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JonCole

"Ethics and Journalistic Integrity"

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Like, I could guess that Correia actually has received harassment because there is at least one fairly vicious left-leaning troll in sci fi, but they're hardly representative of how everyone feels.

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I've received my Blu Ray discs of Star Trek TNG on April 2nd, so I'm binge watching these episodes until my head explodes. There's one, just one episode that has received an extended cut, and it's The Measure of A Man. As the tears started rolling, it dawned on me that this is it. This is the kind of story the Sad Puppies and gamergate are fighting against. Full to the brim with social issues that allow analogy to the present day, and that is what actually MAKES it great.

 

It even has Whoopi Goldberg comparing an army of androids to slavery. It doesn't get much more overt.

 

The actors loved this episode, two of them naming it the best of them all. The audience loved the episode. According to the wikipedia, it was used in a lecture on Computer Ethics at the University of Kentucky.

 

That greatness, it's getting attacked.

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...

We would rather celebrate a public figure for aligning themself with a particular cause than seeing that cause furthered. We become enslaved to the spectre of our passions, elevate our egos and refuse to acknowledge what we know to be true if it conflicts with the myth we have created for ourselves.

...

 

Well said, which brings back the point about things like voting being hyper important (more than denouncing (every time this word reminds me of CiV's AI meaninglessly denouncing me) people online).  But sometimes I think response is a good action.  Still agree that all of this is way too focused on perhaps the least tangible (not that it's meaningless, I just think its meaning is often overstated) aspect of social well being.

 

Don't know much about Sad Puppies or whatever but wonder what they think of Starship Trooper or 1984 (or Starship Troopers the movie hahaha love Paul Verhoeven and his satirical take)?  Two of my favorite 'sci fi' but probably on opposite spectrum of politics.

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Like, I could guess that Correia actually has received harassment because there is at least one fairly vicious left-leaning troll in sci fi, but they're hardly representative of how everyone feels.

 

Oh, I have no doubt that Correia has had unpleasant interactions, potentially bordering on harassment, with some left-leaning sci-fi fans and creators, although that's much more certain now because he is the progenitor of Sad Puppies and that makes him a different kind of target than just being one of many right-leaning authors in sci-fi. What I doubt (and what warrants at least some proof, in the form of a name or a story the details of which are not generalized plurals, like Martin requests) is i) that Correia walked into the door at his first Worldcon in 2011 already labeled and hated by the majority of other attendees as "a racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned," thanks to the efforts of "a whole bunch of malignant lying bastards" whom Correia never names but of whose existence he is absolutely convinced, and ii) that the same malicious group who did their level best to chase Correia out of Worldcon a few years back has a stranglehold on the Hugos, despite Martin's inability to find any demographic or ideological trend in the awards of the past half-decade or in the all-time winners of the various categories, which warrants an unprecedented degree of electioneering and common cause with Vox Day, an actual racist, sexist, homophobic warmonger who deserved to be shunned, just to expose.

 

Typing that out, it's really hard for me not to imply constantly that Correia went to his first Worldcon after being nominated for a Campbell, found that his nomination did not make him a respected celebrity or anything, and then lost the Campbell proper to a more promising newcomer, which happens all the time, even to George R.R. Martin. Only, Correia became convinced that his loss was politically motivated, mostly because he has publicly talked himself into the belief that negative reviews of his book had to have come from people who didn't read it, and hence came up with Sad Puppies as a way to get back at those who wouldn't give him an award by using their own process against them, to force them to give him (and people whose situations resemble his) an award. That's the narrative, one of entitlement, that repeatedly arises out of everyone's comments, even if they're selling me something different, like Correia desperately wants to do.

 

The really sad part, if you're prone to finding tragedy in hubris, is that now Correia will never win a Hugo, rightly or wrongly, unless through Sad Puppies. His attempt to game the nominees in order to give Hugos and Campbells to those he felt more deserving, even though entirely within the rules as they currently are, is all that anyone will ever think about when they see his name on future ballots. He's now given himself the blackballing that he believes he had already gotten "elite leftist sci-fi" and that he believed he needed Sad Puppies to overcome.

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Kotaku tackles "politics in games" (not sure if linked once before on this thread) — not the greatest article, but certainly written with the kind of boldness we now need considering the expected backlash.

 

http://www.kotaku.co.uk/2015/03/23/why-everyone-should-want-politics-in-their-video-games

 

I expect game journalists to talk about the issues, and to defend their right to write about those issues in game culture.

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I think the last word on the Hugo fiasco. As with most articles I like, it starts off with something I didn't know (specifically, that the Sad Puppies slate was less successful than the Rabid Puppies slate) and then just keeps building: http://www.philipsandifer.com/2015/04/guided-by-beauty-of-their-weapons.html

 

For those of you who aren't sold, here's just a taste of where it leads:

 

On top of that, fascists have a remarkably well-developed vocabulary of jargon and a propensity for verbose arguments that puts me to shame. What this means is that if you attempt to get into some sort of practical, content-based argument with a fascist, you will suddenly find yourself staring down a thirty item bulleted list with frequent citations to barely relevant and inaccurately described historical events, which, should you fail to address even one sub-point, you will be declared to have lost the debate by the fascist and the mob of a dozen people on Twitter who suddenly popped up the moment you started arguing with him.

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For those of you who aren't sold, here's just a taste of where it leads:

 

For those of you who still aren't sold, it closes with an argument that Janelle Monáe should have received a Hugo nomination for the Electric Lady video. Cosign 100000000000000%

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I'm going to need a more detailed explanation than the one he gave because, while I can see why the album should get a nomination, I don't see why the music video should.

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I think the last word on the Hugo fiasco. As with most articles I like, it starts off with something I didn't know (specifically, that the Sad Puppies slate was less successful than the Rabid Puppies slate) and then just keeps building: http://www.philipsandifer.com/2015/04/guided-by-beauty-of-their-weapons.html

 

A good read, but also one that led me down an unfortunate rabbit hole of neoreactionary writing. I know a lot about how modern-day American monarchists think now. Very sure I didn't need this, but it's my own fault.

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I enjoyed that a lot. I especially take Sandifer's point that there are at least two types of people in speculative fiction: those who revel in the power of the future and our imagining of it, and those who use its genre conventions to excuse reactionary and regressive politics. Sci-fi and fantasy have always had as much of a problem as wargaming with closet Nazis finding them a good outlet for socially unacceptable impulses and sympathies.

 

I'm going to need a more detailed explanation than the one he gave because, while I can see why the album should get a nomination, I don't see why the music video should.

 

Probably because there's no outright category for it, even though "Related Work" might suffice, and the way that Hugo rules work makes it almost impossible to change that.

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It's also the only part of Monáe's Metropolis series that came out in 2014. 

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A good read, but also one that led me down an unfortunate rabbit hole of neoreactionary writing. I know a lot about how modern-day American monarchists think now. Very sure I didn't need this, but it's my own fault.

 

Wait... do they want a new monarchy, or do they want the British one back

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I've received my Blu Ray discs of Star Trek TNG on April 2nd, so I'm binge watching these episodes until my head explodes. There's one, just one episode that has received an extended cut, and it's The Measure of A Man. As the tears started rolling, it dawned on me that this is it. This is the kind of story the Sad Puppies and gamergate are fighting against. Full to the brim with social issues that allow analogy to the present day, and that is what actually MAKES it great.

 

Yeah. The whole Sad Puppies thing is especially stupid, because they seem to have chosen as their battleground the one genre of fiction which is fundamentally diametrically opposed to their argument.

 

While everybody has their own opinion, my own personal definition of Science Fiction would be something along the lines of: fiction that explores the nature of what it means to be human, usually via interaction with the creations of humanity (i.e. technology).

 

It's the reason that I don't think Star Wars is really science fiction (it's space-fantasy).

 

I assume that the Sad Puppies define Science Fiction as "it has lasers and space and stuff". Which is the most juvenile, facile definition one can give.

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Wait... do they want a new monarchy, or do they want the British one back

 

Xenophobia aside, I'm pretty sure that they want a new monarchy, which can avail itself of all the products of science and rationality (you know, one of the main outcomes of the Enlightenment, but shh) in order to avoid all the pitfalls of medieval and early modern monarchs. I'm guessing no one's had the heart to tell them that "enlightened despotism" was already a thing and it pretty much sowed the seeds of social change... or they do know and they think that Frederick the Great of Prussia was just doing it wrong, in classic internet fashion.

 

Yeah. The whole Sad Puppies thing is especially stupid, because they seem to have chosen as their battleground the one genre of fiction which is fundamentally diametrically opposed to their argument.

 

I assume that the Sad Puppies define Science Fiction as "it has lasers and space and stuff". Which is the most juvenile, facile definition one can give.

 

I mean, sci-fi's also one of the few genres where you can write about a truly oppressive or abhorrent society without total condemnation from your literary peers. The hilarious thing is, just like #GamerGate, no one's taking their toys away, but the fact that another story about a hyper-fascist military dictatorship triumphing over an even more monstrous foe is not winning awards anymore is just an unbearable situation to them.

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Wait... do they want a new monarchy, or do they want the British one back

 

Xenophobia aside, I'm pretty sure that they want a new monarchy, which can avail itself of all the products of science and rationality (you know, one of the main outcomes of the Enlightenment, but shh) in order to avoid all the pitfalls of medieval and early modern monarchs. I'm guessing no one's had the heart to tell them that "enlightened despotism" was already a thing and it pretty much sowed the seeds of social change... or they do know and they think that Frederick the Great of Prussia was just doing it wrong, in classic internet fashion.

 

Yes, this is my understanding. It's not a specific monarchy that they like, but the idea of monarchy (and aristocracy even more so). My understanding of neoreactionaries is that they don't so much think they can avoid the problems of older monarchies, but that they refuse to see that problems ever existed with the system at all. They openly value monoculture and social/economic inequity, and they romanticize war like you wouldn't imagine possible. They're a fascinating group of wannabe cartoon villains, but completely sincere.

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They're definitely JRPG villains.

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I know that outrage over the Sad Puppies fiasco hasn't gained much traction here, and that's totally okay, but the most famous person on the slate, Jim Butcher, finally tweeted something resembling his opinion on it and it's... well, it's what you expect from a more populist author who occasionally makes missteps in areas of social justice but generally just keeps his head down: https://twitter.com/longshotauthor/status/588441394806591488

 

The increasingly ubiquitous stance that opinions are bad and everyone should strive not to have any, unless they're benignly consumerist, is really upsetting to me.

Incidentally, On The Media did a segment about the Hugos / Sad Puppies this week that's a quick primer if anybody wasn't entirely clear on what it is.

http://www.onthemedia.org/story/hugo-awards-sad-puppy-edition/

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i don't know why, but it always manages to sort of surprised me that so many people are still so vehement about their righteousness, and that Eron and now his buddy are on record like that. the doublespeak of the comments also boggles the mind. 

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Yeah, the righteousness surprises me too. But I think I'm pretty self-righteous sometimes, too, so it scares me as well.

 

A big part of how this all started was because one "normal" even "smart" maybe even "brooding and misunderstood" young man idolized a woman to the point that when she didn't conform to his idealized vision of her, he turned on her completely. There's an awful repetitiveness to the narrative of men who see themselves as flawed, lonely, righteous victims looking for a perfect, angelic woman to save them from themselves. And once those men find a woman to raise on that pedestal, they use them as an excuse for their own problems. This article was interesting to read because I think it was working within that frame.

 

An early quote sticks out to me: "But [Gjoni] treated Quinn’s principled stands on gaming, social justice, and loyalty as if they were the behavior of some exotic creature."

 

What I remember of "The Zoe Post" is that it was full of stuff like that. Zoe Quinn was just some weird, exotic bauble or pet to Gjoni, is the impression I got. It's sickening. His actions and worldviews were shaped by the culture of the internet, gaming, etc. He's just the most recent embodiment of some of the horrible things that are broken about the way society is structured. And whatever was in him woke up in a lot of other people, too, when he wrote something calculated to flip every awful switch in their minds. Gjoni is a lot of things that a lot of men (myself included) should be afraid of and conscious of in themselves if they want change to happen for the better, in my opinion.

 

I guess Zoe thought it was a good write-up:

https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/593217470422331392

https://twitter.com/TheQuinnspiracy/status/593217850921197568

 

She's amazing for all the work she's doing on Crash Override.

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This has been incredibly taxing to read and I can't imagine how it must feel for those who've experienced this shit more directly. Apparently some people outside of games have found this eye-opening re: the fucked up petty vanity and anger that inspired months of pure evil, but I don't think I ultimately approve of how flashy portrait pieces romanticize the literal crimes we are talking about here. That kind of coverage promotes the notion that ruining somebody's lives makes you interesting, like oh what a fascinating twisted person you are and what a chilling story to read.

 

("Gjoni even has a new girlfriend now." Oh no. No, no, no, nooooooooo. Glob, I hope she'll be safe)

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So many of the details in that article are horrible, but I think the thing that gets me the most is his friend claiming that 8 months of inciting a mob to terrorize Zoe and others was "worth it" because Gjoni has a girlfriend now. What a complete asshole.

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I don't think I ultimately approve of how flashy portrait pieces romanticize the literal crimes we are talking about here. That kind of coverage promotes the notion that ruining somebody's lives makes you interesting, like oh what a fascinating twisted person you are and what a chilling story to read.

 

Yeah, I feel that way too sometimes. I've seen some stuff on twitter where people agree - it was a good read, but it just gives Gjoni another platform to be noticed on and shouldn't be shared.

 

The "worth it" stuff is seriously messed up, too.

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And I'm sure that was not taken out of context at all :)

Consider the other friend quoted as saying about Eron he's "a very intellectual person with semi-decent people skills"

And given the intent of the article consider the full quote (emphasis mine):

Eron I first met in college. We were both in the same class at school and hung out with the same group of people between classes. I struck up a friendship with him. I always saw Eron as a very intellectual person with semi-decent people skills. He was always super friendly and everyone had good things to say about him.


Before Eron even started writing “The Zoe Post” he reached out to me. He wanted to make sure he was thinking clearly about this situation and what he should do about it. I ended up doing my own research asking people who knew her more in-depth about her… seems that Eron was not alone in being manipulated by her.

 

Of course as a sociopathic mastermind Eron must have fabricated the whole thing, yet simultaneously be so stupid as to go and get interviewed while explictily announcing he is breaking the law doing it. Right...

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