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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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On the question of "why do they care about sex so much", I think this does a good job of explaining it without excusing it: http://badassdigest.com/2014/08/31/why-i-feel-bad-for-and-understand-the-angry-gamergate-gamers/

particularly:

"Let me tell you where these kids are coming from, because I used to come from there. The first thing that’s happening is that they’re mostly males who are socially unaccepted. They’re outsiders, losers, weirdos and freaks. And most of them aren’t just male, they’re white males. What’s happening is that these men are feeling powerless in their own lives, and then along comes someone like Anita Sarkeesian telling them that as white men they are the MOST powerful group in the world. And that they should be aware of this privilege and they should be careful how they exert it.

Imagine the confusion this causes. These kids feel like the bottom of the heap, ignored and hated and mocked and here comes this woman - who is successful and admired and gets Joss Whedon to retweet her videos - telling them that they’re actually part of an invisible system keeping her down. This simply can’t compute for these guys."

Gaming used to be the the social Chateaux D'If that badly socialised nerds went to when they weren't invited to parties.

Now the parties are being thrown in their cell and they're still not invited.

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I went to remedial social education as a kid. (It was a few days, mind; if I'm on the autism spectrum I'm waaaay over towards the neurotypical side.) How to socialise is a skill that can be learned. There's instruction books and everything. I have them. Conversation structure, body language, social conventions, tone, politeness, respect, social niceties, you borrow two or three books from the library and read them, and you'll be caught up enough. It is a prison mostly of their own making; everyone's bad at something, and part of growing up is either learning it, or discarding your need for it. And humans are herd animals so you've gotta drive yourself crazy to discard that you need your herd.

 

Also socialising with people who are good at being social is so much easier than those who aren't.

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I went to remedial social education as a kid. (It was a few days, mind; if I'm on the autism spectrum I'm waaaay over towards the neurotypical side.) How to socialise is a skill that can be learned. There's instruction books and everything. I have them. Conversation structure, body language, social conventions, tone, politeness, respect, social niceties, you borrow two or three books from the library and read them, and you'll be caught up enough. It is a prison mostly of their own making; everyone's bad at something, and part of growing up is either learning it, or discarding your need for it. And humans are herd animals so you've gotta drive yourself crazy to discard that you need your herd.

Also socialising with people who are good at being social is so much easier than those who aren't.

But people are so needy, and they aren't interested in Spelunky; they like working too much, going to bars and having kids. Plus they are typically really inconsiderate of anyone who isn't part of their group. People are interesting in their specificity, but so tiring with their childish bullshit and boring opinions. I rarely meet someone who I would want to see twice. The ones I do, I pester forever.

Becoming social is no small task. It's not like people are cool. It's hard as shit to find people who want to hang out and not feel like you are out-staying your welcome.

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it continues, and while trying to unpack why social justice isn't bad but why they hate people who want it, they're tantalisingly on the cusp of renaming themselves SJW+

 

 

They start from a single assumption really, that the people criticizing games, or 'social justice' issues generally, are not doing it in good faith.  That they pretend to be offended for selfish reasons, to score points, present themselves as morally above others, or monetary gain ("professional victim").  Once you believe that everything else pretty falls much falls out of that, including why the gamergate people act like it's a moral crusade on their part.

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People are interesting in their specificity, but so tiring with their childish bullshit and boring opinions.

Wow.

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Wow.

It's true. Try striking a interesting conversation up with the next 10 random people that you encounter in the physical world and see how many aren't completely self-centered at the expense of everyone else. If you manage to find one ask them what they find interesting.

Self-selecting groups like this forum and established social-gatherings (hobbyist groups and specialized professions) are spoilt by involving people that have similar interests. Once you move outside of that, you find that people are typically just doing the motions to find a way to take advantage of others and rarely have thought of something interesting or worthwhile to do with that added ability.

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I have boring opinions and am also quite childish!

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Learning social skills is certainly a thing that can be done, but it's not easy. Took me years, and I'm still pretty blunt.

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It's true. Try striking a interesting conversation up with the next 10 random people that you encounter in the physical world and see how many aren't completely self-centered at the expense of everyone else. If you manage to find one ask them what they find interesting.

This seems like an exercise designed to select people who have someplace better to be and are a little weirded out by your questions, particularly if you go in with the attitude that they have to prove they are worth the privilege of having a conversation with you. There might be some projecting going on here, clyde.

 

I've had a lot of luck striking up random conversations in queues. Most people appreciate the distraction, and you've already got something in common.

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I think I just don't like people. Except in rare cases, the more I know about them, the less I want to be around them.

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Eh, fair enough. You seem to be better socialised than 4channers, at least, so I can't fault you too much.

 

So Slacktivist posted links explaining this whole mess. Slacktivist is an evangelical blog. #Gamergate has spread so far, and yet it remains so unconvincing.

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I went to remedial social education as a kid. (It was a few days, mind; if I'm on the autism spectrum I'm waaaay over towards the neurotypical side.) How to socialise is a skill that can be learned. There's instruction books and everything. I have them. Conversation structure, body language, social conventions, tone, politeness, respect, social niceties, you borrow two or three books from the library and read them, and you'll be caught up enough. It is a prison mostly of their own making; everyone's bad at something, and part of growing up is either learning it, or discarding your need for it. And humans are herd animals so you've gotta drive yourself crazy to discard that you need your herd.

 

Also socialising with people who are good at being social is so much easier than those who aren't.

 

I think that's being too cavalier.  Studied and measured social responses based on rules you read in a book seem too much like wearing a mask, faking normalcy, pretending to be someone else.  It seems like putting considerable effort into not being yourself, in hopes that doing so will get you accepted by others.

 

Are there simple ways to describe a socially effective person? Absolutely.  However, what are the consequences of altering yourself, parroting back things that supposedly resemble effective social behavior while silencing the parts of yourself that break those rules?

 

I think there is no simple answer to that question, and whether you struggle with it or not can be completely orthogonal to "growing up."

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I think that's being too cavalier. Studied and measured social responses based on rules you read in a book seem too much like wearing a mask, faking normalcy, pretending to be someone else. It seems like putting considerable effort into not being yourself, in hopes that doing so will get you accepted by others.

Are there simple ways to describe a socially effective person? Absolutely. However, what are the consequences of altering yourself, parroting back things that supposedly resemble effective social behavior while silencing the parts of yourself that break those rules?

I think there is no simple answer to that question, and whether you struggle with it or not can be completely orthogonal to "growing up."

I feel like this idea that you're "not being yourself" when you try to improve your social behavior implies a need to project your "true self" in social situations, rather than purely interacting and experiencing separate subjectivity, which I feel is most pleasurable about social interaction. I mean, these things arent necessarily mutually exclusive but I find that if you don't have a good feeling for who you are inherently you can easily objectify yourself in social situations and lead yourself to being false.

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I've read your comment several times and feel like I'm only grasping part of it.  But hopefully this reply is meaningful to it.

 

I don't see how you can purely interact and experience when you're actively trying to act differently from how you normally would.  Those concepts seem incompatible.

 

You also seem to be implying something egotistical about projecting your "true self" (key word projecting).  That it's somehow more natural or honest to not even worry about or notice such things.

 

I don't get that either.  It's not really about projecting anything.  It's about being who you are.  Living your life as yourself.  Social interactions just happen to be part of your life.

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(message me because this is way off topic)

 

I agree with that last part of your post. I'm mostly just saying that having a dogmatic idea of who you are and who the "Real You" is is really limiting.

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(yeah I concur, this was starting to feel a little derail-y)

 

In other news: this is parody*, right?

I am serious when I say that I cannot tell.

Poe's Law is out in force with this stuff.

 

*I just linked to the post instead of quoting to keep the image from taking up huge amounts of space *twice* in this thread

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I guarantee you their outrage has a good deal to do with both of those people being women.

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Sadly not parody at all.  Tons of people saying she should be fired.

Wait, what, who? Who thinks they should be fired? Also who do these people think should be fired? How in any possible universe two reporters being in a relationship (I guess? Also can't read what that image says.) is a violation of any code of ethics is beyond me.

I guarantee the entirety of that outrage is because both people are women. I can't even detect the veil of legitimacy anger at that can hide behind.

This entire last month has been bizarre for me, personally. I don't follow gaming sites beyond idle thumbs, RPS and the occasional polygon article, so my entire exposure to this has been semi-jokey references to shitty common gamer culture and sexism mixed with brief flare-ups that suddenly seemed to blow up in the last couple months. All of a sudden I'm seeing all this insane shit and really disgustingly virulent sexism, and I both feel bad for ignoring what must have been an obvious problem in some places, and also oddly good for running in circles that don't usually contain that. Its been a surreal look into the gaming culture I guess I'm a part of, and I feel like I'm experiencing a weird echo chamber containing and magnifying the worst examples of things I didn't see before. 

Edit: I have an uncanny skill at making my ill-advised ranty-er posts being first on new pages. I promise I dislike it more than anyone else possibly can.

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Well, if you want the full story, the by now inevitable imgur is here. The takeout is:

 

The moral is that this sites are under the influence of people who doesn't have a journalistic integrity, this people is not honest, this people gives positive or negative reviews according to their personal agenda, don't let them take control of the hobby we all love and care for.


I know that spelling/grammar mockery is the lowest form of critique, but really. Dude manages to spell "Riendeau" a different way every time, despite it being right there in the Twitter screencaps. Some people just don't respect their art...

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Ugh. Just ugh. 

Actual journalistic integrity question that's been on my mind recently, for comparison. Al Jazeera is one of my favorite news sources, one that covers Africa and the Middle East in addition to the more important events in Europe and the Americas. It's also owned by the Qatari royal family, who manage a modern day slave state that includes a lovely air base from which the US manages all African and Middle Eastern air operations, and soon the World Cup. This seems to introduce pretty significant conflicts of interest in many areas, but I'm unaware of any serious problems with their reporting. Egypt certainly doesn't seem to like them, at least.
It's hard to reconcile these two ideas being under the same umbrella of "Journalistic Ethics". 

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Wait, what, who? Who thinks they should be fired? Also who do these people think should be fired? How in any possible universe two reporters being in a relationship (I guess? Also can't read what that image says.) is a violation of any code of ethics is beyond me.

 

At this point, it's all I can do not to make fun of people who think that being friends with someone could be such an egregious violation of an ethical code. I'll just say that it's not surprising that they have the time to spend on the internet making over-researched photoshops of the various conspiracies out there.

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