Nachimir

Oh, sorry, I totally wasn't having a go at you. I've known plenty of racist working class communities too, sometimes ones that would violently enforce the exclusion of other ethnicities. Where I am now is pretty racist too. It used to be one of the richest places in the country during Victorian times, and mill owners broke the unions by bringing in migrant labour. The resulting racist attitudes have been passed through families for generations.

It's almost as if they drew exactly the same set of tenuous connections, then spotted that the PR fuckup they were on the brink of was an order of magnitude greater than most things that have tarnished their reputation so far. I know people on the fence about feminism and who've ignored GG, but if it targeted a family and their dead child, those same people would be calling for blood.

I got into an argument like that with someone on facebook, who is a *chan user and argued that kicking kiddie porn/upskirt/celebrity nudes/exploitation/etc. off any website would be the equivalent to banning roads or pubs. When I pointed that no, it would be equivalent to policing roads and pubs, which is a thing we do, he just doubled down and kept repeating himself. Racism is one of the few things we have that transcends our absurdly large class barriers Middle class racism tends to be the most casual and ashamed of itself, because middle class people (not excluding myself from this) seems to live in homogenous neighbourhoods. From Josh: "Hey all, we have not received any direct harassment or threats from #gamergate or anyone else." Of course, they're being grandiose about it and trying to appear magnanimous/competent: "I'm very proud to say that after checking in with #gamergate investigators, That Dragon Cancer is essentially clean. Go ahead and donate!" Investigation in this context meaning anything from "Flinging the same already disproven allegations out forever" to "Shit. Fuck. Shit. Fuck. Back away slowly".

I found Sleepy Hollow pretty corny, but that might be because I watched it on a plane while I was tired. It was enjoyable under those circumstances. Plus points: you'll probably not have any trouble following it even if sleep deprived.

With regard to the shirt thing: This counter-reaction stuff is so tightly coupled now and has no sense of irony. A statement characterising a legit objection as overreaction, that itself then became days of sustained outrage, booming long after the dude apologised. At this point, I want it to happen just to annoy misogyinists/gaters/etc. Perception of sexism should be normalised, and we should just way overshoot on all of these things so they end up having to concentrate sustained attention to win even the most trivial victories. The more things they have to fight, the lower the stakes they can actually contend become.

The dude apologised and there's a bunch of people getting foamy about that fact that they think he shouldn't have. There's more outrage over anyone being offended by it and the resulting apology than there ever was over the shirt. That whole monocle popping stream of thought/discourse has been sustained for days now and it's making me quite unhappy to see it.

Full stealth mode is wanking into a sock.

Yeah, absolutely. I've spent some of the past few months thinking about this and still struggle to sum it up succinctly. Because of people's own patience toward me in the past, I have a lot of time and patience for desocialised people. Desocialisation may not be an inherited condition like Asperger's, but dealing with the self-centred behaviour it generates in sufferers without getting angry requires a similar outlook of not taking it personally. Gater persecution complexes seem to be based around tenaciously clinging to notions of being victimised even while the world moves on, and remind me of two things: Myself, before I realised I was the only common factor in many situations that were making me feel bad, and this one guy I worked with in a bar who never had that realisation. He was an archetypal nerd/geek/goth type who'd obviously been bullied in the past and let that harden into a prickly facade. He often made obnoxious comments and voiced hatred of women. The rest of us talked about it and decided it might pass if we made him feel included and tried not to judge, then spent months doing that. Whatever happened before had gone so deep inside him though, that if he could be brought back from it, we weren't the people to do it. There was a cathartic week where we all admitted to each other that we thought he was just a terrible person, and as soon as we stopped tolerating his behaviour he quickly left the job with a freshly fuelled up persecution complex. I really want there to be more things that healthily support bullied people. Otherwise, it's just things like gamergate and pick up artist communities that'll keep hoovering them up and mobilising their discontent, and they all have the same message packed into them: "You don't need to change, it's the worlds fault". There's a difference between these people and those like Milo, who've truly committed to their worst traits and personally value them.

Ooh! OOH! I'm almost never interested in replaying games, but these two, yes. Regarding the Canvas Engine: Yeah, it's maddening how uninspired Sega seem to be. Yesterday, a bunch of independent developers voiced the idea on Twitter that Sega let them take a crack at Sonic, and I'm sad that's not likely to happen. There are people out there who'd value having a publisher and could do really good things for them, if they'd just frigging talk to them.

Yep. I don't think I've ever used it as an insult, though I once understood it as one. I've used and heard it as a term of affection for someone who's deeply into a given thing since, I don't know, 2008. I have no doubt some gaters have been horribly bullied on this kind of basis, but on a wider cultural field clinging to the most pejorative use of nerd is a weirdly tenacious and blinkered persecution complex. Alpha-dickheads like Roosh and that lawyer siding with them whilst barely masking their contempt points to a sad ending for a lot of it.

It's very odd, but a consequence of the terms they're trying to use. They've also occasionally tried to claim parallels with racial tolerance and religious freedom. Choice is at the heart of this; most of the identity politics they're aping are based around non-chosen characteristics like race, gender and sexuality. As a result, identity politics based on "nerd" or "gamer" look ridiculous from the outside, but they probably make perfect sense to someone mired in it and focussing on the idea that the world is victimising them. It's an identity drawn from a persecution complex while everyone else just getting on with making and playing games. That last point is quite telling: it's as defensive as it is challenging, and this morning I've seen a few people easily name such positive portrayals.

Maybe only a few of them will get that ridiculous, but a grandiose sense of entitlement seems to flow naturally from their appropriation of identity politics coupled with a chosen social identity. I do wonder if they'll have to invent some bits of language to sustain that, or reappropriating nerd will be enough. Edit: It is very entertaining watching them grapple with this stuff after seeing them mock tumblr identities for so long. "NO! NO. You're not a special snowflake! B… but we are".

Really looking forward to finding out about their personal pronouns.

]] Also someone announced nerds as a "third" gender:

It's almost like you could take that point about the KKK and walk them to the idea of discourse, but not quite. I thought this was a joke at first, but looking at the timeline it appears they're serious:

That's the kind of rhetoric gaters employ I don't think it will exactly end, but it's continuing to peter out in a lot of ways. Voldemort bullshit from companies notwithstanding, most ordinary people seem to be able to look at it and see it for what it is. Whatever's left long term will be the most deluded, earnest and vicious people of GG. We already know that, as it stands, gaters are a tiny minority of gamers who had delusions of grandeur.

I loved Matt Smith in the role, but hated the writing he was given. I think "Let's Kill Hitler" might have been the worst in respect of "Ooh! Whee! What do you mean plot? Who needs plot or pacing or anything else when you have all these loveable characters doing stuff? Wahey!", but there were plenty. Especially all of the ones Moffat wrapped up with "women are magic", he relied on it so much that if it made any sense as a concept it might have become a trope. Oh, I'd forgotten about that.

Ditto. All I could think was "That's not he Hobbit, it's the Hobbit turned into epic hollywood bollocks". I realise they've rolled in bits of the Silmarillion, but even after watching the first one I was hoping for more personal storytelling in the same world. Doctor Who: also, we've all seen this article, yes?

What do your coworkers make of him? Is he only doing that sort of thing when people with the power to fire his ass aren't around?

I saw that set for the first time today; I like that Lego are starting to include women minifigs who don't all wear ridiculous make up. I got the Ecto-1 set today, but haven't got time to build it until the weekend.

… well I guess it only took Milo two months to notice. Hope someone redoes that fan art GG battle picture. Somewhat related to that, it's interesting to see that LewieP has been a vocal detractor of GG since the start. He's not only said he's on the side of consumers before, he's occasionally told journalists, developers and retailers to go fuck themselves in service of that. It's about emotional truths for gaters. The Huk piece linked a few pages back is one of the most insightful things I've read on it, particularly this bit talking about cult mechanics tied to superficial identity politics:

He is now basically GameDawkins.

I think they're students from his former school, too. I'm always amazed at how patient Rami is in those discussions on Facebook, and how doggedly persistent the people trying to justify harassment/meritocracy/libertarianism/sexism/etc. are.

<-- The tiny Christmas hat was there ALL ALONG muhaha

Every time shit about ZQs private life gets rehashed somewhere, it cements some of the impressions GG spawned about her and erases a little more of her identity and privacy. Anything in the accusations as they pertained to corruption was disproven, and the rest is her private life. For the sake of your own sanity, I'd advise ignoring TB. He's a twat, and I don't know why people are taking him so seriously.