Edit: Made a literary reference mistake in this post, citing the Two Minutes Hate as (incorrectly) the “Three Minutes Hate.” Leaving the mistake in but acknowledging it nonetheless. Whoops!
Wish I had gotten to this thread sooner, but there is something I really wanted to comment on.
kotaku: They’re doing what any publication would do in a situation when they see blood in the water. When initial reports of problems at fighting game events broke out, such as the Cross Assault incident, they saw a huge response from the public. And small wonder; nothing riles people up quite like like a common monster to lash out at; the classic literary example is Oceania using a “Goldstein” figure for their Three Minutes Hate in Orwell’s 1984. None of this justifies what they’ve done, but it certainly explains it and provides a motive.
When you see all the reader responses and hit’s that is generating, it makes sense to pursue more stories along that same line and ride the wave while it’s there. Even if some of the stories don’t make a damn bit of sense, like that “His First Fighting Game Tournament Ended in Frak” piece where some guy showed up with an illegal controller (a stock wireless PS3 pad, if I recall right?), the tournament enforced their entirely sane and justified policy against wireless controllers due to the disruption they can cause… and somehow kotaku decided to run the piece as a “look, MORE evidence of just how vile fighting game tournament players are!” article for their part of cashing in on the witch hunt. It probably got them a decent hit count, too. Let that sink in for a moment; some guy broke the rules, wrote a piece whining about being called on said rules-breaking (when he presented himself as fairly knowledgeable on fighting games and thus should know better), and we were seen as the villain for it! That’s very telling, it shows just how effective the narrative against us has been.
kotaku hates us because it is good business to hate us. We’ll overcome this in time, though. History favors us; usually when a group is despised by society at large, this fades once they learn more about how that group really is. Sure, we may have some growing pains and need to address some problems in our ‘culture’… but we’ll get through this. We’re stronger than we’ve ever been, so panels and articles based on laughably bad ‘research’ aren’t going to be enough to ruin that.
I don’t know how the community is at tournaments, but I’ll say that on this forum is pretty much average. There are some people that make it look worse than it is, not just trolls, but the elitists who never miss a chance to put down a game that they deem unworthy(like SF4). But that’s really to be expected in any forum. For instance, I frequent ultimateguitar.com, and the elitists, snobs, and fanboys there get to be almost unbearable at times. The same thing goes for car and 4x4 forums. I would never have expected a video game forum community to be comparable to musician and car enthusiast communities, but it really is.
Anyway, I wouldn’t worry too much about what that guy said.
There’s nothing to “overcome”… All this shit has zero influence outside of the vg journalism circle-jerk which is meant for idiots anyway. It’s not like vg journalism doesn’t engage in bullshit and nonsense any other day of the week. Even when you take all the sexism/racism bullshit away, you still end up with the rest of their usual bullshit. The solution is to simply stop seeking approval from idiots, which includes videogame journalists.
and what if I’m offended by that statement because my mother has passed on? Are you going to apologizes for saying something insensitive to people without parents or mothers at least? I would appreciate it if you would.
The difference is whether or not it is reasonable to expect someone to be offended. If somebody knew your mother had just died, it would probably be better to avoid the remark, but otherwise there’s no reason to assume that it would cause offense; it isn’t an inherently rude thing to say unless you know somebody’s mom just died or there were other circumstances that would make the remark hurtful. Conversely, if you didn’t know somebody was cool with that kind of humor, it would be pretty reasonable to assume they would be offended by extremely personal sexual remarks; unless you know a reason why it would be okay, it’s better just not to say that kind of thing in the first place.
In other words, Art had no reason to think his remarks would be offensive unless he knew a reason why they would be, Aris should have assumed his remarks would be unless he had a reason to assume that they would not be.
In general, though, it seems weird to single out something like the FGC as specifically misogynist in such a way as to imply society at large is not, or even that society at large is markedly less so. If you look at the sort of thing politicians who are nominally supposed to represent the people say about women on a regular basis, it hardly seems particularly noteworthy that some guys at a Mahvel game were condescending; I’m sure guys with knowing, obnoxious grins ask her if she needs help every time she goes into a hardware or auto parts store; I wouldn’t be surprised the guys tearing movie tickets make a “witty” comment about her going to see Thor for Chris Hemsworth’s abs; I bet if she took a kickboxing class, most people would assume it was to lose weight, or even that she’d gone in the wrong room for her yoga lesson. The fact that it exists outside of “the FGC” doesn’t make it right, don’t get me wrong, but the attempt to make it sound like sexism and misogyny are problems in niche communities — and thus implicitly not problems in society as a whole — is problematic because it allows the more macroscopic and more pervasive oppression to go on while and because it is “being combated” by “raising awareness” about it in the community of any given Other. It’s basically the same thing that happens when people talk about homophobia in hip-hop as though it’s the scourge of our nation while people funded by Focus on the Family and worse hold office all around the country. Treating a symptom rather than its causes only allows the greater disease to fester.
The world is a diverse place. With people of many different backgrounds, situations. You can’t assume anything. Ignorance isn’t bliss in this case. He’s said similar things throughout this thread, trying to pull on our emotional strings, failing to see where people may have a problem with what he’s saying. The fact that he’s asking us to imagine something offensive, is offensive in and of itself. Even the best meant words may offend someone.
So do you go ahead and try to be sensitive to others or realize that people are unique and opposed to treating people as politely as possible and still offend them in some manner. If that is the case, maybe we should be ourselves, and try growing a thicker skin instead. Because there will always be something that we don’t like, something that we’re offended by. Suing people, ruining their lives is not the answer. It’ll only reinforce their hateful ideas/stereotypes.
They did one on sensitivity training but that contains nudity (old male).
I think it’s perfectly possible to draw a line between something which could theoretically cause offense and something that is nearly certain to; I don’t think giving somebody a nod and saying “hello” to them is the same as spitting at them and shouting a racial slur, as you seem to imply. I’m not advocating some ridiculous straw-man of political correctness; I think what Art said is fine and what Aris said isn’t.
Also, I think it’s funny that you linked a Penn and Teller video while complaining that someone else is trying to pull on emotional strings.
I’m surprise somethin as grassrooted as playing games can suffer a stigma such as conflict of interest. Don’t we have this community to network with people to indulge on our hobby? why are we letting the few upset us soo?
“It’s now very common to hear people say, ‘I’m rather offended by that.’ As if that gives them certain rights. It’s actually nothing more… than a whine. ‘I find that offensive.’ It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. ‘I am offended by that.’ Well, so fucking what.”
Anybody that acknowledges that the FGC clowns on everybody within it then goes ‘look, they’re harassing a girl, it’s a sexism problem in the FGC’ is so far gone that they don’t warrant a reply. As a bisexual, biracial, slightly overweight, tall, baby faced, long haired psuedo 09er, I should be rife with abuse, but I get the same amount of clowning at tournaments and arcades that anybody else known within the scene gets. You can call it victim blaming all you want, but in the FGC if you’re getting a lot of negative flak from people? You’re either a) in some ghetto ass arcade with sticks held together with duct tape or b) being a dumbass/bringing negative attention onto yourself.
Stop letting media guilt you for treating everybody the same, if you don’t have the emotional stability to handle a little bit of joking, then regardless of your gender or race, arcades and tournaments won’t be an incredibly pleasant experience for you. Or… they could, if you simply do the logical thing and go ‘Hey, cool it’ which to any reasonable person will stop them dead in their tracks.
I don’t know man, going up to a complete stranger and going…baby, I’m going to fuck u so hard. Or references to her genitalia, tits, and the strong sexual overtones r pretty messed up. If Aris had done this to a guy, he would have probably gotten punched in the mouth.
Miranda didn’t fall into any of the categories you listed. It is Victim Blaming because you implied that Miranda should " the emotional stability to handle a bit of joking." Which is fair but it wasn’t a bit of joking, it went for quite a while. Then Miranda should have told Aris to “Cool it.” when Aris at anytime could have stopped.
I’m glad you are well received in the FGC but your anecdotes don’t hold much merit.
How about Aris not say those things in the first place? How about the FGC stop using logical fallacies like “Well the MOBA crowd does it too” when someone call us out on our sexism?
Bronson himself said the it was a two way street and that everyone involved could’ve done something. Its not just Aris making poor jokes at a woman’s expense. There was a lot miscommunication and there was the fact that Miranda was ok with it. Aris didn’t know or he would’ve stopped a long time ago. Some of the cast picked up on her uneasiness like Sherry and told her to talk to Aris (privately might I add) because she knew Aris would stop if she asked. She did not for whatever reason and did it during the voting off session, basically in public. Bronson said this like a few weeks after the fallout. I wish the video was still up that talked about it but you could probably get in contact with him yourself.
Aris’ only real “wrong” here was not paying attention to how Miranda was really feeling instead just looking at how she reacting(and she played a long with it fine at first, I watched whole situation play out) and Miranda for the miscommunication and making the situation even more public than it should’ve been. Its not this black and white situation that paints Aris as the main villain.
My feelings about Miranda aside not a fan of her due to how she conducted herself like a child at NCI she could have handled the Cross Assault situation so much fucking better and just talked about the situation with Aris in private to end it. Then again she apparently can’t do that and instead loves to take problems that can be handled privatley public.
You dumbass, did you not see the footage? Aris was holding the camera for god sakes. Miranda was trying to ignore it and just play her game, but he just had to keep going.
All the Aris fanboys should watch this with their mothers.