The Big Picture: Don't Censor Me!

[ngl42398]

You think the stuff he posts here is crazy? You should check his Twitter. Going by the stuff he puts there, he probably hates half the people on this site. I guarantee, if the Moviebob who wrote his Twitter made The Big Picture, The Big Picture wouldn't have lasted a week.

 

[Saviordd1]

Bob, I don't watch your show for opinions on the current "thing" going on. I come here for movies and comic stuff. If I wanted otherwise I'll head over to Jim.

 

[Kathinka]

If this is in relation to calls for elements in games to be banned being called censorship well yes they already to do that in China, Germany and Australia frequently and it's textbook censorship.

No, Germany does not censor. Germany just has laws for youth protection and against incitement of popular hatred. One poses regulations, the other is a criminal offense. Both are not censorship.

Taken from the wiki

"Violence in video games is a controversial subject in Germany, and German localisations of violent games are often heavily cut by the publishers to permit a public release. Usually this entails a simple removal or reduction of depictions of blood and gore, but sometimes extends to cuts in the content or plot of the game, as was the case in games such as Counter-Strike and Grand Theft Auto."

Its voluntary censorship but its still censorship.

It's also interesting to note that this only applies to minors. Adults of the age of 18+ can buy and play whatever they want.

 

[Rahkshi500]

Well at least at the end he pointed out that what he says goes both ways instead of being one-sided about this.

However, still some things he says I don't agree with, or at least to an extent I don't agree with. First would be that he seems clearly to be against the Golden Means Fallacy, as in the idea that the answer is always found in the middle between two opposing sides. While this fallacy does exist and has been used a lot, his insistence on going against it so much puts him as risk of falling into another fallacy, the False Dichotomy, because whether he likes it or not, sometimes the answers do come from the middle, or even come from a third or fourth option. I think he should at least be aware of that. Next would be his advice to his fellow nerds, geeks, dweebs, and fan-people; sure, he has a point of not to automatically assume that every piece of criticism is a personal attack on them, but by the same token, if people like certain things, it's pretty natural that they would want more of those things, so on the other hand, it's somewhat understandable why people would get defensive about it. At least he says that it goes both ways as well, and that the critics should also be mindful of that advice as well when it comes from the other side. Because whatever issues they might discuss may not always be a black-and-white thing, that sometimes what one may find problematic may not be as problematic as they think it is and it might be projection, that sometimes criticism can come from a place of bigotry as well, and that it says more about the critic than it does about the medium. That's why it's important for people to engage with each other in a discussion for why they disagree instead of trying to silence each other.

Good video.

 

[WuNanZi]

I don't believe anyone was defending Adam Orth's right to free speech when he told everyone to #dealwithit.

And while it is true that there is no /legal/ obligation for a private individual or corporation to allow free speech within forums/servers/communities they own, it is shady as ****. If the only argument you can put forward for a particular course for behaviour is that you wouldn't be arrested for it, you should start re-examining your actions.

Everytime I hear about Anita, I think about Jack Thompson. Except, this time, a good portion of the gaming media has taken the position Jack Thompson would advocate.

 

[Rellik San]

-snip-

Ahhhhh that makes a lot more sense, yeah you're right, if you're in the wrong, you shouldn't be afraid to change your views as new information comes available and you learn more on the subject, people are too defensive in this respect and will argue a point on principle so they don't appear "weak". It's a sad turn of events for sure.

I'll admit, sometimes evil is evil, sometimes good is good, but mostly I think shades of grey is the way of things, nothing is ever truly absolute, sometimes evil needs to be done for the sake of good and sometimes good serves only to propagate evil. It's an interesting discussion.

Anyway glad you didn't take that second part too seriously.

Two points.

1.) Sometimes games do things that are bad, that they shouldn't do, and that reinforces negative stereotypes. You need to point out the problems and say why they are problems before you can suggest solutions. No one is going to fix a problem if they don't think there is a problem.
2.) You actually catch more flies with balsamic vinegar than with honey.

Anita Sarkeesian says before every video that you can like these games and still admit there are problems. However, many people ignore this part of the video, because they need to be attacked by outside forces in order to have an identity. That's the most important lesson to learn from GamerGate. There are some people who need an outside enemy to have an identity. These people will never be satisfied.

1. But there is a difference between: "This isn't good, here's why and you guys should have done better and here's one idea on how..." and again, "this is just bad, why would you do this? This is just so bad, you guys should feel bad, it feels bad right? I hope it does."

2. Surely that's dependant on the species of fly in question?

I actually have no issue with Sarkeesian, I think her series could do a few things a little better, she could go into more details or again proffer more positives: "This game did this wrong... but it did do this right..." but again that ties into my, it doesn't get clicks and clicks get you paid point. I'm not a fan of hers, but what she says is interesting enough food for thought. You're right though, some people will never be satisfied without a cause to fight for, however peripheral and tangential that cause is.



As I said a friend of mine and I had this discussion last night and at the end she asked me: "Do you consider yourself a feminist or an equalist?" to which I responded initially with: "I'm none, I don't like those terms, they paint a target people will use to outright dismiss your argument without understanding it, if anything I'm a peoplist, people should just be cool to each other, if you don't like what they say, tell them why and why you think it's wrong, but don't attack, engage them instead."

 

[totheendofsin]

Ah the semantics argument, meant to turn discussion into a bunch of people arguing about the meaning of a single word

of course we can always just take a look at the context being used whenever someone uses a word to determine what that person means by it, but that would be crazy (here's a hint, I doubt very many people meant the government was censoring the Dixie Chicks when that shitshow went down)

 

[Something Amyss]

One of the things that kills me is how we're told to vote with our wallets, but if we do it to the wrong property, it's censorship.

Without any judgment on the Dixie Chicks, the people who purchased (or didn't purchase) their music were well within their rights to do it. But if we're using this as the mark of censorship in any meaningful sense, then we're basically saying consumer choice is censorship.

It's the old carrot and stick metaphor, it's "you catch more flies with..."

Your catch more flies with manure, and that's what's been smothered over Anita's arguments. Just the part where you frame it in the sense of "This is bad" is an indication that the manure is more appealing. The argument has already been rephrased, and this new phrasing is being held against her.

She might as well have come out with both fists swinging, because that was always how she was going to be framed.

"If it's a game you want to play, you'd better load the dice 'cause they'll do it anyway."

 

[sexy=sexist]

The distinction between ACTUAL definition of "censorship" and this "practical" definition is nonexistent.

Censorship by the government without just cause is ILLEGAL.

Censorship by people just shouting out the opposition is totally legal, but it is still IMMORAL. It is dishonest, and sometimes just as harmful as the illegal kind depending on WHAT is being drowned out.

I got to agree fully with this.

government censorship is just censorship but with the government. In my mind silencing the opposition so they can not be seen is censoring them.
If I open a blog to talk politics but turn off the microphones of everyone who disagrees with me this would not be government censorship, but it would be pretty shitty of me.

 

[Baresark]

Yep, for once Bob and I are on the same page. Censorship is what is shouted out when you want someone else to stop having an opposing opinion. Though I wouldn't blame capitalism so much as I would blame ignorance on the part of the news viewer. MSNBC and FOX are in the full swing practice of "singing to the choir". They aren't rich and therefore control a big section of the media, they say what roughly 1/2 of the country wants to hear (ie. that the other side is wrong) and that makes them rich. I am neither, so I'm willing to both entertain and bash the ideas of both sides. But the average television watching individual does not do this.

Part of being human is the psychological need to be consistent. Consistency is not a defacto state when it comes to opinions. You can love something and love something that is the opposite of said something. But people reject this and that is how party politics happens. Conservatism is a basic principle of the Republicans (that is a big fuckin' lie, but just run with me on this), so if you include hero worship of the military, full support of foreign intervention policies and just being basic dicks to everyone who isn't you into that, then you you have the Republican party. But people who get wooed by the idea that Republicans are Fiscal Conservatives (once again, bold faced lie), then feel the need to be consistent and support the other parts of what the whole group is about.

 

[inkheart_artist]

"The other side doesn't owe you a boom mic or soap box" omg, yes. I think the problem here is that people (in the US at least) seem to think that freedom of speech is supposed to mean you can put whatever you want out there and its somehow wrong if that message, whatever it may be, is tarnished or struck down. As if freedom of speech is an entitlement to say whatever the hell you want with total impunity.

When I think about it, I can hardly understand how this could become such a de facto belief with everyone having to live normal day to day life. How do you get from birth to adulthood unmolested from different opinions from your own and not develop the ability to just accept it as a fact of life that everyone doesn't always agree and that it doesn't mean you're a martyr or crusader for your cause on that merit alone?

 

[Darkness665]

Yes I am more blue state than red state. By a large margin while I do have a few red state minded friends. One comment on the actual Dixie Chicks incident was their horror. My response was, "well, I am ashamed he is human" but they did not seem to get the joke even though they voted for the joke.

When their next album came out it was not well received and my friend never bought it. I did and while it was a reasonable album it was NOT a Dixie Chicks album. It was a Dixie Moms album and left much of their audience searching in vain for the missing Sin Wagon. Nope, sorry. Babies and relationships, time to grow up here. In addition to it not being censorship it was actually quite a change of content from their earlier work.

 

[geier]

You say a mother cannot censor you?
Well is say: "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of little children." by William Makepeace Thackeray
So if mothers are gods for children, they can very well censor them.

If what bob said in the video is true, then it is no censorship when indie devs delete bad reviews or unpleasant comments from their game pages on steam?
Someone should tell Jim about this. He calls this censorship all the time.

Also, getting youtube to pull the videos down is no censorship, because youtube is not the government.
So what to call this behavior?

 

[Jennacide]

I agree that what happened with the Dixie Chicks wasn't censorship, but it was something way more insidious, it was flat out blacklisting. Which is why the McCarthy era references are brought up in the first place.

 

[Farther than stars]

It's not Capitalism that people are mad at. It's Monopolies. Capitalism doesn't exist unless there is competition, and though you might think MSNBC was the competition for FOX News it actually isn't. FOX has a monopoly on Conservative news coverage, and MSNBC has a pretty solid monopoly on the Liberal end. Even Hollywood tries not to compete by carving up the Calender and doing everything to collude to ensure that major films don't compete.

Well, this really depends on your definition of a monopoly. And that's hard to define for media, because it's about a market based on a highly subjective product and it's also complicated by freedom of the press (see also the legal price fixing of magazines and newspapers in the UK), but generally antitrust law fosters some kind of competition in markets with objectively definable products.
Also, the thing about films really doesn't apply to competition law, because the whole point of copyright/patent law is to give creators and innovators a monopoly on their invention, thereby stimulating arts and science. So of course movies seek to exploit the monopolies legally given to them. But even within those fields you could still argue that there is some kind of competition, because people still have a limited budget to spend on going to the movies, for instance, which means that individual film studios are going to try to make better films than the other ones, thereby facilitating progress within the medium (i.e. films are generally better now than they were twenty years ago).

Monopolies are a part of capitalism. The magical land of perfect competition, leading to producers competing for the patronage of consumers has never existed. What part the government plays in this is up for debate, but it happens with or without them.

That's a fairly extreme statement. You might be able to make a case for the natural existence of oligarchies as a means of lowering competition (although you still get lower prices because of the economies of scale), but to say there is no competition whatsoever seems unfounded. Whatever market segment you look at, there are always at least two competitors and this is thoroughly enforced through antitrust laws (to the extent that price fixing is the area of white-collar crime most focused on by criminal prosecutors).

 

[Darth_Payn]

So in other words "Censorship" is another one of those buzzwords that people keep using without actually knowing what they mean. I'll add it to the ever growing list.

It has a certain weight and negative aura to it, so its great for making something sound worse than it is.

'she wants game creators to put more thought into how they design and create certain elements' sounds reasonable, and harder to argue with. 'she wants to censor videogames' is much more villainous and much more easier to argue against.

The problem is... when the person making it phrases the point as: "This is bad, games shouldn't do this, because this reinforces negative..." it's didactic, confrontational and puts people on the defensive. (I was having this conversation with a friend of mine last night), saying "Well I think this didn't work, but if they tweaked it a little and gave it a little more thought, it could have been more like... ...and that'd have been awesome."

It's the old carrot and stick metaphor, it's "you catch more flies with..." it's stuff we're taught from a very young age. But then there is of course the problem, no one cares what the well reasoned people think, they don't grab headlines or drive up view counts... and without those, the people saying those things don't get paid (that's not to say their intent is disingenuous, just their presentation). But that's a wider cultural issue.

Case in point: Bob showing the "faces" of FOX News and msnbc, who are the biggest loudmouths for their sides, and they know that nothing gets everybody's attention better than pissing them off. Especially Rachel Maddow. IMO, something about her just rubs me up the wrong way, and I typically vote Democrat. I think it was on Sunday night that my dad and I found her reporting on Somali pirates picking a fight with (and losing to) a U.S. Navy Destroyer, and getting arrested, and being thrown into what she called "sea jail", or something that stupid. We both yelled at the screen, "It's called the brig, you bonehead!"

In this video, Bob could not have picked better clips to illustrate his point. I was hoping to hear some of the Oscar-nominated song "Blame Canada", and I'm impressed he didn't spend too much time espousing this or that left-wing viewpoint.

 

[Bocaj2000]

Before watching, I thought this was going to be a one-sided shouting match at an imaginary foe... I was very wrong.

You surprise me with how calm and sensible you are in this episode. You took a very neutral stance by using something fundamentally agreeable as your primary example and expanded to imply that this is a common misunderstanding from every front of many arguments. Nice episode.