I don't think you can use the comments area of a blog to credibly criticize an ideology/political party/anything except an individual commentator.
That's one of their most common defences of their shitty behavior - "Oh, it's not gamergate, it's just these individuals." Except, Gamergate seems to be mostly composed of those individuals.
When someone's quoting chapter and verse from what a group believes - particularly a group with no structure, where the beliefs are entirely written by those individuals - it's entirely fair to criticize that group for it.
Yes because calling an individual commentator "they' with implication that they're a representative of a specific group is potentially perilous if you want validity and veracity to be a part of your discussion.
I was debating on whether to post about this since it is kind of preaching to the choir, but again we kind of do this all the time in other threads anyway.
Obsidian has a new game out, a fantasy RPG called Pillars of Eternity which was funded with almost 4 million dollars through Kickstarter. One of the backer tiers allowed for the backer to add some inconsequential trinket text somewhere in the game. One of those backers chose to put a transphobic poem about a man committing suicide after having sex with a trans person he didn't know was trans there.
One person on twitter wrote to Josh Sawyer, one of the designers of the game, and said that such a joke was not okay. Sawyer responded by saying he would look into the issue. Cue the gamergate brigade descending, declaring that what the evil SJWs want is censorship, how the person who complained shouldn't be listened to because she joked about killing all men, and how Sawyer shouldn't cave to evil SJWs (and instead cave to the GamerGators?). The funniest part is still the people defending the poem because of "historical context" in a fantasy RPG featuring magic and elves.
Oh yeah, and on another note, I find it funny how GamerGate is all about Reaxxion. Reaxxion is "gaming site" started by RooshV, a man who believes that rape should be legal in a private residence. Because ethics I guess.
Eh, I'm on the fence about that. Ultimately I think they'd be well within their rights to disallow offensive text for that reward, but many jokes are offensive and still funny. Would have to see the poem, I guess.
My problem is that they basically equate criticism with censorship and enforce their views through what is essentially bullying. It doesn't help that they are completely projecting all their own faults onto their opposition.
Well, maybe they're equating criticism with censorship, and I definitely do not agree with that. I think it's pretty obviously censorship if they remove the material, though. That's not to say that they don't have every right to remove offensive material from their game (or not publish it in the game in the first place), but that would still be censorship by definition, yeah?
Unless the Kickstarter forbade offensive text in the fulfillment of that reward level, maybe their best course of action is to refund the guy and say "Sorry but this is offensive to our users and can't be included." Done. If they did claim some editorial control then there's really no problem. Just say "Sorry this can't be put in like this, what else have you got?"
I've seen people distinguish between "kicking down" and "kicking up". Making fun of trans people is an example of kicking down because it's against a group that face discrimination. Kicking up would be a make a joke about racists as this group do the discriminating.
The line gets blurred in places and I've seen situations where the joke about the racist is misintepreted as a racist joke.
Cards Against Humanity retracted a the "Passable Transvestives" card and used the term "kicking down" in their apology.
Ugh, I dislike that terminology intensely. I don't think it's reasonable to make a blanket statement that perceived oppressors are fair game and perceived oppressed are not. That borders on establishing standards for thought crime, to me.
That borders on establishing standards for thought crime, to me.
It's not so much standards of law, as standards of decency/quality. I'm a free-speech absolutist, but that doesn't mean I think all speech is good. "Punching down" doesn't mean a joke is criminal, it's just a good indicator that joke is bad.
Censorship is the forceful removal of speech by a governing body. I do not consider responding to criticism and removing an item that has little consequences to the overall piece censorship. By the broadest of definitions, you can invoke "self-censorship" but I believe that leads to conflation of concepts and devaluation of the term.
It's still a problem when a community starts bullying around speech they have decided emotionally isn't cool. I dunno. To me tumblr is a disaster in this area. Granted it's just a website but it's also a peer group for millions of teens. Standards of decency good. Knee jerk generalizations bad.
Censorship is the forceful removal of speech by a governing body. I do not consider responding to criticism and removing an item that has little consequences to the overall piece censorship. By the broadest of definitions, you can invoke "self-censorship" but I believe that leads to conflation of concepts and devaluation of the term.
100% disagree with this. Censorship is far more nuanced than this, or if you disagree, then we need a new term. I'm not defending the poem, which I haven't even read, but choosing not to publish it would be censorship in this scenario, justified, ethical, or not.
Censorship is the forceful removal of speech by a governing body. I do not consider responding to criticism and removing an item that has little consequences to the overall piece censorship. By the broadest of definitions, you can invoke "self-censorship" but I believe that leads to conflation of concepts and devaluation of the term.
100% disagree with this. Censorship is far more nuanced than this, or if you disagree, then we need a new term. I'm not defending the poem, which I haven't even read, but choosing not to publish it would be censorship in this scenario, justified, ethical, or not.
First of all, you are absolutely wrong. Second of all, you are again guilty of avoiding having a discussion of substance by arguing semantics.
The definition of censor and censorship is nuanced. Shit, it even includes criticism, which was surprising to me.
Second of all, the semantics here are material to the conversation. If we're all working off different codices then we can just talk past each other all day. Granted, it's just a discussion forum and all, but that's just masturbatory and pointless.
Declaring everything as an absolute doesn't make you seem particularly smarter or anything, not sure why it seems to be your favorite thing.
The definition of censor and censorship is nuanced. Shit, it even includes criticism, which was surprising to me.
Second of all, the semantics here are material to the conversation. If we're all working off different codices then we can just talk past each other all day. Granted, it's just a discussion forum and all, but that's just masturbatory and pointless.
Declaring everything as an absolute doesn't make you seem particularly smarter or anything, not sure why it seems to be your favorite thing.
The semantics are not material to the conversation unless the original point of contention is semantic in nature. You are trying to make them material in order to support your extremely weak debate tactics.
Here's exactly what you are trying to do. You find a word like censorship. Why? Because few people are going to argue in favor of censorship. Then you try to have a semantic argument in an attempt to label a particular behavior as censorship. If you can succeed at applying that particular label to the behavior you are then going to claim that as a logical conclusion that the behavior is bad because you can successfully apply a word to that behavior which is a bad word.
Thereby you completely avoid any actual discussion of the morality of the behavior in question, and only need to argue the definition of some word.
If someone is publishing or creating something, they have complete authority to decide the content of that thing. That is freedom of speech. Each person/group can choose to express, or not express, themselves in any way they choose. It is only wrong if the government restricts that in inappropriate ways. What word you use to label this does not matter.
The semantics of what censorhip is become relevant when people make it relevant (ie, by questioning the use of the term).
Materially, though, when it comes to this specific scenario, it seems like what the developers should do is either ask the KickStarter backer to give them another quote that's not offensive, or just refuse to publish his quote with or without a refund depending on the language used when describing the reward.
It's certainly not an example of institutionalized censorship and it's certainly well within their rights, at least in my opinion.
When you sell space in your publication and then revoke or edit that space, that's an example of censorship whether you like that term or not. Even if they have every right to do it, which I agree they do.
And I agree that arguments over semantics tend to derail, well, the INTERNET, but that's what you get in this medium. It's pretty much unavoidable and the best you can do is try not to get lost in it. I try for brief clarification. People who use semantics deliberately as a troll to derail are boring. That's not me. Your finger pointing and meltdown are more derailing than anything I've posted. The biggest distraction here is you.
It's not unavoidable many people are capable of having discussions without ever needing to discuss the definitions of words because they all know the definitions of words and use/read them appropriately. I'm pointing it out here every single time someone does it in order to train people not to do so. I'm not targeting you specifically. I'm calling everyone out. It just so happens that you seem to do it in almost every discussion. You'll either stop doing it (success!), or at least you will realize just how often you are guilty of doing it.
I absolutely agree, but I'm not the one who questioned the definitions of terminology in this discussion. I only responded to someone who did. Briefly, before your tangent.
Seriously though the bottom line is that I agree that conversations that devolve into pure semantics (which seems to be about 99% of the internet) are fucking boring and counterproductive.
The BBFC in the UK changed from being the British Board of Film Censorship to the British Bord of Film Classification. So there is no censorship of movies any more, and the classification is there to help people determine if the movie is suitable for them or their children. They list a general guide like this:
"There are a number of scenes of violence or violent threat in which the increasingly deranged central character chases after his wife and child with an axe. In one scene he also kills a man who is trying to help his family, burying the axe in the man's chest. This is not shown in any great detail, however, with the axe wound visible only through the man's coat. There is some strong language in the film, which is often directed aggressively by the central character toward his wife. There are also some uses of moderate and mild bad language, including 'bitch' and 'son of a bitch'. "
I nice thought experiment would be to see if there was classification like this we could put on other free speech.
Seems needlessly wordy. I think the rating system in the US is pretty sufficient for most stuff, although I think it can also marginalize speech based on standards whose genesis/intent isn't always very clear. But that's just another long, boring slog through defining pornography.
I remember when I used to check the BBFC website to sneakily find out which animes were in the process to be released here.
I talked about it online on my very first forum and the americans there were shocked that it existed! (But back in those days I think all I did online was be super british to shock americans.)
I thought it might be interesting to dispassionately describe the content and form of political speeches. Or of the average statements of online groups.
If nothing else it would probably have a great deal of comic value for certain specific instances. It might even end up a really useful debate/educational tool.
Comments
When someone's quoting chapter and verse from what a group believes - particularly a group with no structure, where the beliefs are entirely written by those individuals - it's entirely fair to criticize that group for it.
Obsidian has a new game out, a fantasy RPG called Pillars of Eternity which was funded with almost 4 million dollars through Kickstarter. One of the backer tiers allowed for the backer to add some inconsequential trinket text somewhere in the game. One of those backers chose to put a transphobic poem about a man committing suicide after having sex with a trans person he didn't know was trans there.
One person on twitter wrote to Josh Sawyer, one of the designers of the game, and said that such a joke was not okay. Sawyer responded by saying he would look into the issue. Cue the gamergate brigade descending, declaring that what the evil SJWs want is censorship, how the person who complained shouldn't be listened to because she joked about killing all men, and how Sawyer shouldn't cave to evil SJWs (and instead cave to the GamerGators?). The funniest part is still the people defending the poem because of "historical context" in a fantasy RPG featuring magic and elves.
Oh yeah, and on another note, I find it funny how GamerGate is all about Reaxxion. Reaxxion is "gaming site" started by RooshV, a man who believes that rape should be legal in a private residence. Because ethics I guess.
Unless the Kickstarter forbade offensive text in the fulfillment of that reward level, maybe their best course of action is to refund the guy and say "Sorry but this is offensive to our users and can't be included." Done. If they did claim some editorial control then there's really no problem. Just say "Sorry this can't be put in like this, what else have you got?"
The line gets blurred in places and I've seen situations where the joke about the racist is misintepreted as a racist joke.
Cards Against Humanity retracted a the "Passable Transvestives" card and used the term "kicking down" in their apology.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/censor
The definition of censor and censorship is nuanced. Shit, it even includes criticism, which was surprising to me.
Second of all, the semantics here are material to the conversation. If we're all working off different codices then we can just talk past each other all day. Granted, it's just a discussion forum and all, but that's just masturbatory and pointless.
Declaring everything as an absolute doesn't make you seem particularly smarter or anything, not sure why it seems to be your favorite thing.
Here's exactly what you are trying to do. You find a word like censorship. Why? Because few people are going to argue in favor of censorship. Then you try to have a semantic argument in an attempt to label a particular behavior as censorship. If you can succeed at applying that particular label to the behavior you are then going to claim that as a logical conclusion that the behavior is bad because you can successfully apply a word to that behavior which is a bad word.
Thereby you completely avoid any actual discussion of the morality of the behavior in question, and only need to argue the definition of some word.
If someone is publishing or creating something, they have complete authority to decide the content of that thing. That is freedom of speech. Each person/group can choose to express, or not express, themselves in any way they choose. It is only wrong if the government restricts that in inappropriate ways. What word you use to label this does not matter.
Materially, though, when it comes to this specific scenario, it seems like what the developers should do is either ask the KickStarter backer to give them another quote that's not offensive, or just refuse to publish his quote with or without a refund depending on the language used when describing the reward.
It's certainly not an example of institutionalized censorship and it's certainly well within their rights, at least in my opinion.
When you sell space in your publication and then revoke or edit that space, that's an example of censorship whether you like that term or not. Even if they have every right to do it, which I agree they do.
And I agree that arguments over semantics tend to derail, well, the INTERNET, but that's what you get in this medium. It's pretty much unavoidable and the best you can do is try not to get lost in it. I try for brief clarification. People who use semantics deliberately as a troll to derail are boring. That's not me. Your finger pointing and meltdown are more derailing than anything I've posted. The biggest distraction here is you.
Seriously though the bottom line is that I agree that conversations that devolve into pure semantics (which seems to be about 99% of the internet) are fucking boring and counterproductive.
"There are a number of scenes of violence or violent threat in which the increasingly deranged central character chases after his wife and child with an axe. In one scene he also kills a man who is trying to help his family, burying the axe in the man's chest. This is not shown in any great detail, however, with the axe wound visible only through the man's coat. There is some strong language in the film, which is often directed aggressively by the central character toward his wife. There are also some uses of moderate and mild bad language, including 'bitch' and 'son of a bitch'. "
I nice thought experiment would be to see if there was classification like this we could put on other free speech.
I talked about it online on my very first forum and the americans there were shocked that it existed! (But back in those days I think all I did online was be super british to shock americans.)