R3miel7

I think I'm going to withdraw from this topic for awhile. After reading more about this Quinn debacle, I just feel gross about every single person involved including myself for reading about it. Woof.

It doesn't help that it's the culture of misogyny mixing with the assumption that video games journalism is corrupt. Looking back, I'm completely unsurprising it blew up as it did. If there were any two topics that get people spitting bile, it would be those two.

I think you're missing my point. I believe that, obviously, the culture of misogyny is of course the main issue. Anyone subjected to that kind of persecution is a victim no matter what. Equally as obvious is that this entire debacle is fueled by the misogyny and whomever decided to lay these accusations at Quinn's feet did so simply to rile up mangamers. Sadly, the ruse worked, and it worked well. However, bad journalism ethics is not mutually exclusive with the culture of misogyny. I think the fact that we are discussing the issue at all is dumb because it implies that Quinn is guilty but yeah. tl;dr: blaaaaah

While death threats are definitely out of line, professional ethics do matter a lot. Companies and industries are propped up on a basis of trust. Given that the games industry seems to have a deficit of trust in general, the accusations alone are bad, much less if they are true. Also, I understand that you're struggling with this stuff but we have to be realistic too. "assholes stomping on every non-white, non-CIS male out there?" Real people DO get hurt and killed but somehow I doubt that video games are the cause of it. Plus, that level of cynicism is a bit defeatist. Feminism, gender, and many other issues are beginning to break into the main stream of video game culture and even culture at large. We are making progress, it's just that progress will never be as fast as we'd like.

I don't even want to speculate on whether it's true or not because that only feeds the flames. As for deserving to be taken seriously, well, it's something we need to work toward. If we just resign ourselves to saying "we'll never be taken seriously and beside the point, we shouldn't be taken seriously," the medium will suffer. Like, suffer a lot. That's why encouraging and supporting good games journalism is really important.

Quid pro quo journalism is completely unacceptable, especially if we ever want to be taken seriously as a medium at large. I don't think that's the case here but if it is? Yikes, that's bad. Like, really really bad.

Eh, I'd be careful about sweeping statements like that. It's a good way to get MRAs to point out the discrimination against men vis-a-vis domestic violence.

And just to contradict all my hopefulness and optimism, here's what I hesitate to call a "story" from the New York Post: http://nypost.com/2014/08/18/enough-sanctimony-ladies-catcalls-are-flattering/

Stay strong. It's rough but at least we have each other. This is a safe place and that's kind of amazing on the internet

I completely understand the need to vent but we have to be careful about dehumanizing the trolls. As disgusting as they are and as awful as their speech is, I really believe that they can be reformed. The person isn't the enemy: their ignorance and hate is the enemy. Can you imagine how empty these people's lives must be if they get their kicks mocking and humiliating people? Maybe I'm being naive but people can, in fact, come around. Hell, look at how the nation has completely turned around on gay rights/marriage. The progress that's been made would not have been possible without the people who used to be hateful but then had a change of heart.

But Frederick Douglass didn't have to deal with the internet. While his advice is sound, we have to acknowledge the difference between the times and how we can adapt best practices to now. Also, this is completely on the side but it really bugs me when I see vitriol come out of our community against the trolls. While being angry is important, I think tempering it with action and intelligence is critical. If we react with the same level of bile, it will only make the fight against harassment worse, not better. This isn't to say that the trolls don't deserve it but I believe we need to hold ourselves to a higher standard.

I disagree. The reason trolls, well, troll is that they already view the internet as just words, not people. Mocking them online will probably have a limited effect at best. When mocking would be super helpful would be if pop-game culture adopted the outlook. If you were at a lan party and made some misogynist comment and everyone then made fun of you for it, it would stop people from acting that way online. The same goes for cons, popular podcasts, etc. That's what I think anyway.

I definitely see your point about the uselessness of "don't feed the trolls." I do think auto-muting may act as a social pressure though. Getting that auto-mute would be a scarlet letter showing that you're a d-bag. Maybe if there were a way to then get rid of that mark, people could be trained to not be such jerks. I'm also afraid shunting all the jerks into a jerk-server would only cause them to reinforce each other and then have their bile spill into other games and the community at large.

Calling these people "terrorists" isn't going to help the cause and neither would DRM. One, that's huge hyperbole that, considering the deaths in Iraq, Syria, et al, is kind of disrespectful. Two, barring people from things would only make people angrier and what's more, it's not right. What needs to be done is silencing the hate speech. I'm partial to Extra Credit's idea of auto-muting people who have a history of hate speech or blocking them from communicating. That way, these people still have the right to play their games, even on multiplayer, but also have their hate BS removed. Link:

I agree. Unfortunately, even if we're careful, the nature of the internet leads us to naturally be more confrontational on the internet than we would be IRL. Some people may just not really think of user names and text as real live people which enables such nasty comments. Labeling trolls as sociopaths implies that the culture can't be changed and I really disagree with that notion.

I like your idea Tegan! I don't know how it could be made, much less how to make it not-gross but outside-the-box thinking can really help solve some societal problems

I think anime porn doesn't really have any more issues with objectifying women than normal porn does. The animated nature of it allows for certain aspects to be highlighted, more so than in any real life porn but the issue is still on the same line. This leads to the question of whether porn is inherently good or bad which is an entirely different question all together.

This TL;DR story was reallyinteresting. I'm not 100% sure how to feel about it but then again, I'm a man so case in point? Life is weird. http://www.onthemedia.org/story/unfollow-man/

We definitely shouldn't stop. It's more that we just have to accept that growing our community (especially a diverse community) won't happen all at once. The Thumbs have already made a great podcast so now it's up to us to help spread it around word-of-mouth style. Also: hell yeah Danielle is a total badass.

I agree. Video games culture is still very entrenched in the "only white dudes" mindset. Thus, it's usually the white dudes who find the niches most quickly. The trend is breaking but Giant Bomb is just more popular and the diverse crowd will probably stick with something well known.

Ok, I definitely see that in regard to WotC just blowing off the concerns. It smacks of corporate damage control which, unfortunately, will probably work. I guess now that I think about it, I'm glad the issue is being raised because it shifts the culture away from the overwhelming gross-ness but it's such a fine line. Also, Love + Radio is awesome. Also Bjorn, being surrounded by creepy, uncanny sexualized women sounds like something out of a nightmare fever dream. Sorry you have to put up with that BS. I can't even bring myself to be mad at the companies though. They wouldn't do that kind of stuff if it didn't work and unfortunately, it does. Thankfully, I think conversations like this are helping to swing away from that mindset.

What's disingenuous is claiming that these people's blogs are professional work. I do believe that public persona should affect the work life but what, specifically, have they done that's worth firing? Should having a cave-man opinions on sex and gender and no ability to form cohesive arguments online be a reason to lose a job? If so, where do we draw that line? Are we comfortable if an employer with conservative values fired someone for believing more progressive stances on sexuality and gender? What's more, we don't know the details of what these two people did aside from "Additional Consulting" which is perhaps the most vague word choice possible. The reality is that these two bloggers may not have had any substantive effect on the final product but we're supposed to blacklist D&D due to their involvement? Please note that I haven't played any version of 5e but it seems that the final product itself is open to gender and sexual identity so who knows? Maybe those two were "consulted" to find negative aspects of D&D culture that could be rooted out. Essentially, all we know is that two idiots showed up as "Additional Consulting" with no other context. To say that D&D is somehow guilty by association on their sins is absurd. Starting a witch-hunt over these two would only hurt the blossoming acceptance for people outside the norms of the sexuality and gender. In my opinion, being accepting and inclusive even of people who are hurtful will, in the end, win more progress for us than the scare tactics the original article seemed to embrace.

Again though, how much do we want to allow employers to make work judgments based on private activities? The answer to this is obviously different for everyone but I hate the idea of my employer constantly spying on me, even at home.

I'm not sure I agree with the thesis of the article that a company is responsible for the opinions of every employee. When it's a CEO or other management (i.e. the whole Firefox debacle), equating a person's opinion to that of the company's makes sense. However, if they're just regular employees, then why does their opinion matter? I'm not saying that these people shouldn't be fired (they should), but I really don't like the idea of companies acting as thought police and then having the internet combing through online documents to be informers.

I'm now imagining a re-release of Jaws: Unleashed as something similar to Goat Simulator.