Poll: Victims and Victimhood - a prediction from the past

[Fallow]

I just found a very interesting article that seems to articulate quite well the current victimhood situation on many fronts, including several gaming-related ones.

Victims and Victimhood [http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/27/opinion/sunday/the-real-victims-of-victimhood.html?mwrsm=Facebook&_r=0]

Spoiler: Excerpts

"So who cares if we are becoming a culture of victimhood? We all should. To begin with, victimhood makes it more and more difficult for us to resolve political and social conflicts. The culture feeds a mentality that crowds out a necessary give and take ? the very concept of good-faith disagreement ? turning every policy difference into a pitched battle between good (us) and evil (them)."


"The problem is that the line is fuzzy between fighting for victimized people and promoting a victimhood culture. Where does the former stop and the latter start? I offer two signposts for your consideration."

"First, look at the role of free speech in the debate. Victims and their advocates always rely on free speech and open dialogue to articulate unpopular truths. They rely on free speech to assert their right to speak. Victimhood culture, by contrast, generally seeks to restrict expression in order to protect the sensibilities of its advocates. Victimhood claims the right to say who is and is not allowed to speak."


"Second, look at a movement?s leadership. The fight for victims is led by aspirational leaders who challenge us to cultivate higher values. They insist that everyone is capable of ? and has a right to ? earned success. They articulate visions of human dignity. But the organizations and people who ascend in a victimhood culture are very different. Some set themselves up as saviors; others focus on a common enemy. In all cases, they treat people less as individuals and more as aggrieved masses."

​

(Please note that these are just excerpts pulled freely from the article, and not the whole context).

I strongly recommend you read the whole article, it's a quick and concise read.

So, what do you make of this? Are we too far down the victimhood path? How long will it take to get rid of this polarisation? Will my weiner ever surpass 2 inches? What will the future look like with regards to victimhood?

 

[Thaluikhain]

Eh, usual rubbish about the PC police taking over, freeze peach and how society is doomed in some not very specified way.

 

[wizzy555]

Glorifying strength too much leads to fascism. Glorifying weakness too much leads to self destruction (or something like the Tivoli from Doctor Who)

 

[Loonyyy]

Nope.

Firstly, the experiment is nice and all, but it's what you'd expect. When you've been fucked, your first priority is to help yourself and fix things for you. Note that in the experiment, as detailed by the author, they were asked to do something for the researcher. As you'd expect, asking them to recall feeling victimised returned them to that state of mind, as recalling unhappy times may make you unhappy, etc.

Secondly, the author manages to fuck up the experiment, by describing the group who were asked to write about ?a time when your life seemed unfair. Perhaps you felt wronged or slighted by someone.? as "victims". They are not, except in the broader context that most people have been victimised in one way or another, and then they go on to extend this sentiment throughout the rest of the piece. This is an error.

He goes on to say "Does this mean that we should reject all claims that people are victims? Of course not. Some people are indeed victims in America ? of crime, discrimination or deprivation. They deserve our empathy and require justice." This is frankly a non-sequitur. The experiment doesn't say anything about whether the recalled unfairness was victimisation, or whether it was accurate or not, or whether it should be accepted or rejected, it looked at how selfish or not people were after recalling some unfairness. He doesn't say the details of the second experiment, which makes it even harder to read from. He has misunderstood the conclusion, if I'm being charitable, but since he was able to paraphrase the experiment, I think it's far more likely he's cherry picked the example, and is doing his best to hammer it in, which would make his statements deliberately misleading. As I'll expand upon, I think this is in fact the case.

If you've seen homeless people rob and cheat each other, or you've seen the crime in low income areas, you'd know that people in poor circumstances are often selfish, looking out for number one. It doesn't change their circumstance. As they say, "Desperate people have been known to render desperate deeds". Just because a poor person robbed you doesn't change the fact that they're poor. It also doesn't change the fact that they robbed you, and you might be just as poor.

He then goes on to extend this to his supposed "victimhood culture", with some pithy statements about free speech (notably here he drops any form of citation, or examples. It's an op-ed, but his contention is relatively novel (And little more than reflexive conservative sneering at best, come one, is he going to say that rock and roll is from the devil, or that television will be the demise of humanity next?), so he should actually support it. His case about free speech is then left rather vague. This reveals that his discussion of the experiment was nothing more than an attempt to poison the well beforehand. His renaming of the group in the experiment is to match his own wording.

In my experience, people ignore real victimisation, and instead demonise it. On this very forum, we had a thread about a crew of racists committing a mass shooting, and a large portion of it was dedicated to denying that it was terrorism, arguing that they deserved it, arguing that it's a comeuppance for protesting police departments, and a bunch of other pretty pathetic rubbish. People ignore it, especially since they feel attacked, or offended by the concept of say Black Lives Matter.

People deny problems associated with gender inequality, with discrimination based on sexuality or gender expression, or racism, or classism, or lash back at those people. Even when people do overcome the selfish impulse and band together to improve a situation for everyone, people who haven't been victimised in any real way still feel victimised, still feel offended, and act selfishly to defend the status quo.

Overwhelmingly, the argument he is putting forward is the same one we've seen used to dismiss any claims of discrimination, and to make it more disgusting, he accuses them of selfishness, failing to realise how the same experiment, which demonstrates a HUMAN response, applies to him.

He finally gets to his real point in the third to last paragraph "What about speech that endangers others? Fair-minded people can discriminate between expression that puts people at risk and that which merely rubs some the wrong way. Speaking up for the powerless is often ?offensive? to conventional ears." His purpose is to defend a fundamentalist approach to free speech, and defend hate speech, and argue against criticism (Ironically, also defended by free speech, making him a censor, one also motivated by his own victimisation, except that he's hurt by other people being aggrieved at their injury, which is pathetic). It's interesting that he justifies this for speaking up for the powerless, because he's certainly not taking that stand. Conflating the offensiveness of human rights movements with the offensiveness of hate speech is repulsive.

He argues that the supposed victimhood would dictate that only the victimised speak, but then argues for a laissez-faire approach to free speech (ie, pretty close to what we already have), and ultimately against motions which aim to present the voices of those who have been victimised.

But hey, I could be wrong about all of this, because he doesn't cite anything, most of his terminology is utter bullshit, and he leaves the examples to the wind. Ultimately, this is directed at no-one and everyone, about everything and nothing, and as a consequence, says nothing, except to speak to those who already feel aggreieved that people may disagree with their speech, or that others may feel, or in fact, be victimised. We've seen them, the people who get upset that people are irritated by their use of slurs, by their racism, chauvinism, or general bigotry, it's not exactly uncommon.

All in all, it is exactly what one could expect from the American Enterprise Institute. He's literally employed to spin this stuff, it's his job.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

It's about time someone took the victims and the less-fortunate down a peg, those assholes had it coming!

That was kind of a joke, but that's always the point I seem to take from articles like this. I was waiting for him to mention what a victim-hood culture would look like, but then the article just ended. I guess the worst thing about a victim-hood culture is that people will steal a lot of pens?

It's like when people complain about affirmative action. We can all acknowledge that hundreds of years of slavery and racism are bad, but if one black dude gets a job over a white dude everyone loses their shit

 

[BloatedGuppy]

All in all, it is exactly what one could expect from the American Enterprise Institute. He's literally employed to spin this stuff, it's his job.

Oh is it AEI again? Yeesh, they're everywhere these days.

So, what do you make of this? Are we too far down the victimhood path?

Nah, but we're making good progress down the "whining about victimhood" path.

 

[Erttheking]

All in all, it is exactly what one could expect from the American Enterprise Institute. He's literally employed to spin this stuff, it's his job.

Oh is it AEI again? Yeesh, they're everywhere these days.

So, what do you make of this? Are we too far down the victimhood path?

Nah, but we're making good progress down the "whining about victimhood" path.

No no, we're actually pretty far down the victim hood path. Mainly because the people who complain about victimhood are, ironically, presenting themselves as victims. Such as the sex negativity thread, where one person said that the way some games presenting sexualized characters was juvenile, and another said that that was shaming everyone who ever enjoyed it. Because apparently every time I criticize a game for being immature and stupid I'm also insulting everyone who liked it.

 

[Saltyk]

All in all, it is exactly what one could expect from the American Enterprise Institute. He's literally employed to spin this stuff, it's his job.

Oh is it AEI again? Yeesh, they're everywhere these days.

So, what do you make of this? Are we too far down the victimhood path?

Nah, but we're making good progress down the "whining about victimhood" path.

No no, we're actually pretty far down the victim hood path. Mainly because the people who complain about victimhood are, ironically, presenting themselves as victims. Such as the sex negativity thread, where one person said that the way some games presenting sexualized characters was juvenile, and another said that that was shaming everyone who ever enjoyed it. Because apparently every time I criticize a game for being immature and stupid I'm also insulting everyone who liked it.

This is actually a really good point. I've found that criticizing Nintendo often gets replies from people who feel insulted. They get defensive and I become a monster who just hates Nintendo.

The best example I have of this is a time on this very forum where I wasn't even criticizing Nintendo. Merely, I was explaining that they won't make a proper Pokemon game for a console because that goes against their philosophy of proper Pokemon games being handheld exclusive and selling their handhelds. Pokemon is a system seller for their handhelds and Nintendo knows that.

To support this thesis, I stated that the only Pokemon games on consoles were Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap. I then suggested that Nintendo might make a Pokemon Stadium 2 for the Wii U, but not a proper Pokemon game. I got a reply from someone calling me a hater because there was a Pokemon Stadium 2 for the Gamecube. Mind you, I didn't insult Pokemon or Nintendo. But because I didn't know there was already a sequel to Pokemon Stadium, everything I said is wrong and I am an evil "hater".

Beyond that, I always hate hearing someone speak up for some "marginalized group" that they don't belong to. Bonus points if they don't even know anyone from said group. It shows so much disrespect for the group they claim to be speaking for. As a rule, people from those groups also hate having others speak for them from my experience. They'd much rather someone make a joke about them, then treat them like delicate and breakable objects.

 

[Worgen]

All in all, it is exactly what one could expect from the American Enterprise Institute. He's literally employed to spin this stuff, it's his job.

Oh is it AEI again? Yeesh, they're everywhere these days.

So, what do you make of this? Are we too far down the victimhood path?

Nah, but we're making good progress down the "whining about victimhood" path.

No no, we're actually pretty far down the victim hood path. Mainly because the people who complain about victimhood are, ironically, presenting themselves as victims. Such as the sex negativity thread, where one person said that the way some games presenting sexualized characters was juvenile, and another said that that was shaming everyone who ever enjoyed it. Because apparently every time I criticize a game for being immature and stupid I'm also insulting everyone who liked it.

This is actually a really good point. I've found that criticizing Nintendo often gets replies from people who feel insulted. They get defensive and I become a monster who just hates Nintendo.

The best example I have of this is a time on this very forum where I wasn't even criticizing Nintendo. Merely, I was explaining that they won't make a proper Pokemon game for a console because that goes against their philosophy of proper Pokemon games being handheld exclusive and selling their handhelds. Pokemon is a system seller for their handhelds and Nintendo knows that.

To support this thesis, I stated that the only Pokemon games on consoles were Pokemon Stadium and Pokemon Snap. I then suggested that Nintendo might make a Pokemon Stadium 2 for the Wii U, but not a proper Pokemon game. I got a reply from someone calling me a hater because there was a Pokemon Stadium 2 for the Gamecube. Mind you, I didn't insult Pokemon or Nintendo. But because I didn't know there was already a sequel to Pokemon Stadium, everything I said is wrong and I am an evil "hater".

Beyond that, I always hate hearing someone speak up for some "marginalized group" that they don't belong to. Bonus points if they don't even know anyone from said group. It shows so much disrespect for the group they claim to be speaking for. As a rule, people from those groups also hate having others speak for them from my experience. They'd much rather someone make a joke about them, then treat them like delicate and breakable objects.

People have a real hard time separating criticism of something they like and being criticized themselves. It's why you end up with people throwing around death threads for a low score on a aaa game or even a score that isn't quite high enough. (unless its one like cod which everyone has agreed to hate on) We even see it on movies like toy story 3, when people got pissed that it didn't have a 100% on rotten tomatoes.

 

[1981]

Beyond that, I always hate hearing someone speak up for some "marginalized group" that they don't belong to. Bonus points if they don't even know anyone from said group.

Cats often get hated on for no reason. All of my best friends are cats. 'Cause I hate people. Fuck you, people.

 

[MishaK]

So basically, distorted thinking that led to conspiracy theories and bullshit a while ago, leads to the same thing today. I'm shocked, really. Typical hysterical conflation of, "This annoys me" with "THIS WILL DESTROY CIVILIZATION!" is so fucking tired and old now.

 

[Breakdown]

Well, I liked the article, I thought it was good. A Yerrs vote for me.

 

[Something Amyss]

No no, we're actually pretty far down the victim hood path.

Do you think there's any hope that we could shift over to the "self-reflection" path, or am I just talking crazy again?

Anyway, "victim" as it's used here has virtually no meaning, which is why it's useful as a snarl word. But it's amazing how often people who complain about victimhood are the first to complain that they've been wronged. So if we are indeed living in a victimhood culture, people need to start looking broader than just at the people they like to complain about.

 

[Thaluikhain]

Beyond that, I always hate hearing someone speak up for some "marginalized group" that they don't belong to. Bonus points if they don't even know anyone from said group. It shows so much disrespect for the group they claim to be speaking for. As a rule, people from those groups also hate having others speak for them from my experience. They'd much rather someone make a joke about them, then treat them like delicate and breakable objects.

"Speaking for", yes, but "speaking up for" isn't the same thing.

 

[Eddie the head]

Ehh it's not really a grate article, but I see where they're coming form. It's incredibly hard to have a conversation with people who don't realize they're just as likely to be the oppressors as the oppressed. I remember someone one time made a thread about "false rape accusations," and prevailing opinion throughout was that it didn't matter because real rape is more likely. Because you know appealing to worse problems isn't a fallacy or anything. For bothering to point that I out I think I'm still on some people's ignore list. Ehh nothing of value was lost.

 

[09philj]

We have developed an astounding culture filled with heartless bastards who blame everything on victims, and egocentric twats who see the world as revolving around them, and any kind of useful advice as victim blaming. There a tendency for those in the second group to insist they have it worse than everyone else and everyone else should be ashamed for even complaining about their situation.

 

[Something Amyss]

Ehh it's not really a grate article, but I see where they're coming form. It's incredibly hard to have a conversation with people who don't realize they're just as likely to be the oppressors as the oppressed. I remember someone one time made a thread about "false rape accusations," and prevailing opinion throughout was that it didn't matter because real rape is more likely. Because you know appealing to worse problems isn't a fallacy or anything. For bothering to point that I out I think I'm still on some people's ignore list. Ehh nothing of value was lost.

Why do I have a feeling it didn't so much go the direction of "it doesn't matter" so much as people were pointing out the absurdity of using a statistical improbability as a counter to the more likely scenario?

Beyond that, I always hate hearing someone speak up for some "marginalized group" that they don't belong to. Bonus points if they don't even know anyone from said group. It shows so much disrespect for the group they claim to be speaking for. As a rule, people from those groups also hate having others speak for them from my experience. They'd much rather someone make a joke about them, then treat them like delicate and breakable objects.

I'm going to echo thaluikhain's sentiments:

"Speaking for", yes, but "speaking up for" isn't the same thing.

And then elaborate some.

See, speaking as someone who's part of more than one marginalised group, I appreciate it when people who aren't in those groups speak up in support or defense of me and mine. In fact, when you're a minority group especially, it's often hard to get any traction without aid from the majority. In my experience, a lot of people in the minority are often reticent to speak out when they're marginalised because they'll either get ganged up on (try saying something as seemingly mild as sexual harassment isn't cool in an online game), ignored, or treated as the hostile party.

What is a problem is talking over the people involved. Because while the support is appreciated, it's still us who have to live it. The large issue, at least in my book, is when someone who is "helping" takes away my self-determination.