Abelian75

Awesome, thank you for clarifying. This massively changes my opinion of the situation.

As much as I recognize the irony of being outraged by outrage culture, I have to say I'm extremely disappointed and feel more than a little betrayed. It's just one instance of outrage culture bullying around everyone else, but this time it's a game I had quite a bit of both money and emotional investment in. The demands for this to change are not connected in any significant way to people being hurt by the joke. This is about a group of people who have developed a taste for power, and managed to convince themselves that their addiction to witch-hunts and outrage are in some way servicing the greater good. It isn't. It's an effective brand strategy for a power-mad mob, and nothing more. When they say "I'm offended", what is actually meant is that they've seen something they know is improper, unacceptable speech by their subculture's standards. In doing so, they've found a target that they know their friends will willingly join them in attacking, and that more likely than not, they can feel the thrill of exerting their influence on others. It's entirely possible, Obsidian, that you all went along with this more than willingly. It's possible some of you are even part of the same crowd, and are excited by watching society shaped by your friends in a way you've convinced yourself is surely, surely for the best (and no judgement: I've been a part of witch-hunts just like this one as recently as a year ago, before I figured out what was happening). Regardless, as minor as this change is (and I admit it is minor, and fully understand anyone reading this and thinking "Jesus, dude, it's one dumb joke"), you've just acted to give more power to an insatiable mob of witch-hunters. When they attack their next target (and they will), know that whoever they hurt will feel the effects of their attacks just the slightest bit more deeply because of the power you've just given them.

Oh, I wasn't really arguing with you specifically, just tugging on a thread I thought was interesting. Incredibly, there's actually room for interesting discussion in this thread! We live in strange times, when a joke that I would ordinarily roll my eyes at and dismiss as being a little offensive (!) somehow provokes interesting discussion. Maybe that backer somehow IS a legitimate artist!

While I actually am personally pretty much wholly against censorship in virtually any form, I do agree that people should feel free to challenge the notion that censorship is always bad. Ironically, treating "censorship" as some magical thing one must agree is evil is ITSELF censorship. That being said, the reason I am against it is that people are ultimately pretty stupid. Throughout history, we've always been wrong about pretty important things, and it's complete hubris to think we aren't wrong about important things now. There are always going to be uncouth, "unacceptable" thoughts that are, in fact, actually correct. In the future, people will look back at us in disbelief that we were so certain of our virtue in believing X, when Y was actually obviously true all along. The kind of mob-based censorship we're seeing lately is predicated on the assumption that we've got it all figured out. In some cases, some of the stuff that we've supposedly got all figured out is incredibly, impossibly complex. It needs to be ok to talk about these things, because we are inevitably wrong about lots of them.

No, that's not true. I think it's a stupid joke and if it was my game I wouldn't have put it in. But we CAN define censorship. It is a person's speech being suppressed. That's what we fear is happening here. You're totally right that it's possible virtually nobody at Obsidian is ok with a joke like this, and that it just slipped through the cracks. If that's legitimately the case, then of course it's fine for them to remove it. That wouldn't be censorship, that would be a production mistake. That said, there is a broader picture here. This is far from an isolated case. It keeps happening, and it's happening more and more often. We just saw something similar happen a couple days ago, and the people campaigning are the same crowd every time. It's reasonable to believe that these people have the power to force Obsidian to change it out of fear of the mob, and it's reasonable to stand against that. But you're right, in this one specific case, it is possible that they just made a mistake. Because of the broader picture, it's still reasonable for us to make our voices heard and try to give some assurance that they will be supported if they do not do what the vocal outrage crowd demands. I don't care about the joke. It's dumb. I care about taking a stand against a group of people obsessed with fear, shame and power.

Of course. Or more accurately, since I doubt many of the people objecting are actually offended themselves, they want to be able to say that something is offensive to a group of people that others are inclined to care about. Most people are pretty good people and don't want to hurt anyone, so it's a very powerful rhetorical tactic to declare yourself the defenders of a group of innocent people that are supposedly being hurt by your chosen target. People enjoy having power, and this particular tactic gives them the joy of exercising power over others while still being thought of as a champion of good. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure there are a handful of people that actually did, independently, see this and feel a little hurt by it, and they have every right to say so. But the vast majority of the noise here is from the same group of people we always see doing this. They've found a very effective rhetorical tactic that allows them to bully others around. They're addicted to the power and they won't stop until people stop freely handing that power right to them.

Please, please at least consider not bowing to these bullies. You don't have to like the joke. You don't have to approve of the joke. Just please, please consider how much power you are yielding to these people before acting rashly.