Tauriq Moosa is one of the few, and in my opinion, one of the better, major video game writers who examines cultural issues about video games from the point of view of a Person of Color. He’s a native of South Africa, where he is literally an ethics tutor. This weekend, the totally not racist elements operating in the shadows of GamerGate decided to run him off of Twitter (The Mary Sue’s take, Freethought’s take). This appears to have been an organized, coordinated dogpiling attack. It resulted in people continuing to launch abuse in his direction far beyond the point where a person of color asked people to stop because he felt unsafe. It frequently contained personal attacks or racist commentary. It had precious little to do with actual fair representations of his work.
Once he left Twitter (after warning his followers to watch out for being targeted for being on his friends list – a persistent and valid concern for people who have been targeted by the movement in the past), the worst elements of GamerGate took to publicly congratulating themselves while KiA mods worked tirelessly to remove any sense that the organized abuse brigade originated from there to avoid KiA from encountering the same fate as FatPeopleHate two weeks ago. Most of this grandstanding was taking place in the #IStandWithTauriq, a hashtag they attempted to hijack after it was started by colleagues of Moosa showing their support. Needless to say, much of this hijacked hashtag was also filled with awful shit that is either illogical, false, racist or just plain being assholes for the sake of being assholes.
The free speech I care about the most is the free speech that leads to better games.
Earlier this week, I pointed out that there are many good reasons for good game developers to oppose gamergate beyond being pussywhipped by our spouses, as Mark Kern would choose to imply. Here’s why: I stand firmly on the side of free speech. Games are made better when people can talk freely and openly about games, and can talk freely and openly about how games can be made better. Not all of these ideas are winners. I am, as mentioned previously, not always likely as a designer to reach for the ‘SJW’ answer to any given problem. But I do think that, as Cliffy B said, voices calling for diversity are worth listening to, even if their suggestions are not right for the game you’re working on.
“It’s one of those things where diversity, even at the studio level, it just makes for a more interesting environment,” Bleszinski says. “Apart from that making sense just in general, financially it makes sense…. As a capitalist, even if I didn’t care about diversity — which I do — I want everybody’s money, of all walks of life,” Bleszinski says. “I want an Asian person to see a character who they feel like they can rally behind. And then maybe they want to spend money on that too.”
Tauriq Moosa is one of those voices, and he’s written consistently on the topic. Sometimes I agree with him, such as his excellent article about race in Rust and Witcher 3. Sometimes I don’t. But his writing is always insightful and inspires deep thinking. It’s exactly the sort of writing you want from your gamer press, if you actually care about the state of the art of the games industry to create new genres and expand their reach, which is somethign that all game developers and true lovers of the art and craft should care about.
There is a misconception that GamerGate is about harassment. GamerGate is not about harassment any more than its about ethics in games journalism. What GamerGate is about is silencing the point of view of progressive critics of games (i.e. ‘SJWs’ who care about feminism and diversity in games in particular). Harassment and bullying , though – these are the tools in the toolbox that some gamerGaters use, as they believe in using any means necessary to meet their goals. This particular episode contained plenty of publically available gloating about the issue, as well as plenty of awful stuff plainly visible in some of the bigger names of the #GamerGate movement on Twitter.
This particular incident had the whole playbook on display.
1. Be thin-skinned to a ludicrous decree, best done by misrepresenting your opponent’s argument. GamerGate misrepresented his arguments constantly. As one example, they claimed that this article accuses the game Witcher 3, or the game makers, as being racist, when in fact it’s a discussion about how game developers fall into patterns and don’t think about the implications of their decisions. Or as someone he quotes in the article says:
“It’s not that anyone on the Dragon Age team is willfully racist or malicious to players; it’s simply that someone who doesn’t have the lived experience of dealing with racism as a person of color would simply not think about these things.”
This is not ‘how the Witcher 3 is racist’. It’s a discussion about how dev teams frequently can and do make decisions that limit the reach and power of their games because they lack perspective about race. Incidentally, this is all completely true, and one of the reasons why more diverse teams are good. Some also jumped down his throat for pointing out that the term ‘PC Master Race’ might be considered offensive to some, and he’s not wrong about that. My twitter feed was full of people trying to claim that he called them all Nazis.
2. Switch to ad hominem attacks that have nothing to do with his argument. A huge part of the attack was to demean his expertise by highlighting, for example, a tweet where he said that he didn’t know much about graphics card technology or Steam. It should be noted that their standards in this matter would not be met by, say, Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Sommers, or Allum Bokhari, cultural critics who are not hardcore gamers, and who in fact didn’t play games at all until they signed up to take advantage of #GamerGate’s neoreactionary culturally conservative leanings. These guys don’t have even a thimble of the game expertise that Tauriq consistently shows in his writing.
3. Throw in some spicy racism – you know, just for fun! No, I don’t think most #gamergaters are racist, but there sure are plenty who are willing to put on the clothes of racism just for LOLs. For what it’s worth, Tauriq is not the first person from Polygon to talk about Witcher 3’s whiteness nor is he the first person from the press to point out that using the term ‘PC Master Race” is somewhat distasteful. For some reason, though, he just seemed to get it worse than the other guys. I can’t imagine what the difference is.
4. Afterwards, claim it never happened. My twitter feed is full of people simultaneously boasting that they managed to drive that pussy Moosa off of Twitter, while at the same time claiming defensively that no harassment happened. He just couldn’t handle criticism! But if you look through the feed, you’ll find there to be little in the way of valid criticism of his views. In fact, what you see are blatant distortions of his views, personal attacks, bullying language, and occasional racist bullshit.
And after this all works, they celebrate.
In a nutshell, this is why GamerGate should be condemned. They are blatantly, BLATANTLY against the freedom of speech of progressive voices in games. I don’t even agree with these progressive voices all of the time – hell, I’ve caught fire from feminists in the past, and my friends think it’s pretty funny that now I’m considered an SJW champion, since I tend to be pretty non-politically correct. But I am a huge fan of academia related to games, and I’m a huge fan of sites like Polygon and Rock Paper Shotgun who look at games from a new angle. These authors may not always be right, but they do tend to make me reconsider my biases, and find ways to grow and evolve my design.
Games criticism and commentary is good for the industry. Game designers can always feel free to ignore the Tauriqs and Anitas of the world, but the games we make are typically richer from giving it the consideration. People who try to silence these voices — and then dance in glee when they’ve succeeded — are the enemies of free and open discourse about the art of science of making games, and they are the enemies to progress in the field of game design.
Looks like you forgot to revisit this sentence before publishing:
“Some also jumped down his throat for pointing out that the term ‘PC Master Race’ might be considered offensive to some, and .”
Hyperlink leads to the same image as the one in the next paragraph, too. 😛
Fixed sentence.
You’ve summed up my opinion pretty well, here.
The worst part of it is, for me, that you can guarantee that 99% of the people engaged in this harassment have no idea what it is that the person is supposed to have done. This is how GG seems to work – they have a target that they’re supposed to go after, and only maybe half a dozen people know the real reason why they’ve been chosen. Everyone else relies on their (always exaggerated, often invented) explanation of events to launch their attacks from.
We’ve seen it time and time again, from the harassment of Zoe for ‘sleeping around for good reviews’, Anita for ‘wanting to ban games’, Brianna for ‘making up harassment’, and so many others that it’s genuinely soul-destroying to name them all. Now Tauriq, whose crimes are ‘not knowing anything about games’ and ‘being racist against white people’ – it’s all invented, or exaggerated. It’s in their heads, it just doesn’t exist. But they’re told to believe it by malicious actors, people they trust, and they do – people like Total Biscuit, who is happy to point the mob at people who disagree with him like Leigh or MovieBob, as well as Mark Kern and Milo Yiannopolous. These people seem to have personal vendettas to settle, and are happy to use GG to settle them.
I’m not removing their agency, or culpability. They’re still harassers, engaged in harassment. But it’s easier for me to understand when I see them as an angry mob being nudged in the direction of other people’s targets. When it comes down to it, that is a depressing ‘movement’, and it’s the least ethical thing I’ve ever heard of.
I think you are too soft and assume good, if mistaken, intentions. I think you fail to understand the twisted and malicious reactionary thought and, if I understand it well, the actions of this hate group make sense.
One of the important things you must understand about reactionary though is that the individual rights are fundamentally different from the saner definition. Rights aren’t fundamentally equals between, they are hierarchic Usually, when we think about rights, we think that we have the same set of right than any other. For example I don’t have the right to punch you, nor you have the right to punch me since those actions would deny the victim the right to be safe and healthy. We can disagree, express our disagreement, even argue but we can’t threaten, implicitly or explicitly, each other. Finally, any of us who would attempt to use force against the other would be open to retaliation from the victim and the onlookers. But the key element, we are fundamentally equals. Is it somewhat like the doctrine of mutually assured destruction at personal at individual level, really.
On the other hand, reactionaries don’t work that way. There is the worthy at the top, where the reacts “happens” to be or pretty close from it, the trash at the bottom. The more worthy “evidently” have more right than the less worthy. In the case of a conflict, the rights of the one on the higher worth level trump those of the one at the lesser; onlookers are excepted to fight the lesser one. I think the idea is to avoid conflicts by making sure that everyone know its place in the pyramid and making conflicts easy to resolve, just beat the lesser one into submission.
In the case of GG, I think it works like this: ” The game industry is for real gamers. Feminist (and SJWs) are fucking trash and should shut up. Any criticism from feminists is an attack on the real gamers and the market. Gamer and the market need to defend themselves from the feminist invasion”
Please note that what they call the market is really the equivalent of “the natural order of things” that you may heard from racists, sexists, ultra-nationalists warmongers, homophobes, neo-nazis, anti-Semites, anti-environmentalists, religious extremists and others assorted reactionaries maniacs. Note that the appeal to market don’t refer to the very dynamic economical concept; the GG market is fundamentally static.
Another thing to notes that feminism and progressivism aren’t just in the sewers of the scale of worthiness, they denounce and attack the iniquities and injustices promoted by the reactionaries. In a way, GGers aren’t wrong when they say that Anita attack them, she openly challenge the reactionary worldview and, for that, she must be forced into silence. Threats, harassment, slander, sabotaging communication channel, any means that have some plausible denial is a useful tool to force her into silence, making her an example. When GGers say she lie, what matters is that she doesn’t have the right to speak in the first place, everything is just a way to silence her and send a message:”feminism will be punished”
Or Zoe. She a feminist that have crossed nasty reactionaries, she defended and still defend herself and must be beaten and humiliated into silence to send a message and keep other progressive in line. Her game must be purged, the “reviews” are just an excuse to attack her. No wonder that the ethics argument make no sense, is it about domination and suppression of progressives by hatemongers that have literally no interest in ethics.
A note about justice about reactionaries is that their only concern is to preserve the structure of privilege. When some incident of police shooting happens, is it not hard to find that racists fundamentally don’t care about the committed crime from the dead black, it may even help to keep them in line. If only the liberal wouldn’t object that police shoot protestors.
Defiance of the privileged is the crime.
If I expressed myself, you should read this linked comment and find that it makes sense, if you have the sick reactionaries values and accept that lies are perfectly valid tools to keep progressives in line.
http://www.zenofdesign.com/standing-with-tauriq/#comment-74373
You’ve created a terrible mirror of the attitude that pushed GG to where it is right now. Ask yourself if creating this image of the inhuman monster that inhabits GamerGate is helpful, or in any way different to the monster they’ve created in their heads that is supposed to resemble Anita Sarkeesian.
An eye for an eye makes everyone blind.
^ I don’t recall anyone saying that GG slept around with reviewers or that they’re being funded by a cabal of Jewish/Anti-White men to destroy gaming. What I do recall is GamerGate doing everything in their power to make games boring as fuck and bland just like they are. There is no comparison to be made: one group wants video games to include the more (there’s a pretty good critique about inclusion and capitalism, but that’s another discussion) and the other thinks it’s cool to send SWAT teams and death threats.
This liberal belief that all ideas should be respected and that we should be polite to those who think it’s okay to threaten and kill people who oppose them must die. It does not stop the behavior of reactionaries and in fact it just gives them aid and an environment where their beliefs must be tolerated while any opposition is being mean or “just as bad” as they are.
“This liberal belief that all ideas should be respected and that we should be polite to those who think it’s okay to threaten and kill people who oppose them must die.”
Can you point out where I said that? Why are people in this comment string so determined to paint me as somebody who is trying to whitewash Gamergate, despite me explicitly saying that these are shit people doing shit things, but that they may not know why they’re doing them?
That’s just the “KKK fallacy” isn’t it? Roughly: “The KKK hates African Americans, but African-Americans hate the KKK. Really both sides are equally bad. Instead of dismissing the KKK as monsters who harass and intimidate for no valid reason, we should assume that they’re justified about half the time.”
Do you understand why that’s a fallacy?
I’m not pushing a both sides view point, and I find it sad that you didn’t read both my posts.
I’m saying that treating members of GamerGate as inhuman, irredeemable monsters doesn’t do anything to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing.
You said, “Ask yourself if [what we’ve done] is in any way different from [what they’ve done]”. That’s a “both sides” argument.
If your main point was that GGer’s aren’t totally inhuman monsters 24/7, I don’t think anybody’s arguing against that. I mean, if you look at individuals in the KKK, a lot of them are kind and generous to their pets, and to their friends, and to at least some of their relatives. But that doesn’t change the fact that joining the KKK is an inherently monstrous act.
The both sides argument I created was “It is bad for both sides to create monsters out of the people they don’t like”. I don’t know how you read that I’m excusing Gamergate behaviour. I’m specifically saying they’re doing something awful, and that you shouldn’t do that in return.
I think the problem here is we don’t agree on the context of what Dom wrote. I’m specifically addressing his use of “the reactionary” to describe a GG member, along with describing their thought processes as “twisted and malicious”. I don’t find that particularly helpful, and in my opinion it does remove humanity from the people he’s talking about.
I’m happy to agree to disagree here.
Fuck Gamergate and everyone involved in it, from the opportunistic right wingers to the channers to the silent supporters to the poor fools who think #NotYourShield is real. This temper tantrum masquerading as a “consumer revolt” has been dragging on for nearly a YEAR and all it’s done is drive people who aren’t white cishet men out of gaming. Every Gamergater is a fucking little bully and nothing of value would be lost if they all vanished into the Fifth Dimension.
GamerGate continues its crusade for Ethics in Video Games Journalism by attacking anyone displaying Ethics in Video Games Journalism.
What happened to the whole speech having consequences thing?
You might have had a point if the consequences visited on Moosa were related to anything he actually said, rather than a deeply dishonest characterization used as a veneer to hurl racist and threatening invective at him.
For example, an actual consequence of speech here is that Gamergate has, yet again, proven how little they care about ethics and how much effort they spend coordinating harassment.
But does someone who overprivilege a minority not deserve to be harassed in the first place? The racism is only a response to equalism, and the latter is the bigger crime. The two things cannot be compared on a moral basis.
What the fuck does that mean, ‘overprivilege’? And what statement from his article, chapter and verse, actually implies that? Have you actually read his article, or are you just repeating criticisms that came over twitter or KIA?
“NationalistFront”. That’s how he wants to be known.
In addition to Andrew’s reply, there’s also the point to be made that if GamerGate has such an interest in consequences for speech, why do they put so much effort into dodging their own consequences?
Speech should have appropriate consequences.
For instance, if I say “The Witcher should have more characters of color since none exist and I am disappointed in CDPR for it,” appropriate consequences would be:
-Pointing out that I’m missing that Z-word place and characters from it who appeared in the first game.
-Say it’s a Polish myth and Poland is overwhelmingly white.
-Disagreeing with me or saying I’m wrong.
Inappropriate consequences would be:
-Everything outlined in the article above, for A.) misrepresenting Tariq’s viewpoints and B.) taking the form of relentless harassment.
While I am nor American, I am aware that Americans have not only a particular form of racism, they literally have a strong tradition of literately deliberately removing the blacks from history. It goes as far a western refusing to portray black cowboys, an American symbol, despite being a pretty popular occupation for freed slaves. That a worse kind of political correctness concerned by oppressing minorities.
As for South Africa, one of the most baffling things I’ve heard from white supremacists is calling SA “white homeland” without any hint of irony.
AFASK, Poland doesn’t have anything analogous. That make the dev team for TW3 very likely to just not have thought about it. This also make this game not exactly the best example to talk about racial diversity. But honestly, there is only a review that basically say ” It would be nice to have non white character in TW3 world”
Mossa’s article bring TW3 as an example of whiteness as neutral and compare that to Rust example of having a diversity imposed by the game considered non acceptable. Again, TW3 isn’t exactly the best example.
But I think the interesting story is that 2 writers coming from countries where racism is a huge problem, where white is the default and the black (or others) is the non-default, decided to respectfully mentioned race while showering the game in praises and unbleached the psychotic fury from the reactionaries. I think we understand the message “race discussion is forbidden”, ironically said by people defending the confederate flag.
Moosa’s article makes it clear why The Witcher 3 is a good example: it’s a great game that just chose ‘white’ as a default, because that’s what they know. Most of these times, developers just don’t put thought into that, or the developers who do don’t speak out on their teams. Thus, a company like CDPR may very well have released a game that was all white specifically without even considering whether that’s what they wanted to do.
It happens all the time.
Where I would apply Tauriq’s point is valid is that games and companies that aspire for International success really need to consider race as an important factor in the development of the game.
And while his point may have been correct, it didn’t acknowledge that a Polish developer should be criticized less on this than an American one. Anyone who gets an education in America will likely meet many people of diverse cultural backgrounds, while a Polish person will not, and it is far more excusable for them to be more culturally insular. The argument Anita trumpeted was that since Polish culture has been erased, they shouldn’t try to evoke it through the culture of the game. White eastern Europeans are culturally erased as simply “white” to have arguments made against them that simply wouldn’t be directed at Asian developers. Because all white people should be held to the same cultural standard even if they’ve never even set foot in western Europe, let alone America.
Further, Gies or Moosa can write an article that’s critical and mostly reasonable, yet the hordes of fanatics will still get and spread the “CDPR is racist/sexist” message whether this was originally intended or not.
And when this happens on KIA, or from a gamergater on twitter, and then other people dogpile and harass based on originally reasonable criticism, you call this coordinated harassment and dogpiling. Forum moderation is a grand KIA conspiracy. And it’s evil and against free speech when they laugh that someone took his ball and went home but it has nothing to do with free speech when you laugh that gamergaters are silenced by others.
If you want to sell games on an international market, diversity is something that’s worth considering. Witcher 3’s sales have clearly shown the product is capable of being a game with international reach. They almost certainly left money on the table because they did not have any diversity. Also, most Polish people I know blanch at the thought that somehow the Aryan-like whiteness is the most important thing to represent when representing Polish culture. Thor did fine simply by adding Heimdall – doing so did not undermine Norse myths, and helped these mythologies reach audiences they otherwise wouldn’t have.
And where did Anita trumpet what exactly?
As for your assertion that I can’t tell dogpiling from actual criticism, I await proof of this fact. So far, few people criticizing Moosa have actually factually represented his point of view. Many included insults, taunting, and even some racial slurs. This wasn’t a debate, and its not how reasonable discourse about improving our games is going to happen.
Apparently you missed the factually deficient article trumpeted by Anita by an “actual Polish person” (living in New Jersey) that didn’t accept excuses for Witcher lack of diversity, basically because erasure of Polish culture means they are not worth representing.
As for the rest of your comment, it doesn’t contradict anything I said so I don’t know what your point is in reposting your own uncontroversial views on diversity. As for whether they “almost certainly left money on the table,” they appear to be doing quite well in sales. If it’s only a marginal increase in profit margin, it’s not worth sacrificing artistic vision. War zones aren’t hot spots for Zerrikanian tourists.
Sure, and that’s largely what happened. Moosa made some stupd arguments about Witcher 3, then made even stupider comments about pc master race, then got upset about people talking about him who weren’t talking to him. Some uncoordinated dogpiling occurred. Some genuinely awful things were said by various people.
There was no coordinated harassment. Damion reacts gleefully at the prospect of KIA getting banned from reddit, whenever a gamergate supporter gets suspended from twitter, when their server host kicks them, when a funds processor refuses to serve them, or when they are kicked out of conventions. He then defends these reactions on the basis that websites are not free speech platforms and by misrepresenting events. Then whines about Moosa voluntarily deleting his twitter account because some people said mewn things and his arguments weren’t always represented fairly, and, of course, FREE SPEECH!
Damion supports broad extra-legal free speech advocacy for any cultural critic that doesn’t support gamergate. Real hero, that one.
Most of the arguments that describe Moosa’s points about Witcher 3 and PCMR as ‘stupid’ do so by willfully misrepresenting his point. I look forward to you being the one that proves to be the exception to the rule and actually describe why and how he was wrong in either case. Good luck!
I suppose you’d rather rehash someone else’s arguments that I conceded were technically fine while still being stupid and probably unintentionally inflammatory. Better that than address your own glaring inconsistencies regarding free speech. Because it should only be free if you think it’s valuable.
So, nothing. Right. Got it.
It’s a bit childish to post this after I’d addressed above the specific points of Moosa’s that you reiterated. I’m not posting here to argue with people’s arguments on other websites. I’m not here to ask “how high?” when you tell me to jump. I’m here to address your arguments, your conclusions, and the arguments and conclusions of the others who post here. I’m not going to fisk Moosa’s argument for your entertainment, when it’s simply more tiresome and lacking perspective (as I’ve already indicated) than technically wrong.
> A huge part of the attack was to demean his expertise by highlighting, for example, a tweet where he said that he didn’t know much about graphics card technology or Steam. It should be noted that their standards in this matter would not be met by, say, Milo Yiannopoulos, Christina Sommers, or Allum Bokhari, cultural critics who are not hardcore gamers, and who in fact didn’t play games at all until they signed up to take advantage of #GamerGate’s neoreactionary culturally conservative leanings.
Anyone who read any of his articles would be well aware of how deep into games he was. But he was relentlessly attacked for not being a ‘real gamer’ and for being ‘incompetent’ why? Literally because he prefers to game on a console instead of a PC.
The craziest irony is that before everyone exploded in rage at his article, I remember him tweeting incredibly effusive praise for the Witcher 3, including stuff like it would probably be in his top 5 game of all time. But if let just a whiff a social critique into the conversation and you are suddenly compared to Hitler and you’re trying to exterminate all gamers everywhere.
I don’t really see the point here.
The man received criticism, some hateful, mean-spirited, some not. Both he and his critics are welcome to free speech. He left Twitter because he chickened out, or is playing at being drama queen. That’s about it. To portray recipients of internet harassment as victimhood smacks of coddled white-girl behavior.
And besides, what was wrong with the criticism? Games and media in general should reflect the majority demographic, and social critique is not useful unless it caters to the will of majority and the normative. His whining about “minority representation” is apologism for equality, and was rightfully attacked.
“Games and media in general should reflect the majority demographic, and social critique is not useful unless it caters to the will of majority and the normative.”
This is probably the most honest expression of the GG ethos I’ve ever seen written. It is not lost on me that the person posting it prefers to go by ‘NationalistFront’.
Recently info surfaced about how Tim Cook’s quote was taken out of context in a speech where he talked about how he was a blatant sexist in the past and how women have achieved so much in science despite people that were like him.
If that info is true, his career was destroyed just because a journalist wanted a target for an ideological crusade.
What has this to do with Tauriq? The fact that any accusation can be the basis for a call out attack from zealots, in this case to the creators of The Witcher 3, for the heinous “sin” of basing their game in the mostly white skinned culture around them. Even if it wasn’t probably Tauriq’s original intent to attack the dev team, the magnitude of his reach as a voice in gaming criticism and the kind of audience around him tend to foster the presence of ideological crusaders eager to do harm in the name of the greater good. As seen with Tim Cook, the danger is real.
As part of a gaming consumer revolution, protecting original intent is paramount to me. And this applies to all sides of the controversy (I’m not content on how ideological zealots pressed notoriously anti-GamerGate game developer Brianna Wu to shed all aesthetic ties from her game to Sailor Moon that was one of her key influences).
Calling repeated dissent towards a target “harassment” at the same level of whose really suffered credible death or personal harm threats like Milo Yiannopoulos, Brianna Wu, Randi Harper or others is just ludicrous and does a great disservice to those who were forced out of their homes by sociopathic harassers.
Yes, once you set the climate as a witch hunt (as people from the so called “social justice” side has done), you can expect general nastiness from all sides. Because that becomes a friggin war. Want to restore peace and a free marketplace of ideas, where people like Tauriq and Sargon can coexist with minimal friction? Disarm call-out culture. Take down that Damocles’s sword from the Internet. Devote as much of your energy to condemning it as you devote to combat the idea media and ideologues gave you of a gaming consumer revolt.
You’re talking about the scientist who had the kerfuffle recently, right? If so, I seriously question where you’re getting this material, because the guy was given multiple chances to explain himself and *kept digging himself deeper.*
“What has this to do with Tauriq? The fact that any accusation can be the basis for a call out attack from zealots, in this case to the creators of The Witcher 3, for the heinous “sin” of basing their game in the mostly white skinned culture around them. Even if it wasn’t probably Tauriq’s original intent to attack the dev team, the magnitude of his reach as a voice in gaming criticism and the kind of audience around him tend to foster the presence of ideological crusaders eager to do harm in the name of the greater good.”
You. Cannot. SERIOUSLY be comparing Tariq’s thoughtful, reasonable critique that at no point ever devolves into personal attacks with the abuse heaped up on him.
Holy shit, you’re disingenuous. Or deluded.
“like Milo Yiannopoulos, Brianna Wu, Randi Harper or others is just ludicrous and does a great disservice to those who were forced out of their homes by sociopathic harassers.”
Right, like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn or… Brianna Wu. Herp derp.
“Disarm call-out culture. ”
No. Because the only people who benefit from that are reactionary assholes who get to go about their business without ever being confronted with the shittiness in the things they say and do.
“Calling repeated dissent towards a target”
…There’s a bit of cognitive dissonance here, no? When you’re claiming GG as a consumer revolt or revolution, and making a distinction between “real” harassment – people have had bomb threats, been doxxed, forced out of their homes etc – with just dissent or criticism on the internet…
and still using the word ‘target’ apparently unironically?
If someone is being specifically targeted, it’s not really appropriate to describe what you’re doing as “repeated dissent” or criticism, is it.
Here some reading about Tim Cook
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/07/01/tim_hunt_nobel_laureate_s_comments_about_girls_and_science.html
Few things – did you know in 2014 that Tauriq published an article on Big Think that said: “Targeting individuals can be moral, but it needs to be done with a lot of care…” It was in the context of calling out problematic persons on Twitter or with social media.
Search for “Big Think – On the ethics of targeting others”
“We should be using words to target proper harmful individuals, not harmless (indeed, we use words to help the harmless and helpful).”
Here’s the thing – who gets to decide who “deserves ” it?
Besides that, it’s never a good idea to target anyone on Twitter – you know why? It perpetuates Outrage Culture. It encourages online witch hunts. It’s not cool.
So while you lament the loss of a paragon of diversity and wisdom or whatever, I only see the irony that someone who perpetuated Outrage culture was driven off social media as a victim of it.
I don’t know. Who decided that the Westboro Baptist Church doesn’t deserve a presumption of good faith? Maybe we can involve them.
Or maybe – just maybe – it’s possible to develop a community standard without positing some moral overlord?
Nah. Better fearmonger instead about the possibility of thought police directing outage apparatchiks..
“Anti-Free Speech” /= “Progressive criticism”? SINCE WHEN? Anyone who seriously uses the terms “progressive criticism” is completely sucking off the ones who are promoting the anti-free speech in the first place. Free speech would be allowing devs to make whatever the fuck they want, not worthlessly condemning them by using extremely backhanded, biased, misinformed, and intellectually dishonest techniques to push their own agenda.
Please point out which developers have been prevented from making whatever the fuck they want by the SJW mob. Certainly you’ll have numerous examples. I mean, if you didn’t then your entire post is a series of lies, and surely that’s not the case.