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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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I think the slower pace this thread has taken on lately is the ideal way to continue it. There's no need to indulge in the kind of misery tourism that Ghazi indulges in, and I don't know that continuing to discuss why and how it's bad is going to help given that basically everyone here agrees GG was a shitshow from the start (and anybody who disagrees probably isn't going to take well to the thread), but it's nice to have a place to vent, in moderation. For instance, a certain unethics database has recently redoubled its efforts to stalk a site I help out at, and I kind of like to keep tabs on that in case they end up posting sensitive information and I need to warn my friends. But that also leaves me with the urge to occasionally go "Can you believe this stuff?", even if it's best not to dwell on it.

 

 

The problem is when you segment off a portion of people who are "too into" shit to make yourself look more "with it" you push the middle on any sort of social justice conversation.

 

Yeah, that.

 

megaspel's original argument a page or so back was that some people need to be cut out because they're not "helping the movement" (I think), but there's always so many tacit assumptions built into those kinds of statements. Like, what is the goal that they're standing in the way of? Do they actually share that goal? Or is that something that one group of people decided is best for everyone and are now telling them to get behind?

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I am aware of how terms get claimed/reclaimed but it's shitty, it's used by shitty people for a shitty reason and it's directly from the internet's undying loathing for people who care about shit. Trust me, I'm aware of the frisson between slurs and reclamation. '

 

Edit: I mean, my post was clearly about my own personal feelings about the term, right? Am I missing something here? I don't need to adopt SJW, it sounds terrible and I'm already a feminist.

Yes, your post was indeed clearly about your own personal feelings about the term. I hope my post was also clearly about how these things usually work without meaning to have any implications for what you ought to do (this is why I began my post with "Obviously you don't have to do anything"). I agree with you that SJW is shitty and that it is used by shitty people for a shitty reason, but that's also the case for "faggot" and "queer," and although I'd never in a million years get mad at anybody for not wanting to identify as a "faggot" or a "queer," and in fact although I don't tend to call myself a "faggot" very often, I think it's worth at least understanding that a word being used by shitty people for shitty reasons doesn't have to stop people from reclaiming it, and for the same reasons I label myself queer, I would have no problem labeling myself a social justice warrior.

Part of this might be a result of working in philosophy, where "social justice" has a long, storied history of being something important and worthwhile that we of course ought to be fighting for - at least since the 1970s, when John Rawls published his groundbreaking work A Theory of Justice, social justice has been one of the most talked-about aspects of philosophy. So in the context of a philosophy conference or whatever, if you say that you're a social justice warrior, someone would just assume that you work for the Southern Poverty Law Center or something. So for me maybe it's not much of a jump to reclaim the term social justice warrior.

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Part of this might be a result of working in philosophy, where "social justice" has a long, storied history of being something important and worthwhile that we of course ought to be fighting for - at least since the 1970s, when John Rawls published his groundbreaking work A Theory of Justice, social justice has been one of the most talked-about aspects of philosophy. So in the context of a philosophy conference or whatever, if you say that you're a social justice warrior, someone would just assume that you work for the Southern Poverty Law Center or something. So for me maybe it's not much of a jump to reclaim the term social justice warrior.

 

I think even (especially?) in that context, some people would be turned off by the "warrior" part, as (at least from my perspective), it isn't taken literally and can be seen as trivializing the concept (on the contrary, it's possible that outside the context of a gaming community, "warrior" _can_ be taken more literally, since it doesn't have DnD connotations).

 

In that case, I think something like "social justice activist" or something like that might be seen to be more appropriate.

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Denying that terrible leftists exist is dangeorous and unhealthy for everyone. I think the recent redefinition of "racism" to only apply to people who have power or privledge to be dangerous too. I don't believe that people with power and privledge are at all comparably affected by racism as other people are, but I believe everyone can be racist, regardless of the damage and impact it actually has. If a black person says, without humour, that they want to castrate and sterilize all white people, that person is a racist. Of course racism against white people isn't comparable to racism against black people in the least, but I think saying that example isn't racist is incredibly damaging to equality and only exists to further the divide.

This is a problem of nomenclature, not of opinion.

Racism is a process through which prejudice is expressed, but prejudice because of race exists outside of racism. The definitions of race and racism are complex and I don't have the time to type all that out since I'm just on break at work, so I just wanted to point out that this looks to me like a problem of words, not ideas.

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Racism is a process through which prejudice is expressed, but prejudice because of race exists outside of racism.

 

It's interesting that you say that because, to the vast community on the internet, I don't think there is a difference. Or at least it's not one they care to state. It's all just racism. I've certainly never heard it said as you did here.

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What is your opinion of Bob Ross?

 

Careful, careful. Bob Ross hated his afro. The sole reason he started to wear it was because he once thought it'd be a hairdo that's easy to manage. As it became part of his public image immediately, he just couldn't get rid of it.

 

I love Bob Ross! Especially when he cleans his brush. :)

 

 

 

For instance, a certain unethics database has recently redoubled its efforts to stalk a site I help out at, and I kind of like to keep tabs on that in case they end up posting sensitive information and I need to warn my friends. But that also leaves me with the urge to occasionally go "Can you believe this stuff?", even if it's best not to dwell on it.

 

Oh geez, yeah, the unethics website. If needed, tell me how I can help.

 

Things may well up again rather quickly, as the anniversary of The Eron Post approaches rapidly. Sure enough, many of us will find ourselves debating the very same things as last year and find that the actual gamergaters have stuck around all the time. :mellow:

 

 

I think the more extreme groups tend to hang onto the words designed to be insults, but for the more moderate crowd the phrase itself becomes an insult.

 

"SJW" goes beyond that. "SJW" is a group without particularly fixed traits. As a gamergate supporter, you find some supposedly negative trait and then just slap the label on it. On Monday, I've been accused of employing "SJW tactics" for "stating opinion as fact". Now that was new to me. The guy had invented an SJW characteristic out of the blue. Rest of the mob just goes with it. The insult is in the term, but I have the impression that gamergaters are just plain winging it when it comes to meaning. The strength of the insult is that you can fill it with new meaning daily.

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Funny story about Bob Ross, he hated the perm he had (which was apparently done because it saved him money on haircuts? Which I don't buy!) but it was pretty key to marketing his products and selling himself as an image, which is what made him the bulk of his money. Because of his popular art classes and supplies, he was able to do his show on PBS for free. 

 

That still doesn't mean that what he did with his hair was free of problematic elements or doesn't need criticism. Profiting off a certain kind of image is one of those things that gets talked about in feminist circles. However, I'm also not sure he referred to it as a 'fro, either, an afro is a pretty specific type of hairstyle that's fairly rooted in black hair and black culture, you can have curly hair as a white person (which I do) and still not have it look like an Afro. Calling it an Afro is still callously disregarding what it means to black people? A lot of what actually happens with regards to Afros is when white people don "afro wigs" and live out caricatures of black people.

 

Either way, not sure what your point is. 

 

Edit: Van beat me! But point remains.

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Dude, that "truth is in the middle, both sides have crazies" spiel is fucking bullshit. What is the point you are trying to argue? I don't think anyone here beleives that everyone with similarish politics to them is perfect or not harmful. There is SO MUCH self reflection and critique within feminist communities, especially with regards to other feminists. Anyone who's paid attention to feminism/social justice for a decent amount of time should be pretty familiar with the cycle of people pointing out things that are bad that someone (usually a famiua person) is doing then getting accused of backlash and outrage culture and all this garbage.

You keep pulling back to this "well there's no way to know which is worse" but man, yeah there fucking is.

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Funny story about Bob Ross, he hated the perm he had (which was apparently done because it saved him money on haircuts? Which I don't buy!) but it was pretty key to marketing his products and selling himself as an image, which is what made him the bulk of his money. Because of his popular art classes and supplies, he was able to do his show on PBS for free. 

 

That still doesn't mean that what he did with his hair was free of problematic elements or doesn't need criticism. Profiting off a certain kind of image is one of those things that gets talked about in feminist circles. However, I'm also not sure he referred to it as a 'fro, either, an afro is a pretty specific type of hairstyle that's fairly rooted in black hair and black culture, you can have curly hair as a white person (which I do) and still not have it look like an Afro. Calling it an Afro is still callously disregarding what it means to black people? A lot of what actually happens with regards to Afros is when white people don "afro wigs" and live out caricatures of black people.

 

So is a person adopting any element of a culture that isn't theirs going to be problematic?  Don't all cultures at some point just start to borrow from one another, or at least resemble one another with enough exposure?  There are plenty of examples of things that two cultures came to separately but are seen as being a part of one culture rather than another (the word Yo for example).  I get the reasoning behind this position, but I think it implies an intent that isn't necessarily there.  It seems to suggest that once a thing is associated with a particular culture, any other culture using it is appropriation or problematic (a word I feel is starting to lose it's meaning to me) for no other reason than they didn't think of it first.

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Van beat me!

 

For those shying away from "Vain" (yeah, there are a few, while I have no problem with the abbreviation), I readily accept just "V" or possibly "Väin" for the purists.

 

Funny story about Bob Ross, he hated the perm he had (which was apparently done because it saved him money on haircuts? Which I don't buy!) but it was pretty key to marketing his products and selling himself as an image, which is what made him the bulk of his money. Because of his popular art classes and supplies, he was able to do his show on PBS for free.

 

When he wanted to get rid of that hairdo, his marketing people had already designed the now iconic Bob Ross logo, of course with the perm.

 

The PBS show wasn't just something he 'could' do for free out of the philantrophy the guy oozed out... these shows were the most effective advertising of his products you could think of. And they weren't exactly demanding on him: He recorded an entire season of "The Joy of Painting" in two days IIRC. :)

 

I only knew of Bob after he died. I still miss him. He should be around somewhere painting happy trees. :mellow:

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The thing is, I think we're actually doing what you asked for right now megaspel by addressing counterproductive stances that are holding this conversation back, we just happen to have different ideas of what these look like. You think that radical or extremist viewpoints are harmful (side-note: many things that I support these days seemed overreaching or far-fetched to me at some earlier point in my life), while myself as well as others (I presume) think that appeals to a broad center, false equivalences, tone arguments and the casual ableism of describing one's ideological opponents as insane are much bigger issues.

 

 

Oh geez, yeah, the unethics website. If needed, tell me how I can help.

 

Actually, yeah, there is a thing that everyone here could do if they want to help, but do so at your own discretion since I'm about to link to very creepy stuff. If that's not an issue, go to this Pastebin and report it for spreading private information without consent (link via my Twitter in case it shows referrers). You can't report accounts directly it seems, but it's still worth looking at the profile and reporting pretty much anything that has names in the title, since these are all dedicated to tracking who people support on Patreon or Kickstarter, information that many people (like myself) have long since made private. It persists in the form of archived pages and such, but that doesn't mean we have to make it easy for them to pool and share this and draw more meaningless MS Paint lines between folk.

 

I know it says you need an account for reporting, but you can log in with Twitter if you have an account there and just revoke app access afterwards. Looks like bulk reporting is the only way non-Pro users get heard so help is appreciated.

 

Creepy stuff over.

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Maybe the word 'radical' or 'extremists' also being misplaced?  Like the stuff that megaspel is describing isn't even that extreme in ideology... it sounds like more of a case where people are just acting like an ass.

 

Now maybe it can be argued that it's an ideological problem if the ideology has a history of producing asses, but as much as I despise the 'left-troll', I'm not getting the impression that it's in any ways unique to the left so I think the description of jackasses or other ideology free descriptions would suffice.

 

Sometimes people are metaphorical dicks and it just doesn't have any bearing on their beliefs :/

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My initial intention when I entered this conversation was to address the default response of aggression as soon as someone with a differing opinion appears. I remember when we were discussing which words were harmful, I think it was Twig who just outright said they hated me, and there are numerous posters who have talked to me in an incredibly condescending tone, just on the last thread, assuming I haven't even looked into the matters I'm talking about and if I was smart, like them, I would agree with them.

 

I understand the aggression, since there are plenty of trolls, but it's ultimately harmful since no one can criticise anything without fear of being harassed or insulted at the very least.

 

I actually kind of agree with what you're saying here and I wish we could do a better job of fostering these kinds of discussions/debates instead of getting frustrated and talking down to the people that don't agree with the majority. I don't necessarily agree with some of the opposing opinions that you and others like Ninety-Three bring up but I appreciate hearing a different point of view and reading through the ensuing discussion.

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Speaking unironically here, Deadpan and Gorm are really good at it, I think.  I talked to them about stuff that could press all the hot buttons but those two never really got mad at me.

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Twig who just outright said they hated me

lol what

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