Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, toxicity and dog-whistling are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either !asklemmyafterdark@lemmy.world or !asklemmynsfw@lemmynsfw.com.
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email info@lemmy.world. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try !politicaldiscussion@lemmy.world or !askusa@discuss.online
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
The reason I brought this topic up was because in some cases, it isn't easily addressed.
One example that I think is often misunderstood is an interview with the developer of Battlefield V, being asked about the inclusion of female characters. The interview response generally targeted overt sexism and women-hatred that came online as a result. The response was long, but ended with the statement: "You have two choices: either accept it or don't buy the game."
Yet, I saw this quote being forcefully pushed into a lot of other contexts, as though this was EA's response to everything from general historical accuracy criticisms, gameplay issues, pricing problems, etc. There was a small crowd of overt misogynists that could pull a lot of people to "their side", and weaponize the conversation, by making the general playerbase of the game feel like they were "being attacked". I saw the quote used by many people that I knew generally didn't care about avatar genders. Many afterwards never even came to realize there was a wave of Gamergate-style "Your body my choice" sexism, or desire by female gamers to be represented, in response to Battlefield's off-history inclusion efforts (hence the "no one even heard of the robbery" part of the example)
So my point is these distractions generally are not as easily addressed as you believe. In many real-world allegories to the sample, the metaphorical culprit behind the orphanage robbery is never actually put in jail since the proper response would require societal reaction, but the actual reaction has built up two "sides" that are of equal size.
EA including women in a video game, saying "accept it or don't buy the game", and anyone continuing on after that is absolutely perpetuating a societal ill.
Anyone who doesn't see that, and gives even rhetorical space for pretexes like "historical accuracy" or "gameplay" or "games journalism", is perpetuating that same I'll the same way white "moderates" who argued the civil rights movement shouldnt actually do anything.
I know this sounds harsh, but the ordinary response to a game you don't like is to just not buy it. If you don't like the gameplay or the graphics, or the voice acting, or the labor practices of the developer, or whatever, simply not paying for it and not playing is the best and primary way to signal that.
I didn't suggest that this kind of bad behavior is always easily addressed. I said and will say again that when assertions of bias are not easily addressed, the ongoing bias is literally more important than anything else that could be addressed.
When a Nazi sits down at your table, either kick him out or accept that you're a Nazi.
Rather than give a full reply, I’m going to ask you to rephrase this because this is a really confusing line. I don’t know what “continuing on” refers to. The sentence structure suggests EA’s inclusion of women in a game was a societal ill; but I’ll give you time to clarify on that.
I think you need to intentionally misread that sentence to get that interpretation. But, since you asked:
I'm not all that interested in letting you sealion about how it's unfair for me to dismiss somebody's "very real" concerns just because unrepentant sexist bigots are also making sexist attacks. So I'll also quote and annotate my original point: