I could say exactly the same about "GamerGate as a whole is a positive force". Some anecdotes, tweets, screenshots and a video ain't gonna cut it.
Censorship? There is no censorship!
- Thread starter cronicler
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Akratus
Bleep bloop.
Then go on twitter right now, here: https://twitter.com/search?src=typd&q=#gamergate, and scroll down until you see some form of harassment. I defy you to find anything but a superminority.
Also: Numerous changes in ethics policies, 5+ charities supported with thousands of dollars, promotion of female/minority developers/people, and bringing ethical issues to the Federal Trade Commission.
Is that enough?
Also: Numerous changes in ethics policies, 5+ charities supported with thousands of dollars, promotion of female/minority developers/people, and bringing ethical issues to the Federal Trade Commission.
Is that enough?
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cronicler
Lurksalot
Let me just leave this here quietly. It's from the other side of the many borders video games share with other media, specifically the SF/F (Science fiction and fantasy) land;
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/12/10/fisking-the-guardian-again-this-time-for-hp-lovecraft/
http://monsterhunternation.com/2014/12/10/fisking-the-guardian-again-this-time-for-hp-lovecraft/
Don't expect that. All you get is the same parroted talking points and self-centered bullshit. GamerGhazi is really adept at claiming that minorities cannot speak for themselves and only they make it happen, or that a few thousand dollars donated to random charities (nevermind that Humble Bundle gathers more donations in a day than GGhazi in its lifetime) excuse the wave of harassment that is facilitated by GGhazi.
Really, all you have to look at is their targets. It's pretty telling that GGhazi has given large corporations who are known for having plenty of ethics problem a wide berth, instead hounding small, independent developers who don't have the money or legal support necessary to defend themselves.
It's also important to consider that GGhazi is simply small, far smaller than the people it fights against. It does counter their size with aggression and sheer tenacity, though.
In general, /r/GamerGhazi does a good job of debunking whatever bullshit the GGhazi crowd spreads:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GamerGhazi/comments/2k5b97/just_wanted_to_share_this_with_everyone_here/
Lovecraft was a horribly racist person who wrote horribly racist fiction. Yes, both by the standards of this age and by the standards of his time, lots of stuff he wrote was abhorrently racist. And not just the kind of "Africa is one mysterious and dark continent"/Heart of Darkness racism we saw a lot at the time. More like "black people are destroying our perfect Anglo culture and need to all be shipped back to Africa and/or killed" racism. This "he was a product of his time" shit is used far too often to excuse stuff that plenty of people did not do at the time. He was a product of his time inasmuch as anyone is a product of his time, but so were all the other people writing far less racist stuff and being far less racist.
That doesn't mean you can't love his prose or his fiction and it doesn't mean you're a racist for liking his works (and no one said that -- but somehow it's the first thing Larry Correia interpreted, because we can't have conversations about this without someone getting defensive). But it's important that we reckon with and understand the full breadth of someone's work, and not selectively read it to gloss over the stuff we don't like. If we reckon with the full breadth of Lovecraft's work, it's pretty horrifically racist. And having one of the biggest awards in speculative fiction use as its logo/form some of the most virulently racist fiction ever produced in the genre, effectively sending the message that that is the kind of fiction they're honoring -- well, that may not be the best thing in the world. And maybe it's time to change that.
Correia's spiteful putdown of Octavia Butler says more about his failure to educate himself in the genre he's writing about and in than about Butler, by the way. And indicative of the diversity problems speculative fiction has had for decades.
Regardless, this goes back to a similar split in speculative fiction land to what is now happening in gaming. You have lots of writers promoting the idea of diversity, promoting new ideas, re-evaluating the genre's history and trying to create fiction that is much more inclusive. People who note that while Heinlein wrote lots of good fiction, that was also some pretty damn sexist fiction. People noting that the generally accepted canon of great writers tends to gloss over many excellent female and non-white writers. And then you have a mostly older and conservative guard fighting that, like Larry Correia.
gamergate itself is a minority though ... a very small one at that. Vocal yes, they get probably more hype than they would if they talked about puppies or cats instead of something that is touching on feminism in gaming - its a hot topic after all.
But are they really "many"? I don't think so. Hell, I think pewdiepie has a bigger influence on gaming then Gamergate could ever dream about ...
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Akratus
Bleep bloop.
It´s true that PewDiePie has a bigger audience than gamergate. But GamerGate is far bigger than most people assume, I think. Not a lot of other things get 1.2 million tweets in about a month.
One more thing on that Lovecraft post: it's also a great example of two people having different kinds of conversation about the same topic, because one sees racism as a system in society, while the other sees it as individualized discrimination. Fundamentally, Larry Correia and Daniel Older are not talking about the same thing when each mentions racism (or sexism). Which is why Correia can think that "I’m only aware of a single incidence where a publishing house discriminated against an author because of their sexual orientation" is a counter-argument to Older positing a sustained system in society as a whole, and in publishing as an offshoot of that. It's why Correia can state, with no irony whatsoever, that the reason that people of color are underrepresented is that they read less, caused by a lack of education or parenting or access -- and then conclude that this is not racism (because to him only overt, conscious discrimination is racism), while Older would say that it is part of racism (because to her it is the system as a whole).
And that's a real problem. It's why Correia immediately thinks he's being called a racist, even though Older never called anyone who read or liked Lovecraft a racist. But by treating racism as a personal, individual and fundamental moral fault, something that is individualized and abhorrent in any one person, Correia can only react defensively to the word. Because he sees it as such a serious and fundamental, moral accusation. So if someone says something is racist, he'd better have really good proof that there was a real, individualized intention to discriminate, because otherwise you're insulting an individual's moral character when his intentions were good. It's why he's not concerned for the people affected by racism as a system, but concerned about the people accused of racism -- because the accusation is about their moral character.
It also means that he cannot see the system, because everything is an individual event, and it's about the individual's moral character. The fact that black people are far less represented in literature cannot be the result of racism unless individual publishers actively intended to keep black people out of publishing. And that's obviously not true -- publishers want money, so why would they consciously keep black people out of publishing? So there's no racism! It's just that black people don't write the kind of stuff that sells. Because black people are less educated, thus read less, and thus the completely objective and benevolent market forces thus keep them out. Nothing racist about it! No individual discriminated against a black person here, so what's the problem?
And that's how two people talking about the same things with the same words are talking about completely different things.
And that's a real problem. It's why Correia immediately thinks he's being called a racist, even though Older never called anyone who read or liked Lovecraft a racist. But by treating racism as a personal, individual and fundamental moral fault, something that is individualized and abhorrent in any one person, Correia can only react defensively to the word. Because he sees it as such a serious and fundamental, moral accusation. So if someone says something is racist, he'd better have really good proof that there was a real, individualized intention to discriminate, because otherwise you're insulting an individual's moral character when his intentions were good. It's why he's not concerned for the people affected by racism as a system, but concerned about the people accused of racism -- because the accusation is about their moral character.
It also means that he cannot see the system, because everything is an individual event, and it's about the individual's moral character. The fact that black people are far less represented in literature cannot be the result of racism unless individual publishers actively intended to keep black people out of publishing. And that's obviously not true -- publishers want money, so why would they consciously keep black people out of publishing? So there's no racism! It's just that black people don't write the kind of stuff that sells. Because black people are less educated, thus read less, and thus the completely objective and benevolent market forces thus keep them out. Nothing racist about it! No individual discriminated against a black person here, so what's the problem?
And that's how two people talking about the same things with the same words are talking about completely different things.
Tweets cost nothing and do not represent the actual amount of bodies behind it. Absolute numbers, like the size of their curator group or following of prominent figures in the movement, does. And the cold, hard truth is that the people they fight against have a bigger following by several orders of magnitude.
EDIT: To build on Sander's post: That's an excellent point. CNN covered it with additional sources cited. It's the problem of implicit bias. If you don't have a grasp on the subject, Harvard has an excellent project that allows you to check whether you have unconscious prejudices. I find it a very intriguing tool for introspective.
In general, it's extremely foolish to believe that only overt racism or sexism can exist. It only obscures the creeping bias that is embedded in society and does nothing to improve the situation. Awareness starts with yourself and confronting the fact that you are biased and prejudiced, often in ways you don't consider.
EDIT: To build on Sander's post: That's an excellent point. CNN covered it with additional sources cited. It's the problem of implicit bias. If you don't have a grasp on the subject, Harvard has an excellent project that allows you to check whether you have unconscious prejudices. I find it a very intriguing tool for introspective.
In general, it's extremely foolish to believe that only overt racism or sexism can exist. It only obscures the creeping bias that is embedded in society and does nothing to improve the situation. Awareness starts with yourself and confronting the fact that you are biased and prejudiced, often in ways you don't consider.
Akratus
Bleep bloop.
Saying that anti-gamergate is represented by all followers of polygon, kotaku, zoe quinn and feminist frequency, and gamergate is represented by milo's followers and adam baldwin is idiotic. I can name 10 prominent gamergaters left out, and I think the majority of kotaku followers have no interest in gamergate, among other things.
And the amount of #gamergate tweets is actually around 2 million now.
And the amount of #gamergate tweets is actually around 2 million now.
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cronicler
Lurksalot
Sander;
“Supporters of the Lovecraft statue point out his influence on the fantasy genre, and they’re right: today, we’re still struggling to unravel the legacy of racism and erasure with which he and other early speculative fiction writers permeated their work.”
I'm sorry but if someone is arguing that Lovecraft's only, sole, singular legacy is "the root that fed racism"...
That sanity check fails critically mate.
“Supporters of the Lovecraft statue point out his influence on the fantasy genre, and they’re right: today, we’re still struggling to unravel the legacy of racism and erasure with which he and other early speculative fiction writers permeated their work.”
I'm sorry but if someone is arguing that Lovecraft's only, sole, singular legacy is "the root that fed racism"...
That sanity check fails critically mate.
I wouldn't interpret that as Older saying that's Lovecraft's sole legacy -- he explicitly names world-building and imagination as creating Lovecraft's legacy earlier, and he doesn't say that racism is his only legacy. Certainly I think Older is too dismissive of Lovecraft's prose and craft, which works for many people. But racism is absolutely a part of his legacy, as it is a part of Robert E. Howard's legacy. And we should acknowledge and reckon with that.
I wouldn't have much of an issue with Larry Correia responding to that article with something of the form of "Lovecraft was and still is extremely influential, and I think we should honor that regardless of the racism otherwise present in his work", or something similar. That's fine. Reasonable people can disagree on that part. But Correia goes miles and miles further than that -- he apologizes for Lovecraft's racism as a "product of his time", dismisses the entire concept of racism in the publishing industry, ridicules Older (and social justice in general) mostly through straw men, and on and on and on.
(Incidentally, apparently no one on the internet has ever used "the root that fed racism" before you just did, haha)
I wouldn't have much of an issue with Larry Correia responding to that article with something of the form of "Lovecraft was and still is extremely influential, and I think we should honor that regardless of the racism otherwise present in his work", or something similar. That's fine. Reasonable people can disagree on that part. But Correia goes miles and miles further than that -- he apologizes for Lovecraft's racism as a "product of his time", dismisses the entire concept of racism in the publishing industry, ridicules Older (and social justice in general) mostly through straw men, and on and on and on.
(Incidentally, apparently no one on the internet has ever used "the root that fed racism" before you just did, haha)
cronicler
Lurksalot
Sorry about that purple prose, had a decent chunk of "literary" (translation, various long winded self help and neo-urban-paranormal-romances) translation done for the last few days so my mind is drowning in that crap.
As for Correria's counter-charge tactics, somewhere after his 10th or so frisk, he simply gave up on trying to use soft reason and switched to ridicule and tetsubo when dealing with people who liberally use extra concentrated doses of political correctness.
Frankly as more often thanb not, such people are also the rabid defenders of traditional publishing houses and act as a "good" lynch mob when discussing evil new publishers like Amazon or radicals like Baen, I enjoy his salvos on two faced liars*.
And yes, this no hyperbole or exaggeration. I firmly believe that "People" who earn their living from governmental "grants" for writing books or patreon (and similar systems) based public charity have no place to lecture about writing good or successful or challenging (one's own views) books or financially living off the produce of your craft.
As for Correria's counter-charge tactics, somewhere after his 10th or so frisk, he simply gave up on trying to use soft reason and switched to ridicule and tetsubo when dealing with people who liberally use extra concentrated doses of political correctness.
Frankly as more often thanb not, such people are also the rabid defenders of traditional publishing houses and act as a "good" lynch mob when discussing evil new publishers like Amazon or radicals like Baen, I enjoy his salvos on two faced liars*.
And yes, this no hyperbole or exaggeration. I firmly believe that "People" who earn their living from governmental "grants" for writing books or patreon (and similar systems) based public charity have no place to lecture about writing good or successful or challenging (one's own views) books or financially living off the produce of your craft.
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Hey, remember a few pages back where I used this argument against you and Tagz piling on TB and your defense was "well, I think he means worst-interpretation-of-statement so that's that"?
Good times.
Correia never attempted to seriously respond. His only aim was to ridicule, by cutting up the concerned text into ever-smaller pieces devoid of context to be able to attack every tiniest part. As amusing as Fisking can be, it's never a serious attempt to respond to an argument. Because to seriously respond to an argument, you have to seriously consider the entire argument in its entire context and with all of its nuance. He didn't just give up on using "soft reason" after his 10th or so Fisk. If you start Fisking, your aim is never soft reason -- it's ridicule and to produce entertainment for your readers.
I mean, I could do that to your post up there. I could scrutinize your use of scare-quotes around "people" and "grants". Your hatred for Patreon and characterizing it as "public charity" rather than what it is: just another market-based transaction. Your assumption that people who disagree with Correia somehow only operate on grants and patreon-like systems, rather than selling books (I could give you countless counter-examples. Let's start with John Scalzi). Your implication that people who don't make a living in writing don't get to have opinions about this stuff. Your accusation that 'those people' defend traditional publishing over Amazon (you see plenty of both among both conservative and progressive writers), and the implication that that is somehow relevant. Your calling them two-faced liars, your "extra concentrated doses of political correctness". But Fisking you would be stupid, because none of that would engage with your actual argument. It would just be attacking sideshow bullshit, and the result would be an unending and useless quote war.
And I'll also note that none of this excuses Correia's denial of the existence of racism in publishing. His trivializing of harassment at cons (a pretty well-established thing that happens). His apologizing and glossing over Lovecraft's racism. His consistent use of straw men to attack his perceived enemies. Perhaps that post is entertaining. But it's not a serious reply. It can't be.
I mean, I could do that to your post up there. I could scrutinize your use of scare-quotes around "people" and "grants". Your hatred for Patreon and characterizing it as "public charity" rather than what it is: just another market-based transaction. Your assumption that people who disagree with Correia somehow only operate on grants and patreon-like systems, rather than selling books (I could give you countless counter-examples. Let's start with John Scalzi). Your implication that people who don't make a living in writing don't get to have opinions about this stuff. Your accusation that 'those people' defend traditional publishing over Amazon (you see plenty of both among both conservative and progressive writers), and the implication that that is somehow relevant. Your calling them two-faced liars, your "extra concentrated doses of political correctness". But Fisking you would be stupid, because none of that would engage with your actual argument. It would just be attacking sideshow bullshit, and the result would be an unending and useless quote war.
And I'll also note that none of this excuses Correia's denial of the existence of racism in publishing. His trivializing of harassment at cons (a pretty well-established thing that happens). His apologizing and glossing over Lovecraft's racism. His consistent use of straw men to attack his perceived enemies. Perhaps that post is entertaining. But it's not a serious reply. It can't be.
Maybe you should go back and re-read what I wrote there. Specifically the bit that points out the exact parts that I found disagreeable in context because "whether or not he specifically means them that way [..] a lot of people do mean them that way. Including Akratus."
lets add some more fire in to it. Com on guys! BURN BUUUUUUUURN!
[h=1]Ridley Scott Casts White Men To Play Egyptians, Explains His Choices[/h]
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Ridl...lay-Egyptians-Explains-His-Choices-66972.html
[h=1]Ridley Scott Casts White Men To Play Egyptians, Explains His Choices[/h]
http://www.cinemablend.com/new/Ridl...lay-Egyptians-Explains-His-Choices-66972.html
Oh, Sander. You so silly. Trying to hide the most important bit.
Why, it looks like you're doing that thing again that I keep talking about, what with not applying the things you demand from everyone else to yourself.Sander said:
It's this kind of thoughtlessness that really gets me. You're making a movie set in Egypt and your main characters are played by people from Wales, Australia, and England. I love Christian Bale, but that's kind of thoughtless of Scott. There's no shortage of talented actors with a lineage that matches Egypt more.
Correct: that's what I think he means. I posited my opinion on his position, based on listening to the entire context. Feel free to try to convince me otherwise. I could explain why I think he thinks that (mostly because elsewhere, he consistently makes statements like that), but to take my explicitly subjective evaluation of his meaning as a definitive, unarguable statement that ends the argument is...weird? Misinterpretations happen and it's perfectly possible I am judging him too harshly, but the fact is that many people do mean that criticism that way -- which is why I noted my opinion of what he specifically meant as an aside, not as a main point.
But the way Walpknut interprets what specific people are saying is both flatly contradicted by the original text, and not actually what anyone I've ever seen has argued -- nor what anyone he's been able to cite has argued.
He had a certain vision of the role, and he saw Bale in that role.
Personally I don't care if it's Bale or some lesser known semitic dude as long as the acting is spot on. But I guess Scott has a more developed eye for the detail, and he wants the actor to really live up to the role.
The question is if he should have kept looking for a more racially appropriate actor who would have been up to the task or if it is ok to just go with his initial idea.
Personally I don't care if it's Bale or some lesser known semitic dude as long as the acting is spot on. But I guess Scott has a more developed eye for the detail, and he wants the actor to really live up to the role.
The question is if he should have kept looking for a more racially appropriate actor who would have been up to the task or if it is ok to just go with his initial idea.