Thank you! I still couldn't work out the other 'C'. I am not a clever man.
We need a better way to argue in controversial, serious, sensitive topics.
- Thread starter Speevy
- Start date
- Status
Thank you! I still couldn't work out the other 'C'. I am not a clever man.
No. They made a comment specifically about society's tendency to accept the word of cishet white men as truth without scrutiny. As opposed to the word of the rest of us, that need 4 or five peer reviewed academic studies before even being considered.
Seeing as a lot of girlgaf left because the owner perved on them and more.
Did you ever take a step back and read what you are posting? Jesus, almost every post from you is a straight up dismissive strawman rhetoric. Your behavior is the prime example of how discussions turn sour or why discussions don't even start to begin with. It's very ironic, considering in the TOPIC you post in.
Because, in dangerous situations, including sexual assault, it's not uncommon for your body to seize up completely until the danger passes. This has happened to me personally.
Because women are socialized to coddle men's egos, so clearly saying "no" and potentially hurting their feelings isn't an option to many of us.
Because if you're a woman who is being harassed by a man, chances are he's bigger and stronger than you, and clearly rejecting his attempts could get you killed.
Sigh.
Everyone can post poorly, even people in the right.
The heavy handed approach won't work as the moderators are humans and humans make mistakes and are prone to their own biases.
Ultimately, I feel like the best way to discuss controversial topics is just to be nice about it and I understand people can be very angry/offended if their existance is threatended, but it's much better to quote something and tell them
'this is out of line' and explain why than just dog piling on them or baiting them with snarky commentary.
Will it happen? Probably a pipe dream and people who feel they are in the right will post however they like because more often than not, moderation will catch up with their opponents, but I feel like that is not a long-term solution to any forum.
The forum will ultimately devolve into angry mobs attacking people because they've gotten away with it before and that is what happened in the old forum, and a lot of people who probably shouldn't have been excluded from the community will get caught up in it because of the precedence set in the past.
I just think taking a step back with any discussion after 2-3 exchanges in a discussion results in a stalemate is just a good thing overall. Sometimes, all it takes is one side saying 'I'm sorry' or 'I was ignorant of this fact'
My 2 cents.
The heavy handed approach won't work as the moderators are humans and humans make mistakes and are prone to their own biases.
Ultimately, I feel like the best way to discuss controversial topics is just to be nice about it and I understand people can be very angry/offended if their existance is threatended, but it's much better to quote something and tell them
'this is out of line' and explain why than just dog piling on them or baiting them with snarky commentary.
Will it happen? Probably a pipe dream and people who feel they are in the right will post however they like because more often than not, moderation will catch up with their opponents, but I feel like that is not a long-term solution to any forum.
The forum will ultimately devolve into angry mobs attacking people because they've gotten away with it before and that is what happened in the old forum, and a lot of people who probably shouldn't have been excluded from the community will get caught up in it because of the precedence set in the past.
I just think taking a step back with any discussion after 2-3 exchanges in a discussion results in a stalemate is just a good thing overall. Sometimes, all it takes is one side saying 'I'm sorry' or 'I was ignorant of this fact'
My 2 cents.
Last edited:
Looking on it again, yeah that's definitely another possible meaning for it.
Things like that are actually why I responded in the manner I did. Like, it didn't come to my mind that they could be adding to Persephone's comment, but in general there are a lot of times where you can misunderstand something rather easily, and the other person might be coming from a completely different place than you are. So there's no point in attacking, but instead I just asked them a question. Then it's easy for them to fix the misunderstanding if that happened, or elaborate on their view.
We don't really know for sure until the person posts back.
She didn't respond to that part (though certainly there were a lot of gamergaters too), but the part in which the post said it was the opposite (implying that it was all perfect).
Maybe, but it was still full of insidious sexism that was let slide. Meanwhile GirlGAF was getting banhammered left and right for no reason.
This place started nice and friendly then quickly turned back into the old place. There's still a lot of good discussions here, but I find a lot topics are best avoided. Sometimes I start reading through threads in OT and the posting quality isn't much better then a place like Yahoo Comments.
gamergate is born from a wilful ignorance and desire to sow discord and hatred in the first place, it's not a real prideful movement where people stand on their principles. i would wager that the vast majority of supporters on gaf weren't the ones posting so obviously. or they were using their burner accounts to do so
It sounds like we're in agreement that harsher consequences are needed, then.
And again, the mission statement/forcing users to read and agree to conditions before they post is a way of removing the excuse that they didn't know what they were doing, therefore justifying swift action from the mods.
I'm just being pragmatic. It doesn't do any good to argue about whose responsibility it is. Outright banning ignorant (but not malicious) people isn't going to make them disappear from the world. It isn't going to make things better for women and minorities. At some point, someone needs to engage with these people if we want to improve our world.
I totally understand if you don't want to or are too tired to. I can't even imagine how it must be for women and minorities. I'm just saying we shouldn't get in the way of those who do choose to engage them — because engaging them is the only way we move forward as a society.
Gaf was not even close to pro gamer gate, 90% of posters here migrated because of Tyler Malkas sexual assault case. Problematic posters were banned on the regular.
1. You don't know what a strawman is. Stop using the term.
2. Argue my points, not my argumentation.
Okay, I would really like a mod to come and explain this post. Because it is not insulting, it is not going full "sexism" but giving another side to the story. It doesn't make sense to me that it won a 3 day ban.
The owner being a shitbag doesn't make something a hive.
Can't really say much to that, just the idea that it was a gamergate hive seemed too weird to me when all the mods took such a hard stance against it.
I'm sorry that happened to you. Honestly, it would be much better to tell people that who have those kinds of questions. It might sound simple to you, but maybe its over their heads. When I see those questions I constantly see smart aleck responses and "victim blaming" being thrown around. Some people simply need to learn about the situation.
Nah I'm sure it was just a coincidence that so many of the people making gamegate-esque posts were Junior Members.
I was saying snarky comments that are dismissive of other people's comments ("sexism didn't exist on GAF because a cishet white male said it didn't"), do not contribute to discussion and discourage people from posting.
It's not the content of the post. It's how you used it to dismiss someone's comment.
This is the thing here. It seems that this is the case. Why even plant that seed of doubt?
The implication being that cishet white men are misogynists? I have no idea what you're even saying.
You literally made up a "quote" he supposedly said as paraphrasing instead of actually discussing anything, so I very much would like you to consider following your own point number 2, because that's what you actually don't do.
In this topic we discuss how to discuss better. And I'm pointing out your aggressive line of "reasoning" isn't a good way to accomplish that, let alone considering the topic at hand.
I think the point is that even if most of GAF was anti-gamergate, it was still something that women had to deal with on a daily basis. The kind of casual sexism followed by a swift "that's not what I meant" retort when called out. On gaming side especially the casual remarks were plentiful.
Alllllllll of this, and also this:
GAF is right there. They're using the same board software now, even. The transition back should be nice and clean for those dudes. The only thing stopping a lot of shitty, toxic, insecure men from just going back there is probably
1) They don't get the sense enough people would be watching them do their shitty toxic two-steps, and
2) Running back there feels like taking an L because they'd have to own their shit in order to do it.
But it's pretty obvious the way they wanna talk about pop-culture fits way better over there. On the board run by the handsy asshole. The one who cultivated the atmosphere you toxic, shitty, "I'm just askin..." dudes are begging for in the first place.
Fuckin' go home.
Outside of the meaningless anecdotes in the post -
This is disgusting. Pointing out, discussing and addressing sexism is not the problem and is not why there are fewer women in science.
Do you know WHO was saying GAF was a progressive haven? IT WAS CISHET WHITE MEN. Women and minorities on GAF were well aware of all the bullshit but cishet white dudes kept telling us to be grateful for how ~tolerant GAF was.
ofc the reason was the site owner didn't like anyone saying you should believe women and naturally a large amount of women happen to hold that viewpoint. gaf became a safe space for tyler malka
(and thats just the stuff from within its last year)
I understand that some people genuinely don't know, and even I, who have considered myself a feminist since I learned of the word, thought "if a dude assaulted me I'd just kick him in the balls!" before it happened to me and my body froze and my mind dissociated until it was over. But you (general you) have to understand that women and minorities are simply exhausted of answering the same questions over and over again. Imagine if someone came to your job and asked you the most basic shit about it and you had to stop everything you're doing to explain it to them in excruciating detail. And then someone else comes the next day and does the same thing. And then the following day. And then the following. Again. And again. And again.
Which is why imo it's important that allies actually do ally work. Women and minorities can't bear the entire burden of educating people. Men, cis people, straight people and white people need to do better. Just saying "oh yeah I support minorities!!" and then doing nothing doesn't help.
Just bear in mind that unfortunately loops into the situation where a burden is seemingly placed upon victims to explain the abuse they've received to people. That can mean reliving it, and otherwise bringing the stress it caused back up, which is not a comfortable process, and for some, is honestly damaging. At the very least, it often gets tiring, and for many, they've simply had enough. It's not an easy issue to, however you slice it.
Edit:
Or as psychowave put it. I still don't know how to turn usernames into notifications.
This forum should take hard stances against things like misogyny, anti-lgbt, pro-life, racism, etc.
Trust, we are in 100% complete agreement on this. What's interesting that I was clumsily pointing out is how expectations for a fresh start came into play, and how that works in reality.
A lot of what I'm reading in this thread is a whole lot of 'fence sitting' 'middle of the road' 'talk around the point but not the actual point' usual nonsense that keeps this all in a stalemate.
I'm not sure why we don't have heavier consequences for these problems, except that no one wants to be the bad guy. Either that, or people don't really care as much as they claim that they do.
Hey OP get off your high horse.
There are plenty of ways to express ourselves and disagree without asking for bans to our fellow resetera members.
Put an @ in front of their username and a prompt should pop up. Hope that helps!
Actually, let's talk about my argumentation:
Ya see, when you paraphrase someone, what it does is force them to respond with what they meant:
As opposed to what they said:
Which makes debating their actual point infintely more efficient. Which makes for a better discussion.
...In hindsight, that feels like it should have been obvious. Thank you very much.
Edit:
And you as well.
At what point do we need to coddle posters who refuse to do anything such as read the thread over before posting? For example, usually threads on the first few pages actually take arguements in good faith and arguements happen. Then a new person comes in defending an opinion without knowing all the context, rinse and repeat. It's a cycle at this point. Or even not reading the OP article, to the point where mods had to remake a thread saying 'Read the OP'.
It's not like I disagree with you, of course it isn't going to make ignorance disappear, but aren't you prioritizing the unintentionally ignorant over the minorites and women in the forum? This is an online forum for video games, not the real world. I guess it depends on ERA wants to be shaped in the end though.
Straight saying "Wait for all the facts" might be seen as disrespectful, sure, but it can be neutral. Questioning both sides is totally a ok thing to do and it's open to discussion.
Without being disrespectful of course.
You can take an accusation serious but still wait for all the facts to come out to have an opinion. Saying "I'm not sure I believe the victim" might be seen as taking the assaulter side but you can say " These are some serious allegations. Let's see how X will respond or if anything comes out of this" f.e.
The post has a really common argument structure that is often used in dismissing systematic issues.
1. Women in the game industry complain about sexism and harassment.
2. Here is a woman or a number of women who didn't experience it
3. Therefore the problem doesn't exist or is not a systematic issue
It's dismissing the experience of the first group of women. In addition in this case the user also posted that because he didn't notice any sexism there were none. Another common argument to dismiss these issues.
Honestly I'm a bit baffled how you can spent any amount of time with the topic and not notice these patterns of dismissal.
It was pretty noticeable on the gaming side, especially with those big thread blow ups for Pewdiepie and Jontron. And whenever there was a thread about the latest Anita Sarkeesian video.
Gaf was a really progressive forum, not perfect and the gaming side was worse than the Off-Topic but compared to others forums it was way better, especially considering its size. It took a hardline against the GG BS, Trump voters didnt bother posting that much.
Again I'm not saying it is perfect, there is always room for improvement which I hope ResetEra can do.
To get a frame of refrence is there a forum which you would consider a progressive forum?
People that defended PDP and especially JonTron got banned. The gaming side was worse than the Off Topic but definetly not a GamerGate hive or pro-GG.
User Banned (1 month): Racism and dog whistling.
Here's how you can handle it.
1. Stop making this an anti-American site.
2. Stop making this an anti-White site.
3. Stop banning people if they aren't anti-American or anti-White.
That would be a good start. The off-topic forum is absolutely littered with anti-American and anti-White rhetoric. How many threads do we have on Trump? Why is America so constantly brought up here? Why are people constantly claiming white people are inherently evil?
It's disgusting.
Good steps to getting rid of the trash is to move the politics to a separate sub-forum. Off-topic shouldn't be primarily a political subforum. That alone would clean up most of the muck here. It's so bad it even spills in to the gaming forum either through people erroneously posting threads there or for some reason bringing politics in to video game discussions.
I'm also going to actually stop visiting this "EtcetCera" part of the site as a way to keep away from the negative vibes present here. I don't see the world as a place of hate and I really don't care to have to view all these hateful attitudes present.
1. Stop making this an anti-American site.
2. Stop making this an anti-White site.
3. Stop banning people if they aren't anti-American or anti-White.
That would be a good start. The off-topic forum is absolutely littered with anti-American and anti-White rhetoric. How many threads do we have on Trump? Why is America so constantly brought up here? Why are people constantly claiming white people are inherently evil?
It's disgusting.
Good steps to getting rid of the trash is to move the politics to a separate sub-forum. Off-topic shouldn't be primarily a political subforum. That alone would clean up most of the muck here. It's so bad it even spills in to the gaming forum either through people erroneously posting threads there or for some reason bringing politics in to video game discussions.
I'm also going to actually stop visiting this "EtcetCera" part of the site as a way to keep away from the negative vibes present here. I don't see the world as a place of hate and I really don't care to have to view all these hateful attitudes present.
- Status