the native indians) and the Portuguese in the
composition of the Brazilian people. Freyre's writing style and eroticised descriptions of the
exploitation and degradation of the black and indian women have created an exotic and soft
vision of slavery in Brazil. This idea was nourished by the fictional romantic relationships
between whites and natives, masters and slaves already present in Brazilian fictional
literature and entered a cycle of mutual reinforcement with the image of a 'tropical paradise'
advertised to induce the immigration of Europeans to Brazil between the end of the XIXth
century and the first decades of the XXth To this day, the image that Brazil presents to the
world – and to its own people, through the mass media – is this combination of positive and
welcoming miscegenation, tropical exoticism and exquisite eroticism.
Sergio Buarque de Holanda's Roots of Brazil (1936) contributed to this picture of friendliness
and receptivity by spreading the notion that Brazilians are cordial men. To the author's
disappointment, the widespread understanding of the idea of 'cordial man' is nearer to the one
that he was refuting than to the one he was proposing. In place of the sociologist's
interpretation, the version that became popular was that of the poet Ribeiro Couto, whose
Cordial Man (with capitals) was naively ruled by emotions, is inherently hospitable and has a
tendency for credulity (Bezerra, 2005, p.125).
Buarque de Holanda's cordial man is also ruled by emotions rather than reason, but his
understanding of cordiality is not restricted to positive feelings: "Enmity can be as cordial as
friendship, in the sense that one, like the other, comes from the heart" (Buarque de Holanda,
1995). To consider that the most typical feature of the cordial man is the strength of his
emotions, and that these emotions are not necessarily positive, can be a valuable key to
understand the passionate overtones of the online confrontations involving Brazilians.
However, the emotional imperative of Buarque de Holanda‟s cordial man also drives him
28
http://forums.riftgame.com/retired-forums-threads/grand-archive/eu-shards/pve/icewatch/85612-why-do-
russians-gamers-have-such-bad-reputation-all-over-world.html
29
http://forums.eune.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=662469&page=3
30
http://lolbot.net/index.php?content=viewer&vmode=random&id=2956#.UwqzwYXdeZo
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
11
away from conflict, which is avoided at nearly any cost. This is verifiable in daily life in
Brazil, but is not reflected in online interactions, which easily become confrontational even
when no foreigners are involved (Recuero & Soares, 2013). Apparently, the technological
mediation forces the abandonment of some rituals of Brazilian politeness, especially those
intended to simulate 'familiarity'. In Brazil, it can be good manners to break anonymity with
degrees of warmth that, in other cultures (particularly non-Latin cultures) are normally
reserved to close friends and family. However, as Buarque de Holanda noticed, this closeness
is superficial and ultimately meant as a „pièce of résistance’: Brazilian 'friendliness' shields
the cordial man from the need to handle impersonal relations, which are something he abhors.
However, the technological mediation of the internet establishes a degree of impersonality in
which most of the strategies to establish familiarity and „warm up‟ interactions used by
Brazilians in their daily life cease to be applicable. Even the need to communicate in writing
complicates the task: the usual modes of interaction in Brazil oscillate between residual and
secondary orality (Ong, 2001), that is, between the need to communicate by sound due to the
maintenance of pre-literate attributes and the preference for sound typical of a post-literate
society. Communication is made more difficult by the need to use of a foreign language: the
majority of Brazilians know little English and have no need or motivation to learn the
language, as English is really not used or even useful for daily matters in Brazil
31
. The use of
languages other than English is a permanent source of tension between US players and
players from other countries.
My English is very rusty, at times a word in Portuguese escaped, and then came the
question:
_Who is brazilian?
(...) either I would say "Yes i a brazilian' or I tried to speak with my English that most
of the time shows that a guy cannot speak correctly.
The result usually was (...) to be kicked out of the group, no matter how well you
could be playing, as for many the simple fact of being BR means you are not a decent
player (Grahal, 13 September 2013
32
)
The impossibility of maintaining their rituals of politeness due to the technical mediation and
the requirement to communicate in a language in which they are not fluent makes online
interaction a challenge for Brazilian gamers. Technical disturbances, infra-structure problems
and geographic distances complicate it even further by increasing the lag and levels of
latency, impairing the performance of Brazilian players. The records encountered in game
forums suggest that it is not unusual that Brazilian players are accused of being unskilled due
to conditions that are not of their choice.
My question is what is their ******* problem? They are on average way worse at
dota than north americans. and not just bad, they are bad and play like they don't give
a **** if they win or lose and play like total retards (...) there is 0 reason for these
******** to pick english when they can't speak it well (fdghg, 1st May, 2014
33
)
Not due to their attitudes I'm fine with those, but their 250+-300+ ping is annoying.
Sometimes you will flash away from them and their stuff will still hit you etc due to
latency discrepency [sic].
(...)
If you played another online game with 220 ping, you would be banned.
(Tamed, 11 February 2011
34
)
31
Brazil is geographically far from any English speaking country, its academic environment is of French origin,
dubbling has been a legal requirement for broadcasting foreign films on TV since the 1962 and, in recent years,
dubbled versions of films and games are becoming increasingly more popular .
32
http://geektrooper.wordpress.com/2013/09/13/os-hue-hue-hue-br-uma-praga-virtual/
33
http://www.playdota.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1418008&highlight=americans
FRAGOSO
12
As a consequence, from their point of view, the HUEHUEs understand that they are being
made to suffer and are unwelcome because of who they are. In a word, they are being griefed,
and their response is to (counter) grief by creating another game of their own, one in which
they can (must) speak Portuguese and the objectives are such that their high latency is
irrelevant.
4.2 Family and Foreigners
As described by the sociologist Roberto Da Matta (1985), the paradoxes of daily life in Brazil
are similar to those encountered by Brazilian players in MOGs.
Due to circumstances beyond the scope of this text, the Brazilian State apparatus was
designed with the intention to create a specific type of society, rather than to respond to the
existing social organization. The impersonal logic of a (supposedly) egalitarian State was
imposed on a culture in which the most valuable bonds were those of personal relationships,
generating a tension that has not yet been resolved. In Da Matta's interpretation, Brazilians
have found a way of dealing with the need to live under an institutional logic that does not
match their cultural values by transforming impersonal situations into more familiar events.
This often results in requests for exceptions: such as when Brazilian gamers require their high
levels of lag and latency to be forgiven, independently of the harm they can have caused to
the team.
The association between family and protection is an important key to understand the
gregarious behaviour of the HUEHUEs and the facility with which they unite against players
from other countries. In anonymous and global online environments, nationality becomes an
obvious point of interpersonal convergence. Being 'BR' is sufficient to create a bond between
players − and sufficient reason for them to unite against the 'non-BRs'. This explains the
speed and agility of coordination of the HUEHUEs' attacks: there is no need for previous
arrangements, the HUEHUEs act together because they are Brazilians. The problem is how
easily this pre-eminence of nationality translates into nationalism.
It would be naïve to think that Brazilians' confrontations with foreigners started on the
internet, or that it is a recently developed trait. The idea that people in Brazil are especially
receptive to foreigners is part of an artificial image of the country as a 'friendly multicultural
tropical paradise' that has been under construction for centuries. According to Simai and
Baenninger (2011), this image includes a "quasi-xenophile" attitude that is, in fact, a myth, in
the Barthian sense of an ideological discourse that erases its own existence by making its
content appear natural, evident and even inevitable (Barthes, 1991). The authors defend that
the success of the "myth of receptivity" of Brazilians can be measured by the strength of the
denial of xenophobic feelings and beliefs in Brazil. Their argument would be tautological if
the myth itself was not the primary tautology: when asked about their relation to foreigners,
Brazilians respond with the narratives of „soft slavery‟, positive miscegenation, associations
between the tropics and the exotic and the erotic and the agreeable nature of the „cordial
man‟, that are all part of the construction of the myth. Brazilians interviewed by Simai and
Baenninger (2011) and Rezende (2011) repeatedly affirm their receptiveness to foreigners
and rejected any suggestion of racism or xenophobia on their part by repositioning Brazilians
as the victims, never the perpetrators of aggressions. The pattern is the same that is
encountered when the HUEHUEs claim the right to act aggressively because the US. players
attacked them first.
My profile does NOT denote any uncommon characteristic related to a stereotype. I
try to follow online games etiquette, but this does NOT oblige me to remain passive
34
http://forums.na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=507196
'HUEHUEHUE' 'BR?BR?'
13
in a situation that I consider unfair. (Survey Respondent #246)
5 Carnivalesque Huehueing
In principle, everyone in an online game is supposed to be equal and the same rules apply to
all. However, when playing in servers located in the U.S., the conditions encountered by U.S.
gamers are not the same of those encountered by players from other countries. Low ping and
the primacy of communicating in their native language are preeminent examples. From the
perspective of players outside of the U.S., the theoretical equality is not a principle of justice,
but of disempowerment. It is possible than, from the point of view of the HUEHUEs, the U.S.
players appear to be aggressive by demanding that they circumvent their linguistic,
geographical and technological restrictions in the name of 'equality'. Under this interpretation
the U.S. players trolled, the gullible HUEHUE took the bait and engaged in a passionate and
aggressive counter-attack.
Assuming the position of victim is not a novel way to justify one's own xenophobic
discourses. In Brazil as anywhere else, this well-known rhetorical strategy consists in
swapping the places of the subject and the object of the aggression, inverting the argument.
There are accounts that U.S. players have insulted gamers from Brazil (and other countries)
for circumstances beyond their control. However, there are also records of the HUEHUEs
attacking first and claiming the position of victim later (in the classic sequence 'gibe moni
plox' followed by 'thas raciss, I report u').
Other ways used by the HUEHUEs to justify their aggression include hiding xenophobia
under a cover of gaiety and jolliness. This conveniently converges with the idealized
happiness that is part of the idealized image of Brazil and with the type of anonymity
encountered in MOGs, where every HUEHUE could be any other HUEHUE and individual
identities are protected by the collective identity. The game becomes a masquerade and
huehueing a form of carnival − a cultural manifestation that is also conveniently part of the
Brazilian stereotype.
The organized and unified Brazilian Carnival presented by the mass media is increasingly
distant from its origins, but huehueing can be thought of as a variation of Brazilian street
carnival (Da Matta, 1978) and as carnival in the Bakhtnian sense, that is, an event in which
familiarity amongst strangers and eccentricities are the norm, excesses are allowed and power
relations are inverted (Bakhtin, 1984). As carnival, huehueing is an opportunity for the
HUEHUEs, who see themselves as a minority, to invert the forces and troll the mainstream
group. The "jolly relativity" of the situation has been established from the trademark of the
HUEHUEs - the meme of laughter - and the most basic form of huehueing - spamming a
channel with that laughter. The relativity of carnival is amplified by the multicultural nature
of online interactions, which broadens the ambiguity between what is playful and what is
pernicious (Stivale, 1997). The carnivalesque tone and the use of nationality as identity
marker are the most outstanding differences between huehueing and other types of disruptive
behaviour in MOGs or on the internet in general.
In their peculiar masquerade, the HUEHUEs take control of the stigma placed upon them and
mock themselves in order to make fun of the other players. Not only their memes, but also
images and videos that ridicule them are created and distributed by them. With this attitude,
the HUEHUEs refuse the sanctioned ways of the Feast of Fools, in which those of lower
ranking impersonate the authorities, and the carnivalesque inversion is turned inside out: the
HUEHUEs don't dress up as kings, but as jesters, and by doing so raise doubts about where
the power effective lies.
FRAGOSO
14
6 Final Remarks
In this article, I discussed whether there are differences between the aggressive behaviour of
Brazilian players in MOGs and actions from other groups, in online environments. I also tried
to verify how Brazilian players deal with the association between their actions and their
national identity. To this end, I recalled some episodes of online hostilities between
Brazilians and non-Brazilians in SNSs and games, introduced the HUEHUEs and huehueing.
References to huehueing collected with an online survey and from secondary sources were
used to illustrate the comparisons of the behaviour of the HUEHUEs with descriptions of
spamming, trolling and griefing in previous literature.
Huehueing combines these three types of actions, with the main differences between
Brazilians and other spammers, trolls and griefers being their preference for group action; the
ostentatious use of nationality as their identity marker and the creation of a peculiar
carnivalesque setting in which they grant themselves, by means of humour, the right to
perform a disturbingly two-folded inversion of power relations.
Huehueing was discussed in this text as a symptom of the complexity of the interplay
between national identities, geopolitics and technological mediation in online multicultural
interactions. The intention was neither to describe Brazilian culture based on the subculture
of the HUEHUEs, nor to imply that huehueing is a typical behaviour of all Brazilian gamers.
On the contrary: the sociological theories about Brazilian culture and the relation between
Brazilians and foreigners were considered interpretative keys to understand the specific
phenomenon under scrutiny. However, the strong convergences between these sociological
theories and the behaviour of the HUEHUEs, as well as the popularity of the memes and their
increasing appearance in other online environments, suggest that huehueing is representative
of Brazilian culture and could be taken as a case for further studies aiming for generalization.
The traces of the confrontations between gamers from the U.S. and players from other
countries suggest that studying online interactions with Brazilians can lead to a better
understanding of international online interactions in general.
Acknowledgements
This work presents partial results of a research supported by the National Council for
Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq). The author is grateful to the
Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) for financial
support to participate in CATaC, to Mr Robin D. W. Lane for proofreading and to CATaC
reviewers for their insightful criticims and advice.
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