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

the HD remake was Hitler's fav video game iirc

Getting rid of review scores and having text only reviews would help a lot

Jet Grind/Set Radio the original is a 10, though.

― Andrew Farrell, Saturday, October 18, 2014 8:50 AM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah I guess my whole family does deserve cancer good point.

That's Andrew actually great thank you Andrew that's in a weird way just what I need right now.

because of some other reason

yeeeeeah

the stupid persecution complex and irrational anger of the culture

otm! I was cleaning out some stuff from my parents' house yesterday and I was surprised by the anger and alienation of the dumb shit I'd scrawled among the doodles of my high school era rough notes. I mean I'm bitter now of course but I'd really forgotten the intensity, and it did remind me of the younger/less manipulative end of #GG

so y'know I just roll my eyes at these guys going "women can't appreciate games properly because none of them were this angry and dorky as teenagers, therefore they aren't allowed into the clubhouse or to imply they don't always get everything they want just for being women"

signed, the most angry, dorky and dateless teenager, who wasn't even allowed to play D&D and Warhammer with the male angry dorks because 1. girl 2. ugly girl 3. if even talked to, instantly given a gatekeeping quiz and deemed a FAKE for not memorising the right pointless arcane facts, or if test passed then "uh that stuff's dumb and who'd want to know any of that stuff anyway" (OK, stage 3 might be how all geeks treat each other)

Every women I've known in games has talked and ppl asking if they "really" played games etc, quizzes like you mention

I think for every man thinking women can't really be gamers, there's another congratulating himself because he knows women can be gamers, too.

i mean i knew this was insane but i didnt know HOW insane. i keep waiting for an adult to step in

Hell, they've adopted "Mom" as their shield/adult, I think

http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091019190254/futuramabeta/es/images/f/fc/Mam%C3%A1.jpg

http://www.wearyourbeer.com/images/Pink_Floyd_Mother_White_Shirt.jpg

Sorry matt, that was a stupid thing to say.

(for me to say)

signed, the most angry, dorky and dateless teenager, who wasn't even allowed to play D&D and Warhammer with the male angry dorks because 1. girl 2. ugly girl 3. if even talked to, instantly given a gatekeeping quiz and deemed a FAKE for not memorising the right pointless arcane facts, or if test passed then "uh that stuff's dumb and who'd want to know any of that stuff anyway" (OK, stage 3 might be how all geeks treat each other)

― club mate martyr (a passing spacecadet), Saturday, October 18, 2014 10:38 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

teenage dorks were the worst at stuff like this, like bc they feel unable to ascertain the social cues that have helped their peers 'get ahead' socially they create this very strict hierarchical alternate structure, it's like the competition of the real world but more narrow and punishingly competitive

very often the social cue they fail to ascertain is "be physically attractive."

teenagers in general are aggrieved and judgemental its totally typical and understandable and just kinda part of life, the thing w nerd culture is it becomes some sort of talisman that they carry with themselves way longer than is healthy, its a central animating myth along with that theyre smarter than everyone and deserve actually to be at the top of the totem pole because of it, so at a time when they shld be growing up theyre cocooning themselves in this scene that encourages them to feed their resentment when they shd be developing a more magnanimous view on life

tho tbqh im not sure the % of aggrieved manbabies is really any higher than society at large, and the gamer gate people are prob mostly still young

Yeah, I mean, I passed through this stuff on my way to the well-rounded and healthy (!?!??!) state that I currently occupy. I get a LITTLE bit iffy about hating too consistently on "nerds" as the problem here, because being hated on is what drives a lot of people to armor themselves with these nerd tropes! I knew a lot of dudes, in my teenage anime/gamer/etc. days, that were considerably more intense and angry than I was. Some of them stayed that way, and we grew apart as I got a little further along and just basically mellowed out a little. I wonder if any of 'em are now GamerGaters; it wouldn't surprise me.

But some of them turned out just fine! The intensity got worked out somehow and they are now happy enthusiastic nerds of the kinds you want to meet. The degree of nerd-dom doesn't really track directly onto the degree of hateful intensity. Some of the nerdiest are some of the nicest. But there are these tropes and tendencies and myths within nerd subcultures that could, yeah, become self-sustaining in a certain sort of person, to where you're still using at 30 the tools for sorting out insecurity that are really meant to be kind of temporary tools of firming yourself up at 13. I guess this is a longwinded way of throwing around the "manchild" straw-man(child).

Like, we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that nice nerds are some of the nicest people you'll ever meet - empathetic eccentric enthusiasts. ILX has more than a few great ones. There are legitimate paths out of being a little ball of rage and internet cockiness, besides becoming one of the Cool Kids or w/e.

feel like a lot of the nerd bashing ive seen is just messing w them for adopting that aggrieved mythology, which is ironic in a way no one committed to that ideology is capable of understanding, which is the joke anyway

everyday i thank god there was no internet around when i was in my teens/twenties

i said dorks not nerds *clears throat*

very often the social cue they fail to ascertain is "be physically attractive."

― you walk on the street, grab the rock (President Keyes), Saturday, October 18, 2014 4:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ehh i mean sure but also learn personal hygiene

you know who wrote a great essay long these lines is ellen willis, i think this piece is pretty otm:
http://nymag.com/thecut/2014/04/memoirs-of-a-non-prom-queen.html

but to be fair, this experience in h.s. she describes was also mine: The students’ social life was fragmented along ethnic and class lines; there was no universally recognized, schoolwide social hierarchy.

The most popular kids were not necessarily the best looking or the best dressed or the most snobbish or the least studious. In retrospect, it seems to me that they were popular for much more honorable reasons. They were attuned to other people, aware of subtle social nuances. They projected an inviting sexual warmth. Far from being slavish followers of fashion, they were self-confident enough to set fashions. They suggested, initiated, led. Above all—this was their main appeal for me—they knew how to have a good time.

feel like my jr high had popular kids but by hs it was just a bunch of diff cliques

and wow there was some shameless nerding

I like this NYer bit, especially when it points out that games are artifice:

http://www.newyorker.com/tech/elements/gamergate-scandal-erupts-video-game-community

How much of the 70s-80s jock v. nerd mindset persists culturally because the main cohort of pop-culture producers were formed during that time and consumed pop-culture formed during that time, so it sticks as a primal template, even tho culture changed and blew the fuck up once the Internet permeated everything?

I mean, I'm reminded of Patton Oswalt's thing from from a coupla years ago bemoaning the change to outside (sub)cultural transmission avenues; genre entertainment used to be something you had to hunt for, like having an older brother hook you up with Watchmen or Replacements albums or Joy Division or Public Enemy.

This is badly articulated, but does anybody get what I mean? 21 Jump Street explicitly commented on this change

yeah idk i was in hs pre internet as mass culture and things already did not resemble the popular jocks and suffering nerds archetype

town im from is on the liberal end of the spectrum tho so im sure that had something to do w it

I feel like 'jocks rule the school' was more prevalent in certain circles places than others, it was def prevalent in more mainstream suburbs, where i went to h.s. it was like 40% white and 1/3rd on free lunch so obv more serious underlying divisions of race/class are going to undermine a traditional heirarchy

but nerd cliques still created their own heirarchies that replicated themselves around certain kinds of knowledge or whatever ... definitely around possessions. i mean in 5th grade it was around magic cards, lol, i was very proud of myself when i beat the rich kid who had like a million magic cards in one game bc he always won

i always google to see if my friend from jr high who was the epitome of the nice smart handsome sucessful jock class president is in congress yet but hes still just a finance bro so disappointed in him

one thing i guess i notice about people who were popular early is that they tend to have paired off pretty early on, like they are married by their mid 20s, this is a big generalization though

100% world of young ppl anecdotal obv

one day these ppl are going to come to their senses and piggy's corpse will be lying there and they won't have any idea how it got to that point

― Roberto Spiralli, Saturday, October 18, 2014 8:30 AM (11 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm so late on everything today but

idk, i think "driving multiple women out of their houses and threatening mass shootings" is enough to warrant the "piggy is dead" comp, and if someone were to actually end up physically attacked or dead from all this we've already seen what their response would be: "pity these horrible fringe extremists would do this and hurt our movement, hey stop generalizing us, we're not all like that, you're being racist against gamers #gamergate #notyourshield"

It's getting harder and harder to remember the details, but I'm pretty sure that as an angsty teen in suburbia, "jocks" vs. "nerds" was a useful shorthand derived from TV and comics that I didn't find actually fitting the particularly forms of outcastyness I experienced. This is probably partly derived from the realities of magnet programs and honors classes, things which I imagine didn't exist in the heyday of this trope. It was more like Daria, where our heroes the bitter oddballs seem to actually get along just fine with the two most genuinely well-liked kids in school (Jodie and Michael) even though they don't really hang out with them, or with the token Goth girl floating around somewhere in the background. The teasing and isolation for being a nerd and a crybaby were worst between third and eighth grade; by high school, my main sources of alienation were the wounds I'd already accumulated, and the arbitrary justice and dumbass logics of the institution itself.

But I also imagine that things were and are really different in small towns and that it varies a lot by the size of the school in question. The really really intense, resentment-filled dudes I used to know online were all from much more small-town or practically rural settings, where outlets and role models for nerds were probably way fewer, and the seeming (and real) powers of closed-minded high school big shots were almost certainly much greater. I mean, I was in a position where my school could sustain both an anime club and a breakaway rival faction of an anime club. If you were one of only two or three kids at your whole school who liked "weird" stuff, what would life look like? How much of an escape could the ostensible meritocracy of the internet seem? How easy would it be to convince you that critiques of the hobby around which you found solace were actually attacks by outsiders trying to take away this one refuge? Just spitballing here but I remain fascinated by GamerGate's appeal, not to the hardcore assholes but to the neophyte arriving at the fringe, trying on the costume and finding it appealing.

also, agreed sadly with zachylon - i think we are past the "piggy is dead" moment, it just hasn't been any kind of sobering wake-up call. Or rather, within the stories gamers tell themselves, abandoning (or even taking to task) a banner that's been sullied by evil isn't the honorable way out. The stubborn insistence on keeping the name and the supposed mission going, when it's brought nothing but harm and has no viable platform, I think goes beyond just the fact that the mission is a smokescreen for other unvoiced anxieties and so on.

anyway i could write a zillion, literally a zillion words about my own psychological history that resulted in me becoming the worst abusive type of internet troll for a short period in my life -- and there's a lot there that isn't really built on these talked-about/thought-about themes in internet nerd abusiveness and are also, i'm 100% certain, a big part of it -- but i'm done thinking there's real value in trying to properly plot all the psychologies that make up this abusiveness, that it won't solve anything or help what is essentially just a misogyny issue (with "lack of mental health support" the biggest secondary factor). and it would just be super narcissistic of me to get into it.

but on a similar note i find this discussion really interesting

xp xp xp xp

I want to believe it could help to chart the exact paths of this stuff, but I couldn't actually say why, or how - maybe you're right and these are rocks whose undersides are best not seen. Maybe I'm anticipating some next campaign, in PSAs or editorial content or how games are reviewed or some brilliant psychological Trojan Horse of a game - that, knowing the tropes and myths and emotional pulls well, could thus effectively detour or short-circuit them, or offer alternative ways of filling the same needs. I dunno, I'm kinda out of my depth here.

its at least interesting

one of the things thats so unchill abt so much internet communication these days is the undefined line between conversation and activism and how activism is generally considered to be more virtuous end of that spectrum which imo is just adopting the values of materialism where action and success is more important than ethics and conduct

not at all to say that activism is bad btw btw

i'm not anti-conversation though i've become a lot more cynical about its usefulness now than in recent years, there is definitely just a part of me that sees it as more self-serving in certain arenas like, often, ilx (for example), where there seems to be a disconnect to me between the discussion and the utility. not against it but i've been distancing myself from the need to talk about my own shit cause i'm ascetic and also boring idk -- it starts to just feel self-serving, so i'd rather rearrange the idea of personal conversation as recreation rather than usefulness. i do think there's "activist" value in academia etc

of course i have also become v cynical about activism. i am basically a downer

why does it need ~utility~

a part of all this is i've come to think a lot about the difference in how gamergaters etc (are allowed to) act and how they think. when i was more of an idealist these were totally connected. but thanks to the horribleness of the internet and its many comment sections i've had to unlearn the idea that brown vs. board and the voting rights act actually coincided with less racist thinking in america, that they were blunt-force acts that weren't at all predicated on massive societal shifts in thought but shifts in political pressure and etiquette etc. that racism isn't only still alive in concealed, lib postracial attitudes but that there are literally tons of people who would vote to repeal interracial marriage.

i guess what i'm saying is i value action and success more than ethics and conduct! but i am equally cynical about advances in either esp under late capitalism which has ruined my own personal utility as a human being

this is all just a long bloated way of me saying i'd feel guilty boring everyone with my long bloated personal story esp under the guise that it would have gg-related usefulness, bc i am forgetting that 90% of this thread is really just making fun of embarrassing tweets and who gaf anyway. ignore me

Aren't the statements on online boards also actions though? Both ILX and 4chan? Shifting the words and stories would be shifting the actions, and if only the harassment typed online stopped, that would be 99% of the GamerGate harassment, right? But I worry I'm misreading you.

i think lag00n and me are both approaching that idea from different angles

i was very passionate about internet discourse activism (feministfuckboyism well-documented here) and my mind almost immediately drives me into that "how is this helpful" arena, so i have to force myself to stop viewing discussions about nerd psychology etc as attempts to enact real change bc i'm not there anymore, i'm cynical about what you're saying (again -- mostly bc capitalism). i see it as the wrong avenue to get to a place other people aren't necessarily interested in going.

that came out bad, when i say "it" i'm not arguing w/what you're saying just about what my brain defaults to.

now that this convo has shifted to my own personal psychology we can all go back to the nerd brain shit

since ilx is largely a "progressive" space isn't conversation supposed to augment understanding moreso than change hearts and minds? and doesn't education have an inherent utility, in that especially in a complex field like politics you have to know the nuances of the field if you are to act meaningfully?

augment understanding -> "let's go down the rabbit hole"

no thanks