Bay 12 Games Forum

I get that.
What I mean is that the article written by Kathy doesn't look like it's written by a raving lunatic at first glance either (assuming that weev's doesn't look like one at first glance, which I want to severely object to - as reason I give the passages quoted above - you might not see any of those as being worthy of calling "lunatic" but I guess almst anyone should be able to find a quote that's just way beyond reasonable even at first glance).

In a way weev's article is evidence for what the people dismissed here for superficialities are talking about, and it seems to be largely ignored.

It's, as usual, full of generalization and the like. The line about Gamergate says all what you need to know about the author.

I could absolutely sympathize with her, because her basic point is true. There are a ton of people out there who will do exactly as she says in the article. But she lumps these in with all others who voice criticism (Altough, it might be the exact same thing with the earlier article, and you're supposed to exclude yourself from the picture if you think it doesnt apply to you. But I think she does an even worse job than the guy from before).

I especially love the line about complaining people never having any evidence. Because that's the exact thing that's pissing me off so much. You can provide sources, evidence, screenshots and whatever you want, stuff that actually PROVES that certain people on twitter, or on their respective Blogs are either actively lying, or just arguing based on wrong facts. But then you're just a mean harassing troll, out to discredit poor journalists and writers, trying to ruin their lives. Or even better, a sexist pig trying to get women out of games and the internet in general.

A few weeks ago, I would've said that the whole #GG crowd was overdoing it, and that there really was no need to for any of the stuff we're having now. But the more articles from the other side I read, the more convinced I am that the movement was right all along. I'm really getting sick and tired of being lumped into the same cave as these trolls, as being a sexist, harassing hatemonger on the Internet. These sites and people can dissappear, get fired or whatever, from my point of view, nothing of value will be lost.

Now, I am almost through the article and anything that is a gross generalization I could find is this:

* A document issues an explicit threat, warning women against speaking out. Lots and lots of women in tech have seen this document.

* Weev endorses this document, enthusiastically, repeatedly.

* Prominent people in tech endorse weev

Which could easily be seen as…

* Prominent people in tech tacitly endorsed that threat against speaking out.

She did talk about techies before, but never did she accuse them of anything, she only stated what she observed.
Now, that last part, that's an accusation, but, damn, the part I quoted is quite straightforward and I don't see how you would even think of denying how that could be seen as a hostile environment. I mean... What?

For the whole article before that any accusation she made was against two groups:
1. trolls
2. dangerous trolls
I think her accusations are actually valid. I mean, those are trolls. That group actually is defined by most of the very accusations she is making.

Are you actively looking for something you might construe as offending?
Seriously, I really thought there would be a mention of gamers or geeks or anything like that, but there just isn't anything that ever indicates that she did say anything against gamers, geeks, nerds, whatever as a group. Even that one accusation against "prominent people in tech" is only a statement of "there are prominent people in tech who endorse weev", so, how the hell is that even a generalization against people in tech in general?
In her last section she even talks about how there is a big group of programmers out there who definitely isn't awful.

I don't know what kind of demands some people in this topic have. When would you ever consider an article not "badly written" if this one is? I don't see the flaw in it. Seriously, I just cannot find anything that seems to be plain wrong, unfair to anybody, hazy, a bad example for what she's writing about...
What the hell?

I like this idea a lot

So do I. The clarification in the last post makes it sound even better.

So the aim is to be smug instead of making the world a better place. That seems totally sensible.

@Stuebi:
You freely admit that you understand that they probably are frustrated. I assume that you, as a fellow human being, understand frustration and have experienced it yourself. If you don't understand frustration, I won't be able to explain to you why I think they are perfectly justified in writing that article.

That person probably didn't sit down and write that with the intent to piss off as many people as possible. It is also very likely that they didn't actually sit down with the idea that all gamers are insufferable assholes. They probably even were and are aware that there are gamers out there who are downright awesome people.
But in this moment it doesn't matter. You know, it's not like they're trying to even argue that point.

Their point is something entirely else: There are a lot of gamers out there who act like entitled assholes and then feel like kings when they threaten someone to "take their business elsewhere (hah, that'll show you to stand up for yourself!)".
Are you one of those people? I guess you're not. Even if they didn't say so explicitly, in this case this article isn't directed at you.

Now there are a lot of people who go all like "Yeah, but they didn't write that, so clearly they are assholes who don't care about all the other people they are insulting."
Uhm, you see, no. If someone is writing like that, they normally assume that normal people like you and me are
1. capable of empathy (and you demonstrated as much)
2. intelligence (which you also demonstrated)
3. the willingness to use their empathy and intelligence
Now, that third point is crucial. You already understood they were frustrated. You probably would have had an easy time to realize they were talkng about entitled assholes specifically, but you didn't even bother to go that far.
For some people "that guy/gal is frustrated" is an immediate free card to shut off their brains, not even try to understand what they are saying and instead be offended. It's not like they are too exhausted or riled up to be able to bother, no, it's just that they are too damn lazy to even consider that they maybe could take a step back, switch on their brain and take the time to first realize what that other person must feel like to write that and then extract what they are actually trying to say.

In this case it was: "Dude, if you first go on being all demanding and act like an entitled asshole and then take your business elsewhere when we don't take it then you didn't 'show us' at all."
It's not even like that message is somehow buried under a pile of insults. The only insults I could find was "you're worthless" and "the average gamer is an entitled asshole".
The first one is part of the message, even if you might need to do a bit of interpretation to get what it actually means. I mean, they even explain why you are worthless to them: The money you pay is in most cases totally worthless. It doesn't cover their costs. So, actually they are saying "Your money is worthless" - they take "you" as a stand-in for "your money" and in this context that is quite justified, as the people they are targeting are actually of the same opinion - "I give you monay so you owe me!"
The second one, yes, that might be a bit harsh. That's the point where you might want to switch on your empathy, because, well, they're frustrated, right? Using hyperbole is something like the best literary device to express frustration. But it's just that - a literary device, not a statement of fact. I'm not saying they were using it consciously with the intent to signal frustration, but they certainly did subconsciously.

Of course you can make an argument about how what they are doing might be bad communication or whatever, but why the need to feel insulted?
It's not like they used their frustration to hide what they actually think.

@Phmcw:
I was specifically referring to the article that was linked by Stuebi. I did not refer to anything in relation to the whole feminism-vs-gamers mess. I apologize if I made the impression I was talking about that and would like to know how I did that.
What the linked article says when one applies the power of interpretation is, in my eyes, right. Everything else above.

I dunno. I allways went with "Nerd", because I think it sums my freetime up nicely. I casually observe the whole GG thing here and there, and I gotta say that I understand the "Gamer" side on this one a lot more than I do the other side. Stuff like this:

http://www.puppygames.net/blog/?p=1574

And other insults hurled around by certain sites offends me, because even if you disregard the label "gamer" entirely, I know it's aimed at people like me. And I cant stand Dev's and marketeers that insult and disregard their customers/readers/whatever either way.

I actually like that article. Defending your right to be treated like a human being is a good thing to do. It's quite a bit of entitlement to expect to be treated like a king for spending a few bucks - if you don't actually act like the people they are describing there, the article is not directed at you. And if you are like the people they complain about, in my eyes you deserve what you get.

I support this.
Mainly because every time I have to download a new version and install all kinds of stuff (like tilesets) I have to redo my personal options.
The Duerer tileset for instance overwrites the tree tile values and doesn't touch anything else. Having those changes in its own file would be quite nice.