"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

[feelthedarkness]

I'm a voter/pro-voting. There are many problems with it, as mentioned above, but I feel the biggest is that us liberals aren't super good at actually doing it. There is no question that voting is very effective at delivering the right wing candidates the right demands. Granted many of their real policy desires aren't enacted, but they get the people they want. 

[Zeusthecat]

I get where people are coming from with not wanting to vote but damn, when you really look at some of the candidates, it is often more like choosing between a destructive pile of shit and a person who is kind of shitty but at least isn't trying to smash everything around them with a giant fecal hammer.

 

I see a lot of this bullshit here in Arizona. We are something like 48th in the nation when it comes to education and yet our governor just cut another $200 million from K-12 education and $75 million from university education all in the name of lowering government spending. Then you have things like religious freedom bills, laws that attempt to restrict women's access to contraception, anti-voter laws, and a number of other completely regressive things that pretty much exclusively come out of one particular party.

 

And I get that in practice, a lot of these things are all talk and once they are elected, they don't necessarily have the influence to do all these things they campaigned on but if I have any capability to tip the scales away from whatever dystopia some of these psychos are fighting to achieve, then I am going to check that box for every possible democratic candidate on any ballot I have access to. If it is true that liberals aren't as good at voting as conservatives then it is incredibly frustrating to think that a lot of the bullshit could be lessened if people would just make some kind of an effort to vote. 

[Bjorn]

Brownback won in Kansas by less than 2 percent of the total registered voters, or about 30,000 votes.  If a higher turnout would have happened in the right areas, we would have seen so far:

 

• No radical change to the school funding formula (this is going to be the third or fourth time in a decade where the supreme court is going to have to step in about school funding again)
• No elimination of a permit for concealed carry (anyone can now carry a concealed weapon...yeah)
• No new abortion laws, meaning we wouldn't have become the most restrictive state for abortions in the country
• No removal of sexual orientation and gender identity as protected classes for government jobs in Kansas

That's the pinnacle of what they accomplished in just over 3 months.  And there's a whole bunch of other bullshit that's been introduced that hasn't made it to his desk yet.   We've got almost 4 more years of this.  The liberals and moderates of this state who didn't vote should be fucking ashamed of themselves. 

[tegan]

There is a huge problem among Canadians around my age of being apathetic about voting and being content with the way things are now, because our country is superficially much more socially progressive than the US. It's awesome that gay people can get married here. Not so awesome that we treat aboriginals like garbage and have a double digit unemployment rate in virtually every province east of Quebec. This election I intend to finally start chipping in, as much as I can.

 

For those unfamiliar with Canadian politics: it's not all it's cracked up to be. PMs tend to either be in office for way too long or way too little. The current PM's held the position for nine years, while the sole female PM was only there for just over four months.

[tabacco]

If you're in the US you can almost definitely vote by mail in your state, and there's like zero reason not to. Yeesh.

[JonCole]

Basically there's no reason to not vote by mail, particularly if you're a civically-minded person because you can ask to get mailed every ballot that goes out. I know a lot of people who purport to care about politics but only vote every four years. Absentee/mail-in can work for every local election; I guarantee that I'd probably blow off voting in the runoff in my city because I already voted for the mayor once and damned if I'd do it again.

[Eric]

There is a huge problem among Canadians around my age of being apathetic about voting and being content with the way things are now, because our country is superficially much more socially progressive than the US. It's awesome that gay people can get married here. Not so awesome that we treat aboriginals like garbage and have a double digit unemployment rate in virtually every province east of Quebec. This election I intend to finally start chipping in, as much as I can.

 

For those unfamiliar with Canadian politics: it's not all it's cracked up to be. PMs tend to either be in office for way too long or way too little. The current PM's held the position for nine years, while the sole female PM was only there for just over four months.

 

Canada's dirty little secret is that it is very nearly as shitty as the united states with regards to it being run as a racist police state by underhanded capitalists trying to cash in on running the entire world into the ground as fast as possible.

 

That said, to everyone: vote. Please vote. Canada and the US are the same in that the majority of voters are old baby boomer assholes and, while many youth do vote, they are as you say apathetic and inconsistent. Whether or not your vote is a hail mary at best or at worse a shot at a lesser evil it is extremely important that you cast it. If you are young and/or a minority and don't vote politicians have absolutely zero reason to do anything for you or your demographic unless you have millions of dollars or some political will of your own. Please just fucking vote

[syntheticgerbil]

I guess I should look into getting ballots mailed to me. I always get mail on when and where to go vote but nothing else so far. I suppose I never looked into it.

[Mawd]

I love voting. I don't like either of the two major parties and I don't like a lot of decisions made in local or nationwide government particularly the lack of transparency, public distraction, and the rushing through of unpopular bills (so standard stuff I guess?). But I absolutely hate that if you don't vote, then politicians and spin doctors will say that you're a part of this huge silent majority that implicitly supports them so much they don't even bother to vote for a party because the winners were destined to in because they're so great.

 

Not everyone in my age group of young twenties hates the National Government or even has a problem with them (whether they're politically minded or not) But it always astounds me the amount of friends I have that do feel strongly for or against the three time winning government who don't even bother to vote for them.

I had this hipster "Fuck John Key" friend of mine who was galled about the nationwide spying and hated a lot of the other scandals that came out But he told me that he didn't vote because he hates the system of voting and democracy we have because its so corrupt (something along those lines).

But it absolutely astounded me that he wouldn't chose the lesser of two evils and vote for the party he did agree with more when politics and media in NZ is designed to tire or distract people away from politics. It's so geared to making sure people don't vote because the incumbents know the people who do vote for them are strongly motivated to. So when people say "fuck politics its a shit show I'm so tired about hearing of it" and decide not to vote, they become part of the next media talking point about how voter turnout is so low because everyone is happy with their government.

 

I don't think I've articulated myself well in this but I hope there's some kind of useful message buried within the irate channelling.

 

In summary I'll just post this David Foster Wallace quote and say that is literally how politics is run these days at least in my country.

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”

[Henroid]

So, today something dumb happened. Someone working at Polygon (I dunno who yet) registered a domain and redirected it to Polygon. It was squatting on the name of an upcoming Lego game, and it was a leaked name to the press at the time.

 

Now, all that is is dumb. But I'm not going to ask for the person's head on a pike or some shit.

 

Goobergate on the other hand has lost its fucking shit. To the point that they're calling it "insider trading." I don't think they know what those words mean.

[Tanukitsune]

I heard about the domain thing, but I didn't know it was someone who worked on Polygon... Shouldn't they know better? I don't know if this is some breach of contract or just trust, but how can you do something so dumb?

 

I don't know how the legal systems works here, but I assume that at minimum WB should blacklist Polygon?

[JonCole]

It was Mike McWhertor, news guy at Polygon. It was up for like 15 minutes then he turned it over to Lego. He didn't have any insider information or was under any kind of embargo, probably just word of mouth.

I don't really know what the problem is. Lego was stupid to not buy a domain for a game that they were certainly going to announce. He was making light of it by making a joke.

[Vainamoinen]

Looking forward to the respective GG articles!

[Deadpan]

Really weird how GG thinks he used his position to his advantage there. Yeah, he might have heard of the new game before you, benefit of being tapped into this kind of thing, but he certainly wouldn't have heard of it before the company that makes the game and could/should have secured the domain months in advance. It's not like there's any laws saying domains have to be up in the air until there's and official announcement and developers have to scramble to register theirs the second when they release a trailer or something.

 

Still, this is a pretty silly move from the Polygon guy given the internet's history of squatting on domain names in order to sell them for profit.

[syntheticgerbil]

Uh, that's a pretty shitty thing to do, especially if they paid him to get the name. Okay Lego is a registered trademark and this is pretty much cybersquatting which I THINK is illegal reading wikipedia. Maybe if he called it Legodick.com it would be fine because I'm sure Lego wouldn't be interested in that name, but the name of the new Lego game?!

 

I guess it's harmless but I don't see how this is a funny "joke" or makes Polygon look good in a positive light. Honestly the dude should probably be fired because it redirected to Polygon which makes the whole site look bad. Maybe if it redirected to his personal site or something it would help it appear he acted alone, but shenanigans like this really don't help the journalists side.

[Twig]

He [claims he] didn't make money. In fact, [he claims] he lost 13 bucks. So [if true] it's completely harmless and this is one of those many instances known as Much Ado about Nothing that also actually IS harmful because people are idiots. It's a big deal because people are making it a big deal. How fun!!!!?

[syntheticgerbil]

Even if he made no money, it comes off as ridiculously unprofessional and then he ropes the site he works for in it by redirecting. It doesn't make Polygon look good and I'm sure Lego is not amused.

 

But I guess this'll be the second time you call me an idiot, so that's fine.

[Twig]

Did I call you an idiot???

Oh you posted just above me I guess. I want talking about you?!

I ain't never said it wasn't stupid. But it's definitely only stupid because other people exist to make a big deal about it. It is absolutely one of those things that shouldn't be a Thing, but because we live in a shitty world, that's the breaks, eh.

[syntheticgerbil]

Well I think it's harmful as my message says. I like Polygon. I listen to, read, and watch multiple things on there and I really don't like that someone on staff pulls something dumb to make the site look bad or give bait to Gamergaters.

[Twig]

Okay cool

[BusbyBerkeley]

Yeah that seems really stupid and unprofessional. I don't read Polygon, but that feels like something some smaller site would try to pull in like 2006 or something. It's not a BIG DEAL but it's also not a "pfft whatever" deal. It's definitely a thing that makes Polygon as a whole look really juvenile and dumb.  

 

You can say that a thing is bad and not be a rabid misogynist conspiracy theorist. 

[JonCole]

I really don't understand how it makes him look unprofessional, juvenile, dumb, or makes Polygon look bad. If you all actually think this is some kind of deal, not big and not small but a deal nonetheless, can you explain how it does any of that? I'm sure there is no policy at Polygon that forbids such a joke, funny to you or not, but I'm also sure that their HR probably wasn't super-duper happy about it. That said, if he "should be fired" why hasn't he been?

 

Also, saying that he shouldn't do anything that "gives bait to GGers" is pretty trite, they will use literally anything as ammunition regardless of the real-world veracity of their claims. "Not giving bait to GGers" could also include talking about literally any socially progressive topics.

[BusbyBerkeley]

It looks like domain squatting, which can range from a dumb prank to someone leveraging a payout. Not good for a reputable brand to deal with. I don't know that the dude should be fired or that it gives bait to gamergate people, but it's definitely not nothing at all.

[JonCole]

He had it up for literally 15 minutes and then gave it to Lego for free. In this case, it ranges from a dumb prank to a dumb prank.

[tberton]

Not exactly the same situation, but El Muerte has had yearoftheps3.info registered for like 7 years and it links directly to this site. Does that reflect poorly on Idle Thumbs? It could easily be seen as domain squatting. Obviously, there are differences, in that El Muerte isn't employed by Idle Thumbs and this isn't necessarily considered a "professional" site, but there are some similarities.

 

I'm with JonCole on this one. Dumb prank, maybe, but not really any dumber than the pranks that get pulled all the time.