"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[CollegeBaby]

The backwards leaps in logic they have to make to justify their outlandish conclusions just seems so totally exhausting. To be a GamerGater, MRA, chan troll - whatever they are - they just seem like that guy you knew from high school who always put more effort into avoiding homework assignments than it would to actually do the homework. For a while I gave them the benefit of the doubt that most were just insecure bullies who didn't truly believe the GG rhetoric and just wanted to lash out to feel good, but to actually believe this shit and consider it as logically consistent is completely baffling to me. Is it because I don't own a fedora? Do fedoras just have a supernatural ability to erase cognitive dissonance?

[BigJKO]

[SuperBiasedMan]

"It's not men's fault, it's the ruling class."

Who do these people think the ruling class are? Do they genuinely believe that there's only a small group of people dictating the rules of how society works and everyone else is prey to their whims?

[Deadpan]

If memory serves, that was Operation Skynet. And yeah - I think that's a pretty big part of the thinking. If you are used to nobody paying any attention to you, having people suddenly telling you you're amazing can be very intoxicating. I don't mean to denigrate young casters or hobby writers for this, in particular, because I think it's also affected quite a few of the golden-mean "two sides" guys. Which is precisely the goal of the relentless lovebombing, of course...

 

Yup, and another case of GG styling themselves after villains and not realizing how truthful that is. I don't want to talk down any hopeful upstarts, I just find all this extra, extra gross because I made a site for the specific purpose of having a place where people can start out writing about games every now and again and not be served the usual bullshit about how they'll paid eventually, when the site makes it big, or how they need to keep their writing objective, whatever that even means. Instead I get to watch hateful ideologues playing pied piper and drawing them to such crap as garbagegamers.barf UGH

 

 

The backwards leaps in logic they have to make to justify their outlandish conclusions just seems so totally exhausting. To be an GamerGater, MRA, chan troll - whatever they are - they just seem like that guy you knew from high school who always put more effort into avoiding homework assignments than it would to actually do the homework. For a while I gave them the benefit of the doubt that most were just insecure bullies who didn't truly believe the GG rhetoric and just wanted to lash out to feel good, but to actually believe this shit and consider it as logically consistent is completely baffling to me. Is it because I don't own a fedora? Do fedoras just have a supernatural ability to erase cognitive dissonance?

 

It's incredibly (and terrible!) how much work they're willing to put into researching everything and anything about whoever speaks up against them but won't consider what they are saying for even a second. GG, looking for the tiniest speck of fecal matter on their enemy's coat with a magnifiying glass, forever unwilling to turn around and confront the heap of dung right behind them.

 

On a more general note: Nina White wrote about why the term sealion makes her uncomfortable and more people should probably read this. She raises a valid point, I think, and it's disheartening to see people dismiss it (r/GamerGhazi doesn't deem it worth talking about, for instance). Makes me worry that condemning GG is seen as the mark of progressive Video game folk, when really that's just a good baseline.

[CollegeBaby]

 

It's incredibly (and terrible!) how much work they're willing to put into researching everything and anything about whoever speaks up against them but won't consider what they are saying for even a second. GG, looking for the tiniest speck of fecal matter on their enemy's coat with a magnifiying glass, forever unwilling to turn around and confront the heap of dung right behind them.

 

On a more general note: Nina White wrote about why the term sealion makes her uncomfortable and more people should probably read this. She raises a valid point, I think, and it's disheartening to see people dismiss it (r/GamerGhazi doesn't deem it worth talking about, for instance). Makes me worry that condemning GG is seen as the mark of progressive video game folk, when really that's just a good baseline.

 

It's a valid point. The comic - without the context in which it was created - leaves it ambiguous enough to interpret it both ways since it doesn't show the motives behind any of the characters. I don't know, I guess it shows how a single comic with a cute metaphor can't always succinctly sum up your snarky opinions.

[CollegeBaby]

 

Cheers.

 

 

The sophistry of these Cultural Marxists as they invade our chosen hobby to essentially stop us from killing prostitute sluts is essentially a gamer holocaust of Entryism, essentially. Q.E.D.

 

OH LORD WHAT HAVE I BECOME.

[Problem Machine]

I rather disagree with her take on it. No matter how out of nowhere awful and offensive the original thing said was, at the point where you are continuously hassling them to justify themselves, to the point of violating their boundaries, you Become The Asshole. If that comic had ended on the third panel, the ladies on the cart would Be The Asshole, but because it keeps going and going, the Sea-Lion becomes the asshole, with the implication being that this is typical behavior for a sea-lion, justifying the otherwise unjustified attitudes of the first panels.

 

Granted, it's rather clumsy equating being a jerk with an immutable inborn attribute like species, but that's a slightly problematic trait of an otherwise on-point satirical critique. I think we can take the satire in the spirit its intended and forgive that flaw, though I can understand why the implication would make people uncomfortable.

 

This is the problem with drawing analogies: Sometimes they take us further than we intend to go.

[Bolegium]

Yeah, i've never particularly liked the sealion metaphor. I get the point of it, it just doesn't hold under even mild scrutiny and there are plenty of better metaphors we could come up with.

This also happened: http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2015/01/8chan-tries-swatting-gamergate-critic-sends-cops-to-an-old-address/

[Ben X]

Yeah, the sea-lion comic doesn't work as a good argument against GG or anything, it's more of a "this is how it feels" thing. I don't think transposing it from a discussion about an ostensible political movement to one about disabled people is fair, though. The point is that you wouldn't expect to get this kind of response if you, say, tweeted at a friend that you don't like Democrats. Although it would still be a bizarre way to respond to someone who said they "could do without people with spinal deformities". (Also, a minor point: White refers to the people in the strip as "two clearly privileged dudes", whereas one of them is clearly a woman.)

[Merus]

The possibility that the analogy is leaky because it's not actually intended as an analogy, and is in fact just a bizarre joke about an unpleasant interaction that people decided was an analogy for a problem they were seeing, seems pretty likely to me. It's strange that no-one considers that. Wondermark is frequently bizarre, and it's not particularly political, so the idea that Malki ! decided that this was the time to break from tradition and make a topical joke doesn't seem plausible. I mean, he likes it when his work has resonance but I don't recall any sort of topical humour from anything Malki's ever done.

[Deadpan]

The possibility that the analogy is leaky because it's not actually intended as an analogy, and is in fact just a bizarre joke about an unpleasant interaction that people decided was an analogy for a problem they were seeing, seems pretty likely to me. It's strange that no-one considers that. Wondermark is frequently bizarre, and it's not particularly political, so the idea that Malki ! decided that this was the time to break from tradition and make a topical joke doesn't seem plausible. I mean, he likes it when his work has resonance but I don't recall any sort of topical humour from anything Malki's ever done.

 

I don't think that isn't being considered so much as just not being very relevant to the discussion. Unintentional or not it has been picked up by a lot of people condemning GG, to the point where I've often seen this polite heckling referred to as "sealioning," so it's worth getting into why that's not a great analogy.

 

 

I rather disagree with her take on it. No matter how out of nowhere awful and offensive the original thing said was, at the point where you are continuously hassling them to justify themselves, to the point of violating their boundaries, you Become The Asshole. If that comic had ended on the third panel, the ladies on the cart would Be The Asshole, but because it keeps going and going, the Sea-Lion becomes the asshole, with the implication being that this is typical behavior for a sea-lion, justifying the otherwise unjustified attitudes of the first panels.

 

Granted, it's rather clumsy equating being a jerk with an immutable inborn attribute like species, but that's a slightly problematic trait of an otherwise on-point satirical critique. I think we can take the satire in the spirit its intended and forgive that flaw, though I can understand why the implication would make people uncomfortable.

 

This is the problem with drawing analogies: Sometimes they take us further than we intend to go.

 

See, but at a certain point you have to get in people's face to achieve any kind of change in attitude, let alone some sort of systemic progress. Nobody enjoys being called out on shitty behavior, but if they get to retreat to their comfort zone any time it comes up they'll never address it. Feminism and other social movements have been waiting a long while for people to confront stuff of their own accord, it just doesn't happen. People are unwilling to engage in the discussion even if one is, as the sealion suggests, unfailingly polite in bringing it up.

 

Like, it's fine if you don't share that read and latch onto the invasion of their home rather than the dismissal of the group, but I don't think it's something you can disagree with (at least not the basic truth of "this makes me uncomfortable"), nor do I think it warrants statements about what we as a group can and should do. If anything it just shows what a non-alliance the opposition to GG is. Plenty of people condemn it now, but as soon as it ends, or even just disappears from their radar, they'll go back to hiring their buddies, writing ableist shit (TWD Season 2?) and generally ignoring any such issues.

 

(Also, a minor point: White refers to the people in the strip as "two clearly privileged dudes", whereas one of them is clearly a woman.)

 

The other person refers to them with "dude" in the last panel. Or just says "dude"? Maybe not entirely clear.

[Problem Machine]

I don't mean to say it's an invalid interpretation, but it strikes me as a bit single-minded in its intent. I mean, I agree that the comic problematic from that perspective, I just think it's still useful and worthwhile, and the parallel drawn is obviously unintentional on the part of the author, as well as on the part of the people sharing it. It does certainly raise a very interesting point, which I think is worth keeping in mind: If the comic ended on the third panel, the woman on the cart would be obviously in the wrong, since she's basically talking shit about an entire species. Going on to show that the species in question deserves it because they're assholes, and her criticisms are thus justified, resolves this and flips it around to some degree, but it still doesn't cast her in a very good light. Even more, though, in choosing a species to showcase this passive-aggressive harassment, we end up with The Orc Problem, inherent evil (assholishness) justifying mistreatment (fuck those sealions amirite).

 

Anyway, like I said, I think it is a problem, but I also have a hard time imagining how the comic could have told its joke without falling afoul of this particular problem, so I just try to take it in the spirit in which it was intended..

[Deadpan]

Anyway, like I said, I think it is a problem, but I also have a hard time imagining how the comic could have told its joke without falling afoul of this particular problem, so I just try to take it in the spirit in which it was intended..

 

Maybe the direct analogy of another pastime could have replaced the visual gag. Personally I would have liked a miffed unicyclist.

[Problem Machine]

That could be pretty good, yeah.

[Twig]

The other person refers to them with "dude" in the last panel. Or just says "dude"? Maybe not entirely clear.

It's not uncommon for people to use "dude" when talking to female friends. Well, it's not unheard of, is probably more accurate. It's definitely a man and a woman in that comic.

[Bjorn]

Yup, and another case of GG styling themselves after villains and not realizing how truthful that is. I don't want to talk down any hopeful upstarts, I just find all this extra, extra gross because I made a site for the specific purpose of having a place where people can start out writing about games every now and again and not be served the usual bullshit about how they'll paid eventually, when the site makes it big, or how they need to keep their writing objective, whatever that even means. Instead I get to watch hateful ideologues playing pied piper and drawing them to such crap as garbagegamers.barf UGH

  

On a more general note: Nina White wrote about why the term sealion makes her uncomfortable and more people should probably read this. She raises a valid point, I think, and it's disheartening to see people dismiss it (r/GamerGhazi doesn't deem it worth talking about, for instance). Makes me worry that condemning GG is seen as the mark of progressive video game folk, when really that's just a good baseline.

 

Huh, that's interesting, and not something I had really thought about that comic.

 

The possibility that the analogy is leaky because it's not actually intended as an analogy, and is in fact just a bizarre joke about an unpleasant interaction that people decided was an analogy for a problem they were seeing, seems pretty likely to me. It's strange that no-one considers that. Wondermark is frequently bizarre, and it's not particularly political, so the idea that Malki ! decided that this was the time to break from tradition and make a topical joke doesn't seem plausible. I mean, he likes it when his work has resonance but I don't recall any sort of topical humour from anything Malki's ever done.

 

What Malki did or did not intend doesn't matter in the slightest to the primary point the writer is making. Sealioning has been taken up as a term to describe a particular type of behavior, and the term was inspired by that comic. She's seeing peers and allies use a term that she's uncomfortable with, because the source of it can have multiple interpretations, including one that's particularly uncomfortable towards oppressed people.  Malki can't be held responsible for what people have done with that comic since its release, but neither does his intent or historical use of Wondermark excuse the concerns someone might have with the term and origin of sealioning.

 

Anyway, like I said, I think it is a problem, but I also have a hard time imagining how the comic could have told its joke without falling afoul of this particular problem, so I just try to take it in the spirit in which it was intended..

 

The joke likely works fine and doesn't hit a nerve if it isn't two white folk trying to ignore the concerns of someone they don't want to talk with.

[Problem Machine]

That's true. It seems like the comic relies a lot on absurd juxtapositions against Victorian archetypes, and expressing this joke within that context definitely also adds to the unfortunate implications.

[Gormongous]

On a more general note: Nina White wrote about why the term sealion makes her uncomfortable and more people should probably read this. She raises a valid point, I think, and it's disheartening to see people dismiss it (r/GamerGhazi doesn't deem it worth talking about, for instance). Makes me worry that condemning GG is seen as the mark of progressive video game folk, when really that's just a good baseline.

 

I'm sympathetic to her arguments, but I don't think I agree, mostly because of her interpretation of the comic? The joke isn't that the sealion won't leave them alone and that's funny, the joke is that by relentlessly harassing two people through the veneer of civility and reason, the sealion is proving the woman right in her dislike of it, even though it apparently thinks the opposite. I am all for conceding oppressed people whatever tools they need to withstand and fight oppression, but I am slightly discomfited that harassment needs to be defended as one of them, even just in the abstract. I've never known any oppressed person to use harassment to fight oppression, anyway, as it mostly seems the tool of the privileged.

 

I'm also just really cautious of being shown how problematic certain statements are by substituting the central characters within them. Almost any statement can be rendered problematic that way. "The justice system ought to focus on punishing violent criminals" becomes problematic if we replace "violent criminals" with "people of color." "Sauron intends to enslave all peoples and cover all the land in darkness" becomes problematic if we replace "Sauron" with "Anita Sarkeesian." I thought the point of using a sealion instead of anything more mundane was to highlight the behavior as harassment when removed from context, but if we replace it with a real-world analogue, of course there are situations where the harassment is potentially justified.

 

All that said, I'm not crazy about using "sealion" as a verb for harassment. Just call a spade a spade.

[Twig]

All that said, I'm not crazy about using "sealion" as a verb for harassment. Just call a spade a spade.

Well it's a very specific kind of harassment, innit? The relentless "WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, HUH??" kind of harassment. Whether or not that needs its own word I guess is up to the individual but I like it. It works for me. Though it's possible (and probable) that most people read it as harassment in general, I suppose.

[Problem Machine]

I think it is important to have a term for the kind of harassment that would be perfectly acceptable discourse as a one-time interaction, but repeated so often by so many people it becomes an act of aggression. Whether sealioning is a good term for that, I neither know nor care, but it is a helpful distinction to make.

[Gormongous]

Well it's a very specific kind of harassment, innit? The relentless "WHY WON'T YOU ANSWER MY QUESTIONS, HUH??" kind of harassment. Whether or not that needs its own word I guess is up to the individual but I like it. It works for me. Though it's possible (and probable) that most people read it as harassment in general, I suppose.

I think it is important to have a term for the kind of harassment that would be perfectly acceptable discourse as a one-time interaction, but repeated so often by so many people it becomes an act of aggression. Whether sealioning is a good term for that, I neither know nor care, but it is a helpful distinction to make.

 

That's fair. If so, it should probably be something that's not bizarre or confusing to say in public, which I have already found "sealion" to be.

[Twig]

As usual with language, I fall on the side of "eh it's a word people will get used to it or they'll come up with something else". I don't necessarily disagree with you, but if that's what people use, that's what people use.

[Denial]

Oh, wow. I just realised the I think unintentional irony of "Operation Skynet".

 

In  The Terminator, Skynet eventually became self-aware.

[Deadpan]

I'm also just really cautious of being shown how problematic certain statements are by substituting the central characters within them.

 

That strikes me as rather close to the "everything is subjective so that thing I just said really wasn't offensive at all" line of reasoning employed by folk who think that because the meaning of words can change, they're really some kind of unknowable, gelatinous beasts. Sure, you can drastically alter the meaning of a sentence if you introduce some entirely new element (like adding race to a sentence that previously wasn't about race), but you can also alter one word and hardly change it at all, say if you subsitute one type of fruit for another type of fruit, or replace "talking" with "chatting".

 

Consequently, it's needlessly alarmist to suggest that replacing a word is liable to flip everything on its head. Whether such a change is absurd or reasonable simply depends on whether the two things are similar enough to make it work. Sauron and Sarkeesian? Clearly not. Sealions, as portrayed in the comic, and folk with disabilities? Both haven't chosen to be born this way, both still get shit for it, both are seen as annoying when they try fighting that kind of discrimination.

 

Such substitutions don't fall flat because the concept is flawed, they just lead to absurdity when people choose silly replacements.

[Gormongous]

That strikes me as rather close to the "everything is subjective so that thing I just said really wasn't offensive at all" line of reasoning employed by folk who think that because the meaning of words can change, they're really some kind of unknowable, gelatinous beasts. Sure, you can drastically alter the meaning of a sentence if you introduce some entirely new element (like adding race to a sentence that previously wasn't about race), but you can also alter one word and hardly change it at all, say if you subsitute one type of fruit for another type of fruit, or replace "talking" with "chatting".

 

Consequently, it's needlessly alarmist to suggest that replacing a word is liable to flip everything on its head. Whether such a change is absurd or reasonable simply depends on whether the two things are similar enough to make it work. Sauron and Sarkeesian? Clearly not. Sealions, as portrayed in the comic, and folk with disabilities? Both haven't chosen to be born this way, both still get shit for it, both are seen as annoying when they try fighting that kind of discrimination.

 

Such substitutions don't fall flat because the concept is flawed, they just lead to absurdity when people choose silly replacements.

 

I think it takes a lot of rhetorical work to make either real sealions or sealions in the comic resemble persons with disabilities more than superficially. Even in the context of the comic, being a sealion is not a disability, not even in the hypothetical, except insofar as certain people don't like them and are unwilling to elaborate on the dislike. To me, it is furthermore apparent that sealions are disliked because they harass people relentlessly for speaking negatively of them, even in private conversations, as if the two aren't connected. Certainly, it takes no less rhetorical work to conflate that with people with disabilities, with whom I have never in thirty years had an interaction like in the comic, than to do the same between Sarkeesian and Sauron. I'm not condemning Nina White's interpretation outright, because I assume it's her genuine reaction and that's important, but I don't think it's totalizing or definitive for either the comic or the language that has come from it.

 

 

EDIT: After a shower, I think I've got my objection conceptualized a bit better. In the real world, people with disabilities and people of color and women and LGBTQ* are hated because of a racist, sexist, ableist, transphobic, and homophobic society that co-opts its members into perpetrating systemic oppression without accountability or responsibility. In the comic, sealions are hated because they harass people for speaking poorly of them, full stop. Support for this is overwhelmingly implied by the comments of the male character ("Now you've done it" and "Told you, dude"). Sometimes oppressed people in real life have good reasons to use violent tactics like harassment for self-defense and self-expression, but that does not mean all people who use violent tactics have good reasons, let alone that all people who use violent tactics are oppressed. Therefore, with no further context than the comic, identifying sealions as people with disabilities (or any other kind of oppressed people) on the sole basis of them using harassment and being disliked for it is something I find extremely problematic.