Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

"Hey y'all, my ex cheated on me; avoid her" <--- see, you can do it in one sentence

he's very 24

Part of this belief seems to stem from his assertion that “thezoepost” was not a misogynistic character assassination, as it has been painted online, but a “callout post” detailing Quinn’s purported misdeeds and hypocrisies as an emblem of social justice. Indeed, Gjoni told BuzzFeed News, as he has written elsewhere, that he considers himself a social justice advocate.

that was the sense I got from his screed--that it was mostly about knocking his ex off an SJ pedestal

that is a very generous reading

it was a revenge blog about an ex attacking her at the angle he thought would hurt her most
I don't see how that's a charitable reading

it implies thought, which is a charitable thing to grant to this dummy

and it implies his logic makes any sense whatsoever

the constant need to find contradictions in others by dredging through minutiae is not how you relate to other humans

it's how "internet discourse" works for a lot of people, line-by-line microanalysis of every choice of word and particle.

I was that guy to an extent in my past but it was always much more about me than whoever I was interacting with

don't forget the red lines and arrows!

xp

I don't know guys, when I read a piece that keeps explaining to me that its target has betrayed her own righteous principles re:consent, and keeps asking the target to square her actions with her SJ stances, then it sort of leads me to believe there's an attack on the target's SJ cred going on. It's crazy, but that was part of what he was trying to do. He wound up making himself a lot shitty new buddies, though.

dude quit his job for this shit. so much of what these people do is incomprehensible to me.

Thing that really bothers me about this whole thing is it's hard not to see it as a sort of indictment of games in a way. (and yes #notallgamers etc etc I'm not accusing anyone ITT or myself anything)....but it's hard for me not to look at the whole body of games in a different way, that this reactionary conservatism and paranoia and credulity about ridiculous conspiracy theories is really part of the DNA of the art itself, I tweeted as a joke (then erased because i'm shook now) that "It's not surprising that people brought up consuming plots about ludicrous, adolescent conspiracy theories would fall for one in real life"....and it was a joke but the more I think about it, this sort of reactionary conservatism is really a part of games....the lone man standing up to "oppression" through violence, the conspiracies on top of conspiracies, the terrible machismo and casual sexism, racism and homophobia in online gaming, the jockish asshole nature of competitive/pro gaming....i don't know i'm not being super articulate but it's hard not to see everything through a different lens....like think about the id Software guys like Carmack and Romero, that was late 80s/early 90s but tell me those guys wouldn't have bought into this "Suck it feminists" stuff? Duke Nukem? Leisure Suit Larry? This strain has been there from the very beginning, games worldview is essentially a reactionary conservative worldview so why was I so surprised that this is what a substantial part of the audience would be like?

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--9GUJkw_l--/18j3h1di06j1yjpg.jpg

suck it down indeed

oh PK, you read his 9000 word diatribe? I suppose I should do that if I want to credibly make fun of this dude but OTOH I don't think reading that would get me to stop laughing at how dumb he is or what a terrible idea all of this was in the first place

so while I might be mocking from an uninformed position, I really only have one counter-argument: lol

yeah i gotta say this shitshow is a small-but-significant (and growing) part of me wanting to give up on this activity altogether

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0FmdMHCIAAJEt6.png

I kind of wanted to check out the new WoW expansion just to see how the game's changed but honestly fuck going back into that world with random ppl I don't know

also holy shit

"It's not surprising that people brought up consuming plots about ludicrous, adolescent conspiracy theories would fall for one in real life"....and it was a joke but the more I think about it, this sort of reactionary conservatism is really a part of games....the lone man standing up to "oppression" through violence, the conspiracies on top of conspiracies, the terrible machismo and casual sexism, racism and homophobia in online gaming

― u2 removal machine (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, October 16, 2014 2:58 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dont really feel like its fair to even categorize this as gaming culture tho its so america 2014, anything thats not overtly opposed to that sort of thing is prob gonna have a significant contingent of it

#imwitchu

the cartoonish over the top faux-masculinity (enough qualifiers?) of gamers almost seems like an over-reaction by a subset of young men who can't or don't want to aspire to more traditional forms of masculinity. attack games, particularly the way in which they make this alternative viable, then you attack a very fragile ego prop.

well i wasn't even gonna link this to give it any air but of course polygon topped so here goes....the "perfect" game for these last couple weeks, fucking christ

http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/16/6988687/the-worst-trailer-of-the-year-revels-in-slaughtering-innocents

betrayed her own righteous principles re:consent

the whole thing hinges on the idea that he claims she had this very particular stance and that people can't be fallible when it comes to their own ideas

like, if he's trying to say she had nonconsensual (by their shared definition, not necessarily anyone else's) sex with him because she was cheating, that still wouldn't mean her social justice stances are all garbage, it means that you're reading things in an amazingly black-and-white way with no nuance

my main takeaway from all of this is that games, like most things, are a perfectly fine hobby as long as you aren't a worthless piece of shit about them

secondary takeaway is that it would be very difficult for me to give up games entirely but if that was the price I had to pay to punitively punish all of these horrific dumbfucks, so be it

http://i.imgur.com/6kWH3fl.png

the only way i like to slaughter innocents

damn in my head i can hear my lousy PC speaker make the 'smash building' noises right now

xxp my experience is that MMOs (and strategy games even moreso) are a somewhat separate sphere where these people exist in fewer numbers and/or milder forms. i've definitely created a mental connection between gamergaters and AAA studio games (especially shooters), maybe falsely, but the behavior on display throughout this whole ordeal is much more extreme than anything i ever encounter as a gamer

derek mad smart if u ask me

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/522829362597752834

xp: Whereas in my experience, the GamerGate chatter is very much like what you'd see in every WoW zone on the general chat channel, to the point where it was SOP in our guild to unsubscribe to general whenever you entered a new zone (and ESPECIALLY in hub cities).

can we go bump some other threads with cool new games and articles by women developers and critics about actual games, spending too much breath on this shit is bad for the humours

okay goole you have got to stop linking this shit, I'm going to have an aneurism from stifling alternating lols and screams

Wait...that was serious?

im dying

xp it's more of the same mindset that guy who started all this nonsense has "I’ve had to…keep it from splitting the earth in two"

give me a fucking break. what's the word for being insufferably self important and totally misguided at the same time?

cnn manages to make a more incoherent graphic than these goobers usually do

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/522831910343413761

lool

give me a fucking break. what's the word for being insufferably self important and totally misguided at the same time?

― i'd rather be arrested by you folks than by anybody i know (art),

a Republican.

so much mspaint

https://twitter.com/BurntheBolo/status/522833234472620033

https://twitter.com/dsmart/status/522828080097009664

Derek Smart is the most ironically-named person

some traditional gamers

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B0FxelrCQAIozpJ.jpg

to bring our lil illuminati circle all the way around:

https://twitter.com/Reyeko_/status/522833063986749440

"psych"

he has also mocked atheism and obesity

sorry, couldn't resist posting that image. Can imagine people who actually don't know anything about this just being even more confused. "Hold on a minute, what do the arrows mean? what are online"trolls"?" etc. etc.

wow boycott gawker boycott max reed

ah wait scratch my last post, Smart is anti-GamerGate

circles within circles, man

wait he IS?

or IS he...

so while I might be mocking from an uninformed position, I really only have one counter-argument: lol

no problem. as long as we agree I'm more well-read than you.