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Creslin321, I can see your point, but censoring seems like an extreme remedy.  People can answer "bad" opinions/speech with speech of their own.  People who see "bad" speech have options beyond censorship. 

 

 

 

More about removing a joke that targets an oppressed group and was painful to some of them to encounter.

 

Alright, but does that warrant all out censorship of an idea or message as the first remedy?

 

That being said, Pillars of Eternity also is a game that not only features lynchings, but also has characters glorify it.  Is that not more troubling than a backer message that one has to go out of his or her way to find?

 

Oh I agree with you in general, I don't think it should be censored at all.  I just wanted to point out that in SOME cases, censorship is justified, BUT it needs to be applied fairly and hypocritically. 

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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

eta: wait, you probably meant the backer NPCs, not the memorial message, didn't you?

Edited by sparklecat
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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

I think that skews his point.  It is not whether he is "cool" with it or not, but rather whether any message needs censorship over a simple mod. 

 

Edit: To clarify, I do not this is about endorsing a message or an idea.  Instead, it is about what remedy is appropriate for this type of situation, and some posters are not comfortable with censorship as a remedy.

Edited by Nixl
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Once again just a friendly reminder not to call each other names and the like. Attack each other's positions and arguments rather than each other personally. Also, please be charitable. If someone says something in the heat of the moment that doesn't strictly go beyond the pale, give them a break. Assume that the vast majority of arguments here are made in good faith and address each of them with intellectual honesty. Think to yourself, is taking the hill worth leaving everyone's corpse on top of it? I swear, I'd host my own little beer summit if I could, but with the number of people in this thread, I don't know if I could afford the bar tab! :Cant's rueful grin icon:

Fionavar's Holliday Wishes to all members of our online community:  Happy Holidays

 

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Remembering tarna, Phosphor, Metadigital, and Visceris.  Drink mead heartily in the halls of Valhalla, my friends!

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I would like at this point to note again that the message in question is not a part of Obsidian's artistic vision for their product; it is a backer message put in because the person in question paid for it.  We're talking about a commercial, not an installation in a modern art museum.

I am not sure that I understand the distinction between commercial and artistic vision, since both are in view of the player.  In fact, one needs to go out of his or her way to find the message.

 

Mostly I'm just saying that acting like we're mangling some precious work of art by taking out a backer message and comparing it to the Charlie Hebdo situation is really pushing it. 

 

I would argue the debate does not depend on whether the work is precious or not, but rather the act of removing/censoring a message.  The act of censorship is not good in any instance.   

 

 

Ehhh...I would disagree

 

I would say that removing a message because it offends someone is, by definition, censorship.  However, I would also say that not all censorship is bad.  For example, I doubt most major news organizations would give a segment to the KKK.  This is definitely censorship, but I am for the censoring of hate speech, so I regard it as good censorship.

 

That said, I think that any policy of censorship really needs to be thought out carefully, and it needs to be applied fairly throughout society.

 

You want to censor hate speech?  Fine, but you need to clearly define what hate speech is, and you need to censor it REGARDLESS of the origin or the target.

 

So when I look at the requests to censor this limerick, I basically see a request to censor a joke that offended someone.  It is by no stretch of the imagination "hate speech."

 

And if this joke were censored, then I would think it's only fair to censor any other jokes that offend someone.

 

So if a blonde gets mad at a blonde joke, if a religious person gets mad at an offensive drawing of one of their figures, if a lawyer gets upset at a lawyer joke, then all those should be censored as well.

 

Personally, I think that is going WAY too far, which is why I'm firmly AGAINST censoring this limerick.

 

Except that the entire point of hate speech as a category is the target.  Simply targeting someone because of the fact that they belong to some group isn't hate speech.  It has to be a protected group that's historically been the victims of oppression.  If the speech in question isn't contributing to systemic discrimination, it's toothless.

 

 

I disagree here, hate speech against ANY group, regardless of a history of oppression, is hate speech.

 

For example, I often see arguments that #KillAllMen is not hate speech on the grounds that men have not been historically oppressed.  I disagree with this.  Regardless of history, it STILL incites an attitude of hatred against people based on the unalterable traits they were born with.

 

It also doesn't take systematic oppression for someone to pick up a gun and shoot someone (cough) Valerie Solanas (cough).  Like, I think if I am some dude bleeding on the ground because I was shot by a radical feminist, I wouldn't think "oh well, at least I wasn't systematically oppressed."

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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

I think that skews his point.  It is not whether he is "cool" with it or not, but rather whether any message needs censorship over a simple mod. 

 

Not really; if you're arguing that absolutely nothing be removed from the game by Obsidian for offensive content, that's a pretty broad category.

 

That said, it occurs to me that he/she might well be talking about the original subject of... one of the threads here, the backer NPCs, which is a different matter entirely.

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Well, you've demonstrated that you don't respect others' beliefs or opinions, so I'm not going to respect yours.

 

Not that I was going to anyway, because I don't actually respect anyone's opinion save my own. On that idea we just disagree completely.

 

 

Where have I disrespected other's beliefs and opinions?  Disagreeing is not disrespecting.  If I am being perfectly honest to hold the opinion that disagreeing with someone's opinion is disrespecting their opinion is a very dangerous way of thinking.  That is the line of reasoning that is the very core of intolerance and all of it's excesses throughout history.  And every time it happened people thought they were doing the right thing and were on the right side of history.

 

 

Oh man, we're getting so close to Godwin's law here, people, I can almost taste it! You can do it, darkpatriot! Which people exactly are you talking about throughout history who thought they were doing the right thing on the right side?

 

 

 

You could bring that up as an example but it isn't a particularly good one since it was only partly about ideology.  A better, and more topical example since this is the PoE board, would be the treatment of the Cathar Heresy.  It is topical because the Cathar Heresy was one of the major influences on Josh Sawyer concerning the way the Eothasians are treated in PoE.  But you see it any time you have one group who feels they are right and those they disagree with are wrong (and generally some kind of evil) and they have no need to respect their opinions. 

 

That is why I consider tolerating those who disagree with you to be extremely important.  You can certainly disagree with someone and express how you disagree with them.  But by attacking someone just for disagreeing with you (for example by calling them bigots or intolerant) you certainly won't have a great deal of luck convincing them that your opinion is correct.  If your only response is to not tolerate their opinions, attack them, and try and supress their speech then that isn't really a productive way to approach it.  For some reason people tend to dig in even deeper regarding their opinions when you do that.  And then that doesn't even take into consideration the fact that it is possible that you might be wrong and perhaps their opinion is better.  I have never seen a perfect person who was always right.  If you are only allowing your own opinions to flourish that is only going to cause you to have an even harder time recognizing when you are wrong.

Edited by darkpatriot
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I disagree here, hate speech against ANY group, regardless of a history of oppression, is hate speech.

 

For example, I often see arguments that #KillAllMen is not hate speech on the grounds that men have not been historically oppressed.  I disagree with this.  Regardless of history, it STILL incites an attitude of hatred against people based on the unalterable traits they were born with.

 

It also doesn't take systematic oppression for someone to pick up a gun and shoot someone (cough) Valerie Solanas (cough).  Like, I think if I am some dude bleeding on the ground because I was shot by a radical feminist, I wouldn't think "oh well, at least I wasn't systematically oppressed."

 

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong; hate speech has a very particular definition.  If you want to talk about speech that targets someone based on simple group identity, okay, but it's something different.

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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

I think that skews his point.  It is not whether he is "cool" with it or not, but rather whether any message needs censorship over a simple mod. 

 

Not really; if you're arguing that absolutely nothing be removed from the game by Obsidian for offensive content, that's a pretty broad category.

 

That said, it occurs to me that he/she might well be talking about the original subject of... one of the threads here, the backer NPCs, which is a different matter entirely.

 

My issue is that Mungra did not endorse any message, and so it is not about him being "cool" with it.  He merely disagrees with the remedy, which I do not see a problem with. 

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I have no problem with them,  didn't know they were backer NPCs and thought the stories were written by Obsidian.  Haven't come across anything really bad yet.

Yeah I was in the same boat. I haven't truthfully been reading all the dialogue as much as I should be so I'm not sure exactly what is happening in the game but I see these yellow bared people and reached into their soul without knowing why. At least now I know why they are different lol.

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I would say that removing a message because it offends someone is, by definition, censorship. 

 

 

Always applicable:

 

 

 

This is the definition of Censorship according to Wikipedia:

 

Censorship is the suppression of speech, public communication or other information which may be considered objectionable, harmful, sensitive, politically incorrect or inconvenient as determined by governments, media outlets, authorities or other groups or institutions.

 

Removing a joke because someone was offended clearly, unequivocally falls under this definition.

 

My argument is that censorship is just a word and is not inherently good or bad.  The key here is to argue whether the specific censorship in question in justified.

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I disagree here, hate speech against ANY group, regardless of a history of oppression, is hate speech.

 

For example, I often see arguments that #KillAllMen is not hate speech on the grounds that men have not been historically oppressed.  I disagree with this.  Regardless of history, it STILL incites an attitude of hatred against people based on the unalterable traits they were born with.

 

It also doesn't take systematic oppression for someone to pick up a gun and shoot someone (cough) Valerie Solanas (cough).  Like, I think if I am some dude bleeding on the ground because I was shot by a radical feminist, I wouldn't think "oh well, at least I wasn't systematically oppressed."

 

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong; hate speech has a very particular definition.  If you want to talk about speech that targets someone based on simple group identity, okay, but it's something different.

 

 

From Wikipedia:

 

Hate speech is, outside the law, speech that attacks a person or group on the basis of attributes such as gender, ethnic origin, religion, race, disability, or sexual orientation.

 

Male is a gender, looks like hatred of men qualifies to me.

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How about just saying "hey this is kinda uncool, maybe put something else in"

 

Still looking for someone an honest man, by the way, Diogenes?

 

 

Always.

 

Something to keep in mind guys as well is that having dark things occur (hangings/racism etc) is different from having a joke about the same thing. We all know the hangings in Gilded Vale are messed up and when Durance calls women whores, we know he's a messed up dude and is not being endorsed by the text.

 

The presentation of the joke in question is what hurts it the most I think. If some drunk jerk in a bar was singing it you could roll your eyes and think "oh this is one of *those* establishments." It's not though, its from a fourth wall breaking group of messages you find within the game. You know the joke wasn't written by a character in the context of the story/game universe but its just dumped in there by the developers/backers which changes the way in which you examine it.

 

Jokes are a tricky thing in general. Its always harder to make a joke about dark subjects than to play them straight because you are expected to laugh and therefore agree with the point of view the joke is presenting to some extent.

Edited by Diogenes
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No wonder these threads get locked. 

 

EDIT: Barney Fife said to be nice, so since I can't say nothing nice, I'll say nothing at all.

For the better. If you are here just to mock or attack other posters, then this is not a good thread for it. 

Edited by Nixl
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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

eta: wait, you probably meant the backer NPCs, not the memorial message, didn't you?

 

 

Oh just stop it with these silly falacies. You cannot win an argument by trying to misrepresent someone else's position. 

If a backer message featured ingame lore friendly racism, then yes that would also be ok. 

 

 

A fair answer, but I think this situations goes beyond just stating that something does not sit well with another.  It is about removing messages and ideas because it does not fit with a viewpoint. 

 

If the joke is horrible, then it is fair to call it horrible, but to erase/censor it feels like an extreme remedy. 

 

edit: Grammar

 

More about removing a joke that targets an oppressed group and was painful to some of its members to encounter.

 

 

Can you prove that said joke was made to target anyone in particular? Unless you can then I would be more careful when making such accusations. You, and some others, have apparently convinced themselves that the joke is somehow an example of great social injustice. It's not. It's a single joke in a video game. If they remove that poor joke then they might as well remove all of the other poorly worded backer messages or all other instances in the game that may offend some people. Like the hanging tree, incest etc. 

If you want the joke removed then you better be very precise in your definition as to what would warrant a removal from the game.

Edited by ChipMHazard
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How about just saying "hey this is kinda uncool, maybe put something else in"

 

Still looking for someone an honest man, by the way, Diogenes?

 

 

Always.

 

Something to keep in mind guys as well is that having dark things occur (hangings/racism etc) is different from having a joke about the same thing. We all know the hangings in Gilded Vale are messed up and when Durance calls women whores, we know he's a messed up dude and is not being endorsed by the text.

 

The presentation of the joke in question is what hurts it the most I think. If some drunk jerk in a bar was singing it you could roll your eyes and think "oh this is one of *those* establishments." It's not though, its from a fourth wall breaking group of messages you find within the game. You know the joke wasn't written by a character in the context of the story/game universe but its just dumped in there by the developers/backers which changes the way in which you examine it.

 

Jokes are a tricky thing in general. Its always harder to make a joke about dark subjects than to play them straight because you are expected to laugh and therefore agree with the point of view the joke is presenting to some extent.

 

 

But what about shows like Family Guy or South Park that are chock full of jokes that offend several marginalized groups?

 

If we decide to censor this joke in PoE, how can we, in good faith, allow these shows to exist without fighting them?

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I disagree here, hate speech against ANY group, regardless of a history of oppression, is hate speech.

 

For example, I often see arguments that #KillAllMen is not hate speech on the grounds that men have not been historically oppressed.  I disagree with this.  Regardless of history, it STILL incites an attitude of hatred against people based on the unalterable traits they were born with.

 

It also doesn't take systematic oppression for someone to pick up a gun and shoot someone (cough) Valerie Solanas (cough).  Like, I think if I am some dude bleeding on the ground because I was shot by a radical feminist, I wouldn't think "oh well, at least I wasn't systematically oppressed."

 

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong; hate speech has a very particular definition.  If you want to talk about speech that targets someone based on simple group identity, okay, but it's something different.

 

 

AFAIK, in the US, hate speech was defined in the earliest governmental publications as:

  • Speech that advocates or encourages violent acts or crimes of hate.
  • Speech that creates a climate of hate or prejudice, which may in turn foster the commission of hate crimes.

Hate crimes are defined (legally) as:

  • crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person.

As I recall, the original provision didn't have all those categories, they've been added over the years. Anyhow, I've never seen anything that would indicate you had to be a "historically oppressed" to have a hate crime applied against you.  Where you'd have an issue would be in proving it was a hate crime if you're not in a historically oppressed demographic as opposed to it being just a normal crime, but in theory it could happen.

 

(Cue Gromnir correcting me on legal definitions; but as I always say, I'm not a lawyer, I don't play a lawyer on TV and this post does not constitute legal advice).

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I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

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Honestly thought without these backers / supporters, the game wouldn't exist, sk I have no issue with them being memorialized in game. Just wait for mods that can remove such things if you don't like it.

 

So just to check, you'd be cool with backer messages that included racial slurs as well?

 

eta: wait, you probably meant the backer NPCs, not the memorial message, didn't you?

I'm not even aware what the offensive one is.

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I disagree here, hate speech against ANY group, regardless of a history of oppression, is hate speech.

 

For example, I often see arguments that #KillAllMen is not hate speech on the grounds that men have not been historically oppressed.  I disagree with this.  Regardless of history, it STILL incites an attitude of hatred against people based on the unalterable traits they were born with.

 

It also doesn't take systematic oppression for someone to pick up a gun and shoot someone (cough) Valerie Solanas (cough).  Like, I think if I am some dude bleeding on the ground because I was shot by a radical feminist, I wouldn't think "oh well, at least I wasn't systematically oppressed."

 

I'm sorry, but you're simply wrong; hate speech has a very particular definition.  If you want to talk about speech that targets someone based on simple group identity, okay, but it's something different.

 

 

AFAIK, in the US, hate speech was defined in the earliest governmental publications as:

  • Speech that advocates or encourages violent acts or crimes of hate.
  • Speech that creates a climate of hate or prejudice, which may in turn foster the commission of hate crimes.

Hate crimes are defined (legally) as:

  • crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person.

As I recall, the original provision didn't have all those categories, they've been added over the years. Anyhow, I've never seen anything that would indicate you had to be a "historically oppressed" to have a hate crime applied against you.  Where you'd have an issue would be in proving it was a hate crime if you're not in a historically oppressed demographic as opposed to it being just a normal crime, but in theory it could happen.

 

(Cue Gromnir correcting me on legal definitions; but as I always say, I'm not a lawyer, I don't play a lawyer on TV and this post does not constitute legal advice).

 

 

Well said, and to give an example...

 

If a paraplegic, half black, half native American, transsexual, homosexual woman shoots a Harvard educated cis white man because she hates white men...it's still a hate crime.  

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Something to keep in mind guys as well is that having dark things occur (hangings/racism etc) is different from having a joke about the same thing. We all know the hangings in Gilded Vale are messed up and when Durance calls women whores, we know he's a messed up dude and is not being endorsed by the text.

And yet, it is also human nature to joke about those things. Or even sing songs about them.1

 

The presentation of the joke in question is what hurts it the most I think. If some drunk jerk in a bar was singing it you could roll your eyes and think "oh this is one of *those* establishments." It's not though, its from a fourth wall breaking group of messages you find within the game. You know the joke wasn't written by a character in the context of the story/game universe but its just dumped in there by the developers/backers which changes the way in which you examine it.

Personally I'm treating everything in the game AS part of the game regardless of source. For example, some people complain about the names of the backer NPCs as "world breaking". My attitude is that they're in there, so they can't be world breaking. Sure it may have been a weird personal name by an eccentric family, or a name translated so many times between varying languages that it no longer fits any language, but at some level this is what the game world is.

 

With respect to the memorials, they may not make sense, always. But again neither does walking into a bathroom and reading the graphitti make any sense.2

 

1Strange Fruit anyone?

2Well how much sense can be made from "Yur gey", "No u", "yer mum" followed by crudely drawn penises anyhow?

I cannot - yet I must. How do you calculate that? At what point on the graph do "must" and "cannot" meet? Yet I must - but I cannot! ~ Ro-Man

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