privilege as a meme

UN-American, I mean. Weird how these Russians are all "fuck yeah".

gamers are not worth your time

i really want to be on the right side of history re: gamergate but i can't get over my initial reaction, which is "don't play video games"

some video games are fun and all but i guess i don't get why everything has to have a 'culture.'

i thought gamergate was about who killed Roger Ebert

i don't get why everything has to have a 'culture.'

I'm sure you know the actual answer to this. Sociologists started slicing off subcultures from mainstream cultures many decades ago and, once started, this process has no clear stopping place. By now, bowling leagues and book clubs are sometimes treated as subcultures.

Politically speaking, it is especially useful to have a culture to defend, as this aligns you with the general movement for minority rights and allows you to frame the argument in terms of your oppression by outsiders. The co-option of this narrative was pioneered by opponents of affirmative action. Now it is everywhere.

Alt litgate must be super stoked bigger group of nerds snatched the spotlight

no, that lasted about as long as a controversy over alt lit was ever going to last

oh it continues, it's just back to only existing within the petri dish. and thank god.

sigh

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/19/realestate/a-greenwich-village-apartment-for-a-creative-soul.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur&bicmp=AD&bicmlukp=WT.mc_id&bicmst=1409232722000&bicmet=1419773522000&_r=1

I hadnt really read about gamergate until yesterday. Horrifying. I seriously don't understand the rape and murder threat thing but I think it should be something that carries serious legal penalty.

Maybe theres no way to do that which wouldn't implicate offhanded outbursts or whatever, but the systematic intimidation campaigns carried out by some of these men is clearly harassment at best, but seems more serious than that word implies

UK law is obviously different, but rape threats via Twitter to a feminist in the UK got two people sent to jail: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/twitter-trolls-isabella-sorley-and-john-nimmo-jailed-for-abusing-feminist-campaigner-caroline-criadoperez-9083829.html

offhanded outbursts or whatever

I seriously don't know how anyone "offhandedly" types the words "You should be raped" or anything similar. I have said some vile shit to people online, much of which I regret, and none of which I posted in any kind of "offhand" manner. Every time I did it, I carefully considered my phrasing for maximum impact. So basically, these pieces of shit should be implicated, because they know exactly what they're doing. And if they don't, they shouldn't be allowed near any form of modern technology, frankly.

I was thinking about how you'd phrase the law to differentiate these comments with the innumerable ilxors who've told me to "die in a fire" and similar

I read an article/essay earlier this year by a woman who was being stalked and sent death and rape threats on twitter and the most marked thing about trying to get law enforcement to do anything about it was that cops didn't even understand what twitter was. They kept saying things to her like, "Well just stay off-line then, what's the problem?" Iirc they didn't consider the threats credible so nothing was done. Basically they're not credible until someone actually carries them out, at which point you're dead.

Don't think these gamergate ppl are being offhanded

I'm trying to find it again but searches are full with gamergate and Brianna Wu hits.

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

Maybe it was this one: http://skepchick.org/2013/10/why-i-dont-just-go-to-the-cops/

They told me there wasn’t much they could do because he apparently lived in another state. They offered to take down a report, but admitted that nothing would come of it unless someone one day put a bullet in my brain, at which point they’d have a pretty good lead.

Oh and this one: http://www.psmag.com/navigation/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170/

When Time journalist Catherine Mayer reported the bomb threat lodged against her, the officers she spoke to—who thought usernames were secret codes and didn’t seem to know what an IP address was—advised her to unplug. “Not one of the officers I’ve encountered uses Twitter or understands why anyone would wish to do so,” she later wrote. “The officers were unanimous in advising me to take a break from Twitter, assuming, as many people do, that Twitter is at best a time-wasting narcotic.”

a-greenwich-village-apartment-for-a-creative-soul.html

― RAP GAME SHANI DAVIS (Raymond Cummings), Saturday, 18 October 2014 01:38 (3 hours ago)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hmiv_gWiKHo

In my experience, it's hard enough to get the police to take threats seriously when it's an actual partner threatening to take you out as well in his next suicide attempt, let alone something from a stranger in that ~crazy, not-real-life, little-understood internet thing that you could just avoid if you really wanted to not get killed~.

I thought this piece was pretty good on the difference between "online smack talk" from the memetic "go die in a fire" type stuff to the more considered purposeful angry insults; and what we talk about when we talk about "death threats":

http://secretgamergirl.tumblr.com/post/100182276170/the-routine-harassment-of-women-in-male-dominated

For example, I’m going to talk a lot about receiving death threats. An awful lot of people think they routinely receive death threats. I’ve seen it said pretty commonly that “everyone gets death threats on the internet all the time.” No. Those aren’t what I mean when I say death threats. You’re thinking of things like these, right?

"Drop dead!" "I hope you choke on a pretzel and die!" "If I ever get the chance, I am going to chop off your head and crap down the stump of your neck!"

Those aren’t death threats as I’m using the term. That’s all just smack talk. This is a death threat.

"Your name is Jane Smith. Your husband John leaves for work every day at 8 o’clock, from your white house with the crappy yellow curtains at 123 Road St. I have a long-handled sledgehammer in the back seat of my car, and when you come back from buying groceries tomorrow, I’m going to use it to bash in your skull, then use the other end to…"

(I don't agree with everything in the piece, because even smack-talk has lines (gendered and racially barbed smack talk, for example, is no longer 'just' smack talk, but we've discussed that to the death) but I think that makes a point.)

Mayer is a journalist - in media jobs, you're expected to use Twitter - it doesn't mean you have to Tweet a lot, but in a lot of jobs you'll be considered media illiterate if you don't know what kinds of things are on it.

The idea of cops using Twitter is disturbing.

Police are getting a little more Twitter saavy--at least in the case of the recent Philadelphia hate crime when there was a cop taking tips on Twitter that led to arrests.

educational privilege is causing a lot of problems at my workplace

Ayn Rand tells us that in a truly capitalist society, educational privilege would not exist. btw, the devil made me say that.

any sentence that starts "ayn rand tells us..." will not end well

you are a teacher yeh LL?

is 'educational privilege' like of the going-to-college-heard-of-moby-dick vs not, raised-in-a-home-where-parents-talked-a-lot-and-read-around-kids vs not variety?

yeah
and the resulting assumption that because the educated person knows something that "everyone" knows it

like how to write a formal research paper
guess what
not everyone knows that from birth

http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-going-to-trust-societys-determination-that-he,37486/

you are a teacher yeh LL?

is 'educational privilege' like of the going-to-college-heard-of-moby-dick vs not, raised-in-a-home-where-parents-talked-a-lot-and-read-around-kids vs not variety?

what now

idgi?

I have no memory of posting that! Is it possible I butt-texted ilx? I am sorry!

i am choosing to read your butt's communique as "no fuckin lie"

if your butt was giving itself detailed instructions on how to manage this acrobatic feat it could stand for 'now flex leg.'

next fucking level

iirc

<iframe width="100%" height="124" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="//embed.wbur.org/player/onpoint/2014/11/24/living-hand-to-mouth-in-modern-american-poverty"></iframe>

u rc xp

butt-to-leg texts would certainly be next fucking level

http://liartownusa.tumblr.com/image/105804091140

didn't work?..

http://i58.tinypic.com/2e2qo1i.png

Catchy.

lonely girl just thinking baout #privilege

i've read that image like 4 times now and i still can't make sense of it

#privilege = -(understanding)*(violence + history of intentions), where (violence + history of intentions) ~ < (what you do understand to think)

she's thinking "what the fuck do the words floating in mid-air beside me even mean?"

guys i think the image maybe possibly just might be intentionally confusing as a goof