Though when you think about it, it isn’t really that far of a stretch.
“The sooner you fall behind, the more time you’ll have to catch up.”
The struggling retail chain GameStop laid off over a hundred employees today, both at its corporate headquarters in Grapevine, Texas and at other offices including its subsidiary Game Informer magazine in Minnesota, where nearly half of the editorial staff lost their jobs in a surprise cut.
Some great folks lost their jobs today. I wish I was in a position to do more for them :( :( :(
Yeah, very saddened by the news. Game Informer has become one of my favorite outlets in the last couple years.
Yeah, it really improved after 2013 or so ;)
More seriously, the more I think about this the more it burns my ass. GI puts out a consistently good-to-great product for PEANUTS – seriously, I can’t tell you how nonexistent that budget is, or at least was – while GS leadership has been comically inept for 20 years running.
I mean, almost literally every single strategic decision has been a full-on disaster. Impulse, for starters. Trying so hard to force mobile hardware. Putting every single egg in the loyalty basket and praying that would change the fundamental realities of a market becoming increasingly hostile to their core business model. Ugh. Fuck them. ThinkGeek I guess actually made them some money, so there’s that.
So congratulations, GameStop. You managed to save some pennies by forcing layoffs from a successful vertical because you have completely and utterly failed to navigate the OBVIOUS TO LITERALLY EVERYONE decades-long metamorphosis of software retail.
Spin off GI to someone who gives a shit already.
This is how it works unfortunately. Computer Games Magazine might still be around today if not for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheGlobe.com and their spamming exploits.
Who’s going to buy a videogames magazine other than Future right now? Especially if it doesn’t have GS as a distribution channel.
Also, the Gamestop chain’s management was terrible before they bought Electronics Boutique, and unfortunately that management was installed as the new management and the people who ran EB (which was very successful) didn’t stick around. You can essentially blame Babbages/Software Etc. for the trajectory of all things Gamestop. They ruined Funcoland and EB, both stores that were a lot more friendly with customers and better focused on discount pricing.
They were never going to be able to get beyond the margins they were getting by selling used copies of recent releases for $55. Everything else must have felt like a waste of time and effort in comparison. Kept them from building any business model that was not based on screwing gamers for all they could get at the moment.
Once they can’t do that anymore, they aren’t built to do anything else. Nothing else can justify all of those retail storefronts.
Oh boy.
The conventional model has always been to treat students as a sort of blank slate, using education and information to inform them and teach from point zero. The combination of Gamergate hubs like subreddit KotakuInAction and unchecked alt-right personalities preaching harmful ideologies have changed that. An educator’s job is no longer just about teaching, but helping students unlearn false or even harmful information they’ve picked up from the internet.
That’s nothing new. Science teachers have had to deal with religious kids since the beginning, when God created the heaven and the Earth. Schools should be prepared to handle this problem by now.
The article goes into a lot more, but the feeling is that this is different because unlike previous indoctrination waves, GG started very young for some kids, and is constantly reinforceable thanks to social media ubiquity. A religious objection in the old days was teachable because in most cases a kid in college was breaking away from parents and the community they grew up in. You had a chance of educating against it. With kids that grow up on a steady diet of Gamergate, anything you teach is instantly torn down by a million YT videos or Twitter telling them otherwise. Weaponized online harassment featuring heavily in that.
None of that is unique to GG. It’s just the dividing point between before and now.
Yet there is no protection for kids against religion, which some would consider more harmful than “lulz” and trolling.
Well, I mean not until I’m elected God-Emperor.
:+1: .
So used to slack.
It’s more of an anti-indoctrination wave. Kids will always rebel against the status quo - it’s part of the “leave the nest” instinct humans have to ensure the expansion of the species. Criticize the establishment views, even if we think the contrary is abhorrent. It’s impossible to muzzle that.
It’s pretty disappointing that, in today’s world, giving your child a religious education is considered by some more harmful than letting them trawl the kind of places where gamersgate trolls proliferate.
There is really no comparison between the 2. One of the 2 is unlikely to form considerate and caring children. But militant atheists will militant atheist, I guess.
Well some still think the earth is still flat. That doesn’t make it anymore true than it was before. They’re not related. Religions are just as likely to be used as tools by the militants as anything else; it doesn’t make them the cause for it.
It’s strangely reassuring. I can be appalled by the sociopolitical landscape around me and know that the next generation has it covered. Then the generation after that will take care of business.
I’m a hopeless optimist!
Yes. Some parents take things too far, be it with religion, anti vaxxer or flat earth belief, other family values or simply letting their kids hang out in any cesspit of their choosing without guidance. None are very good parenting, IMO.
A child needs values, context and then some freedom to learn from those, make mistakes and have a place they can go for advice afterwards.
That kind of throwaway comment just makes me sad. I’m not talking about any kind of extreme religious education. But to say that’s worse than trolling or the lulz doesn’t sit well with me. I know what values and moral basis I prefer my kids to have.