Jake

Idle Thumbs 170: Esophagus Sarcophagus

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Grok is from Stranger in a Strange Land, and has been used by dorks of all kind since then. I have always assumed it is popular anywhere that nerds smoke weed basically. I dislike that word outside of its use in the book. I am a prude I guess.

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So some thoughts on the ethics discussion in the reader mail:

 

* One of the ways that companies try to manipulate key influencers is with access. Not only will we fly you around on our dime, they say, you'll also get close to our staff, and you might even become friends. You do such similar work, and you both want the same thing, right? There's a measurable bias that results from this kind of behaviour - key influencers don't want to diss their friends, and because they know one particular product much better than the others, they're more comfortable with it - and the best part is, both parties swear black and blue that there's no bias going on, and everyone is acting entirely professionally.

 

* I think that it's extremely unlikely there's a lot of this going on in games journalism, because bias is a topic of great interest to both readers and journalists. Journalists are very ready to talk about ethical lapses and what steps they take to guard against them, and that willingness to discuss the ethics of game reviewing on its own does a lot to keep the industry wary of ethical breaches. A lot of the accepted best practices - the firewall between editorial and advertising, having different people do previews and reviews - guard against ethical lapses, and don't have people questioning why they should exist, as happens in other media. While individual instances of people claiming payola because a game didn't get a perfect score are fuckwitted, the overall climate where the audience cares deeply about whether coverage is ethical or not is the only thing keeping gaming journalism relevant. (I suspect the currently ongoing blowups regarding YouTube reviewers and their flexible ethics is going to bite them in the ass fairly soon.)

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I became familiar with the word grok because Mark Rosewater (lead designer of Magic: the Gathering) used it all the time in his design columns. It always struck me as a useful word for talking about teaching game mechanics, but I don't think I've heard it used in any other context.

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I've mostly seen grok used in neckbeardy, libertarian leaning circles like Slashdot where Heinlein would be popular. It's been in the stupid "jargon file" for at least as long as I've been alive. I don't really associate it as a gamer term.

 

Greebling is a new one to me, though. 

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So some thoughts on the ethics discussion in the reader mail:

 

* One of the ways that companies try to manipulate key influencers is with access. Not only will we fly you around on our dime, they say, you'll also get close to our staff, and you might even become friends. You do such similar work, and you both want the same thing, right? There's a measurable bias that results from this kind of behaviour - key influencers don't want to diss their friends, and because they know one particular product much better than the others, they're more comfortable with it - and the best part is, both parties swear black and blue that there's no bias going on, and everyone is acting entirely professionally.

 

* I think that it's extremely unlikely there's a lot of this going on in games journalism, because bias is a topic of great interest to both readers and journalists. Journalists are very ready to talk about ethical lapses and what steps they take to guard against them, and that willingness to discuss the ethics of game reviewing on its own does a lot to keep the industry wary of ethical breaches. A lot of the accepted best practices - the firewall between editorial and advertising, having different people do previews and reviews - guard against ethical lapses, and don't have people questioning why they should exist, as happens in other media. While individual instances of people claiming payola because a game didn't get a perfect score are fuckwitted, the overall climate where the audience cares deeply about whether coverage is ethical or not is the only thing keeping gaming journalism relevant. (I suspect the currently ongoing blowups regarding YouTube reviewers and their flexible ethics is going to bite them in the ass fairly soon.)

 

I don't know if I buy the idea that game journalists are any more (or less) ethical than journalists in other fields, but I do agree that this fear of bias is much more of a boogeyman than an actual threat.

 

Semi-related: Is there a consensus on how Patreon should be handled with games writing? As in, are there any standards yet about what needs disclosing when a writer reviews a game made by their Patreon contributor?

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I would like everyone who accepts direct payment on a patronage model (patreon, Kickstarter, etc) divulge all the ways they make money off of the content that is funded, because it feels like they owe that to the people who pay them, purely from an ethical standpoint, but I don't have hopes for that to be the case.

Like, I know nobody is obligated to do anything in those models, but it feels ethically sound to inform all of your sources of capital about your other sources, even if they aren't all equal, aren't all investors or whatever else. (I'm not arguing against taking investment money or advertising of any particular kind on a Kickstarted or patreon funded endeavor, just wishing that disclosure of such acts and intentions would be more common and considered standard ethical practice.)

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Re-listening to the episode, it occurred to me that calling Epic's new game The Unreal Tournament would have people calling it TUT and now I want this very much.

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I would like everyone who accepts direct payment on a patronage model (patreon, Kickstarter, etc) divulge all the ways they make money off of the content that is funded, because it feels like they owe that to the people who pay them, purely from an ethical standpoint, but I don't have hopes for that to be the case.

Like, I know nobody is obligated to do anything in those models, but it feels ethically sound to inform all of your sources of capital about your other sources, even if they aren't all equal, aren't all investors or whatever else. (I'm not arguing against taking investment money or advertising of any particular kind on a Kickstarted or patreon funded endeavor, just wishing that disclosure of such acts and intentions would be more common and considered standard ethical practice.)

Yeah, obviously more disclosure is always preferable to less. The lack of robust disclosure is one of the reasons I can't take crowd funding seriously as a sustainable supporter of writing.

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I don't like the word "grok" because it doesn't sound like a real word. That's my own silly prejudice.

I'm in agreement with this. Alien very easily could have continued down the path of all the other horror classics from the late 70s through early 80s, with rinse/repeat sequels.  And for what is an action movie, Aliens is still exploring territory that we wouldn't see other actions movies touch for years, if ever (motherhood, PTSD, gender integrated military forces, genocide).   It's a great movie, it's just not Alien.

I'm willing to concede that perhaps the sharp left turn paved the way for the series' flexible approach to genre, but I still find it too silly to fit in well.

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I like the word grok and I've only been around nerds that smoke weed recently - while in San Francisco, though now I'm not there anymore - and this was after I liked the word!

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I don't like the word "grok" because it doesn't sound like a real word. That's my own silly prejudice.I'm willing to concede that perhaps the sharp left turn paved the way for the series' flexible approach to genre, but I still find it too silly to fit in well.

 

Robert Heinlein invented the word! I think it's great, albeit unnecessary.

 

Edit: missed Jake's post where this was discussed!

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"Grok" reeks of jargon to me, which I'm never crazy about. I'm sure that I'm not fully consistent with that and employ plenty of it myself unconsciously. But whenever I consciously notice people using jargon it comes off as really affected and cliquey to me.

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I think jargon is inevitable, but also a bad habit that should be avoided. One of the things I dislike the most about getting into DOTA 2 is all the jargon you have to end up using because pushing back against it is just a fight you're never going to win.

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"Jargon" sounds like jargon to me!

 

Ew, that word looks so gross now. I can't grok it. I'm out.

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I think jargon is inevitable, but also a bad habit that should be avoided. One of the things I dislike the most about getting into DOTA 2 is all the jargon you have to end up using because pushing back against it is just a fight you're never going to win.

 

Everything you discuss a lot is going to have jargon. Jargon is something you get from when a group of people talk a lot. FPS, F2P, Sci-fi is all jargon.

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"Grok" reeks of jargon to me, which I'm never crazy about. I'm sure that I'm not fully consistent with that and employ plenty of it myself unconsciously. But whenever I consciously notice people using jargon it comes off as really affected and cliquey to me.

 

How very on blade*

 

*substitute other Idle Thumbs reference as desired

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I hate "grok" for the same reason I hate English adoption of Japanese terms in anime fandom: because it's always replacing perfectly valid words with dumb fanbase jargon.

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I like "grok" especially when used with really obtuse nerd shit like, for example Dota. I'll never grok Invoker. I also like the term "grognard." Feel free to subscribe to my newsletter.

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It's fascinating to me when people get upset at language changing and adapting. I mean, I do it, too, absolutely, but every time I sit back and try to be objective about it I realize I'm just being a grumpy old man about it.

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Why do we even have "really" as a word? "Very" means the exact same thing. Don't even get me started on "actually."

I don't quite get why we can't have multiple words for the same concept, if only for aesthetic purposes. I mean, one word for one idea is nice in theory, but ugly any pedantic in practice.

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"Jargon" has a specific meaning that is not just "word that means something." Jargon is specific to a discipline or field or hobby or social group. It is language that is by its nature exclusive. In some cases, within a professional field, it is extremely useful to keep from having to explain common concepts again and again. But in a lot of cases it's used implicitly condescendingly (as when marketers or financiers use it to deliberately obfuscate or mislead those not in the know), or is just nerds using terminology as a badge or social identifier. The latter is not some grievous sin, but I still find it annoying.

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"Jargon" has a specific meaning that is not just "word that means something." Jargon is specific to a discipline or field or hobby or social group. It is language that is by its nature exclusive. In some cases, within a professional field, it is extremely useful to keep from having to explain common concepts again and again. But in a lot of cases it's used implicitly condescendingly (as when marketers or financiers use it to deliberately obfuscate or mislead those not in the know), or is just nerds using terminology as a badge or social identifier. The latter is not some grievous sin, but I still find it annoying.

I was referring more just to other people in this thread saying we should use "internalize" instead of "grok," when both are fairly jargony elaborations on "understand." Personally, I feel that, in the absence of outright proof that jargon's use is meant as exclusionary, it's best not to disparage it, because that goes hand-in-hand with anti-intellectualism too often.

Really, it's mostly that I see people in other forums slam words like "privilege" for being pointless jargon, using the same arguments as would-be language police.

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I was referring more just to other people in this thread saying we should use "internalize" instead of "grok," when both are fairly jargony elaborations on "understand." Personally, I feel that, in the absence of outright proof that jargon's use is meant as exclusionary, it's best not to disparage it, because that goes hand-in-hand with anti-intellectualism too often.

Really, it's mostly that I see people in other forums slam words like "privilege" for being pointless jargon, using the same arguments as would-be language police.

I don't doubt that this happens in some cases but I'm not too concerned about perpetuating anti-intellectualism.

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