Jake

Idle Thumbs 173: Ridonkulous Rift

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We'll I did say part of its power. But I think we're in agreement. If someone wants to depict that sort of violence they ought to be thorough in the treatment rather than using it as window dressing for some hero's journey BS.

 

We are in agreement, yes.  I just wanted to make it clear that the book stands on its own without needing to be attached to a "real life story".  But hey, the last thing I want to do is argue with a fellow Bolaño reader!

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That doesn't seem like that big a deal? A community where anyone, regardless of actual expertise, felt like they could take critical discourse seriously and engage with it without fear or anger actually seems like a huge step forward from where we are now. I wish that were the big problem we had to solve.

 

A discourse where everyone has expertise is a discourse where no one has expertise. The fact that critical media studies in video games is seen simply as the act of capturing a dozen minutes of game footage and talking about whatever while it plays is a huge barrier to Sarkeesian's work being taken seriously by the gaming-literate public at large (although, sadly, not as huge a barrier as the fact that she's a woman talking about gender) and to other people following her example. Many of her critics make their own videos that just mimic her presentation and format, without really seeming to understand the work Sarkeesian has actually done to make her analysis effective and credible. It's all part of the same problem.

 

I know it sounds like I'm just carping from my ivory tower, but speaking from experience, it is very frustrating for hardworking scholars when there is no effort in the broader discourse to distinguish between their hard work and no work at all.

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It is very frustrating for hardworking scholars when there is no effort in the broader discourse to distinguish between their hard work and no work at all.

 

I guess the platform choice is part of the problem? - Youtube is pretty much the home of the supercut - it's the place where, traditionally, people mash and remix videos to be funny, not educational. TED talks isn't really the place for an ongoing literary criticism series either, but Sarkeesian's videos seem more at home in that environment than youtube..

 

Are there other academics doing video series? I'd love to see more of this sort of stuff.

(I know Brendan Keogh did one recently but I think it was only viewable through Patreon and I haven't looked into it well enough)

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Can I just say how disappointed I am that Campo Santo didn't make this list of awesome people:

 

image.jpg

 

Seriously guys, try harder.

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I just finished the episode, and while I don't have anything to add to the current thread of the discussion, I just wanted to say that I greatly appreciate Jake voicing the following two sentiments:
1. "I don't actually understand what any people who do that sort of stuff actually want."
2. "I don't want to generalize."

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Thanks to all the Thumbers for this episode and thread. I was aware of this whole mess but getting it delivered like this definitely makes a big difference.

To anyone with qualms or reservations about whether or not they agree with these sentiments, just think about the volume of these things. Yes men and women both get flak online, but how much? What kind of response do they get? And what triggers it?

Likewise men and women can be carelessly murdered in game, but how many women characters are there apart from that category? And how many men? And when they ARE made as real characters, what is their function in the game? Do they seem to fit a narrow definition of roles.

I'm not trying to tell you what the answers are, I'm asking you to think about them and draw your own conclusions. Don't rely on your knee jerk assumptions, sit down and ponder what I and other people say in this whole discussion, because a lot of the trouble on all sides of these discussions comes from relying on pre existing ideas that they never challenge.

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In response to Damian's post, those depictions of violence in the latest Sarkeesian vid disturbed the shit out of me too. Mostly because I had no idea it was that bad. I haven't played a lot of these games, and I think I'm generally desensitized to violence in media, but that stuff is just abhorrent. 

It was actually the first Sarkeesian vid I'd seen, and I will now be checking out the rest. 

 

One argument that I keep seeing slung at Sarkeesian is that she doesn't ''play or like games'', with vague references to a talk she gave a few years ago. Does anyone know what this is supposed to be in reference to?

The idea that she 'doesn't like' games seems like such a lazy accusation. She even gives positive references (Papa & Yo) in that latest vid. 

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It's a lazy "she's not a real gamer!" argument based on the single fact that she at some point in time said she didn't identify as a fan of gaming, or something to that effect.

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I just listened to the latest episode and I felt compelled to make an account and post on this. Did I hear them right? Did they say it was literally impossible for a man to be a victim of sexual assault? It certainly seemed like they implied that Chris received abusive tweets with rape threats without going into specifics and followed that up with saying that would be impossible.

I'm on an airplane so this is going to be briefer than it should be.

Sexual assault is about power. It is completely possible for a man to be sexually assaulted and abused, of course, because specific power structures are dynamic. What I was speaking to is endemic and historical power structures that have existed for hundreds of years. Women have been raped since the beginning of time. That is a fact and it has no bearing on the fact that A rape can technically happen to anyone. I could be raped. BUT because of the way history has gone, I, a white American male never ever have to think about it. I never have to have that particular horror creep over me and trigger all of the emotional responses that come with it unless, somehow, it is an imminent threat. Now imagine that every time you find yourself walking by yourself at night your brain fires off that warning. Or on a bad first date. Or at a weird party. Not because you did anything or because of anything SPECIFIC TO YOUR INDIVIDUAL LIFE but because of your entire gender history. No matter how hard I try, I'm a man. I can be afraid of things and yes I can be raped. But day to day I have no idea what being any woman, let alone someone actually threatened, is like. History would have to rewrite itself for that to be true.

This is confirmed by the fact that the only thing you could write to me that would make me feel as equally threatened as that twitter post I shared from Anita would be to threaten to do something like that to a woman in my family.

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It's a lazy "she's not a real gamer!" argument based on the single fact that she at some point in time said she didn't identify as a fan of gaming, or something to that effect.

 

At this point I'd probably hesitate to say I was a fan of gaming, to be honest.

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I have trouble enough working out ways to vocally articulate my feelings on this stuff. My hat's off to anyone tackling it through another artistic medium, I think that's a really valuable pursuit (exemplified by the impact of games like Coming Out Simulator).

 

Similarly, wanted to give major kudos to the Thumbs, especially Chris (taking nothing from Sean or Jake, of course), on their vocal articulation of their feelings on the situation. I haven't been following the events discussed very closely, but I thought I thought it was admirable that you guys tackled the discussion like you did.

 

Being bad at the formulating of my thoughts (also being French but those two aren't linked), I usually don't partake in those arguments and shitstorms. This is the exact post I came here to write though. Thanks Chris, Sean and Jake, but also thanks forum members for being there on the internet.

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Last night before going to bed I reread "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". For people not familiar with the essay it was written back when Goldwater won the Republican primary nomination, and was about when minor political factions are seized with these apocalyptic beliefs about a changing pluralistic society. I found it couldn't be more on the nose to the current situation, and is well worth your time to read.

http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

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I haven't read the whole thread yet (too tired to process it all), so apologies in advance. I just wanted to share a thing that happened earlier this year, because this episode and the previous one reminded me of it.

 

In January Chris tweeted a link to an article (after a little googling, I'm pretty sure it was "Why Women Aren't Welcome on the Internet") and got some shit for it. I thanked him for linking it and then we had this small exchange (sorry, the whole thing isn't threaded properly for some reason).
 
In the months since that, a lot of internet people have been revealed to be, if not outright misogynists, then generally shitty people. It has made me appreciate the Thumbs crew a lot more. That "low bar" is pretty much all I have to hold on to sometimes.
 
I think it's important for people to talk about issues like this, at least in part because there is often no way to tell if a person is a misogynist (or any kind of bigot) until they let something slip. People going out of their way to support a less-privileged person or group make it harder for the secret bigots to hide. It sucks when you find out someone you like is shitty, but it's also important to know who you can rely on, even if what you're relying on them for is goofy jokes about video games for a couple hours a week. It's nice to have a chunk of time where I know I won't get harassed or insulted and can just hear some people who are friends talk about things.
 
There has been a fair number of people I liked/respected who turned out to be either misogynists or people who sit the conversation out, whether because they're afraid, or uninterested, or convinced the truth is somehow "in the middle" and will balance itself eventually. The people who choose to engage are the people I feel safe putting a bit of trust in. If I were somewhere like PAX and something gross happened, I have a mental list of people I feel like I could approach and be unafraid of their reaction. The list is very small, but I think choosing to engage online is the first step to expanding that list enough that everyone feels safer. 

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At this point I'd probably hesitate to say I was a fan of gaming, to be honest.

 

For a while I've preferred to say I like "games" rather than "gaming". Similarly, I can't deny that I'm a "gamer" by almost any definition, but it's never the word I'd choose. These are really stupid little distinctions and even I think I'm being silly about it, but "gaming" and "gamer" are words with such gross connotations both to me and to the non-game-playing people in my life that I find it useful to avoid them.

 

Podcast commentary unrelated to Quinn/Sarkeesian/gaming misogyny, soon to be lost in the current of that discussion:

Sean's enthusiasm for the Donkulous Oculus Rift has made me interested in the device for the first time ever. I wonder how much of my previous disinterest is due to the disinterest of Thumbs up until this point; you guys are pretty influential w/r/t what I decide to pay attention to in gaming. In any case, it's because you were so skeptical before that your newfound opinion is convincing.

 

Even if the Oculus experience is genuinely awesome, though, I'm still not convinced that it has a place in my actual life. I really want to try one out, but I think I already manage to shut out the world well enough without literally cordoning off my senses with a black box. Maybe if I still lived alone.

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You know the thing that I keep coming back to about all this now that my stomach's not turning every time I see what else has happened on Twitter, is that I had this great idea for a cynical take on a game developer sim, and the punchline was going to be that your audience turned out to be your chief antagonists, ruining your chances of survival with their petty, vindictive bullshit. And now basically everyone's come to that conclusion, so it's not going to be that clever.

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In regards to Jake's thoughts on the divisiveness of modern social issues among groups of friends, and how folks used to be more permissive:

 

I thought I should share one of my absolute favorite pieces by Mao circa 1937, criticizing said western/liberal politeness and permissiveness. I think it gives a pretty cool historic context.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm

 

I totally understand why some people disagree with the divisiveness of the growing "call out culture" in which leftists shout down oppressive shit and cause a bunch of friction. I just think that an increasingly ugly world demands sharp and disciplined action, even if it costs us some peace and quiet.

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Last night before going to bed I reread "The Paranoid Style in American Politics". For people not familiar with the essay it was written back when Goldwater won the Republican primary nomination, and was about when minor political factions are seized with these apocalyptic beliefs about a changing pluralistic society. I found it couldn't be more on the nose to the current situation, and is well worth your time to read.

http://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/

 

 

Favorite quotations:

Spoilers:

Since Masons were pledged to come to each other’s aid under circumstances of distress, and to extend fraternal indulgence at all times, it was held that the order nullified the enforcement of regular law. Masonic constables, sheriffs, juries, and judges must all be in league with Masonic criminals and fugitives. The press was believed to have been so “muzzled” by Masonic editors and proprietors that news of Masonic malfeasance could be suppressed. At a moment when almost every alleged citadel of privilege in America was under democratic assault, Masonry was attacked as a fraternity of the privileged, closing business opportunities and nearly monopolizing political offices.

Certain elements of truth and reality there may have been in these views of Masonry. What must be emphasized here, however, is the apocalyptic and absolutistic framework in which this hostility was commonly expressed. Anti-Masons were not content simply to say that secret societies were rather a bad idea. The author of the standard exposition of anti-Masonry declared that Freemasonry was “not only the most abominable but also the most dangerous institution that ever was imposed on man. . . . It may truly be said to be Hell’s master piece.

 

The paranoid spokesman sees the fate of conspiracy in apocalyptic terms—he traffics in the birth and death of whole worlds, whole political orders, whole systems of human values. He is always manning the barricades of civilization. He constantly lives at a turning point. Like religious millennialists he expresses the anxiety of those who are living through the last days and he is sometimes disposed to set a date fort the apocalypse. (“Time is running out,” said Welch in 1951. “Evidence is piling up on many sides and from many sources that October 1952 is the fatal month when Stalin will attack.”)

As a member of the avant-garde who is capable of perceiving the conspiracy before it is fully obvious to an as yet unaroused public, the paranoid is a militant leader. He does not see social conflict as something to be mediated and compromised, in the manner of the working politician. Since what is at stake is always a conflict between absolute good and absolute evil, what is necessary is not compromise but the will to fight things out to a finish. Since the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, he must be totally eliminated—if not from the world, at least from the theatre of operations to which the paranoid directs his attention. This demand for total triumph leads to the formulation of hopelessly unrealistic goals, and since these goals are not even remotely attainable, failure constantly heightens the paranoid’s sense of frustration. Even partial success leaves him with the same feeling of powerlessness with which he began, and this in turn only strengthens his awareness of the vast and terrifying quality of the enemy he opposes.

 

 

A final characteristic of the paranoid style is related to the quality of its pedantry. One of the impressive things about paranoid literature is the contrast between its fantasied conclusions and the almost touching concern with factuality it invariably shows. It produces heroic strivings for evidence to prove that the unbelievable is the only thing that can be believed. Of course, there are highbrow, lowbrow, and middlebrow paranoids, as there are likely to be in any political tendency. But respectable paranoid literature not only starts from certain moral commitments that can indeed be justified but also carefully and all but obsessively accumulates “evidence.” The difference between this “evidence” and that commonly employed by others is that it seems less a means of entering into normal political controversy than a means of warding off the profane intrusion of the secular political world. The paranoid seems to have little expectation of actually convincing a hostile world, but he can accumulate evidence in order to protect his cherished convictions from it. 

 

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In regards to Jake's thoughts on the divisiveness of modern social issues among groups of friends, and how folks used to be more permissive:

 

I thought I should share one of my absolute favorite pieces by Mao circa 1937, criticizing said western/liberal politeness and permissiveness. I think it gives a pretty cool historic context.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_03.htm

 

I totally understand why some people disagree with the divisiveness of the growing "call out culture" in which leftists shout down oppressive shit and cause a bunch of friction. I just think that an increasingly ugly world demands sharp and disciplined action, even if it costs us some peace and quiet.

 

Whoa. I don't know much about Mao Tse-tung, but he seems like a scarry meglomaniac. I can't stand people that believe that if someone can't express their dissent, then it shouldn't be respected. Those people tend to be intimidating in conversation so that those who oppose their views won't express dissent.

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Whoa. I don't know much about Mao Tse-tung, but he seems like a scarry meglomaniac. I can't stand people that believe that if someone can't express their dissent, then it shouldn't be respected. Those people tend to be intimidating in conversation so that those who oppose their views won't express dissent.

 

It's well worth reading his writings and the history of his country over the course of his chairmanship, but to be fair, pretty much all of Chinese history is really interesting. His tone is definitely "firm" but I guess it's just never phased me. Your mileage may vary, it seems!

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Imagine a woman gets up in an auditorium and says, "Wind Waker, on the Xbox 360, was the first game in the Legend of Zardoz series."  An angry mob of dudes gets up and starts shouting at her, demanding that she shut up, threatening to rape her and kill her family, distributing fliers with her home address.   A bunch of people get up and confront the mob, demanding that they stop threatening her.

 

If your contribution to this scene is to go over to the second group and start pestering them about how, "You know guys, you gotta admit what she said about Wind Waker was wrong.  First off, it was actually a Nintendo game..." then you should rightly expect a hostile response.  Because all this furor isn't really about whether Sarkeesian is right.  It's about whether a woman should be allowed to talk about video games without being subjected to threats and abuse (spoiler: yes, she should).  A woman should even be allowed to say something completely wrong about video games without getting a bunch of rape threats.

 

I think a big part of why Sarkeesian in particular infuriates the misogynists is that she doesn't pander to them. She doesn't jump through hoops trying to prove that she's a "real" gamer. She doesn't use "gamer" lingo and rhapsodize about the SNES RPG series she grew up with in an attempt to show she belongs in the clubhouse. She doesn't wear tight tank tops and flirt with the camera. She takes herself and her subject seriously. Compare her with pretty much any of the female talking heads at a video game website, and the difference is pretty stark.

When she got started, I thought it was a shame she wasn't more of an insider, wasn't the kind of person I thought would be more persuasive to people on the fence about these issues. But as this goes on, I'm really glad that Sarkeesian's the person the gaming community is rallying around, because anyone with an interest in games should be able to discuss these kinds of issues without harassment and without having to demonstrate she's "one of us" first.

 

The guys that Chris has been mocking who are doing a Patreon for an anti-Sarkeesian video made a plea for people to stop threatening her, not because threats are wrong, but because it undermines their argument that women don't really face abuse from the gaming community (while also insinuating that she's likely just making it up for publicity).  They also thought it was a good idea to promote their video series arguing that people denouncing abuse of women are making a big deal out of nothing by giving backers a copy of an actual game that really exists called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian, where the player gets to punch a picture of Sarkeesian's face until "rewarded" with a picture where her face has been photoshopped to look like she's been grievously beaten. 

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Favorite quotations:

Spoilers:

 

 

 

 

 

I've always wanted to join the Masons (and have both friends and family who are members), but I'm not willing to fake a belief in the Architect of the Universe to do it.

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The guys that Chris has been mocking who are doing a Patreon for an anti-Sarkeesian video made a plea for people to stop threatening her, not because threats are wrong, but because it undermines their argument that women don't really face abuse from the gaming community (while also insinuating that she's likely just making it up for publicity).  They also thought it was a good idea to promote their video series arguing that people denouncing abuse of women are making a big deal out of nothing by giving backers a copy of an actual game that really exists called Beat Up Anita Sarkeesian, where the player gets to punch a picture of Sarkeesian's face until "rewarded" with a picture where her face has been photoshopped to look like she's been grievously beaten. 

 

That's one of the things that makes me feel the most nonplussed about all of this. There are these large organized attempts to gaslight popular women in gaming culture in order to sink those women's credibility, but certain elements are so overzealous that they end up providing proof for what they say doesn't exist. The people who doxed Quinn tried to hide the evidence that they'd done it so that they could claim she was making it up, proving that she was just desperate for attention, but of course that didn't work, so they ended up proving what they were trying to disprove.

 

It's just so strange for me to think that some of these people are so convinced that Quinn is an attention-seeking phony and that the hate for Sarkeesian isn't misogyny, but they aren't willing just to wait and let those things play themselves out. They feel driven to go out and create the circumstances they believe already exist yet aren't obvious to most people. I guess it's just striking to me, the arrogance and insecurity that must be at play for someone to feel the need to fake evidence for what they believe is already happening in truth.

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You're generalizing a lot here dude. What do you mean by the female talking heads at a video game website? I haven't found them to be "wearing tank tops and flirting with the camera"

Compare her with pretty much any of the female talking heads at a video game website, and the difference is pretty stark.

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Really disappointed about the turn this thread took and the tone from the folks in charge. Feel free to delete my account, I won't be back.

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This week has been atrociously disheartening, scary, and sad. No "silver lining" really comes close to counterbalancing that. But at least it's been a somewhat effective human decency smoke test.

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