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

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

sometimes at the end of the day, getting in someone's mind is less important than making sure their actions don't harm you

continued from my last point... the discourse on twitter -- a more public arena -- seems to have real value in that there is an urgent need to combat the rhetoric of the gamergate people... to disturb their narrative. politics, and feminist and anti-racist politics particularly, really is about conversation, or the making and unmaking of narratives. so on ilx we can refine our own narratives and on larger stages we can try to make sure that the egregious narratives of gamergate et al gain limited traction. if, that is, we choose to tweet which i don't, really

yeah but like, i don't think "the rabbit hole" is useless. and i also don't think the repeated attempts to shout down or discredit hateful speech is useless either. the latter especially can be very taxing though

mh otm, it's not like anyone here is in danger but it's more important to ensure people are safe from abuse and physical attacks and changing the hearts and minds of a million fuckbags isn't the easiest path to achieving that. but this is ilx and sure people want to discuss things w/e

we're sort of running in circles wrt "does talking things out on ilx = something that ends up effecting actual change" and we can sure talk that out in a conversation that eats its own ass in the casual gaming racism/sexism thread but i am... cynical of the usefulness of that discussion

they have no narrative, just contradiction of anyone who disagrees with their hashtag, whatever the fuck that means. there is no agenda other than disruption and noise.

Gamergate may literally be the least self-aware collection of people I've ever seen. As someone who has ASD, the likely ASD of a sizable chunk of this audience is no excuse. I'd compare this to the dearth of self-awareness typical of a lot of talking head mainstream conservatism, but that's much more reactionary contrarian posturing.

Come to think of it, attacking Depression Quest—a game designed explicitly to engender sympathy in its players—is probably the worst possible thing that can happen to the social development of these people.

if they're not repeatedly and intelligently called out as hateful assholes more impressionable young people are at risk for getting sucked into their worldview, hateful and dumb as it is. if they are just noise then we need to send a strong signal. i think people like brianna wu are doing something important by going on tv talking about how not OK the threats are, even if the specific people who are issuing the threats are a lost cause

also thinking about where these people come from and why they behave as they do seems useful too. bigots and harrassers don't come out of nowhere; they are produced by a culture, our culture. it seems like a good idea to try to build a world where reactionary attitudes are no longer appealing.

so that involves getting more women in the video game industry so it's not just a totally male-dominated world. but it also involves other things. like, why do these people come to think of themselves as unlovable losers in the first place? this self-loathing, mixed with male entitlement makes them feel like they aren't getting what they are "owed" and then life is just toxic quicksand from there. so this cycle needs to be broken. impossible as that might seen. but it should be acknowledged as a pattern first, which is the point of these discussions. i think.

Lately, I've also thought a lot about Glenn Greenwald saying the Joseph Campbell heroics of gaming informed Edward Snowden's sense of morality. I don't know what to conclude from that, but it's interesting that it can lead to both Gamergate and Snowden.

Also, this whole Gamergate thing has completely driven me away from gaming and writing about games.

One last musing: The real ironic thing is that Zoe/Anita/whomever else evidently care a lot more about games than whatever conservative sociopaths trying to latch onto Gamergate. Also ironic: their antics have given further credibility to Anita and she is probably the most noted mainstream gaming voice now?

Agreed with Treesh. I suspect I got, without realizing it, a lot of very positive influence in my general development from like, the FAQs of Usenet groups and other spaces I used to hang out on, plus the conduct-enforcement of older, established members. It was clear certain things were Not OK, that people who did them would be shunned, and I took that with me.

One of the miscellaneous videos linked from some Gamergate story had a developer dude arguing that AAA developers could, but don't, take certain steps to at least make it possible for good community standards to become normalized. I don't really know enough about how current multiplayer games work, but he was bringing up things like players could could have ratings based on up/down votes of other players, and that when you log on you could have it in your settings that you only want to join games/servers that exclude people with a lower than (x) rating. Maybe that already exists for all I know, but it seems like a really basic, first-step thing that, if adopted and used, would give that newly-arriving 13-year-old a sense, already, that there are kosher and not-kosher ways to play, and that the escape of games can be achieved, beautifully, without lawlessness.

the effort to reduce toxicity in online game environments is a complex and pretty interesting subject, and, at least for some companies that i know of, an on-going project with teams of people that are dedicated to working on it. there are a lot of reasons a simple player-behavior rating system like that probably would not really solve the problem. league of legends, for example, has a report system in place so you can report a players behavior and explain what they did, then this report goes to a "tribunal" which is a website where you can read through tons of these reports and vote on whether the player deserves a ban. anyone with a league account can log in and vote to ban or pardon reported players. or at least they used to be able to, idk if the system is still in place. sorry for the digression.

Interesting and relevant IMO!

I was picturing something much more basic, without tribunals or account review even - just that everybody has a rating they carry around with them, based on votes of people who play with them.... like a seller rating on ebay or something... and if you don't want to play with anybody who has less than a 95% rating, you don't have to. But yeah there would be lots of potential pitfalls there, not least the inevitable efforts of trolls and shit-starters to undermine the system by negatively ranking everybody, or whatever. Sigh.

Tho a lot of games that do a lot of that stuff still have p toxic communities like League etc

oh yeah, league is incredibly toxic, they def haven't solved the problem at all. but they release stats sometimes, like ~90% of reports of a user using homophobic language gets voted to be banned, x% of users who get banned never have it happen again. stuff like that. they are also really open with their thought process about how they go about trying to deal with toxicity, like how they don't want to create a "ghetto" of toxic players all playing together, and that they believe most players who get reported are usually not bad-behaved, but just have outbursts after a few frustrating games and stuff.

I find all that really fascinating. Also think a lot of this is a serious "these things take time" thing where if there are positive impacts they will be subtle, and apparent in hindsight years later.

most players who get reported are usually not bad-behaved, but just have outbursts after a few frustrating games and stuff

lol well this is 100% wrong

ime most gamers, like nerds everywhere, access ban-worthy language bc it's what they base their horrible senses of humor on

continued from my last point... the discourse on twitter -- a more public arena -- seems to have real value in that there is an urgent need to combat the rhetoric of the gamergate people... to disturb their narrative. politics, and feminist and anti-racist politics particularly, really is about conversation, or the making and unmaking of narratives. so on ilx we can refine our own narratives and on larger stages we can try to make sure that the egregious narratives of gamergate et al gain limited traction. if, that is, we choose to tweet which i don't, really

― Treeship, Saturday, October 18, 2014 9:50 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah idk i think it does have value but people are also super grandiose and discursive and when all u have to do is yell at people on twitter and thats achieves the highest virtue of activism you just get a lot of people jerkin it in public which is pretty uncool to be around

i have a lot more sympathy who are just mad and telling people to fuck off than those who make telling people to fuck off on the internet their personal project