Another thing I noticed is getting more common among RPG Horror Stories. When once it was common to see entitled players complaining the GM is not running the game like Matt Mercer runs on Critical Role, I have lately seen quite few stories where problem GM tries to use that to deflect criticism. It’s usually the type to be acting creepily towards women, both in and out of game, enjoying juvenile, overtly edgy humor and/or insisting of all kinds of bigotry for “historical accurracy”. And when the players confront him (as it’s almost always a guy) about it, he’s going to say something like “Stop sucking Mercer off, this is real D&D!” or “Go play at Matt Mercer’s table, if you don’t like it!”.
While, as usual, there is possibility these stories are fake, I can see these being true - the kind to engage in those specific behaviors is also the kind to grab on buzzwords or try to twist real problems to deflect criticism.
The edgelord DMs who say stuff like this tend to forget that D&D is in many ways meant to be a better world. Where slavery exists, for example, it exists as something that evil people do and heroes stop. If you’re participating, you’re not a hero; you’re the asshole the heroes are there to stop.
Bigots exist in our campaign, but its because we utterly enjoy putting them in their place.
D&D has hell. It used to be that the fastest-reproducing races were also evil, sending more and more people to hell.
Looking it up, the creators were Christian, so maybe they thought real life was even worse, but D&D was always intended as a crapsack world. If you want to play one that isn’t, great. Just be prepared to rewrite some major lore.