Nachimir
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Posts posted by Nachimir
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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.
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RogueStar, sour because of repeated suspension from twitter, vows to toggle his "shadow network," which I can only imagine is a euphemism for 'wanking'.
Full stealth mode is wanking into a sock.
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I thought we solved the 'nerd, geek or dork' thing back in 2003? We (mostly) reclaimed those words
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.
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Valkyria Chronicles' PC port just went up on Steam, the buzz seems to be that it's a decent port.
Ooh!
If that means Sega will release other titles on PC, like Vanquish
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.
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Abed from Community and Ben Wyatt from Parks and Rec are the ones that sprung immediately to mind, but without knowing what is meant by "nerd" it's hard to tell... I interpret "nerd" as meaning someone with an interest in a thing or things far in excess of a quote-unquote normal level - so, one can be a military history nerd, or a car nerd, or whatever.
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.
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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.
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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".
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Really looking forward to finding out about their personal pronouns.
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]]Also someone announced nerds as a "third" gender:
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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:
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If you want a picture of the future, imagine a gamergate boot stamping on a SJW human face - forever.
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.
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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.
On another note,
what about future Danny guy and now Danny's dead and c'mon. I can only assume they won't let Clara storyline end on that super sour note, so I'm sure she's coming back either during or after the Christmas episode, right?
Oh, I'd forgotten about that.
Well he still exists somewhere, so yeah I guess you're right
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People seem rather stoked about the Hobbit trailer but I don't really understand why. It barely even features THE HOBBIT.
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:
Let's get into some serious shit here.
I love Peter Capaldi as the Doctor, but this season has been pretty shit overall. I don't know. I'm watching the latest episode now. Please be better.
This season of Dr. Who had its ups and downs, but I enjoyed it all the way through.
(Not attacking you Twig, you just reminded me of this).
I have a lot of friends who perpetually express disappointment with Doctor Who, and have done pretty much since Matt Smith's run started. It baffles me; like which bit of it was ever not hokey, not fluffy and sentimental, not aimed at kids, or made absolute sense? It kind of reminds me of gamers decrying games for "not being realistic enough".
I mostly enjoyed this run, especially the antagonistic relationship between Clara and The Doctor. It still has some Moffatt bollocks, but Capaldi chased away any hint of romance between the Doctor and assistants, and the writing feels a lot less infatuated with the characters.
also, we've all seen this article, yes?
If the Doctor regenerated into a woman, would he change his name to The Nurse?
No. Because a woman doctor is called ‘a doctor’.
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Life
in Idle Banter
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?
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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.
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… well I guess it only took Milo two months to notice. Hope someone redoes that fan art GG battle picture.
Yeah I also used to watch some WTF Is... videos before this shitstorm, and I will give him this pass. He has talked about actual issues in journalism and consumer rights on a number of occasions.
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:
But when it comes to gamergate, finding any single kind of point to lock onto in terms of the viewpoint is impossible. Really. It's like trying to tango on quicksand. Every time you go behind the claim you hit another lie, another thing someone will say you don't understand. And unlike any organized group, there is no central ethos to reference at the core. Which just means all organizational statements or inclinations can be disavowed. The vast majority of the movement is actively harassing women? "nope! They're just the minority and not part of what we're really about." for anything that can be used to reveal gamergate for what it is and what it is doing is not part of the true movement. Those harassers? They are just minority trolls. Never mind that hulk can tell you from the hundreds of responses that's not the case. Point out that the movement is only frequently targeting women? "nope! It's about ethics and that's incidental." in this environment, all disagreements become personal attacks. It all becomes a moving goal post. The "truth" of virtually every single step is a shadow of something that cannot even be conceived, maybe even by the perpetrators themselves. Because the one thing hulk cannot get any single one of them to do is outline something positive they are accomplishing that doesn't make it seem like they are trying to eradicate feminist influence in gaming. Instead, they just cling so desperately to the those positive words they say they represent and lash out against any and all threats. The end result is you can't even get to the nugget of disagreement on the world view.there is no world view. There is only the attack and the response.
Which, in case you are unaware, is the standard operating procedure for cults, behavioral programming and more organized organizations like scientology.Now... If all this trouble were just relegated to the tower of babel version of the internet, then this would normally be no problem. The potency of outsider opinions are most often helped by the fact that they disorganized, distant and separate. But the problem with the potency of gamergate is that all those who fervently argue that this is not about sexism are then somehow able to bind their efforts into a fist to attack female developers / female writers instantly, along with the companies that support them on any level... And hulk's pretty sure that many of them don't even realize that's exactly what they're taking part of.You have to understand how problematic this is. It's almost thought to be impossible. What has essentially happened is that we have taken a cult behavioral approach to discussion and philosophy - normally a really difficult thing to instill into people and requires isolation, direct programming and full-on cultural separation - and turned it into something that has been casually learned on the internet's proverbial streets through the organic process of being a part of video game's most toxic subculture.This is one of the scariest things hulk has ever seen. -
He already wrote something about the credible threat thing - http://www.twitlonger.com/show/n_1sejtrh
He stands by his belief that he somehow deserves to be the fear police and that "statistical falsehood" supports his charge that women really shouldn't claim to get credible threats.
He is now basically GameDawkins.
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Oh, man. Rami has had some public Facebook discussions, and they just get totally monstered by, AFAICT, Gamergate Nederlaandse - which appears to be three or four game design students with a _lot_ of time on their hands - and Slade Villenas.
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.
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My refusal to change my avatar is paying off!
<-- The tiny Christmas hat was there ALL ALONG muhaha
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Also if we go by a quote from Zoe on Eron's post, Zoe chea [sNIP]
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.
It turned out that dogboner had not been totally on the level with them.
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Life
in Idle Banter
Cine, as I said on Twitter I really value your posts here.
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http://dangolding.tumblr.com/post/101639865598/some-things-i-shouldve-said
We also need structures in place to ensure that disenfranchised young men in Video game culture do not turn to opportunistic conservatives with open arms and bared teeth. I worry that that horse has bolted, though.
The ubiquitous straight white male gamer is a bedtime story that Video game culture has told for far too long. It is now time to dismantle it at its base. That’s what I’ll be doing, anyway. The only response to such rampant misogyny is more equality, more feminism, more diversity in the most visible elements of Video game culture, more championing of marginalised voices. More, more, more.
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GG didn't seem to cast much of it's shadow at GameCity, apart from one guy who thought it'd be hilarious to continually reference it while playing in a live text adventure event. Which it wouldn't have been under normal circumstances, but especially not since Zoe Quinn and Leigh Alexander were two of the DMs writing in response to players
We wrote/tweaked anti-harassment policies, and had these up in the venue:
http://twitter.com/chromatogram/status/526411507132018688
It was a weird week. A bunch of people would sometimes tell GG jokes because that's a way of coping with it, and there were a few games of indie-illuminati themed werewolf too, which were generally hilarious. At times though, with some of the primary targets of harassment actually around, it was all way too close to the bone. I hope people joking about it doesn't cause them to forget the ongoing, long term harassment GG is a manifestation of, or think it's been defanged.
Feminism
in Idle Banter
Posted
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.