Blarghagh

I did a serious doubletake when I opened up this page and saw this. I had to look up what the hell was going on. I live in one of those cities, my brother lives in another.

Would you invite him to your World of WarCraft wedding? Would you marry him in World of WarCraft? ... I would.

No accounting for tone on the internet, I guess. :D

I consider people trying to sell me stuff on the street harassment.

I guess I better go get my tinfoil hat.

Damn, Captain Marvel? Didn't see that one coming. Carol Danvers, so we're getting a female centered and a black superhero movie with Black Panther now going on.. I guess all the Inhumans rumors were right on the money too.

I'll check that one out, Raithe. Sounds cool. In the meanwhile, I'm currently feeling very apprehensive because a little known slow-burn type horror movie called The Innkeepers is very good at setting tone and atmosphere, even if it has thus far (half an hour left) not yet delivered on scares. EDIT: Nevermind, there they come. Not very pleasant in any way, even though it has nothing incredibly scary it still totally got under my skin.

Especially with the Deadpool movie coming up. Too bad, since the Udon-run romp of those two working together was amazing. But hey, maybe he'll be in the Deadpool movie?

Taskmaster is perfect for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., totally crossing my fingers for him to show up in a significant role. Also: I'm glad someone urged me to get back to Parks and Recreation, I didn't like the first season so I didn't stick around but it actually becomes really good afterwards so now I feel bad that I missed all of it and happy that I have so much to catch up on. Also, I may be in love with Rashida Jones.

My favourite part is where he threatened someone into working with him. That was interesting. I want to see more of that. I think the creators of this show need to take a good look at what made early House episodes so popular. This isn't a story about a hero.

What's with the barbie doll figures and pandering to male gaze? I thought this game was designed by women, for women?

Yes! The mystery is back! The only reason the story was ever interesting in the first place!

You're right, roach infiltrator from the future. That was the point of the post, anything else taken from it is reading too much into it. I suppose one could infer it as a dig at the writers of Feminist Frequency, both of which have at seperate times claimed to not play video games? But in that specific case, it would be a fact and not so much a supposition. In that case the armchair activists really are not the consumer? Either way, since Barthomuk has labeled everyone speaking in favour of GamerGate into a single entity ("you guys") and he seems to currently only be interested of rephrasing others posts in a misrepresenting and projecting manner, I see no need to take him seriously in this debate. Personally, I don't care if there are the mythical "SJW" in gaming, since I've been on the receiving end of that term more times than I care to count, but I do care about the following: - I care about indie developers who rely on exposure from journalists having to become friendly with said journalists to get such exposure rather than having to produce quality games. - Alternatively, they must add anvilicious morals (without subtlety) that the journalists agree with so the journalists will decide to signal boost them, again regardless of quality. - I care that the journalists, who already breached my trust when it comes to scoring AAA games, also breached my trust when it comes to independent games making them entirely worthless to me until they change their ways. - I care that due to the lack of quality of high rated indie games that the "brand" of "indie" has been irrepairably damaged, pushing the average consumer back to AAA titles and removing sources of income from indie developers who release great games. - Independent games that win prestigious prizes to do so based on quality and not due to a racketeering scheme involving the judges of said prizes having invested in the winner. - I care that games journalism at large has ignored that scandal based on being friendly with the developers. - I care that games journalism at large has launched a counterattack against the enthousiast press on youtube based on the supposed scandal of YouTubers taking brand deals and not disclosing them, when the vast majority of YouTubers has either disclosed these brand deals or refused to take them and had already condemned the game developers offering these brand deals, simply because the enthousiast press has been a vocal supporter of the GamerGate movement and they wanted to discredit them. - I care that games journalism, instead of acknowledging people like me who have legitimate problems with the way they work, instead have focused on discrediting me and signal boosting trolls, making those trolls as famous as they want to be and encouraging them through hot air condemnations while clearly naming the victims, painting huge targets on their heads in the process. - I care that a majority of thse games journalists have taken the stance that they cannot discuss something while harassment happens, handily giving horrific trolls the power over what can and cannot be discussed. - I care that these journalists show the highest hypocrisy when they call gamers "entitled" and then make the argument that minorities are entitled to have more games cater to them. I want more diverse games, but you can't promote and decry entitlement at the same time. - I care that some of these games journalists have decided to condemn me and brand me a misogynist, a manbaby, and imply that I am actively involved in harassment, simply because I have concerns that some jerks have hidden behind so they can harass people in the flimsiest excuse for guilt be association that has ever existed since "you eat bread, Nazis ate bread too!" - I care that these journalists have actually done nothing to promote diversity in games but rather harmed it severely with their rampant accusations of sexism, racism and homophobia simply for their own personal dislike of a character rather than actual morally objectionale grounds having convinced game developers that adding diverse characters is not worth the hassle of dealing with these people for. - I care that a couple of women being harassed is being used to drive women away from the industry because they should fear a "boys club", thereby seriously harming the chances that the gender gap will be solved. - I find the highest shame should be in complaining about a gender gap for game developers when 22% of game developers are female, but 8% of the GameJournoPros list is female. Boys club indeed. - I care that these journalists who have harmed diversity in games as well the credibility of anyone striving for diversity in games have branded me and my culture "misogynist" when I and my gamer friends have done more to promote and defend diversity in gaming than they ever will. - I care that these journalists pretend to be the pinnacle of integrity while at the same time condeming charities for taking money from sources they don't approve of. It takes a level of cynicism that even I'm not comfortable with to do that. - I care that games journalism as a whole is happy to take money to give GTA an amazing grade yet continue to pretend they are promoting diversity in games and condeming only those that don't give them money. - I care that these journalists can condemn a game about female empowerment like Bayonetta yet sing the praises of a game like Dear Esther, which literally runs on misogynist tropes. - I care that these journalists have stopped being consumer advocates and instead have appointed themselves as Moral Guardians who control what is being made and have taken it upon themselves to, in an example that was recently posted, declare that games taking place in the holocaust are off-limits regardless of quality or intent and dogpiled developers who wish to make the attempt thereby limited both artistic freedom and gaming as an artform in general. If these guys were movie critics, Shindler's List would never have been made. - I care that these journalists have done so while claiming with a straight face that I, as the consumer, is what holds gaming back as an artform. - I care that these journalists consistently signal boost poorly researched, half baked, morally outraged false academic attacks on video game culture as facts and so devaluing actual academic discussion. I'm perfectly willing to discuss sexism in games, in fact, I've been doing so for years. I don't need nonsense like Feminist Frequency to make it harder for me by being absolutely ridiculous, stupid and filled with flat-out lies. - I care that these corrupt, dumb, morally bankrupt simpletons have had power in the past over, for example, how much money Obsidian made from Fallout: New Vegas because they inform the metacritic scores that affected Obsidian's payment and I will not stop until they have proven they are worthy of this power or are replaced. To be blunt, I care quite a lot about social justice issues and I find "SJWs" can play all the games they want, but I don't approve of two-faced journalists maliciously harming social justice issues for clickbait or to feel good about themselves for being "progressive people who condemn (read: signal boost) harassment" and I definitely don't approve of this ridiculous idea that video game critics are not supposed to be consumer advocates but culture critics. I'll listen to actual academics for that, not glorified game bloggers with zero credentials or intelligent thoughts on the matter of ethics, whose only opinion that matters is the little percentage they add to a metacritic rating. I want more diversity in gaming, I have in the past written countless e-mails to developers to ask them if they could try and moderate their communites better and try to combat toxicity on the internet and it's one of the reasons I've become a game developer. I support women in gaming, I support diverse representation in gaming, but I do not support calls for tokenism and I definitely do not support shaming consumers simply for the "crime" of being the people that studios cater to. If that makes me transparent, or a manbaby, so be it. I don't actually play enough games myself anymore for it to be an idea of "them coming to taek away me gaemz", though. I just feel that the only moral option in supporting diversity, artistic freedom and consumer rights is to support GamerGate.

I'm not sure where he said any of that. The only thing his claim comes down to is that those guys won't carry more weight than any other consumer.

I suppose I could use my status as someone who suffered from clinical depression, but I'm pretty sure everyone would claim I self-diagnosed it. I've heard anti-GGers throw that around against Boogie's PTSD from having been abused by an alcoholic mother since childhood. There's nothing these people won't use. At this point, GG only has misogynists giving them a bad name, the opponents have literally everything else in the book. I wonder who is looking worse. If they truly believe in guilt by association, they should be joining GG pretty swiftly. TotalBiscuit speaks truth on the matter of sides, trolls and media coverage: http://blueplz.blogspot.nl/2014/10/whose-side-am-i-on.html My favourite bit (because it's what I've been saying all along):

Not really, they haven't covered a lot of things. Phil Fish and Polytron's involvement with the Indiefensible scandal is now under investigation, but no major media site has actually mentioned it. Nope, it's about harassment.

YOU POOR THING, YOU'VE BEEN RUN FROM YOUR HOME BY AN ANGRY MOB OF THREE PEOPLE WHO AREN'T ACTIVELY ATTEMPTING TO BREACH YOUR HOME! Surely you must be in need of donations to help you get through these troublesome times. I'd set up a patreon account but I'm not a minority so there'd be no takers. But my point was you don't even have to be a public figure in this debate to get harassed by trolls if you've taken a stance or said anything that can be consider pro-GG. GGers attack public figures, anti-GGers attack everyone. It's like Kazerad pointed out in his journal, GG is a movement focused on personal accountability and is focused on people, and those hardlining against it are focused on grouping and stereotyping.

I've gotten three #GamerGate related death threats on Twitter and my tweet involvement was pretty much mostly retweeting stuff Boogie and TotalBiscuit said and asking people how exactly they expected GamerGaters to police anonymous trolls any better than they could.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2014/10/24/on-the-problem-of-harassment http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/editorials/12222-Why-I-Still-Call-Myself-a-Gamer-During-Gamergate Couple of neutral articles.

If that is her delusion, then yes, gamers are not her audience anymore. I'm not sure who is, because even film critics who look at movies as cultural objects still put scores on them. That is literally what they have any audience for. That is why they are allowed to make a living by consumers. Also, damn, new thread already? The other one didn't last a week. What is this, number six?

You lousy Texan!

Sorry if you feel disrespected, I was just being honest. I respect your view that is what you think but I find it abnormal because that's not how the average person would look at a tragedy that effects the citizens of there own country But you already seem to acknowledge this as the Dutch media showed this concern towards its dead citizens and you didn't understand why, in fact you were offended by this. I can't really explain to you why most people would automatically show more concern to there own citizens killed in a tragedy, its just the way human beings think. Its probably got to do with a level of patriotism and the fact we generally see citizens of our own country as part of our greater community on a national level, citizens in a country are like a tribe. We share a common identify and when someone who belongs to that "tribe " is killed this impacts us on certain levels Empathy in this case would just mean you do feel for the families and the loss. Its something that you don't feel good about. And yes to be totally unconcerned if citizens of your own country are killed in a particular event I think is not right. Sorry to say this The frustrating thing about you lately is that I can't tell if you're intentionally insulting people or not but you do it so constantly that it simply cannot be another way. First off, I take offense to the implication that I don't care at all about citizens of my country being killed when all I said is that I don't value citizens of my country any higher or lower than citizens of any other country, because doing so is unethical. I also take offense to your statement that I don't understand why the Dutch media showed "concern". I understand that perfectly well and I vehemently contest your assessment that it is empathy or even anything related to empathy. I also still take offense to the implication that not showing empathy while not having an emotion connection is abnormal as you have yet to prove in any substantial form that these responses are empathic responses or that they are responses that the average person has. Simply put, I don't think you know what empathy is. Here's the facts: The idea that a country is some sort of enormous tribe is a projection. It cannot exist. If an actual tribe becomes significantly larger than that society's average Dunbar's number (usually somewhere between 150 and 200), it splits. It is impossible to have an emotional connection to more people than the human brain allows and therefore impossible to have a real empathy for them. The fact that the "average" media person (again, I contest your claim that the "average" person does the same because in my personal experience this has never and will never be true) tends to make empathic statements anyway proves not that they have empathy but that they either instinctively fake it because of expectations or project the loss upon themselves (probably under the guise of nationalism), which isn't empathy but self-pity. Were I to read about these people right now and understand who they were, their names, their lives, and form an emotional connection, I would have an empathic reaction. I would have something to identify with, and therefore I would have an empathic response. If you have seen a lot of personal information about these victims? Guess what, you're having an empathic reaction because you have an emotional connection, not because you have some magic "caring about every stranger's life". Maybe the response you lament us not having is culturally respectful, or culturally appropriate, but it certainly isn't nor will it ever be empathy. What happens with nationalism is that the brain can't recognize more people than, again, Dunbar's Number. So it takes more people and internalizes them as a single entity. These good people I know aren't individuals, they're my nationality. It's a projection of belonging with a positive group fit only for people who can't form close emotional connections to the actual people around them. Nationalism on a biological level is the same as discrimination. It's the difference between "this one guy of [race, gender or nationality] is an individual who commited a crime" and "this one guy of [race, gender or nationality] is a criminal, people of [race, gender or nationality] must be criminals". As my country is often referred to as a "melting pot", I can tell you for a fact that nationalism has been nothing else but a source of countless problems and discrimination here. "This guy is dead, but it's worse because he's one of ours!" Does that seem like a good response to you? I think it demeans the entire human race and the fact you consider it "normal" is frankly the most scathing condemnation of modern society I can think of.

Maybe the best way to say "I respect that" is not to continue on with calling someone "abnormal". Can you see how someone might find that disrespectful? Your point is that the media reflects it? Yes, Dutch media reflected the view that somehow, the loss of people who lived in this country was somehow worse or more shocking than than the loss of any other human being. I find that to be demeaning and offensive to the other human beings that lost their lives in that crash. It's unethical. Either way, I'll point you to Hurlshot's post. I don't know where you got the idea that showing "empathy" is normal, but it's not the world I live in. I can recall when I heard about most recent tragedies, no matter who was with me at the time, someone around me responded with a bad joke. I'm confused by what you think is empathy anyway. If I were to become familiar with the victim, or confronted with the victims family, I would likely place myself in their shoes and yes, I would feel empathy. Doing so for people you do not know anything about is not only abnormal, it is impossible. Most of the supposed shows of empathy from people or the media aren't really empathy. It's the show of "I am sorry for your loss and I extend my sympathies". The fact that Dutch media made it about how "we lost our people" is offensive to me, a misappropriation of a terrible thing that demeans the very real loss of people that they actually have emotional connections to that others have gone through. I'm not sure why you would consider a lack of empathic response to subjects with no emotional connection to be a bad thing in the first place. To me it looks like you're trying to shame people for not having an emotional response as if emotional responses are a choice.

Is it? Or is it easier just not to care? It doesn't mean you need to get depressed and lament the state of the world but I would say its abnormal to hear about a real crisis or event around the world where people are suffering and not show any empathy? It's actually perfectly normal because it is hard to be empathic if you do not identify with the victim and identification requires familiarity. I assume you've read a lot of different things about this occurance, seen the perpetrators face, seen the victims face, seen the place where it happened, seen footage of it, heard about who the victim was. You have a lot to identify with. If I learned more about it, I'm sure I would be more empathic. But I've pretty much only read about it in dry facts. I agree to a certain degree, you do identify more with victims of a tragedy when it becomes visible. But weren't upset when MH17 was shot down over Ukraine, most of the victims were Dutch citizens. Didn't this fact make the tragedy even worse for you on a personal level even if you didn't know anyone on that plane? Not really. I'm not particularly nationalistic, the fact that they were dutch didn't make it any worse or better for me. I was about as invested in it as I would be in any other crash. I was angry that saving some jet plane fuel was apparently worth going through dangerous territory at the great risk of human lives, though. Not the same thing as empathy.

Is it? Or is it easier just not to care? It doesn't mean you need to get depressed and lament the state of the world but I would say its abnormal to hear about a real crisis or event around the world where people are suffering and not show any empathy? It's actually perfectly normal because it is hard to be empathic if you do not identify with the victim and identification requires familiarity. I assume you've read a lot of different things about this occurance, seen the perpetrators face, seen the victims face, seen the place where it happened, seen footage of it, heard about who the victim was. You have a lot to identify with. If I learned more about it, I'm sure I would be more empathic. But I've pretty much only read about it in dry facts.