How did The Escapist's culture change so much?

[Lightknight]

Considering a person who is trans to be not the gender they project as is offensive,

Well, they're generally offended if you don't consider them to be sexually or gendered in the way they identify as. I have no problem viewing a transfemale as having a female gender. What I do have a problem with is the insistence that I must then see them as sexually female as well when that is not and will never be the case. I get identifying as a female psychologically. I just don't see why that has to impact how I view sex differentiation or how me having firm views of sex in the majority of cases (hermaphroditism is the only thing that blurs the line in my mind, not gender) suddenly has to be offensive or men I'm anti-transpeople. I simply believe that some people who are sexually male or female can have a gender that does not match the sex. In fact, that seems to be the normal sentiment when people describe the condition so it seems somewhat awkward that we then have to accommodate them with different pronouns and such that we may absolutely associate with sex rather than gender.

In essence, people are getting offended because of semantics. That people won't adhere to the definitions they try to impose on others.

as is blanket equations of drag queens to actual transgenderism. Besides inoffensive is essentially a cop-out term. People can be offended by anything at any time, so inoffensive doesn't exist. Just because you find something inoffensive doesn't mean it is. Still the trans person, or drag queen was the punchline in a very bad taste joke, that's offensive.

If you are talking about the Pillars of Eternity, who the punchline is depends on your perspective. Why not the idiot who jumped off a cliff just because he couldn't come to terms with the identity crises him acting outside of his orientation caused? The joke doesn't indicate that the other person did anything wrong or was bad. Just that the individual that died could not reconcile what happened with who he believed himself to be.

If you woke up tomorrow in the bed of someone that does not match your orientation, wouldn't you question yourself and your identity too? That's only natural and some people would absolutely take it that hard.

Sorry, but accidentally sleeping with someone that you would never sleep with if you knew the full story is a time honored joke and this is just an alternate telling that involves a cross dresser or transgendered person. Sleeping with a person that you think is one sex, looks a certain way, isn't your cousin is all fair game. Sorry if that offends some people but tough tits. Jokes aren't meant to please everyone. Maybe the next joke can be about how a transperson woke up with the wrong sexed person and themselves jumped off a cliff in response. But that would be even more offensive, wouldn't it?

Anyways, it's just a joke. If it were something more? Someone trying to oppress transgendered people or cause actual harm? Then I'd absolutely stand with you on fending those people off and fighting for equality. But this? This is just people bitching about a joke someone told and that's just tough.

 

[Zontar]

and if they are so small to be so inconsequential what does that say about the people who actually concern themselves with them? These dreaded SJWs don't seem to actually be able to accomplish much considering the boogeymen they've been turned into. But anyway good to know people will always go around making claims about whether or not people were ever going to play the game even if they can't back up such a claim.

Oh come on, don't tell me no one thought they might be a large group given how every one of the major gaming sites where reporting on it as if it was major news, with e-celebs that concern themselves with gaming or pop culture all perpetuating the calls for boycott on top of that. If the group was in fact small enough to not even be measurable, then honestly that's probably just more fuel that can be used against gaming news sites for painting an intentionally false image of the issue (though I guess "10 people plan not to buy this game" wouldn't be clickbait enough).

And I may not be able to back my claims with direct evidence, but I can point to trends, which is a fair deal more then you can and have done, and given how the trends show either no real change or the opposite reaction to the results of a boycott, occam's razor points towards them never intended to buy the game over them having intended to buy it and then having changed their mind over the claimed issue.

But you know seeing as this was mostly about someone going around posting that XKCD image and then not being able to back up their own claims and not about the legitimacy of the boycott groups thanks for proving my point.

The only point you've proven is that I have to extrapolate and make an assumption based on trends, while you are making pure assumptions without any evidence.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Considering a person who is trans to be not the gender they project as is offensive, as is blanket equations of drag queens to actual transgenderism. Besides inoffensive is essentially a cop-out term. People can be offended by anything at any time, so inoffensive doesn't exist. Just because you find something inoffensive doesn't mean it is. Still the trans person, or drag queen was the punchline in a very bad taste joke, that's offensive.

No, the punchline was that the straight guy was so full of himself that upon realizing he had slept with a man or a trans person (and let's face it, it was implied to be a man, not trans) he killed himself, either intentionally or accidentally. No gays or trans people where made fun of, degraded, insulted, painted in a bad light or otherwise shown in any way which should have caused offence.

You are right about anything potentially causing offence, but not all things are equal. Taking offence to someone saying a group you're a part of should die, that is understandable. Taking offence to that joke, however, is juvenile, and shouldn't have been taken seriously by anyone.

Stephen Fry put it best, and this is definitely a case where this quote applies.

I frankly don't give a damn what personal opinions Stephen Fry holds. While he's right in part to say that being offended doesn't give you any special position. On the other telling people not to be offended, or something they find offensive is inoffensive is insensitive to the person who was offended.

I said before it was blown out of proportion. I'll still stand by that. That doesn't make it less offensive to people who find it offensive. You can say, "It's just a joke, sorry you found it offensive, but you'll get over it." Which is fine because people who get offended by things do get over it. It's still a tasteless joke, it's still offensive to some parties, and that's the point.

I often like offensive humour. I'm tired of a lot of offensive humour because it's overused because it's easy. It doesn't give anyone special rights when offended, but it also doesn't give you any right to tell them not to be offended either.

Also pertaining to that joke, even if you're trans, gay, and/or had/have issues with suicidal thoughts, and you find the joke inoffensive, doesn't mean others will. Because jokes involving certain subjects are offensive to some people. Trying to undermine their opinion with yours because you found it inoffensive is kind of being a jerk about it.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Snip

What it boils down to is people using their opinions to try to invalidate the opinion of someone else is where I actually have a problem.

Most humour is offensive to someone. Which in and of it self is fine. If someone is particularly offended by a joke, or anything else, then they do have the right to protest against it if they want. Where I get miffed with the whole situation is when either party asserts their opinion on the matter as more important than another persons opinion. Just because one person wasn't personally offended and another was doesn't mean that either party is inherently right. It's rather stupid to try and make someone be offended, or not offended by something they find offensive, or not offensive. No more no less.

 

[Glademaster_v1legacy]

Well the main problem is people don't seem to know how to kill topics they don't like to see. If people didn't like the direction the forum was going people wouldn't be posting or looking at all these GG and gender issue threads. I have come to think they are the biggest load of utter shite and tripe so I ignore them and shun them like a plague. It has made my life so much easier.

I'm just sick of discussing this topic at this point so avoiding the threads is helping do my part. I understand stuff like this does need to be talked about but can we not have a time out or something?

As to outsider's views people always have views of websites like that. Reddit is a hivemind/circle jerk, The Escapist forum is pretentious and over moderated with the only thing worthwhile on this site being ZP, 4chan is an unmoderated hell hole where innocence goes to die, etc. Yeah sure there might be a grain of truth to some of the views other sites have of other sites but I mean who cares about what other people say about collectives? I wouldn't pay attention to someone that said something as ridiculous as all Spanish are smelly and sure the latter is racist and former is just generalizing a site but in my opinion a similar stance should be taken.

That is just ignore it.

 

[Zontar]

I frankly don't give a damn what personal opinions Stephen Fry holds. While he's right in part to say that being offended doesn't give you any special position. On the other telling people not to be offended, or something they find offensive is inoffensive is insensitive to the person who was offended.

Well, fine, I'll stop saying it's not offensive. I will, however, say it's not rationally offensive, as any rational argument as to why someone would take offence has yet to emerge, and it's not the usual easy to understand situation where while one can not care for something to be offensive, it's at least understandable why one would take offence. This is most definitely not one of those cases.

I said before it was blown out of proportion. I'll still stand by that. That doesn't make it less offensive to people who find it offensive. You can say, "It's just a joke, sorry you found it offensive, but you'll get over it." Which is fine because people who get offended by things do get over it. It's still a tasteless joke, it's still offensive to some parties, and that's the point.

I still don't even understand what could be considered offensive about it in the first place. Usually offence is preceded by something negative against an offending party happening first, but there wasn't anything negative about gays or trans people conveyed by the joke.

I often like offensive humour. I'm tired of a lot of offensive humour because it's overused because it's easy. It doesn't give anyone special rights when offended, but it also doesn't give you any right to tell them not to be offended either.

The joke isn't offensive humour, offensive humour has the offence of the joke be critical to the joke being funny, and often itself is the punchline. The joke in the game, however, is just a joke people got offended about. There's a difference between offensive humour and being offended at humour: intent (though usually it's also understandable why someone takes offence to a joke even if you don't agree with it. In this case, not so much).

Also pertaining to that joke, even if you're trans, gay, and/or had/have issues with suicidal thoughts, and you find the joke inoffensive, doesn't mean others will. Because jokes involving certain subjects are offensive to some people. Trying to undermine their opinion with yours because you found it inoffensive is kind of being a jerk about it.

Why would trans or gay people who have had suicidal thoughts be relevant? The joke was about a straight guy, who may or may not have committed suicide because of how far up his own ass his head was shoved.

I'm going to be frank, people who got offended by the joke where looking for something to complain about, because no one has given a logical explanation as to why they where offended appart from the "debunked before it even became memetic" claim that it's transphobic.

 

[CeeBod]

I'm the plural of an anomaly! I think I'm a bit younger that the Gupster, but I'm still older than many here and I never had any problems as a young 'un in relation to my hobbies outside of my brick collection, which, in fairness, was short-lived.

Another anomaly here - I was never bullied for being a gamer, in fact I was never really bullied at all. I got in one litte fight (cue Fresh Prince...) that might have been the start of me being bullied, had things turned out differently, but it was by a kid from a different school I rarely saw after that, so nothing ever came of it, and hell I was an ubergeeky kid with ubergeeky friends. We used to play pen & paper RPGs like Dungeons & Dragons every break-time. I actually carried a d20 to school every day and didn't get bullied! )

 

[Zontar]

The only point you've proven is that I have to extrapolate and make an assumption based on trends, while you are making pure assumptions without any evidence.

You're wrong there, I never made any assumptions. I never said that the reason there was seemingly no effect on sales was because of X. all I said was there were other possibilities and you were claiming with certainty that they were never going to buy the game. Something you can't substantiate.

So if you're saying you where not arguing that the people complaining about Assassin's Creed and Pillar's of Eternity where honest about their intent to buy the games in question but chose not to because of something that either had never been an issue before, or that something one had to be looking for offence to take issue with, then what was the point of this whole argument?

As it stands, the trends seem to show that there is validity to the "they never intended to buy it" argument, one that can't be definitively proven but does hold as much (or, given who some of the people perpetuating the message of the boycotts, more) water as the logical alternatives of the group being too small to matter (in which case gaming news wasted the time of a lot of people by giving a microphone to a fringe element too small to warrant listening to) or are so ineffective as to have a very large and easy to measure effect the complete inverse of their goals.

 

[KyuubiNoKitsune-Hime]

Snip

I'm going to be very very blunt here: YOU do not not need to be offended by anything, or even understand why it's offensive to someone. The fact someone got offended means that the whatever it was could be considered offensive. No matter how inoffensive you find something, if someone else finds it offensive you don't have the right to tell them it's inoffensive, because that person is not you. That also means you don't have to put any stock into their being offended by whatever it was. Still if you try to tell someone to not be offended by something they found offensive, even if you don't understand why they found it offensive, you're being insensitive and rude to the other person. Just because you disagree doesn't give you the right to be rude to the other person because of it.

The people who made a big deal out if it were; however, totally out of line. That I agree on.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

I didn't bother to read all the replies to this thread, so I'll just write from my point of view.

The change has been gradual, though it had its big bumps and things after which the landscape changed forever. I'm sure all those have been mentioned by now. I guess I didn't pay that much attention to it since it happened over several years and I'm not that active on these forums (I did 9 months of military service in 2012, kind of hard to keep up with the site during that time). If you timewarped into this moment from 5 years ago no doubt the discussion would be completely different: terms like SJW (aka the PC Police, aka White Knights, aka whatever they were called before that: same shit, different name), gamergate, discussion of political standing in relation to video games and so on would be completely alien to you.

But I don't know if the culture's really changed. It's more of a paradigm shift in the topics and how things are discussed. I've only had one major period of time when I seriously considered leaving the website: when Gamergate ran rampant, burning, killing and destroying everything in its path before getting sectioned off. Other than that, there's only been minor episodes or topics that have really made me cringe at all the ugliness bubbling behind the seemingly benign face of nerd culture. But the moderation is still strong (which I support 100%), discussions fairly rarely degenerate into shouting matches and there are sensible (Casual Shinji) and funny (PsychicTaco) people writing here. I'll never have a revelation or epiphany from anything I see on this website, but discussing movies, tv series and other surface level topics is amusing.

 

[Zontar]

That you were making a cop out argument that can't be substantiated. You claimed rather certainly that the people who complain were never going to buy the game to begin with. It's an argument I'm sick of seeing because nobody can actually prove it. Especially coming from someone who gets snotty posting the citation needed image.

Do you get into arguments on this site often? Because a lot of people other then myself use that image, it's just used to ask for a source. Plus, I did give sources for trends, and at the moment, that's more evidence then anyone saying that GTA 5 was the only instance of people not planning to buy the game complaining about it have for their claims, and to be honest the only thing I did wrong was assume the group was large enough to merit even acknowledging and that they where not so ineffective as to be massively counter-productive to their goals. Sure that's an assumption based on nothing, but is it really wrong to make it? Though I guess the answer to that is how one feels about incompetence vs lying.

 

[WhiteRat07]

I only come here when I'm really bored. I quit visiting regularly when extra credits left. Also as i have gotten older i mainly play RTS and Adventure games. Site is just not as relevant to me. I don't understand the gamergate stuff, or see why anyone cares. If everyone had ignored Anita whatshername she would be a broke nobody.

 

[Riot3000]

Well escapist had a negative connoation for as long as I have known. In fact every website has negative stigma too it so that is not saying much.

I think for a while there has been a lot of crap going on that all boiled up and then GamerGate happened. Do not know if it was feminism, the status quo or any sort of socio political view but damn it was going to explode soon so I am not surprised these events happened and certain parties, individuals and group dug themselves deeper into their world views.

Plus there this whole idea of persecution complex which can be summed up to one persons grievance is another persons snide dismissal so again it is a matter of how much you care about the topic or experience.

So I guess Escapist can live up to its stereotype of pretentious over thinking intellectuals getting into passive aggressive one up manship spats with other pretentious overthinking intellectuals.

 

[IceForce]

Stephen Fry put it best, and this is definitely a case where this quote applies.

And yet, hilariously, when GG got offended at being called "dead", this quote didn't apply.

Funny that.

 

[Zontar]

Stephen Fry put it best, and this is definitely a case where this quote applies.

And yet, hilariously, when GG got offended at being called "dead", this quote didn't apply.

Funny that.

I don't recall people being offended by the articles which started GamerGate. Angry, yet, at being insulted, but not offended. There's a difference between anger and offence. They can overlap but they aren't the same thing.

 

[13CBS]

I don't recall people being offended by the articles which started GamerGate. Angry, yet, at being insulted, but not offended. There's a difference between anger and offence. They can overlap but they aren't the same thing.

Hmm, I'm inclined to agree with IceForce here. What is the difference between GamerGaters feeling angry about articles calling 'gamers' dead, and, say, a transgendered person finding the Pillars of Eternity joke insulting?

 

[Fappy]

The Escapist doesn't really have much of a culture anymore, and if it does it's not really one I find all that appealing. I have a lot of old friends on this site though, so I stick around for them.

I miss the old Escapist, sure, but I've largely gotten over it.