Why is casual racism/sexism more accepted in video games than other forms of media (these days)?

its gooles fault as far as i can tell

Gooles never say die.

attachment is pain

How is this still going?

i really dgi

koopas all the way down

gamergate will prove to be the infinite respawn point of internerd hardman hero-victim posturing, mark my words

I can't wait until I'm 75 and lolling at pathetic GamerGate post scrolling across my corneal implants

"Yes. The internet will provide comfort after a thousand years of brutal alien rule."

Because Intel, to an extent. Intel put out a statement a day or so later saying "Didn't mean to offend anyone! Remember, there's no good reason not to give us money!", which presumably means that the guy responsible for the first decision is Sales Manager for Siberia at the moment - but they had just released a new (ahem) Intel Core Extreme, and presumably are enjoying a sales bump.

http://twitter.com/Spacekatgal/status/520739878993420290

Fuck.

context on the above tweet: https://storify.com/alexlifschitz/escapist-drama

seriously fucked up

this shit literally makes my blood boil. shame on escapist. i thought that was a decent, thoughtful site.

i'm reminded of all the shit laura hudson had to put up with while running the comics alliance website, for penning and commissioning stories about female and gay and POC writers and artists and comics. 'geek' cultures have a real strong undercurrent of intolerance (which obvs is the thrust of this thread, but...)

This stuff is lolzy right up to the point where people are being harrassed and terrorized which is more or less from jump, so maybe not so funny really.

i don't think any of it's lolzy. its the same old shit.

it's all so ridiculous that it should be laughable, but then I keep remembering that people's lives are being ruined by these horrible, entitled man-babies.

Harassment isn't funny but I feel the only way I have to effectively convey my disdain for ppl who are pro-GamerGate is to laugh at and minimize them.

and that rings true too.

finding a personally right way to claim solidarity in any case where you're not a direct target can be a challenge
renouncing the "gamer" tag seems like a good option when/if you might conceivably be confused with these jackasses

stop buying intel ?

the whole thing is sad to me, but i'm still reluctant to renounce the "gamer" tag, in a way you're letting them win

what am i letting them win?

Why would anyone want to be defined by one of their hobbies

Yeah man I'm a model train enthusiast first and foremost #TrainGate

people define themselves by all sorts of weird things. but you have to question the point of hanging onto a word once it's reached a certain level of toxicity

smellin yr own farts aint gonna do nothin abt gamer gate folks just fyi

Why not define yourself by a hobby? What else is there to life besides things you love? Would you rather be defined by a job or your relation to another person? Or the fact that you have a slight limp and a wonky eye? Why not define yourself by something that you have actively chosen and invested time in?

i define myself as a primate personally, im a primateist, dont try to get me interested in that other stuff

xp

yes! like when people say "it's just a game" like really not worth caring about as much as other monuments of human culture like slavery or war or Chris Nolan movies

Games aren't worth caring about in comparison to wars and slavery, though.

When you get to the point where you are seriously espousing the viewpoint that your ability to partake in a luxury activity is as important as basic human rights issues, it's really time for a dose of perspective (possibly administered by slap).

Why not define yourself by a hobby? What else is there to life besides things you love? Would you rather be defined by a job or your relation to another person? Or the fact that you have a slight limp and a wonky eye? Why not define yourself by something that you have actively chosen and invested time in?

I'd hope it was something I was sincerely passionate about. Video games aren't one of those things for me.

dont define yrself, be chill, be kind, skateboard maybe

it wasn't to say define - it was to say that to be passionate about culture, about the good things that human beings have done, isn't a trivial preoccupation given the fucken awful things human beings have done

like yeah sure people shd throw themselves into making the world less shitty but given we live in a society that actively promotes heightened shittiness maybe if yr passions run in non-horrible directions that's not the worst way you cd live

Five years of playing WoW has made me think that online gaming is actually making the world a shittier places, at least as far as MMOs are concerned.

well yes i certainly wdn't hold up online gaming as a flower of our culture but i'm being v. inarticulate here anyway

I went to GeekGirlCon today, volunteered for 12 hours, donated $10 to PP of the Great Northwest in exchange for those Social Justice Character Class pins, and saw thousands of people having fun celebrating inclusiveness and diversity in nerdy pursuits.

Anita Sarkeesian's panels had extra security and bag checks due to bomb threats phoned into the convention center.

Guess what though, it didn't stop her panel room from filling up at 10am.

Way XP, but there are definitely aspects where it is hard to keep a straight face - like, if you think that the Pressure of Society is stopping True Artists from Following their Vision, then that's kind of goofy in an Atlas Shrugged way, but if your model of these untrammelled souls is AAA video game developers, then you are a clown and no-one should ever take anything you say seriously ever again.

Anita Sarkeesian's panels had extra security and bag checks due to bomb threats phoned into the convention center.

That is really screwed up.

yup /:

is there anything a person can actually do about this stuff or

http://pattheflip.tumblr.com/post/99764532473/dont-be-silent-things-you-can-do-about-gamergate

Also, http://cathodedebris.tumblr.com/post/99675407383/so-just-how-popular-is-gamergate-how-many-of-them-can there's barely any of these people basically

oh good, there's probably less of them than there are of the Klan

like sand through the hourglass so our the games of our gate

i know this has been said before but i can't get over the "content doesn't matter if the gameplay and design is good!" party line spoken by people who nearly unanimously believe the "gaming is an art" mantra but apparently think it's the only artistic medium that should be exempt from sociocultural criticism. it's nuts. what does "art" encompass? "game is fun = good art. game is bad = bad art. bonus points if My Dear Baby Dove Aerith dies so many creis;_;~~~" this whole thing is such silly shit.

lol meant "game is not fun = bad art"

content doesnt matter its just a coincidence all the games we play have psychopathic content

I think for a lot of people "art" is garbled up with "free speech" as a form of the elusive "thing that's beyond criticism." Like the point of achieving "art" status for games is not to enter games into the field of discursive works that operate on each other and interface with society and human life etc etc, but to establish game creators as unassailable visionaries and game consumers as sophisticated patrons of art. This isn't how most people see art, so the dissonance is real: the more games are treated like art, the more the advocates for art-ness encounter the exact kinds of criticism they assumed art-ness trumped.

I'm generalizing obviously - I'm totally down with treating games as art myself and I'm sure many, many people who call for games to be "art" do not see it in the terms I'm sketching here - just suspect, based on my own times in geekland as a teen, that the position may not be fully considered and its proponents may not be entirely reflective or self-critical as they advance it, re: what it means and why they find the stance appealing.