Like the Silver Sagan once said, it pays to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
Adam Baldwin and Conventions
- Thread starter PlainSimpleJoel
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Like the Silver Sagan once said, it pays to keep an open mind, but not so open that your brain falls out.
Haha, I spend most of my thinking time trying to stuff that rascally rascal back into my skull.
I will say that no matter how hard I try to consider all sides of the issue, I can not empathize, either the proper definition or my own previous perception,with the GamerGater's concerns.
Was it said in this thread that 'feminists ruined my life'? Or am I making that up?
I will say that no matter how hard I try to consider all sides of the issue, I can not empathize, either the proper definition or my own previous perception,with the GamerGater's concerns.
Was it said in this thread that 'feminists ruined my life'? Or am I making that up?
^^ That was in a death threat to Sarkeesian, I believe.
Unless you're a sociopath, you should feel empathy for most people. What has she done that is so terrible that you lack any empathy for her? Did she kill your dog, threaten you personally or burn your house down? No, she criticized a fucking video game. So in your eyes, she deserves everything she gets. Which apparently is happening to millions of people. Now I've been on the internet for most of my life, this is the first I've heard of it.
Get help.
Sometimes a debate has a wrong and a right side, JD5000, and it's ok to not agree even in the slightest with the wrong side.
Thanks, I didn't want to misattribute that. What a load of bullshit!
I realize my lack of participation in the collective back-slapping here has made me less than popular, but I don't want to give the impression that I empathize with the views presented by TremblingBluStar. I'm just willing to consider them as part of the overall conversation and I refuse to participate in a pigpile.
Hopefully I can continue to catch my brain before it hits the floor.
I realize my lack of participation in the collective back-slapping here has made me less than popular, but I don't want to give the impression that I empathize with the views presented by TremblingBluStar. I'm just willing to consider them as part of the overall conversation and I refuse to participate in a pigpile.
Hopefully I can continue to catch my brain before it hits the floor.
If you had seen some of the other debates that the various "back-slappers" on this thread have participated in, you would scarcely consider them monolithic JD5000.
It just so happens that when it comes to this one subject, most decent (and even indecent) people are in agreement.
It just so happens that when it comes to this one subject, most decent (and even indecent) people are in agreement.
Even if you accept the GamerGate position as being about ethics in gaming journalism. They mainly seem be upset that journalists are allowed to give their opinions in game reviews. Which is a requirement for any review. You want to know if it's good or not. So either they truly don't understand how reviews work or it's just a cover to trick in stupid people or to cover up it really being a bunch of losers upset that women want to be involved in game development and gaming in general. I guess they're afraid they'll get cooties.
I have such a hard time believing it's simply about proverbial 'cooties'. Sometimes my own naivety and optimism blows my mind.
Hatred on the level that occurred (is still occurring?) within 'movements' like this is so incomprehensible to me that I have to look at the hater side of it before I can just point a finger and say 'you're wrong!'. Shit like this doesn't happen without some sort of reason, even if it's bizarre and misguided - does it?
Hatred on the level that occurred (is still occurring?) within 'movements' like this is so incomprehensible to me that I have to look at the hater side of it before I can just point a finger and say 'you're wrong!'. Shit like this doesn't happen without some sort of reason, even if it's bizarre and misguided - does it?
Cooties was sarcasm, I think that they believe that women want to ruin their games so they can't play Call of Duty anymore.
The whole GamerGate thing is really part of a larger problem of an amazing amount of vitriol and harassment that some groups, women in particular, are experiencing online.
A wise person told me recently that 'there isn't a problem for which a solution doesn't exist. If there is no solution, there is no problem.'
So I guess the question I pose here is, what is the solution? Clearly gender-based hatred in any arena is a problem. Yelling at people that feel this way doesn't change hearts and minds, which is what's been going on here, and the reason I'm not willing to jump on the 'hate haters' wagon.
Personally, I love gaming, working, living, etc with women. Too much testosterone creates problems, such as this one. I like balance.
Believe you me, if I EVER witnessed something like gender-based harassment, or any kind of harassment really, going on in an online game I played, I would sure as shit have something to say to those that did it. But I would ask why.
So I guess the question I pose here is, what is the solution? Clearly gender-based hatred in any arena is a problem. Yelling at people that feel this way doesn't change hearts and minds, which is what's been going on here, and the reason I'm not willing to jump on the 'hate haters' wagon.
Personally, I love gaming, working, living, etc with women. Too much testosterone creates problems, such as this one. I like balance.
Believe you me, if I EVER witnessed something like gender-based harassment, or any kind of harassment really, going on in an online game I played, I would sure as shit have something to say to those that did it. But I would ask why.
Adam Baldwin stood up Dragon*Con three years in a row (2009, 2010, 2011) after committing to being there. When he didn't show in 2011, the D*C administration was considering putting him on their very short list of banned guests. Not sure what came of that.
I've not studied the Gamergate matter very deeply - even though I've read this whole thread and whole other conversations on the matter, all I'm getting is BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. Here's all I've got:
1. People who are worried about whether or not someone had sex with someone else to manipulate a product review are in serious need of something more productive to do with their time.
2. No one should use sex to manipulate journalism, even relatively unimportant entertainment industry journalism - bad, bad person, naughty, no cookie for you, if it happened (which I have no proof of and don't really care) - but, see #1.
3. Regarding number #2 - LOL, who the hell am I or anyone else kidding? Do these people ever watch advertising at all (which is ultimately, a self-review of one's own product)?! It's ALL sex and sex and sex and sex. Big deal. FIRST WORLD PROBLEM.
4. The people who wrote that threatening letter need to visit Gitmo for a little while. Not long - just long enough to make them get their heads out of their asses and understand there are real world consequences to their actions.
5. I don't think the majority of the people getting deeply involved in this thing *on either side* believe or care about their own side of it much if at all. It's about 90% celebrities "taking a stand" (Wheaton, Day, etc) on one side and 4Chan trolls doing stuff just "for the lulz" on the other. Which isn't to say that the latter aren't dangerous. They've run young girls and their families out of their homes and into hiding before "for the lulz".
I've not studied the Gamergate matter very deeply - even though I've read this whole thread and whole other conversations on the matter, all I'm getting is BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ. Here's all I've got:
1. People who are worried about whether or not someone had sex with someone else to manipulate a product review are in serious need of something more productive to do with their time.
2. No one should use sex to manipulate journalism, even relatively unimportant entertainment industry journalism - bad, bad person, naughty, no cookie for you, if it happened (which I have no proof of and don't really care) - but, see #1.
3. Regarding number #2 - LOL, who the hell am I or anyone else kidding? Do these people ever watch advertising at all (which is ultimately, a self-review of one's own product)?! It's ALL sex and sex and sex and sex. Big deal. FIRST WORLD PROBLEM.
4. The people who wrote that threatening letter need to visit Gitmo for a little while. Not long - just long enough to make them get their heads out of their asses and understand there are real world consequences to their actions.
5. I don't think the majority of the people getting deeply involved in this thing *on either side* believe or care about their own side of it much if at all. It's about 90% celebrities "taking a stand" (Wheaton, Day, etc) on one side and 4Chan trolls doing stuff just "for the lulz" on the other. Which isn't to say that the latter aren't dangerous. They've run young girls and their families out of their homes and into hiding before "for the lulz".
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It's not so much hating haters as it is trying to get these people who are a part of Gamergate to realize "Jesus Christ, leave these women alone!" is an entirely reasonable response to what they've been peddling.
If you tell an atheist 'God is the way to salvation and you're going to Hell if you don't agree' it's not going to make a shit ounce of difference in their beliefs.
That said, converting someone to a religion and reversing hatred are two totally different things, I realize that. Yet I think the two examples have a lot in common.
Using the example posited by this thread - How are you going to convince someone that a hateful view is detrimental to their own life? We are selfish beings, this is why the material definition of 'value' and the immaterial definition of 'values' are dissimilar yet related.
If TremblingBluStar has taken even a minute to re-evaluate the opinions (he?) has posted because of the responses in this thread, I'll take my hat and leave.
That said, converting someone to a religion and reversing hatred are two totally different things, I realize that. Yet I think the two examples have a lot in common.
Using the example posited by this thread - How are you going to convince someone that a hateful view is detrimental to their own life? We are selfish beings, this is why the material definition of 'value' and the immaterial definition of 'values' are dissimilar yet related.
If TremblingBluStar has taken even a minute to re-evaluate the opinions (he?) has posted because of the responses in this thread, I'll take my hat and leave.
When someone is at a point in their life when it seems a good idea to bring "facts" into a discussion thread about a harassment victim that a) come directly from her harassers and b) were debunked months earlier, you're past "changing hearts and minds." There's a disconnect from reality there profound enough to suggest factors that aren't likely to be cured by Internet debate; and the whole GamerGate "movement," what's left of it, is that element of it that's gone furthest down the rabbit hole. Like this guy.
But it's still attempting to spread, as we just saw here, exactly the same lies. And that attempt to spread falsehoods can be confronted and short-circuited. You shouldn't be too surprised that anyone who knows enough about it to value doing so will not care too much whether you like their tone.
In my first response to you above, I alluded to an earlier thread where you came into a discussion about racism and peppered it with inane bromides that revealed a fundamental lack of knowledge and curiosity about the subject. I don't care whether you're a "back-slapper" or not, that habit is why I often don't care for your posts. And you've chosen to do it again here, on an issue with no small amount of media profile that you could have researched for yourself before coming in here and talking in patronizing fashion about "self-righteousness" and how you "like your discussions in 3-D." And you couldn't be bothered. It didn't even occur to you.
(That said, I don't think you're a "bad person." I just think you'd benefit a great deal from actually trying to understand issues like this before you try to referee threads where they come up.)
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Dr. Whitney Phillips has been writing about the phenomenon of trolling and online harassment since 2012 (I think). She write her dissertation on it and has published some papers on it. She argues "that trolls are agents of cultural digestion; they scour the landscape, repurpose the most exploitable material, then shove the resulting monstrosities into the faces of an unsuspecting populace" and that "the rhetorical and behavioral tactics used by trolls, including sensationalism, spectacle, and emotional exploitation, are homologous to tactics routinely deployed by American corporate media outlets. In short, trolling operates within existing systems..." (from her dissertation) So when we see trolling/harassment activity like this, it is in some respects an unpleasant mirror image of the way women are treated in media.
The interesting thing that seems to be happening in recent years is that people are less afraid to be openly associated with these sentiments. What seems to be unusual about things like GamerGate is how vocal some well-known people are about it and how willing they are to be associated with something that is so obviously very hateful. I worry that there is overall sentiment now that this is somehow acceptable. This is why I can support keeping Baldwin from cons--the message we should be sending is that no, this is not acceptable, and there are consequences.
To use the practical absence of a solution as evidence that there is no problem is both an irrational position and a fallacy. There are many long-standing difficult problems that remain unsolved, because—wait for it—they are difficult problems. It should come as a surprise to no one who's thoughtful that social problems resulting from the dynamic interactions of billions of people might sometimes prove difficult to solve. Many social problems persist for centuries.
In addition, freedom implies freedom to dissent. The price of freedom is that we must get along with people with whom we disagree. So long as people remain civil even while they disagree, that's in general a price that's affordable. With respect to illegal behavior such as threats, well that's what law enforcement is for. Isn't it? It's not like how to deal with illegal behavior is a head-scratcher.
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