1861

Thanks for the personal attack at my credibility.

Obviously you won’t read the tweets I quoted from the original dustup so this isn’t worth the time of discussing.

1862

That’s an interesting observation. I wish you could see the color of my skin. I’m not white.

You’ve obviously got some real axe to grind here, so I’ll leave you here to post whatever you want. Enjoy.

1863

I continue to look forward to putting Tom’s article to the test (about how the voice actors make the dialogue sound better than it does written out). Then again, I didn’t make it past the first 30 seconds of the video at Kotaku…

1864

Oh look, something else the PC clan can get all bent out of shape about. Am I the only person getting sick and tired of this nonsense from these spineless babies who get fucking butthurt about EVERYTHING?

Tiny Tina isn’t racist. Go to any middle or high school in this country and you will find numerous white kids who speak in so-called “ebonics”. Maybe if you morons spent more time out in the world and less time trying to invent problems on the internet you would know that. It’s urban talk that most of this countries youth have been exposed to and emulated over the past couple of decades. Hell, half of my friends in high school talked that way, and most of them were white. Talking that way is a product of environment, not genetic predisposition.

Seriously, does anyone even know what racism is anymore? Because, clearly, the people claiming this is racist have no fucking clue what the word means. These people have basically taken a strong word with heavy meaning and watered it down until it means nothing. It’s become a worthless catch all term, a form of social peacocking for the white guilt crowd.

1865

If you are willing to sign up for a slimy Logitech page on Facebook you can get 5 keys here:

I did it then immediately removed the app.

1866

The voice acting in Borderlands is almost universally amazing, it’s kind of refreshing to not hear any big name actors and just let some talented professional voice actors do their work.

1867

Why do you think that matters?
I asked you some pretty simple questions and you keep providing irrelevant personal details about yourself. I asked you why the Twitter people don’t count as aggrieved and you’ve given us the rough outline of your entire autobiography.

You’ve obviously got some real axe to grind here, so I’ll leave you here to post whatever you want. Enjoy.

You were pretty quick to come in here and whine about how like 3 people tweeting at BL2’s writer offended you, but suddenly you get the faintest hint of pushback and I’ve got an “axe to grind”? Yeah, I do. I don’t approve of “ebonics” being used as a punchline. That shit is racist and people should complain about it. Hopefully the author has taken the criticism to heart and will tone that aspect of Tina down for BL3.

P.S. Seriously, just as a headsup since maybe English isn’t your first language, using the phrase “white guilt” non-ironically to describe a situation where a white person calls something racist is pretty much exclusively done by bona fide white supremacists, KKK-level types.

It’s an accusation of being a race traitor.

1868

That’s your choice. I haven’t changed what I have been saying. It’s also not a personal attack to suggest that some people might not know the difference between a racist statement and a racist person because they have not encountered that kind of hate in person before. When you are standing in front of a racist, you just sort of… know.

1869

Maybe because you accused him of white privilege? You can’t have it both ways. You attack his points as being from a white privilege perspective and then when you find out he’s not white you claim it doesn’t matter.

I wonder if English is your first language, because your assertion is blatantly false. People use the white guilt term to identify people who go exceedingly out of their way to make every little thing into a race issue so as not to be perceived racist. You don’t have to be racist to use the term, and none of the people I’ve heard use the term, including myself are white supremacists or KKK level types. It has nothing to do with being a race traitor, it’s merely a way of labeling people who are over-sensitive to the point of absurdity.

And let me ask you this…is Scooter racist? You know, the inbred red-neck who wants to have sex with his sister and races cars? Obviously if Tina is racist, Scooter has to be as well, right? He’s obviously making fun of white people, right?

The truth is he, just like Tina, is a sterotype, but he’s not racist. All white people aren’t like Scooter, even ones in the south. And Tina isn’t even a sterotype of a black person, she’s a sterotype of a white urban teen. The fact that the first things that come to your mind are blackface or racist says more about you than the actual character in the game. In fact, here is a quote that best encapsolates this issue.

A white character speaking in ebonics says absolutely nothing about black people.
However, immediately hearing “Ebonics” and going “THAT’S MAKING FUN OF BLACK PEOPLE, THE ONLY USERS OF EBONICS!” is racist.

So, if anything, you’re more racist that the character you are calling racist or the people defending it. I played BL2, saw Tina, and immediately though about, although exaggerated, kids I grew up with…white kids no less. You saw Tina and immediately jumped on the “black person”, “black face”, “racist” bandwagon, when it had nothing to do with black people at all. Nothing about her says black, unless you believe that speaking that way is condition of being black, which would be racist…on your part.

1870

It still doesn’t matter, and my use of “white privilege” was a rhetorical echo of him claiming I was accusing him of “white guilt”.

He appears to believe that the people on Twitter don’t count as aggrieved parties because he’s assumed they are all white. I’m trying to get him to explain why, and hopefully while he’s writing that out he’ll be struck by how awful that explanation is and realize that it’s time to rethink some shit.

I wonder if English is your first language, because your assertion is blatantly false. People use the white guilt term to identify people who go exceedingly out of their way to make every little thing into a race issue so as not to be perceived racist. You don’t have to be racist to use the term, and none of the people I’ve heard use the term, including myself are white supremacists or KKK level types. It has nothing to do with being a race traitor, it’s merely a way of labeling people who are over-sensitive to the point of absurdity.

Yeah, labeling them… as race traitors for “pretending” to care about racism. Because non-PC people, who aren’t suffering from white guilt, they have the stones to face the extremely comfortable “truth” that laughing at how other cultures talk is just FUNNEE.

The idea that a white person(or Asian, or Hispanic) can’t sincerely be upset by anti-black racism, that they must be putting on an act for some hazily defined benefit, is some PROFOUNDLY racist shit.

And let me ask you this…is Scooter racist? You know, the inbred red-neck who wants to have sex with his sister and races cars? Obviously if Tina is racist, Scooter has to be as well, right? He’s obviously making fun of white people, right?

He’s making fun of rednecks, not white people. Again, for like the 4th time this thread though, I have once again responded in advance:

“For a game that clearly understands humor and has a TON of very funny writing, the rare missteps into broad stereotypes were and are lame(the redneck shit is not as problematic but is just as not funny).”

What is it with you people and not reading?

Stereotypes are shitty writing. Racist stereotypes are both shitty writing and offensive.

So, if anything, you’re more racist that the character you are calling racist or the people defending it. I played BL2, saw Tina, and immediately though about, although exaggerated, kids I grew up with…white kids no less. You saw Tina and immediately jumped on the “black person”, “black face”, “racist” bandwagon, when it had nothing to do with black people at all. Nothing about her says black, unless you believe that speaking that way is condition of being black, which would be racist…on your part.

LOL YOU GOT ME GOOD. Except, again, the writer’s tweet that I had helpfully pulled out of the linked article and requoted? You can’t put on your Veil of Autism and pretend that he just randomly selected the same words and inflection of ebonics when he’s already admitted that he intentionally wrote some of Tina’s dialogue as “black” for humor value.

Blah, man, you strike me as the sort of cat who sincerely wonders how come there ain’t no White History Month.

1871

Why isn’t anyone throwing a tantrum over the Goliaths talking like big stupid idiots? THEY REALLY SHOULDN’T HAVE DONE THAT!

1872

The person who originally brought the issue up on Twitter has quit his contracting position with Cryptozoic after a lot of pressure from the internet asking the company to fire him. Cryptozoic’s statement:

To clarify, Mike Sacco was never an employee of Cryptozoic Entertainment. He was a contractor.

We asked him not represent himself as an employee of Cryptozoic. After the message was delivered, Mike quit. We like Mike and we are as surprised by his reaction as you are.

1873

You don’t see how ludicrously stupid that sentence is?

Scooter is an example of making fun of rednecks rather than white people, because he talks and acts like the stereotypical image of rednecks, but Tiny Tina is an example of racism rather than making fun of a stereotype of a tiny subset of the black population?

You’re an idiot.

1874

I thought the characters were fun and didn’t consider burning crosses in front of peoples houses afterwards while wearing a white tablecloth.
Edit: Anyone who disagrees can go bugger themselves.

1875

What the hell, Internet? I don’t agree with the guy, but asking his employer to fire him? That’s crazy.

(That kind of idiocy is why I don’t comment much on controversial matters here any more… Though I will say the Tiny Tina/Racism argument here has gotten confrontational and circular enough now that it should move to P&R.)

1876

I think the whole pressure from the internet thing is probably over emphasized in this story since it’s the kind of thing that people like to add to stories for clicks.

He was contracting for a video game company but instead listed himself as an actual employee of the company and then started some pretty ridiculous public trash talking with a competing video game company.

Obviously Cryptozoic wouldn’t be happy about being brought into something like that regardless of the legitimacy of the issue because he’s not a spokesperson for their brand or company but was acting like one. It seems like he quit on his own when they told him to stop making them look bad.

I don’t think it requires a lot of ‘internet pressure’ to lead to that result.

1877

In the Take Two earnings call, it was revealed that Borderlands 2 has shipped more than 6 million units. (Shipped vs sales blah blah, but it’s still badass.) Borderlands took about 3yrs to get to 6 million.

1878

Very nice, and well deserved!

eye catcher:

Revenue from digitally delivered content grew 244% year-over-year and accounted for 23% of net revenue, driven by offerings for the Borderlands franchise – particularly digital sales of Borderlands 2 and its add-on content, XCOM: Enemy Unknown, the Grand Theft Auto franchise, and NBA 2K13.

1879

Again, amazingly, the response to this post can be found in a post that preceded it:

Racism and illiteracy are perhaps the chicken and egg of the internet.

But actually the most insightful part of this post is the first part. He thought the characters were fun. You can see this throughout the thread. People enjoyed Tiny Tina. Those people don’t consider themselves racist. Ergo, Tiny Tina can’t be racist, because enjoying a racist character would reflect negatively on themselves.

So we see some astonishing inconsistent defenses because it’s all reverse engineered from “Derp I am not a racist” on the spot. Telefrog knows Tiny Tina isn’t racist, because:

Not racist because nobody talks that way. But blah!, he also knows that Tina isn’t racist because:

Not racist because plenty of people talk that way.

And the Gold Medal,

Not racist because it’s not making fun of every black person simultaneously. At least kedaha did have the good sense to edit out the part of my post that was a direct response to his Scooter shit, so put a gold star on that Gold Medal my friend.

1880

I thought Tina acted like some anime character on crack and was generally unpleasant to hear. I think asking someone to be fired because they question whether or not a writer went too far with a character’s joke and providing reasons for the opinion is ridiculous. Games are worth discussing. Sometimes that means hitting topics not everyone wants to discuss.