Bjorn

I wasn't going to acknowledge this post until today's game was over. 8 wins in a row, two sweeps in a row of excellent teams, multiple postseason records set already, 2nd all time consecutive post season wins at 11 (if you go back to the '85 series). This fucking team. They don't stop. Also, a double sporty thing. A buddy of mine was at the game, and Bill Self (Jayhawk basketball head coach) was sitting right in front of him. Got a picture with him at the end of the game. #sosuperjealous

If you were born around this time (or even later for younger members here), it's probably hard to imagine how homogenous entertainment was then. Cable was *mostly* reruns, movies and super cheap original productions. Watching what was on one of the big 3 was the default entertainment choice for a huge chunk of America.

I'd been thinking about picking back up this part of the thread while working this morning, trying to order my thoughts on it. These tweets echoed a thought I had already been having. I feel very much like I'm just poking in the dark with these statements and questions. I'm not meaning to sound like I'm making any grand judgments here (if anything comes off that way). Games have, unquestionably, become more macho and aggressive, more and more heavily tapping into the kind of rhetoric that revolves around jock culture, and that's only increasing with the rise of e-sports. The misogyny, hate and violence that can show up in sports fandom seems to have a lot of parallels with the gaters. Though perhaps that's just that this kind of hatred always looks the same, regardless of the context that surrounds it. People tend to associate the idea of gamers (and comic book fans) as being social outcasts or loners as being an inherent part of gamer culture. But no real parallels exist with the men who are fans of sports. These are often guys with families, jobs, real life social circles. But the same blame, bad logic and vitriol will permeate the online discussions about women. Similarly, you'll see men raging about how untrustworthy and unethical women are, while blissfully tuning into ESPN every night, unquestioningly loyal to a corporation that constantly acts unethically. I suspect we're all familiar with the good and bad of religion when it comes to espousing hate. When it is religious people aiming their hate at women, again you don't have any of the social parallels that are commonly associated with gaming and comics fans. Even on the opposite side of religion, you have all the shitty examples of how men in atheist/agnostic communities have treated women. They don't even have any religious bullshit dogma to fall back on to justify their actions. Are there any traditionally male areas (professional or hobby), where women have been easily accepted and welcomed without this kind of bullshit? It might be more enlightening to find an example of a sub-culture where this didn't happen, that never created a breeding ground from which something like gg could be born. Off the top of my head, none are occurring to me.

The blindness inherent in his final comment is astounding: Because it's the victims who enable them, not the rest of the gaters.

Unless things changed, the client is intended to be completely optional? That was how I originally understood it. But a lot of GOG users really wanted a client to provide some of the similar functionality that the Steam client provides.

This is screamingly NSFW (like seriously, you'll get fired unless you work somewhere super cool). But I think I have a new favorite singer-songwriter. It's nice to see someone writing about the really important things in life.

That's cool, and best of luck! I don't even know what to suggest, it's such an insane hydra. So much of this has played out in social media and forums, and the journalistic write-ups of it all miss something. If I was going to give them some pre-work, I might be tempted to tell them to go down the rabbit hole and spend ~30 minutes on Twitter with #gamergate, or go to 8chan, or NeoGaf. Instead of seeing third-hand accounts, encourage them to see all the original source material, and see how they react to it.

I think you're probably right, there's something more complex and interesting at play than it just being the language of games, or a historic language of hate. A lot of interesting parallels have been drawn between religion and our modern mass consumption driven society. There are probably similarities in the way those groups express hate when they have chosen, or been led, down that path. Ugh, I'm too tired to chase down that thought. If this hasn't gone some completely different direction, I'll pick it back up in the morning.

The boys in blue just keep getting through these games, one after another. It's the most fun I've ever had watching baseball. I lost my shit with that catch by Moustakas:

I understand the trains of thought by Gormonguos and Jason, but I don't think the language of video games actually has anything to do with this in any meaningful way. It has changed the words they are using (with a focus on things like "winning"), but the aiming of violence towards those you have dehumanized and othered dates far, far before the introduction of video games into our lives. The language is just set dressing, a decoration. Extreme religious fundamentalists will use the languages they know, just look at groups like the Phelps clan (hell, damnation, the devil, death), but the inherent message of hate, violence and the inevitable victory over their enemies is all there. Gamers have just gussied up their very similar hatreds with the words they know, but the message is the same. WaPo has an interesting take on this though, that the gaters are just part of the latest culture war that is taking place across multiple fronts: I actually haven't read it all yet, as it's late and I'm tired. But it was interesting as far as I did get.

I've been reading Homeland over the last few days, Doctorow's sequel to Little Brother. Ostensibly these are both young adult novels, but each deal with themes like living in a US city after a terrorist attack, use of torture by the US government, civic protests, online protests, the blending of private and governmental military groups, etc. So super adult shit. I'm about three-quarters of the way through Homeland, and it is enjoyable, but not quite as good as LB. It feels a lot more like Doctorow's goal was to literally introduce and teach people how and why they should be using things like TOR, Linux, custom Android installations, etc. Which hey, is not a bad thing to teach people, but the little side explorations into explaining each of these often feel like they don't flow with the narrative. And maybe it's going to blow my mind in the final few chapters, but the book as a whole feels much more aimless with less happening than LB did. I heartily recommend LB though, and if you enjoy it, Homeland is still probably worth picking up as it is quick read. Just a bit disappointing. Anyone else read them?

What the actual fuck Utah? You can't search for guns even after a specific targeted threat? That sounds like some bullshit.

Thanks! And yes, answering my own question, that was a spray painted Logitech Trackball (image courtesy of this page):

Chris, when you comment on the BluRay copy on the next episode, can comment on the audio quality? I'm as interested in the remastered audio to it as I am the video, and particularly curious if the surround remix affects anything at all.

I only ever watched like the first two episodes of Heroes, and so no characters particularly left an impression on me. I am completely ambivalent to the cheerleader.

DAMMIT, it was going to be like she was looking right at Twig's post.

It's in the episode thread of whenever they talked about Farscape in (the one with Anita in it?). I'll try to track it down and quote it here later on. We're just watching the whole thing, not skipping anything. My wife was a huge fan of it back when it ran, and she wants to see all the glory and trainwrecks from Season 1.

Brianna's last words (paraphrased), "We can't have a rational discussion about this until 8chan stops terrorizing women." The owner of 8chan's final words, "Believe it or not Brianna, 8chan is not all about you." Host's final words (paraphrased), "That was really unnecessary and I hate to leave it there. Brianna I'm sorry about that."

The guy who runs 8chan (paraphrased, but close to exact quotes): "You can't blame 8chan for what happens on 8chan anymore than you can blame Twitter for what happens on Twitter." "If Ms. Wu was really so scared, she'd have been calling the police instead of Tweeting about it."

The host of the show just said HateChan instead of 8chan. Clearly not intentional, but still perfect. I initially wrote it was Kain, but I was wrong. It's whatever dude is hosting the HuffPo live segment.

True, and I also realized that it likely helps remind people about Planned Parenthood in general as well. Lots of folks have never need to go to a PP for anything, even if they support the organization. Our biggest mandate in our calls was simply to be unfailingly polite. So along with election and candidate awareness, we were probably giving a lot of people their first ever contact with PP, and hopefully making it as positive of an experience as an election phone call can be (which, hey, is limited).

No, they specifically allowed for crowdfunding with some guidance:

I wish this was hilarious, and not just sad. The Escapist has removed yet another one of the "game developers" from their grumpygrowling list of essays. Apparently that essay also had to be edited before it was removed as well, as Desborough name dropped someone he had been actively harassing on Twitter, and there was enough evidence for the Escapist to remove that line to prevent the piece from directing any more harassment at that person. And now people are pointing out that Archon is a backer of Desborough's work, and has generally been friendly and chatty with him online, which is likely the main reason Desborough was ever included in the first place. Now the Escapist's ethics policies doesn't ban backing creators crowdfunding projects, so it wasn't a breach of their own ethics (and I don't consider crowdfunding to be a breach of anyone's ethics anymore than just buying a copy of someone's game or book is, but we've discussed that before). But given how many gaters lost their shit about other journalists contributing to Patreon or Kickstarter, there is a (to be expected) silence about their boy Archon doing the same thing and giving premium space to one of the gaters.

If you go through the comments on that GB piece, you can actually find a couple of people who are just learning about gg thanks to Patrick talking about it. I wonder how many people there are like that, who just listen to GB, maybe check the site once a day, don't hang out in forums, don't use Twitter, etc. For as big as gg has been, I can also see how someone could completely miss its existence. And the sites who have chosen complete silence on this have only helped that. They've contributed to the harassment of women being invisible.