singlespace

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Posts posted by singlespace

  2. Posted

    Look, I get it. You made some jokes and I'm just some stranger who walks into a place that's kind of like your home and is critical of the jokes being made: it's kind of a dick thing to do. But I doubt you'll find much modern research suggesting that facts, that pointing out the flaws in arguments, especially via mechanisms like jokes, or satire, is at all effective in changing vastly differing opinions. You will find that researchers, political advocates, scientific outreach coordinators, and more have found over the last decade that the opposite is in fact true: such measures only serve to harden and galvanize the resolve of those you would like to change the most.

     

    Mocking someone's beliefs, no matter how poorly those beliefs correlate with reality, no matter how much you disagree with them, is not effective. It does the opposite of what you would hope. There is a decade of research backing this up now and I gave you two very good places to begin reading about it.

     

    The line of reasoning presented by others that even if everyone agreed that mockery wasn't a good idea, that it is perhaps too much to ask of someone to conduct themselves in such a fashion in all public outlets, I can buy, but it is such a terrible thing to consider that these jokes and emotional, instead of rational, shots at GG could be causing more harm than good?

  4. Posted

    It took literally minutes after her post for Felicia Day to be doxxed. That's not the most stringent data but it's a shitty indicator for sure.

    Why would it be an indicator at all, let alone a good one? Assume there is a core element of GG that will attack any high profile person. Say Day's article had some impact in GG and some group of people who are not part of the core decide to not support GG anymore. Does that affect that core group attacking high profile people via criminal acts? No. Say it affects nothing, does that mean Day won't be doxxed? No.

     

    I have little else to add except to ask you not to only sympathise with GamerGate, they are people with misguided goals and a persecution complex, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't also sympathise with the people being seriously attacked, threatened and harassed over GG. Sure, GGers will take the jokes as an attack, but that doesn't make it equivalent. It doesn't mean that the attacks by GG are less serious or less legitimate. People attack by GG have an emotional assault on them, people need to cope somehow. We're all humans and even if your way was definitely the best, it's difficult to maintain a visage of treating GG calmly when people that want to push this medium forward are being terrorised by them.

    I do, just simply expressed in other places. I don't feel that they're equivalent at all by any means, but it seems contrary to the goal of ending this shittiness to antagonize. I'm not asking anyone to go out of their way to try and reason with them, just that I think that mockery makes it more difficult for those who have a part of their identity tied up in GG to leave.

     

    If it is, in all honesty, one of the best ways people can vent, then there's not much that can be done. That's just how things are.

     

    Similarly, I honestly feel like a Gater who is truly arguing in good faith should be unscathed by comments ridiculing Gaters who make irrational arguments. The whole tone policing thing is protecting a group of people who are not arguing in good faith, they are people who you envision to be eventual allies to be swayed that are so wavering in their conviction that the slightest nudge can rouse them for a fight.

    I don't believe they are arguing in good faith, nor do I believe that they will be eventual allies, but I do believe that they can be given the tools necessary to realize that what they're doing is wrong and that they should stop, but condescensions and slights make it much more difficult.

     

    In recent years I've tried to come around to a more rational approach to argument, where the only way you can convince anyone of anything is by convincing them first that you want to have a two-way discussion with compassion. No climate change denier will consider anything you're saying if they perceive your contempt for them. When I argue with some of my Christian family members about gay marriage, I really try to empathize with the fact that their guiding moral compass is telling them something I disagree with and that convincing them to change their mind is also asking them to doubt something they potentially believe wholeheartedly.

     

    That being said, I think that it's really, really unfair to expect or even ask anyone else to uphold this manner of argument in all circumstances. Not only is it extremely draining in terms of personal energy, but in the spirit of the method you also have to let people argue in their own ways and potentially recognize that empathy and compassion are critical tools in truly reaching someone. I also think that the method really only has efficacy in one-on-one interactions. I think it's unfairly demanding to ask that people sympathize with Gaters in general while acknowledging that a good percentage of them are not arguing in good faith.

    It isn't fair, but if we want this to end as fast as possible then it is in our best interests to at least not go out of our way to make the process more protracted and difficult. I have a hard time believing that refraining from such things as Actual Ethics is equivalent to establishing a meaningful dialog with those who are very different in their fundamental beliefs.

  5. Posted

    You haven't exactly done a great job selling your point. You dive into a conversation that's dozens of pages long with the attempt to tone-police a brief two-page sideshow of questionable seriousness. You also chose one sentence to answer out of multi-paragraph posts I made questioning the efficacy of a conciliating attitude towards #GamerGate. I appreciate you linking me actual studies, which I will look up when I go to the library Thursday to renew this semester's load of dissertation reading, but the data still does not bear out in this situation, since conciliatory moderates like Gerstmann and Day have gotten just as much hate as confrontational feminists like Wu and Klepek, gender and exposure being equal. If your model held at all, Day's wishes not to be doxxed in order to open a dialogue of trust would have actually been borne out, rather than violated within minutes of her posting said wishes. I wish love and kindness could always win the day, but people only have two cheeks to turn.

     

    On replying, I well understand that my opinion in these regards would be entirely unpopular and from a logistical standpoint, there is one of me and what? Half a dozen or more of you? I can't answer in full every single person if I am to have any time so I pick and choose what I can reasonably address.

     

    On your point of data, to be frank, you have no data at all to reference, just supposition. Can you tell me, in precise quantities, anything about the reception or effect of Gerstmann's or Day's pieces had? Can you tell me any comparable number at all? No, and neither can I. There is no reasonable data in those regards. What we have is opinion and the means by which we came to those opinions.

     

    My opinion is not that people need codling, but it is not necessary, and I believe harmful, to go out of one's way to ridicule as is the case of Actual Ethics and things of a similar ilk. Care for oneself and keeping heart are things that must happen, but I question this particular method, as I find it unnecessarily antagonistic to those who will not, and in some sense, cannot, separate a criticism of an idea they hold and a criticism of their person. I do not believe there can be any reasonable defence of such things as constructive.

     

    If there is no possible grounds for reconciliation, with even the non-hardliners, if it is alright to take shots at them, then I feel like this won't just be 2 months, or another 2 months, but we can all look forward to years of this.

  9. Posted

    Gamergate, by contrast, is relatively small-time. Its milieu is 8chan, mostly - it used to be 4chan but they got excluded from 4chan - paranoids, anti-semitics and MRAs, none of whom have significant presence in the gaming subculture and many of whom have been happy to throw games under the bus to preserve their own milieu. Their dehumanisation is mostly limited to a handful of people. It's small, and unstable, but much more vicious.

     

    Confronting them head-on, as you point out, is ineffective, as it's an attack from outside the milieu. But the vulnerability of the milieu is important; while the most effective strategy is to have them leave the milieu, even temporarily, and see from the outside how poisonous it is, satirical jokes can be effective in highlighting the inconsistency of the milieu.

     

    I wonder about that. It's so easy to construct these caricatures of those we disagree with, with those we hate, with those we loathe. We assign to them things they never did, words they never said, thoughts they never had, and they become this awkward amalgamation of all the things we hate. When we are inevitably confronted with the real living breathing person, we can then dismiss them for all these things we have constructed in their place.

     

    "He total said it! God works in mysterious ways. What an idiot."

    "If you have to use but, then you're probably are doing it right now."

    "That's what they say, but look at what they've done."

    "I told you he'd post it: they all post it."

     

    It's easy to build a library of excuses to ignore everything someone has to say, especially if you perceive them to be the enemy, especially if you have something to lose.

  10. Posted

    Thinking about it -- Wouldn't the premise that any mocking or vilification of GGers merely sets them in their ways, taken to its logical conclusion, suggest that we should never disagree with them at all?

     

    No, someone doesn't need to be a villain to be wrong. I think that Gerstmann, Felicia Day, and Film Crit Hulk didn't mock or vilify GGers when making their point that they're wrong.

  11. Posted

    I ask again, what is your evidence beyond paraphrases of uncited studies and a rather unintuitive understanding of radical reactionary movements that such is the correct way forward?

    Certainly, look up Dan Kahan's papers on cultural cognition or scientific communications to begin and you can go from there. Another good place to start is with Jay Ingram who has given some interesting lectures on the topic, but those will be more difficult to come by.

  12. Posted

    Could you expound upon that? Frankly, I feel like you're either misinterpreting the comic or you're really cherry picking what one can and can't say about GamerGate.

    The content is the same -- the context is different. The body of Sea Lioning's entire body of work is of the same tone and disposition.

  13. Posted

    Serious question.  So do you consider the Sea Lioning comic to be bullshit antagonistic mockery?  Or the best examples of the "Actually Ethics" memes?  If those are fine, how do the jokes here cross the line that those don't?  If you think those are just as bad, then we've got a bit of a different discussion going on. 

    I feel that Sea Loining is entirely in line with what they are, but I think that the Actually Ethics meme is unnecessarily antagonistic because it is used in such a fashion as to say look at how stupid these people are. These kinds of things are light hearted to you, but I doubt they are treated as light hearted by the people who are the subject of them.

     

    Oh, totally different topic, my daughter gave her gamergate presentation in class today, and no one stood up to say, "Actually, it's about..."   She actually thought it went really well. 

    If you don't mind me asking, what class?

  14. Posted

    Who said anything about feigning sympathy or doing outreach? I just think that this whole notion of us versus them along with the associated paraphernalia of ridicule and contempt is as childish as it is harmful to ending this entire mess. Is refraining from petty insults and disdain feigning sympathy and doing outreach to you?

  15. Posted

    In the short term, on an individual basis, perhaps. In the long term, my hope is that it makes such positions untenable in the future.

     

    Also: Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke. These jokes mock nothing they should hold dear: Just empty and abusive practices. Just disingenuous dodges. If they can't shed the things I target without shedding their identity, it shows how shriveled and mean that identity is. If they can't admit they were wrong and made a mistake, we won't get fucking anywhere regardless. If they can't laugh about their mistakes, they'll never admit those mistakes were made.

     

    As it is, I would appreciate it if you would regard this as a difference in opinion of how to approach the problem of healing a poisonous culture, rather than mere self-indulgence, because I assure you I put a lot of thought into what I was doing.

    Good luck with that. The climate change skeptics and Tea Party have weathered far harsher condemnations and are still incredibly large groups.

  17. Posted

    To clarify, every single fucking one of those jokes was intended to illustrate a dishonest rhetorical method that GGers have been using. They're meant to make these methods a ) common knowledge and b ) laughable. To say that highlighting the absurdity of their methodology is some kind of attack is an absurdity on par with those that I have been mocking.

     

    It's not a matter of lolol look at these dummies: It's a matter of highlighting the gaps in GG logic and turning them into something we understand and can control. I'm more than a little angry at the idea that this is some kind of fucking bullying. Criticism is not abuse.

    It doesn't matter what your intentions are, the people who already agree with you will applaud you, the people who are the subject of your jokes will take it as yet another reason not to listen to you.

     

    When you mock and deride someone's beliefs, regardless of how right or wrong those beliefs match reality, you are setting up a situation where they must necessarily harm themselves to admit they were wrong. It doesn't matter whether it's an attack, or abuse, or whatever you want to group it with, you're setting up a situation where to change their mind, and admit they were wrong, they must also admit that they are deserving all the hate being thrown at them, that they are an idiot and rube that should be mocked.

     

    You're making it harder for someone to come to your way of thinking.

  18. Posted

    The primary factor correlated with belief is the belief of those who surround you. To be blunt, if all your friends believe one thing, you are apt to believe the same regardless of the facts. The more you set yourself as an outsider, the less someone will listen to you, hence positions like Hulk's and Gertsmann's are invaluable because they are not seen as partisan as many others and can belong to any group to an extent.

     

    Even extremely well educated people will tend to pick their social group's beliefs over those of an outsider. Though it seems counter intuitive, there is a correlation with education and how polarized your position is on any subject regardless of what the facts actually are. The most hardline people on both sides of any issue, regardless of how much evidence points in one direction or another, will be those who are the most educated.

  19. Posted

    I would be more inclined to agree with you it was limited to just here, but it seems to be the prevailing logic of the gaming community that attacking those who attacked you is a reasonable course of action in much less private places than here. What you excuse as venting, I see as needless antagonistic and extending a long dirty fight far longer than it needs to be.

     

    I cringe whenever someone yells or taunts Tea Partiers or climate change sceptics as though it will actually help their cause, as though it will actually cause shame in the those who they wish to change the most. How much more pressure has been thrown at those who don't believe in climate change than any of the petulant venting that the gaming community has managed to muster? How many more years of jokes, volumes of facts, legions of experts, have been thrown at them?

     

    We even have scientific papers published in Nature supporting tribal bonds are stronger than any attempts at humiliation or rational rebuttal -- they actually harden the resolve of those we wish to change rather than dissuade them of their position because it reinforces the notion that there is such an enemy to fight.

  21. Posted

    Film Crit Hulk on GamerGate: http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/

     

    Don't be deterred by the HULK ALL CAPS thing, it's well worth a read.

     

    The thing I really appreciate about the more recent pieces discussing Gamer's Gate like Hulk, Gerstmann, and Felicia Day, is that they actually recognize and respect that the people who are supporting the whole GamerGate mess, are in fact people. This will probably be an unpopular opinion, but I find it sad that most places have taken on an us versus them attitude including here.