This. Games are a work of fiction and it's sad that it needs to be a statement for some.
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What exactly is the deal with this “Anti-SJW” bullshit in the gaming community?
- Thread starter Trago
- Start date
This. Games are a work of fiction and it's sad that it needs to be a statement for some.
Social justice is an economic concept. It's basically communism (or more precisely "scare quote communism") with another name. The UN put it as, "Social justice may be broadly understood as the fair and compassionate distribution of the fruits of economic growth." Some people, particularly Americans, become extremely nervous at the merest hint of communism/anti-capitalist rhetoric or forced redistribution of potentially ill-gotten gains. Most people who talk about "social justice" don't really have a clear understanding of what they're talking about.
What happened somewhere along the line is that social justice got tangled up in the idea of arts and culture; artistic underclasses akin to economic ones. It's the redistribution of power as currency within culture. Typically forcibly. And the forcibly part is where the tensions invariably start. We look at the disadvantages women face getting into IT. A social-justice minded person seeks to redistribute that power structure so that women have a fair chance within this structure. I think most people don't really think through what social justice is. But in practice it's fairly basic "give the short kid a crate to stand on" shit.
And people who use SJW as an insult use it as shorthand for "fanatical person". They genuinely don't care about any deeper meaning of the words. And it has become a surprisingly common insult globally. It is concerning that the alt-right used GamerGate to springboard a relatively obscure term into global mainstream usage.
It was bound to happen eventually, however. When someone is called a Dunce, the person calling them a Dunce 101% doesn't care that John Duns Scotus was arguably one the greatest minds of his generation; writing highly influential works on Catholicism and philosophy. Most people don't care that Luddites fought against violations of labour laws and exploitation of the working class. To them, a luddite is someone who hates technology. The truths behind insults are easily forgotten.
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It's natural product of... people. Both bigotry, but also how a group of people will talk about bigotry. This board is all about a particular subculture that's, significantly, dominanted by a few societies, many with outsized cultural influence etc etc, but with an international audience. Thus terms are thrown around that just don't fly in different cultures (e.g. 'whiteness' means a lot more to more people in the US than it does in the UK, I'd wager), ditto other attitudes and understandings and nuances.
Even with the best intentions (being respectful, inclusive, imaginative, conscious), we're still living and talking in a world that's extremely complicated and there's no one-size-fits-all answer. That's the basic lesson of history and it is amazingly easy to forget.
I'll just call whoever did that shitty crossdressing quest in BotW a piece of shit instead. I have yet to see a good argument for its inclusion. Persona 5 gets a lot of hate, rightfully so, for its shitty gay panic stuff but man that BotW stuff was awful.
And I call sticking to the same character traits over and over forced uniformity, same for media that could easily be more diverse but isn't.
I love how people bring in these loaded and scary terms like "FORCED" and "AGENDA" whenever these topics arise but don't bat an eye when something just serves to maintain the status quo. Why is changing somebody's gender or skin color an inherently bad thing that it needs these scare-quotey labels attached to it?
They are immature and selfish and lack the basic respect for the others.
They will never change so I just ignore them, like I do with stupid people in real life.
They will never change so I just ignore them, like I do with stupid people in real life.
User Banned (Permanent): Rationalizing prejudice and previous severe infractions for bigotry
This is also a fantastic point, that echoes what I said before about the (mainly) US-centric perspective. Latin America is seeing a huge raise in far-right movements that go against abortion, LGBT, and inclusive language. The reason? People reject the sudden and extreme "SJW" movements that have been making its way into some sectors of society (aka the "woke" young people) through social media. Pushing this radical agenda will only cause these conservative sectors reject it and retract to a right-leaning shelter.
Gaming is trying to be pushed in the same direction, and I personally don't see it ending well.
THANK YOU.
Don't hang your art in the gallery if you don't want it analyzed and critiqued.
Can you post in your real account, please? Mr. I only have 10 post in two years.
And fuck gamers. The fact I love videogames that don't mean I love all the communities out there.
when you are criticizing a group its normal in argument to not make use of the word "most" or to not show exceptions, when people criticize the united states for example they are not talking about every american, only to those the critic is aplicable.
like for example: united states is a racist country, does everyone in america is racist? no, people have to stop thinking that we should create execeptions to every argument, there's always exceptions, and people will understand that when i talk like that there's a bunch of racists in US, including the president, and thats a big problem in the country and there's good people fighting against it.
Good for the people that is not part of what the sentence is about, these people dont need to get angry with the argument because they know its used to fight a real problem in that group (Americans).
When people argue gamers are sexist and racists does it means everyone that plays videogames? no they are talking about the majority of the group, resetera is the only place where racism if banable in game forums, its an exception.
Lol what.
When I was a boy I picked up videogames because they were extremely fun. Still are.
This is only part of the story, surely (and a very particular telling of it too).
One thing we rarely hear about is the economic side of things. The focus on 'SJWs' and 'extreme' changes to 'traditional' societies etc feels to me a fig-leaf for many more complicated and larger things behind the scenes.
I guess it's the difference between a title and a person. Anyone can be 007 but James Bond is a trickier situation. Then again authenticity went out the window from the beginning as Connery is Scottish. Ultimately, the IP holders have domain over the characters and decide who and what they are.
And yet, the mere mention of a new character, in a new IP, being queer is considered "forced diversity" by a large contingent of the gaming community.
So yes, Gamers are mostly trash, but you are free to for on that hill.
This made me chuckle. Glad EA and Dice stood their ground with all that nonsense being thrown against them.
How is having a female lead or even a trans character a "radical agenda"? People lost their shit at women in BF5 or female generals in Rome 2. They lost their shit at "Ellie being lesbian". I dont really see how absolutely normal things that exist in this world are a "radical agenda".
It must be nice living in a bubble if you really think only children from 7-10 are toxic
What's the problem if an established character changed sex or color? Seriously, these are virtual fictional characters not some real person.
Can you explain to me what these "extreme SJW movements" are?
Thing that really bothers me about all this stuff is like... the idea that gaming was ever a safe space for marginalised white male "nerds" was largely a myth to begin with.
The truth is that women (and LGBT+ and nonwhites to some extent) who enjoyed games were constantly dismissed. Gender culture has been segregate in most media for a long time, games that actually catered to and were widely popular with women have been dismissed as "non games" and are getting lost to history. When I was a kid every girl I knew had played some kind of game. Maybe it was educational text adventures at school, maybe it was barbie horse adventures, maybe it was centipede on their phone, tetris, bejeweled, petz, rollercoaster tycoon, the sims, nintendogs... but a large chunk of them never identified as "gamers" because society had taught them that being a "gamer" meant military shooters on a home console or some-such.
And then even girls like me who actually did play "traditional hardcore games" widely recognised by gamer geek culture would be dismissed anyway. Maybe our boyfriends or brothers made us play? Maybe we dabbled but weren't that good at it? maybe we were "NOT NORMAL GIRLS(tm)"? Every female gamer I know born before the 90s has these kinds of stories.
I'd also like to point out, this is anecdotal but LGBTQ+ gamers seem to make up an extraordinarily large portion of devs, hobbyist gamers and people who have been gaming for 3 or more decades compared to their proportion in the overall population?
It was awfully telling in the Wii era when nintendo were criticised for making "non-games" and the term CASUAL started appearing everywhere. And after that it was the controversy of "walking sims" on steam. Why would you need such gatekeeping in the first place if you weren't trying to keep people out?
So I think it's a mistake to label straight white male supremacist gatekeepers as "gamers", just like their fantasy of a pan-european white blood legacy (that somehow homogenises vikings, celts, greeks and romans as some singular ethnic identity) is massively inaccurate, so is the idea that gaming *ever* truly belonged to all those boys who were typecast as the primary consumers by the media. It is historical negationism thanks.
The truth is that women (and LGBT+ and nonwhites to some extent) who enjoyed games were constantly dismissed. Gender culture has been segregate in most media for a long time, games that actually catered to and were widely popular with women have been dismissed as "non games" and are getting lost to history. When I was a kid every girl I knew had played some kind of game. Maybe it was educational text adventures at school, maybe it was barbie horse adventures, maybe it was centipede on their phone, tetris, bejeweled, petz, rollercoaster tycoon, the sims, nintendogs... but a large chunk of them never identified as "gamers" because society had taught them that being a "gamer" meant military shooters on a home console or some-such.
And then even girls like me who actually did play "traditional hardcore games" widely recognised by gamer geek culture would be dismissed anyway. Maybe our boyfriends or brothers made us play? Maybe we dabbled but weren't that good at it? maybe we were "NOT NORMAL GIRLS(tm)"? Every female gamer I know born before the 90s has these kinds of stories.
I'd also like to point out, this is anecdotal but LGBTQ+ gamers seem to make up an extraordinarily large portion of devs, hobbyist gamers and people who have been gaming for 3 or more decades compared to their proportion in the overall population?
It was awfully telling in the Wii era when nintendo were criticised for making "non-games" and the term CASUAL started appearing everywhere. And after that it was the controversy of "walking sims" on steam. Why would you need such gatekeeping in the first place if you weren't trying to keep people out?
So I think it's a mistake to label straight white male supremacist gatekeepers as "gamers", just like their fantasy of a pan-european white blood legacy (that somehow homogenises vikings, celts, greeks and romans as some singular ethnic identity) is massively inaccurate, so is the idea that gaming *ever* truly belonged to all those boys who were typecast as the primary consumers by the media. It is historical negationism thanks.
You are free to check my profile and ~ 600posts in the old place. Being more of a reader than a poster. Just got a bit pissed off with all the "gamers are crap/shit" comments lately. @Eylos is right and I do agree with him.
User banned (2 weeks): denying the existence of well-documented hate groups, dismissing concerns of sexual harassment + account in junior phase.
This whole conflict does not exist. SJWs do not exist. An anti-SJW-crowd doesn't really exist. All there is, is a few people on the internet that prove man's inability to sit in a room alone.
Out on the streets, I hear more people arguing the health benefits of avocado. Now for people who live on the internet....
Other example: Sargon of Fuckwad argues that Metal Music is becoming too "safe". Metalinjecton or some other irrelevant youtube channel invites two women who argue that metal shows are not "safe". Well, Metal shows are not meant to be "safe". Neither are they meant to be "dangerous." They are somewhere in the middle. I go to metal shows every week. They are never too "safe", nor are they "unsafe." I punch chicks and they punch back, one almost broke my nose recently.
None of this shit exists. Out there. It's all nothing but irrelevant youtube poopoo.
There is, of course, a discussion regarding our society. I welcome it. I do not see it reflected in the youtubes.
Out on the streets, I hear more people arguing the health benefits of avocado. Now for people who live on the internet....
Other example: Sargon of Fuckwad argues that Metal Music is becoming too "safe". Metalinjecton or some other irrelevant youtube channel invites two women who argue that metal shows are not "safe". Well, Metal shows are not meant to be "safe". Neither are they meant to be "dangerous." They are somewhere in the middle. I go to metal shows every week. They are never too "safe", nor are they "unsafe." I punch chicks and they punch back, one almost broke my nose recently.
None of this shit exists. Out there. It's all nothing but irrelevant youtube poopoo.
There is, of course, a discussion regarding our society. I welcome it. I do not see it reflected in the youtubes.
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Hey I just wanted to say thank you for sharing this. It was actually pretty enlightening and I learned more about black hairstyles.
That's... disrespectful to the OG XB pad.
Agree with the social media aspect, though. Way too easy to spout your toxic views anonymously, without having to worry about any repercussions.
Forced diversity is one of the dumbest terms out there.
It basically means "If the entire story doesn't hinge on the fact that a character is gay/black/female, they should be a white manly man" which is just dumb as shit
It was an overstatement.
There is no problem, just an example of what I would consider forced. This goes both ways, of course. If ND change Chloe or Elie, it would feel just as forced.
I saw this topic and I thought "Wow, in the old days, this thread would be a graveyard of banned accounts, but luckily, we're beyond that now".
Nope.
For sure. My dad suddenly has a lot of concern about how Captain Marvel is going to lead the Avengers, and how Marvel is forcing heroes no one wants like Shang Chi down our throats. We're Puerto Rican and he's 56
I'm trying to give this a charitable reading but it sounds like you punch women at metal shows...
I'm not sure what you're really going on about though with 'this doesn't exist', it definitely exists. Are you trying to give a philosophical argument that we live in a simulation or something? Anti-SJWs absolutely exist. People that fight for equality and social justice absolutely exist as well.
You are giving to much credit to the concept of SJWs. Sure there are posers in real life, people who like to post on facebook or instagram showing their association with various ''virtuous causes'. But outside the virtual worlds of the internet, I don't think the stereotype that alt right has generated of the SJW meme, exists that much. It certainly isn't a particularly useful characterisation of say many activists fighting for progressive causes in the real world.
Similar here. My 60 year old mom, ever since Bolsonaro has become a thing, decided to always complain about PC culture whenever I mention movies with female leads, such as Captain Marvel. Or how Black Panther only won some Oscars because it was a black majority movie.
Roughly a fifth of the US population voted for Trump, not half. It was 19% of Americans, not 50%.
Not exclusively no : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_justice
It's been clarified by people such as Bourdieu that there are multiple forms of capital at work in any society besides economic capital: social capital, cultural capital, and symbolic capital.
For an overview, see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Bourdieu
Social justice is not solely about wealth redistribution.
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Propaganda that exists to further marginalize and encourage violence against vulnerable people should not exist. Whether it doesn't exist because we make people who have those opinions uncomfortable with sharing them, or because we let products with those ideas die out of the gate, doesn't matter. Vote with your wallet and don't support them. Openly criticize the product and the people making them. Make people feel uncomfortable and not wanted in society for being racist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, and generally speaking xenophobic. We aren't going to kill these ideas with kindness.
Media that has harmful ideas, but is well meaning, should be criticized as well so the people in charge understand this and do better the next time.
The question to ask is if a person's outrage about protecting fragile demographics of society or the harmful status quo. Things like the Hay's Code are largely about the latter.
Please get out of here with the "not all men" horseshit. This is just a derailing tactic and concern trolling. "What about the good boys?!" I don't know. We're not talking about them right now. Either engage with the actual issue or leave.
OK!
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I dunno. I find it difficult to understand, honestly. There are probably lots of factors at play that I'm not aware of.
Still, if I were to hazard a (perhaps reductive) guess, I would say folk find change threatening and even a bit scary, so they get angry. Having a 'safe' kind of enemy like "dem SJWz" probably gives them something to project their anger onto that won't, y'know, physically retaliate.
Like I said, I don't really know.
Still, if I were to hazard a (perhaps reductive) guess, I would say folk find change threatening and even a bit scary, so they get angry. Having a 'safe' kind of enemy like "dem SJWz" probably gives them something to project their anger onto that won't, y'know, physically retaliate.
Like I said, I don't really know.
