Are Internet Discussions Regressing?

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

I'm sure gay people can relate perfectly well to straight characters, but does that mean we should have nothing but straight characters?

^Said it right there

Nope, try again. What you quoted does not equate to what you said:

Saying a character is good because they're well written and they just happen to be gay doesn't equate to 'well I want nothing but straight characters'.

You have constructed a strawman. I responded to a comment that said "[if] we can relate to this gay character despite his sexuality, [it] kind of debunks the whole "we need more inclusion in games" thing."

As far as I know you're the one who set up the strawman in the first place. Either that or your intent was lost in the execution.

'Does that mean we should have nothing but straight characters?' is quite hard to not interpret as anything but dismissing the alternative and making it out to be that you just want straight characters.

 

[Dizchu]

As far as I know you're the one who set up the strawman in the first place. Either that or your intent was lost in the execution.

'Does that mean we should have nothing but straight characters?' is quite hard to not interpret as anything but dismissing the alternative and making it out to be that you just want straight characters.

It's called a rhetorical question. If the representation of gay characters isn't important (as the person I responded to suggested), then it's perfectly logical to ask "why have gay characters at all?"

 

[RJ 17]

The internet is just like everything else: it has trends that come and go and shift. Used to be people would just start quoting fallacies as though this were the high school Speech and Debate team. "Nuh-uh! What you just said is prime example of the Dingus Dipshit fallacy! It's the fallacy that proves you're a dipshit!" But we've moved beyond that. Now we just call people SJWs or Sexist or Racist.

Soon enough we'll move beyond this and find a new way to constantly ***** at one another...it's the way the internet works.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

As far as I know you're the one who set up the strawman in the first place. Either that or your intent was lost in the execution.

'Does that mean we should have nothing but straight characters?' is quite hard to not interpret as anything but dismissing the alternative and making it out to be that you just want straight characters.

It's called a rhetorical question. If the representation of gay characters isn't important (as the person I responded to suggested), then it's perfectly logical to ask "why have gay characters at all?"

Rhetorical questions don't really add anything to discourse aside from flavour in text. I'll admit mea culpa in misinterpretting it but explaining your initial rhetoric with further rhetorical questions doesn't do your argument any favours, whatever it may even be at this point.

Let's go back to square 1:

I think EC content has gone downhill. I think that the Kanji episode was alright but they messed up the execution of what they may have intended to say by not researching the game properly or through their own bias. Minority characters in games are cool but are ultimately not up to us to decide nor should we feel entitled to decide that aspect beyond buying or not buying games. It's perfectly fine to have straight white male characters as games are about assuming a role, and the gaming community is varied enough that there are already enough roles of immense variety to assume anyway. Saying that the market is flooded with said straight white etc. characters is a misnomer because it looks at AAA games, most of which aren't marketed directly to the gaming community but to the largest possible demographic because of basic economics. Minority characters =/= well written characters nor do I believe that having more representation is a necessity instead of just a want.

 

[Dizchu]

Rhetorical questions don't really add anything to discourse aside from flavour in text. I'll admit mea culpa in misinterpretting it but explaining your initial rhetoric with further rhetorical questions doesn't do your argument any favours, whatever it may even be at this point.

Rhetorical questions are an argumentative device just like any other, they're meant to challenge a person's viewpoint by encouraging them to look at it from a different perspective.

The whole topic is a rhetorical question actually, I'm not looking for a "yes" or "no" answer but rather a discussion about the development of online arguments. There are things that I consider to be regressive, such as knee-jerk reactions to benign words. But at the same time I consider a lot of things to be progressive, such as the broader access to the internet and the increased exposure to certain ideas or groups of people that might have been considered less visible a decade ago.

I have my disagreements with a few EC videos but I've never felt compelled to accuse them of pushing a spooky agenda or of brainwashing like many people have. I pointed out those two videos in particular because the responses are contradictory. Fair enough if you disagree with their political interpretation of The Division, but the suggestion brought forth by many is that games should exist independently of political commentary or thematic analysis. Why are EC accused of pushing a political agenda when Ubisoft are not? It seems to me to be a convenient deflection of criticism rather than an honest discussion of the game.

 

[DudeistBelieve]

Can't we look at it the other way around? People thinking for their own rather then just blindly agreeing with what "the voice in the computer screen" says like they were taught their whole lives.

But about the second video here I skipped around it.... it makes a comparison to players of The Division to SS agents, it's Godwin's law right there and then goes a spiel of how the game is fascist simulator and hateful to blacks (5:55), I didn't play the game only heard of it, but from what I heard it seems a lot like trying to create controversy for controversy's sake, I also remember someone saying in a different thread it also comes from people trying to diss the game because it's views do not align to their "progressive" views.

No... it's actually a fairly accurate criticism of the game.

I mean I'm a government agent walking around in a societal collapsed city, executing people that are looting corpses. Like of course they're looting corpses, SOCIETY HAS COLLAPSE! These are people doing what they have to.

And the sanitation workers.... yep.

 

[Sigmund Av Volsung]

Rhetorical questions don't really add anything to discourse aside from flavour in text. I'll admit mea culpa in misinterpretting it but explaining your initial rhetoric with further rhetorical questions doesn't do your argument any favours, whatever it may even be at this point.

Rhetorical questions are an argumentative device just like any other, they're meant to challenge a person's viewpoint by encouraging them to look at it from a different perspective.

The whole topic is a rhetorical question actually, I'm not looking for a "yes" or "no" answer but rather a discussion about the development of online arguments. There are things that I consider to be regressive, such as knee-jerk reactions to benign words. But at the same time I consider a lot of things to be progressive, such as the broader access to the internet and the increased exposure to certain ideas or groups of people that might have been considered less visible a decade ago.

I have my disagreements with a few EC videos but I've never felt compelled to accuse them of pushing a spooky agenda or of brainwashing like many people have. I pointed out those two videos in particular because the responses are contradictory. Fair enough if you disagree with their political interpretation of The Division, but the suggestion brought forth by many is that games should exist independently of political commentary or thematic analysis. Why are EC accused of pushing a political agenda when Ubisoft are not? It seems to me to be a convenient deflection of criticism rather than an honest discussion of the game.

Fair do's then on the initial hostility. My apologies.

I don't think EC videos push an agenda most of the time. There are some topics where I do think that they are taking the mickey in not noticing how what they are talking about does come from a very particular set of political beliefs that other people might disagree with. As for why I don't think Division merits a political discussion is that I don't think there's enough of a framework within the game to support it. Simply put, games are entertainment but they can also be art, and I don't think that The Division merits to be within reaches of art. Call me a snob, but considering its marketing, design and price model, it is pretty much just Destiny, which itself was marketed with Red Bull and other cross-promotional stuff.

I don't think that such a discussion is invalid, but The Division does not have a detailed or cohesive enough world to support any parallels to real world politics outside of the completely arbitrary Tom Clancy signature(which TC fans would object to highly to begin with). It does aim for realism, but at the same time it is incredibly detached from reality, with its very arcadey game mechanics and heavy emphasis on competitive multiplayer. The narrative connection between mechanics and story is incredibly weak so any discussion around the game's politics or themes is going to be very inferrential. Compare this game to Spec Ops The Line, which lulled you into a dulled state on purpose so that it can pull the rug from under your eyes with a nightmarish descent into the very depths of the human heart. Everything in that game was designed on purpose to serve the message and to open up debate. By contrast, what elements of The Division are assembled to support a political discussion aside from the 2nd Amendment?

What grins my gears with the Extra Credits episode is that they conflate hoodies in the game with Black Lives Matter in the real world. It's like the idea that say, the game designer was just lazy and came up with a very limited layout for enemy design and just ended up copy-pasting hoodies everywhere flew completely over their heads. The Master-craft idea works in some scenarios, but their discussion here is very much grasping at straws. They're inferring based from events in the real world, and in the playing field that is the AAA scene, things are not that subtle. Even Bioware, as good writers as they are, couldn't tackle current topics without being incredibly blunt about it, and those guys are supposed to one of the gold standards for writing in video games.

As for how EC has changed, I just think they ran out of topics to discuss, or whenever they do discuss it they don't do through a broad enough perspective. I honestly think their earlier stuff was a lot better, and this episode in particular still remains my favourite:


Which is funny in a way, since here they're discussing how if we want games to be taken seriously, we have to embrace their faults and stick by them, yet here they are arguing about the Division in a manner similar to Polygon about how it has problematic elements that are deeply troublesome.

 

[Ogoid]

But why? It's a perfectly reasonable word. "Problematic" is an adjective form of the word "problem", should "problem" also be considered a taboo word?

When people shut themselves off from such benign words such as "problematic" it ironically comes off as the same "safe space" mentality that these people like to ***** about constantly. "Please don't use that word! It's offensive!"

Oh, I can field this one, if I may, considering I have a serious problem with that word.

Quoting myself from 13 November, 2015:

That's the wonderful thing about that oh-so-useful bit of non-speak - to wit, "problematic" - that's so much in vogue nowadays, isn't it? It allows one to issue a Kafkaesquely indefinite condemnation, to cast an air of vague, unspecific objectionability to anything one pleases, while still leaving them with enough wiggle room to play semantics and back down if anyone calls them out on it.

The problem with it is not that it's "offensive". It's that it's been so thoroughly abused, by now it's at best a clear sign that someone's not arguing in good faith or willing to stand behind their actual claims. At worst, it's white noise, containing zero in the way of actual semantic content.

 

[Dizchu]

The problem with it is not that it's "offensive". It's that it's been so thoroughly abused, by now it's at best a clear sign that someone's not arguing in good faith or willing to stand behind their actual claims. At worst, it's white noise, containing zero in the way of actual semantic content.

It's just an adjective. Who cares if SOME people drop the word into an argument without elaborating? If other people use the word in an argument where they DO elaborate why do their arguments have to be rejected?

It's like the recent Jim Sterling video where people got their knickers in a twist because he said "it's 2016". Yeah he said "it's 2016" after a lengthy video explaining why certain business practices have been tolerated for far too long. Just because Justin Trudeau or someone uses it like some sort of catchphrase should not detract from his argument.

People who take such an issue with the word "problematic" or the expression "it's 2016" and as a result reject the opponent's argument have nobody to blame but themselves if a discussion goes nowhere.

Fair do's then on the initial hostility. My apologies.

No worries, I'm happy to have settled this.

I don't think EC videos push an agenda most of the time. There are some topics where I do think that they are taking the mickey in not noticing how what they are talking about does come from a very particular set of political beliefs that other people might disagree with. As for why I don't think Division merits a political discussion is that I don't think there's enough of a framework within the game to support it. Simply put, games are entertainment but they can also be art, and I don't think that The Division merits to be within reaches of art. Call me a snob, but considering its marketing, design and price model, it is pretty much just Destiny, which itself was marketed with Red Bull and other cross-promotional stuff.

I don't know, I can sympathise with the "this game doesn't want to engage in any political discussions" point of view but I think it's an instance of a game trying to have its cake and eat it. It wants to use the visual language of urban rioting and paramilitary intervention that's been a big issue in the United States and other countries in the last few years, but it also doesn't want to deal with the baggage of such imagery. Like EC I'm not accusing Ubisoft of pushing a fascist agenda or encouraging vigilantism, but I do feel that its use of such themes is done clumsily.

I'm not saying The Division is a bad game, much like Destiny isn't a bad game. But I would say that it squanders its potential. The fact that so many parallels can be made between The Division's settings and the real world shouldn't be considered something to shy away from, it should be considered an opportunity to make something really compelling. Something that can elevate a game from "it's pretty fun, I had a good time with it for a couple of weeks a few years ago I guess" to "this is actually really damn good and I want to recommend it to my friends".

What grins my gears with the Extra Credits episode is that they conflate hoodies in the game with Black Lives Matter in the real world. It's like the idea that say, the game designer was just lazy and came up with a very limited layout for enemy design and just ended up copy-pasting hoodies everywhere flew completely over their heads.

I think that was the point of the criticism, it just seemed lazy and clumsy and didn't take into account real-world implications. The hoodie has been associated with thugs and criminals for a while now so having a game lazily dress enemy combatants in hoodies seems... poorly-thought out to say the least.

As for how EC has changed, I just think they ran out of topics to discuss, or whenever they do discuss it they don't do through a broad enough perspective.

I think this is true for many people to be honest. There's only so much you can say about video games while keeping it generalised and eventually you're gonna have to step on a few toes.

 

[Ogoid]

It's just an adjective. Who cares if SOME people drop the word into an argument without elaborating? If other people use the word in an argument where they DO elaborate why do their arguments have to be rejected?

It's like the recent Jim Sterling video where people got their knickers in a twist because he said "it's 2016". Yeah he said "it's 2016" after a lengthy video explaining why certain business practices have been tolerated for far too long. Just because Justin Trudeau or someone uses it like some sort of catchphrase should not detract from his argument.

People who take such an issue with the word "problematic" or the expression "it's 2016" and as a result reject the opponent's argument have nobody to blame but themselves if a discussion goes nowhere.

I can, obviously, only speak for myself, but personally, I don't reject arguments outright on the simple basis of the people making them using the word "problematic"; it does, however, makes me take every word preceding and following it with a hefty extra dose of salt.

It also seems to lend major credit to Pavlov's experiments, in that it automatically causes my eyes to roll up and to the left.

 

[Worgen]

In my opinion Extra Credits has gone downhill. They talked smack about a game that had no ambition to address real world politics, draw some absurd conclusions that hoodie = african american ergo the game is 'problematic' and complain about violence in games, in a game that was designed to be disposable popcorn entertainment.

Their Extra History episodes are also good, even if they did oversell Mary Seacole's contribution to the Crimean War Effort, and also them dedicating half an episode to talk about her being black and stalling actually chronicling her story for whatever reason.

They explain all that pretty well in the episode, I don't understand why it was hard to get.

As for the violence, I'm assuming you mean about bioshock infinite and the violence in it was weird. It made sense in the other bioshock games since you were in a destroyed city full of splicers. But in infinite your in a living city but the only way you really interact with it is with a gun. Its just weird.

 

[47_Ronin]

I have been commenting or discussing stuff on the internet since about the mid 90's. While it has almost always been virtually impossible to discuss intelligently (opponents would either not mention your most important points in their rebuttal or create elaborate straw men), it has never been as black and white as it is right know. There has also been a very disturbing tonal shift. People have always been dicks (me included, on occasion), but the level of vitriol and hate seems to be unparalleled.

 

[shrekfan246]

99% likes, almost universal agreement
[...]
73% likes, which is exceptionally controversial for an Extra Credits video

I just want to mention some stats that you haven't but seem relevant:

First video has 5,631 votes in total as opposed to the second video's 24,165 total votes. Both videos also have a comparable number of views the one which is (almost exactly) 4 years old has 369,759 views while the other one has 324,635, yet it's only barely a month old. So, it seems that the new video has gathered a lot more audience as opposed to the old one, however, that's only views on YouTube - it doesn't count other sites it's been hosted on and people who've seen it there. However, that also means that it doesn't reflect the disagreements of the people from those sites.

I kinda feel like that's a point in favor of the "backlash" argument.

OT: On the internet in general? Eh, nah, not really, though it seems the tides have shifted a bit so it's more difficult to find the good spots now. But in certain areas of the internet? Hell yeah. Talking about video games is fucking impossible now, because you can't say a gorram word without someone leaping out at you to screech about "SJWs".

 

[BarkBarker]

I feel like the first video was getting at more of a representation of a time we left behind and many aspects of games have roots in a time that wasn't always nice to particular genders. The second video felt more like extrapolating a bit too much in a game where we aren't supposed to think about it because it's a means to present the gameplay using Tom Clancy as a shell and whatever comes with that in terms of social commentary and so forth.

In general, I think the way people frame things is important. Daring to have a conversation and doing so without being deliberately and unnecessarily difficult is all I ask.

 

[09philj]

Of course it is, because there are more extremists than ever before and everyone on the middle ground has to die. Basically if you don't think that either men are scum and it doesn't matter if you discriminate against them or are convinced that there's a liberal radical feminist politically correct nazi communist conspiracy to control our lives and stifle artistic expression, you aren't allowed an opinion, and/or will be shoehorned into the group you are closest to or hated by both of them.

 

[JaKandDaxter]

A much older friend of mine says she's never seen people so divided and pitted against each other. And she was around for the civil rights movement. Perhaps because back then it was the civil rights movement, women's rights, and some others. Today, its all the issues of the past and more.

But its not just the internet, its everywhere. Doesn't help that social media which severely lacks moderation, has now given radical groups a platform to push their agenda to large groups of people who are simply sheep. Its just terrible. Its one of Obama's biggest failures in office when he and Holder had a personal vendetta against any suspicion of racism. Those two goons set back race relationships by God knows how long. And I have to say, if all this was planned to keep the general public occupied with conflict while governments and big business do their shady business without watch. Then it was a brilliant idea that succeed beyond measure. Because posting hashtags on social media and insulting others who have a different viewpoint, is not being politically active. Your just venting in a circle where nothing will get done or changed.

 

[Dizchu]

What does Fox News have to do with it? hoodies as a threat seems to be ingrained into american culture, going against it because wonky unfortunate implications doesn't really work as a conversation, besides are the people in the game wearing hoodies mainly blacks?

What does Fox News have to do with it? Did you watch the video at the exact timecode you pointed out? There was a an excerpt from Geraldo Rivera, a Fox News contributor, about how "the hoodie" was the main contributing factor in Trayvon Martin's death. That and the similarity between the attitude of the game towards "thugs" and America's attitude towards "thugs" (which is heavily influenced by race) poses problematic, troublesome[footnote]Please let "troublesome" be an acceptable word, please![/footnote] implications, likely unintentional on the developer's part.

But by your title you seem to mean regression in the entirety of internet discussions, so even if we can call problematic subjects as regressive it still does not stand for most subjects.

Well I'm not sure about the "entirety" of internet discussions as I don't frequent extremist echo chambers or many other communities outside of the sort of mainstream gaming/politics/entertainment/culture forums. But I have noticed changes in approach to many topics, some which have been regressive and some which may not have been. I can't really speak for every community or group, I'm sure religious extremists haven't had much to regress from.