James

Even if it were impossible (which seems ridiculous, but whatever), wouldn't it be worth making every effort to at least bring us closer to equality? Kind of like how we'll probably never completely eradicate murder, but it's still absolutely worth trying the best we can to to get as close to that ideal as possible. A goal doesn't have to be achievable in the absolute in order to be worth moving towards.

Very good point, but TotalBiscuit absolutely seems like the kind of person who looks back on the British Empire with fondness. I mean, I have no evidence for that, but he fits a type. Is that unfair of me? Probably. One of the related videos at the end was "Davis Mj Aurini is a Monster - the proof", in which he unironically quotes Tyler Durden. So you're pretty much spot-on with your assessment.

Yeah, I probably phrased that horribly badly. There are plenty of godawful Daily Mail-reading middle class people, and the upper class and otherwise incredibly wealthy have unparalleled power to do awful things with their prejudices. I should have spoken more carefully. All I meant is that disadvantage in one regard doesn't preclude advantage in another.

Yeah. If I'm not mistaken, many of the footholds for the BNP, and before them the National Front, were/are in the sorts of poor Northern ex-mining towns that TB's talking about. Like so many extremist groups, they took advantage of the frustrations of poor communities, but the point is that it's pretty ridiculous to claim that by being white in Britain you're not benefiting from the pretty fundamental privilege of not being hated by some pretty scary organised groups of people for the colour of your skin. I'd say that's a pretty valuable privilege. I for one would not enjoy losing it. (By none of that do I mean to imply that British racism is an exclusively Northern thing. You need only look at the quoted Robert Ashley tweet above for evidence to the contrary. I merely mean to relate racism specifically to the article that TB wrote; specifically the claim that he came from a Northern town too poor to be privileged.)

I only passed a glance over that TB piece, because I only have so much energy for this crap. Does he ever address the fact that none of his supposed counterexamples were persecuted for being white, rather than being persecuted and also being white? Was his impoverished hometown somehow free of racism? (Attempting to use the Holocaust as a counterexample was particularly bizarre. Did he mean to imply that Nazi Germany was exterminating the Jews because of their whiteness? The mind boggles.) Why do I even care? The man's clearly an industrial strength plonker.

It being an advisory, I'm not sure how that's much different than warnings regarding violence, language or drug usage, other than I suppose a greater potential for disputes regarding the validity of the label. Perhaps it's that where violence in games is taken to be something at least extraordinary, if not outright bad, sexist content is more internalised - you'll never shoot anyone, but you could certainly have a shitty attitude towards women. I suppose it could get pretty thorny. Would it describe sexism depicted by games, or only sexism embodied by games? Is it about sexist games, or games with sexism in them?

In a better universe that John Abarr guy could have been played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. EDIT: Corrected autocorrect

Sounds more like shrinking pains than growing pains.

That account has another video titled "Moderate Islam: A MYTH!", in which the host dresses up as a Muslim and part of his costume is an artificial monobrow. Not that that demonstrates anything concrete about the catcalling video, but it does give you an idea of the place that this argument is coming from. Sure, it's a young good-looking guy presenting it in a modern and "vibrant" way (that stupid contorted face scream he kept doing was very YouTube), but it's just a fresh face on the same old reactionary bullshit. Which I guess should be obvious, but I'm worried people will be taken in by the slick production values and veneer of reasonableness.Besides all that, a pretty obvious criticism of the video is that what he's doing isn't catcalling. He'd probably argue that neither is the drive-by compliment thing, but it is. If you're already in a conversation with someone, or in a less public environment, it's not the same thing. That doesn't mean it's welcome or OK (it's pretty creepy to try to chat up someone who is literally required to be there and not leave), but that's a whole other discussion.

I'd be heartened by the ridiculous stuff people are linking to -- surely something so absurd should be seen for what it is soon enough -- if it weren't for the fact it's been like this for so long, with no evidence of GamerGate's proponents having any self-awareness of how preposterous they look to the outside world. That Mattie Brice thing in particular gave me metaphorical whiplash: one moment I was enjoying the schadenfreude of seeing so many people so earnestly taking a completely obvious joke at face value; the next I was knocked to the (also metaphorical) floor by the IGF playing right into that delusion, a move as bewildering as it is infuriating. Sure, the apology is about as good as you could expect, but in many respects the damage is already done. First answers tend to carry the most weight. Still, I'm largely optimistic, though perhaps without much reason.

Me in last night's games: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-26284548 I had fun, though. If anyone could put with my (hopefully diminishing) incompetence, I'd be up for another round at some point.

I meant the use of the exact same phrase, not the object of that phrase. Mysterious!

My favourite part is the reply where he accuses CliclHole of being a poor imitation of the Onion. Wait, is that a coincidence, or is the Thumbs Shitty Wizard a reference to this? Or this to that? Hahahaha, wow. Smooth.

Barring the very real possibility of my forgetting, I'll try to turn up for that.

When I was eleven or twelve, I remember having difficulty with the claim by one of my classmates that not all depictions of nudity are pornography. The above-described Twitter user sounds like they are operating on a similar level. It's pretty frustrating when a person with very superficial familiarity with something assumes there are no further depths to delve, and goes around acting like some sort of moron-expert, completely ignorant of their personal Rumsfeldian unknown unknowns. Or perhaps completely resistant to the idea that there is anything else, preferring to label and claims to the contrary pretentious nonsense. Like how anti-feminists are so keen to self-identity as rational, because they've thought about it once and it all fits neatly into their nice clean equality formula and let's not worry about the sprawling morass of subtle interconnected social phenomena because that's too messy to be true. Like how my childish model of what was pornographic permitted no information other than whether or not nudity was included. Nuance would ruin an easy formula. OK, that's probably a straw man I'm describing. Sorry. I guess my point is fuck overconfident laypeople. Or educate them or whatever.

I object to your characterising me as selfish (should I speak up about all the things I have no investment in before any of the things I do?), but whatever. Enjoy your thread.

I don't care in the slightest about Halloween. People can dilute that as much as they like. For me it's always been more about spending quality time with family, some of whom I might not see any other time that year. The traditions of Christmas also give me a pleasant nostalgia for my childhood, which is sentimental nonsense but fuck you I like it.I guess Americans get a lot of that stuff from Thanksgiving, but we don't have that, obviously. It's still not Christmas. It's barely even cold.

Quite. For a while at work people thought I hated Christmas, because I got so annoyed at people going on about it months in advance. In fact, the reverse is true. Christmas is my favourite time of year. But by that I mean actually Christmas, not the sixty-to-ninety days leading up to it. The time spent with family and the traditions from my childhood mean a lot to me. That's why I'd really rather not have it drawn out to the point of being fatiguing. If you spend more than a month each year anticipating Christmas, you're spending more than 10% of your life doing so. That seems mad to me. Sorry for this spoilsport rant, but I really do find the multi-month prelude draining and kind of obscene. God, how boring am I?

Haha, that's amazing. In addition to being awful, that is.

Reading that I got a weird kind of thrill at how nakedly stupid and manipulative it all was, how clearly hypocritical and dishonest; surely this would finally make the true ugly nature of GG clear to all. Then at the end I see that the people of GG all jumped (seemingly) unquestioningly aboard, and that thrill was sadistically crushed. How do you get through to people for whom even that whole farce was not obvious enough?

Yes, Ship of Theseus and all that. What's the difference, if not a soul? What is the thing that carries from the present to the future that the "other" you doesn't also have? (I don't believe in souls.) I mean, I agree with you in that I wouldn't step into the teleporter. But I think it would be like a branch splitting, and one of the off-shoots getting sawn off. I don't think the remaining me would be any sort of an impostor, or inauthentic, or not "Me" me.

You'd feel it, but we could make another you that would feel it, too. And there's really nothing special about the atoms you happen to be made up of at a particular time. Both would be a continuation of your consciousness, and neither would have any meaningful claim for precedence. Hence, singular identity only extends backwards through time, not forwards. So perhaps there's no reason not to do it, if you're OK with that whole metaphysical mess being on your mind. Or on my mind. Consciousness is too weird.

This is pretty old, but I only just happened across it: I knew the guy was an idiot, but I didn't realize quite how delusional he is. Regarding the Giant Bomb post, my most favourable interpretation of the "both sides" stuff is that Jeff is trying to pre-empt the inevitable #NotAllGators nonsense and avoid that tedious sidetrack. Even if that is the explanation, it obviously gives that perspective way too much credence, but at least it would be an intent I can sympathise with. But perhaps even that's too charitable. Perhaps, just as the gators don't want to face the problems in their favourite medium, I don't want to face the problems in my favourite website. Perhaps I am a ridiculous child.

Are you sure it isn't the same as killing you? If I take you apart an atom at a time, at some point you will die, regardless of how fast I do it. The question of the nature of consciousness and the self is fascinating, though. This is probably thoroughly stupid, but the whole teleporter/clones/whatever thing makes me suspect that perhaps definitive identity only projects backwards through time, not forwards. If someone created a precise clone of me, including my exact brain structure and state, and therefore mental state, I'm not sure either of those people would hold a greater claim to my identity. Like I said, probably stupid.

So you want ones that merely dismantle and reassemble you?