LMN8R
4841
It’s awfully convenient that conservatives and GamerGate supporters made up a pejorative term called “SJW”. Now they can apply “SJW” to anyone they want, and also cast aspersions on the entire group of “SJW” as they themselves first defined. So now “all SJW” are responsible for the reprehensible attacks Joss Whedon has faced.
Notice how different this is from GamerGate.
With GamerGate, people are defining themselves as GamerGate supporters. And then when a large number of GamerGate supporters harass women, threaten women, all in the name of GamerGate as they themselves declare, other GamerGate supporters continue to cling to the term in a desperate attempt to wash the toxicity from it. Instead of GamerGate actually organizing themselves into a group about ethical games journalism and decrying the false accusations against Zoe Quinn, they dig in and make an entire web site devoted to talking about Zoe Quinn and other non-journalists
On the other hand, there is no group self-defined anywhere as “SJW” or “Anti-GG”. Those are just pejorative groups created by self-defined conservatives and GamerGate supporters to artificially lump their detractors together so that they can then insult them and cast aspersions on them at every opportunity.
Basically, that’s a long-winded way of saying that every stupid accusation about what “the SJWs are doing” or what “anti-GG is doing” is by literal definition the epitome of a straw man argument.
As usual, the situation is a lot more complicated that you suggest. The reality is that plenty of people are labeled “GG”, including in this thread, simply for opposing some view that someone else expressed in one context or another. And, of course, the most egregious examples of people being “assigned” the label of Gamergate supporters has occurred when Brianna Wu, etc. have attributed every reported threat of violence as being generated by GGers, even though the people making those threats don’t self-identify in that way and anyone who actually identifies as a GGer states the exact opposite and decries death threats, etc. And the leftist media has consistently done the same thing.
On the other hand, there are plenty of people who openly wear the label SJW and don’t consider it a pejorative. It’s a term that existed long before gamergate and will likely endure long afterwards - it’s a description of a type of behavior and person, and that’s what’s evident in those attacks on Joss Whedon in social media as evidenced by the lengthy citations at the links above. It has nothing to do with promoting equality and everything to do with self-aggrandizing and trying to manipulate behavior for personal gain and authoritarian conformism. There’s no way to appease or rationally reach any sort of compromise on any issue of substance because they don’t have goals that can be logically satiated, as Joss Whedon and actual civil rights advocates have discovered to their chagrin.
It’s all toxic and intolerant, aggressive, antagonistic and bullying, and the anonymity and empowering nature of the internet (and sense of entitlement and relevance) naturally helps spawn it. And even aside from the people who are acting in vile ways towards others out of some sense of self-righteousness, I have little doubt that there are many trolls who just jump in on whatever side could promote the most drama at the time – whether it’s attacking Joss Whedon, Milo or otherwise contributing something wretched to add fuel to someone’s discomfort, pain or antagonism.
But there’s no ambiguity that some of the worst antagonism directed at Joss Whedon is from Jonathan McIntosh and his friends and readers because they are openly posting it. It’s not “all SJWs” that are responsible for driving Joss Whedon from twitter, but there’s no denying that among the loudest individuals who started those attacks are those who self-identify as SJWs and are actually among the crew that Joss Whedon personally defended when he jumped into the GG discussion. That’s why the schadenfreude
I bet mcintosh is just jealous. You see your girl mugging with joss whedon and you’re going to get a lump in your stomach. Even if you’ve got your own private island, how can you compete?
magnet
4846
As far as I can tell, McIntosh only directly tweeted about Whedon once:
What makes Joss Whedon’s work interesting is his witty humanizing banter between characters. The punching EVERYTHING in the face spoils it.
The rest of McIntosh’s tweets complain about Age of Ultron and superhero/alien/robot movies in general.
This isn’t a “backstabbing”, it’s just a negative review. Whedon surely knows that not everyone likes his work - he’s responsible for Agents of SHIELD after all. Even his best friends aren’t likely to rave about that show.
Not really. It’s pretty objective when theres someone in PR who militantly refuses to communicate in a non-retarded manner, especially on matters that involve people with differing views in his own field. You had one job. ONE JOB!
NORLY. You have one job. And it’s one of the main issues surrounding the issue of corruption and collusion.
I’m almost on board with that, except that it has little to do with anonymity of the internet itself. Adam here doesn’t have much padding in terms of anonymity, but that doesn’t stop him from shitting where he eats. Most of the real douches on both sides are completely known, and several have used it as ways to further their own relevance. I think it’s the very intolerant, aggressive, antagonistic nonsense that helps spawn it. Who wants to talk to retards like this? Most of us grow up and just go “ooooook…”. In videogameland, however, doing the exact opposite is apparently a viable career path.
Again, what does anyone expect to have other than a userbase of vicious jackasses?
First, it seems more likely he quit because he raised the specter of financial damage on an upcoming unrelated movie by his comments.
Second, as we all know, the perfect is the enemy of the good.
Another article on it, by Canada Pravda. which also supports him leaving because of the abuse, and includes quotes from some of the Marvel crew, James Gunn, Mark Ruffalo and Patton Oswalt: http://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/joss-whedon-quits-twitter-after-avengers-age-of-ultron-backlash-1.3062196
Hostility is just increasing in social media, in part because it seems to be rewarded. Vitriol and threats of violence, goofy or otherwise, are becoming so commonplace for any public figure, and women get the worst of it, if they happen to say or do anything at all that in any way doesn’t conform with the norm or weigh in on any politically contested issue. Twitter seems to be going through the same cycle that usenet went through, only on a much larger scale embraced by troglodytes who would have been too dense to figure out usenet. It’s gross to watch.
P
Totally agree without reservation.
The term predates Gamergate by years. No wonder your rants don’t make any sense, you haven’t even defined what the issue is.
Even urban dictionary has two definitions from 2011. One perojative. One defending SJWs.(showing the flame war was well established even then)
flyinj
4854
The desperate attempts of dinosaurs clinging to the flimsiest shred of hope that the status quo is being retained and the world remains their domain alone is so disturbing and sad.
Every inclusive social movement has succeeded… from suffrage, to civil rights, and now we’re seeing it with gay rights. For some reason, there are always people who think “well, this time, fuck those people! they’ll never win!”. The lack of introspection is astounding.
The timeline isn’t that important and kind of misses the point. Engaged parties are increasingly polarizing this discussion into two camps when there really is a whole spectrum and most people here (and most people generally) fall somewhere in the middle as reasonable thoughtful individuals regardless of which way we lean. The discussion pattern seems to increasingly involve finding the worst extremist example (on each side) and then trying to posit that that person/method/incident somehow represents the entirety of one camp. Now it obviously gets more complicated than that since the gators are decentralized and basically invite anyone to use their cause regardless of how good intentioned or vile the act. There is no “SJW” movement or group…rather just a collection of individuals each with their own motives and agendas (and really is a tiny percentage of the population just magnified through social media). Most people not closely following the gamer and entertainment culture probably don’t even know they exist. In fact, Sarkeesian becoming one of Time’s people of the year is probably the first time the general populace became aware of this whole controversy.
-Todd
In this way, internet discourse self-selects for the most extreme viewpoints. And unfortunately, only being presented with the extreme viewpoints in any situation causes our views to diverge even further. The debate becomes defined by the extreme minorities at both polls while the silent majority in the middle either checks out entirely or gets sucked into one extreme viewpoint or the other.
Why Are People Such Assholes on the Internet?
You must be very young or just aren’t aware of the implications of that statement if you think that’s the case. Many inclusive social movements throughout history have devolved or been supplanted by something worse, from 1960s Quebecois in Canada, 1920s Germany, to 1970s Egypt and Iran, to the French and Russian revolutions. Human rights and freedoms have to be strongly defended or they’ll erode.
Trends towards authoritarianism and tyranny are at least as common as the opposite.
Not only is the Mars mission just for white cisgendered males, its just space rape waiting to happen, and if we don’t change how we organise the Mars mission when we get to Mars, it will be full of Gamergaters.
No I haven’t gone completely mad, I’m just paraphrasing the Guardian, who have.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-lay-scientist/2015/may/06/how-can-our-future-mars-colonies-be-free-of-sexism-and-racism
GG has been accused of time travel shenanigans many a time, but now they can add space travel to that too.
Timex
4859
“When we look around and see a homogenous group of individuals discussing these issues – issues that command insane budgets, we should pause. Why aren’t other voices and perspectives at the table? How much is this conversation being controlled (framed, initiated, directed, routed) by capitalist and political interests of the (few) people at the table?”
Turns out, when someone pays to go into space, they get to decide how it’s done.
No, space programmes should be organised by and decisions made by using the progressive stack.
