Jake

Idle Thumbs 250: A Palpable Dream

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It actually legitimately upsets me to see people jump on him for, as far as I can tell, having opinions that differ wildly from the majority and stating them in a blunt manner.

 

I actually don't have much of a dog in this fight, having never played a Jonathan Blow game but having reasonably enjoyed his editorials, and I mostly think that my ill will towards Blow comes from repeated Twitter arguments that he's made over the last few years about there being no causation established to his satisfaction between negative rates of women studying computer science over the past three decades and entrenched attitudes of sexism in said field. It feels like a weird position for him to stick to, seeing that he's also argued vociferously for accepting outside assessments of sexism in gamer culture as a chance to self-reflect and grow, but it feels very unconsidered for what's otherwise a very considered online persona.

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He definitely has said some weird things in that regard, I absolutely agree. It's made me uncomfortable at times. I just wanna tell him to shut up, haha. I certainly don't worship the man or think he's perfect, but, hey, neither am I. (I do, however, worship myself.)

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Yeah I dunno it feels like having zero unconsidered or inconsiderate opinions is an absurd bar to have to jump to be considered not a jerk.

 

I think people have different bars in different places for different people in different industries. Not in my case, but in others, I could easily see how a selection of Blow's inconsiderate opinions, of which there are several from which to choose, makes him a jerk to them. No one's fundamentally a jerk, at least I hope not. It's all context and your own personal threshold of tolerances.

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I guess it bothers me a bit because I feel like a lot of people use Jon Blow as a cipher to represent the general idea of either the egotistical auteur or the oblivious tech dude. It feels like noting him down as a jerk isn't just saying "this dude rubs me the wrong way" but an act with a perhaps unintended political purpose of assigning him a role within the way of the world... He doesn't have to be House! House isn't a real thing!

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Did anyone figure out what that one x-com light game was?

 

Nick was almost certainly referring to Xenonauts although as Gormongous pointed out he was mistaking the simple graphics for a simple game, when actually its complexity is similar to the original X-COM.

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