Blarghagh

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.

Yeah I saw this video on the news and it was hilarious. One guy literally said "really, this is so much better than McDonalds".

Hell yes Mockingbird. You went full badass.

Mine can unless his back problem acts up.

Chuck Norris was never cool, the meme was created to make fun of his lame tough guy persona.

I'm pretty sure he doesn't actually worship Chuck Norris the person and is having fun with Chuck Norris the invincible internet phenomenon.

Yeah, as Orogun pointed out her personal information has been out there for quite a while. Doesn't excuse anything, though.

And then you'd need to feel guilty about that, too. I also feel guilty that I wrote "read about on TV" instead of "see on TV". This feeling of guilt is directly tied to the occurance of earthquakes.

Also, every time someone says something that is true, the word "FACT" will be superimposed on the vision of everyone in the conversation.

Yeah, if I didn't block out empathy for most of the victims of attacks, war, crimes, war crimes or accidents that I read about on TV my anguish would destroy the world.

Yes, I read this and honestly I'm inclined to take them up on their offer.

Slightly off-topic, but I didn't see this before and it gave me a great laugh. JadedWolf, you're the best.

I'm going to pull a Bruce here because this article deserves some signal boosting. It's a fantastic article as all of Kazerad's articles have been. It very clearly demonstrates some of the points I've been trying to make but failed to do so in a coherent manner about why it's ridiculous to smear people as groups over the actions of some of its members and why signal boosting the wrong people is to make their signal stronger. It shows perfectly that the desired outcome here should not be to "win" but to make things better by working together and acknowledging each other. All this alienation and polarisation is helping no one.

Gave me goosebumps. I know I shouldn't buy into hype, but I am so hyped.

That's what I thought last week, but then Sam Biddle posted his nonsense about how GamerGate is proof that nerds should be bullied back into submission and it opened up a whole new can of fury so at this point I'm thinking we haven't even seen GG do a limit break.

I guess that's it. The human race had a good run up until this point, but now it's time to slaughter them all.

I normally wouldn't say anything to dispute this type of post but because I think my comment is constructive I'm sure you won't mind, you not suggesting that real journalism is dead? You mean gaming journalism ? Well, I am talking about a broadcast of an "investigative" news program (EenVandaag) on a public (paid for with tax money) channel. When they regurgitate news from other sources without any research of their own and they only show one side of the story, they aren't fit to call themselves journalists. And no, interviewing a couple of Dutch people from the gaming industry who then rehash the same things you could find in just any gaming news article about GamerGate doesn't count as research. Audi alteram partem seems to mean nothing to these people. The fact that for many people using the GamerGate hashtag the real issue is a perceived lack of ethics among gaming journalists isn't even mentioned, and they don't even try to find anyone who'd want to represent the GamerGate side of the story, it's all about the faceless group of angry men who dislike women having any influence on gaming. And this of course interspersed with scenes from games in which women are brutally killed. Some of which I would agree are rather tasteless, but others in which quite honestly the program misses the point. People are killed in some video games, and among those people are women. This is also true in literature, and on television. But I don't see that being reported on in such a way. It's just plain old sensationalism. It's not the outcome that irks me, by the way, it's the method of getting there. If they had concluded that a toxic portion of a loosely defined group of people calling themselves GamerGate is harassing women on the internet and that we should all condemn that after they had given a full rundown on the story including the various reasons people have for supporting GamerGate and had done interviews with people supporting both sides involved with this story, I'd be fine with it. But anyway, in general, I don't think journalism is completely dead, there are still some bastions of journalism like Der Spiegel, but a lot of news sources have seriously deteriorated in quality. Here's the piece by the way: http://www.eenvandaag.nl/binnenland/54762/vrouwen_bedreigd_in_de_gamewereld?autoplay=1 I'm not used to anything different. Dutch journalism has always just copied over whatever articles they could find when it comes to anything that doesn't take place on Dutch soil. The irony of these journalists is that they don't seem to realize that they're their own worst enemy. They are by far the biggest, most valuable supporters of the part of GamerGate that they hate: The trolls. They're ignoring the people concerned about a lack of journalistic ethics and acknowledging attention seeking trolls instead, giving them aaaaaalll the attention and publicity they could ever need. It's not their intended message but it's their practical message. "Want to be internet famous? All you have to do is harass a woman that is in or vaguely related to the game industry. Go ahead, she's already been doxxed as we reported ad nauseum, I'm sure you can find the information for yourself." In the meanwhile, the genuine journalistic ethics people are getting angrier and angrier and are steamrolling them. Who would have guessed that acknowledging those people (whether their cause of distrust is valid or not) could have been a more beneficial approach? I mean, even if, no wait, especially if you wholeheartedly believe that this is a front for misogyny, maybe it would be a good idea to figure out exactly why so many people distrust and/or hate you enough to buy into it so easily and prefer to throw in their lot with the supposed misogynists than side with you.

I tried, in the other thread. Feeling too mellow for it today. You got me with it too. I am very ashamed.

We need more trolls to keep this from becoming an echo chamber.

I'm much more concerned about the fact that this is news than the fact that his game got pulled. He's an idiot, but I'm pretty sure the message that other idiots will receive here is "threaten somebody and Kotaku will make you famous". It may even be the intended message, seeing as how all of Gawker's nonsense is about this nowadays. Putting "Death threat" in your title makes for great click bait, which makes for great ad money.

If I say "I'm going to kill Gabe Newell too", will Kotaku make me famous? I wish for it so much.

If it was sexist that doesn't explain why people have been saying the same about Phil Fish. I saw a hilarious picture with a quote from Adam Baldwin... and a picture from Stephen Baldwin.