The Big Picture: With Great Power

[Lord_Gremlin]

Blah, blah, blah.
Persecution is one of the sweetest things in human existence. Now that public executions, animal torture and gladiator fights are basically history.
And even if you try to pretend it is not, almost every culture has it's own standards on what is sexist or racist and what isn't.

 

[Aardvaarkman]

The culture I tend to identify with is metal, which I'd say by its very nature is incapable of truly joining up with the mainstream. When elements of it (glam metal, nu-metal) do, they tend to be derided by the rest of metal.

Isn't that rather self-contradictory? There's plenty of mainstream metal, such as Metallica, Black Sabbath, etc.

That's just the same as certain elements of "geek culture" becoming mainstream, while those elements are still derided by other factions of geek culture for not being geeky enough. It's essentially the same with every human cultural endeavour, whether it be music, politics, religion, art, etc.

Has visual art become mainstream because your grandmother accepts Monet and Picasso as "great art" while simultaneously decrying more recent artists such as Warhol or Mapplethorpe?

Ultimately, there are no ultimate arbiters as to how we classify art. Just ask the punks about that. You appear to be claiming that there is some kind of authority on what truly counts as "metal" music, despite it being a very broad genre.

 

[itsthesheppy]

Christ. This was pretty much a sociology class in 6 minutes. I hate those stupid terms like "cisgender" cause it just adds to the idea of difference. If people truly want a unified equal human species, we need to stop making up stupid meaningless terms like that.

Those terms do have meaning to people who are different from you. Accepting that reality and adopting it into your worldview is a big step towards maturity and understanding. Spend less time fighting against that is meaningful for others, and spend more time trying to work those differences in perspective into your overall worldview.

Bob killed it here. The only thing missing was where he drops the mic and walks away in front of a stunned, silent crowd. Unsurprisingly there are already comments of people expressing their "Yeah, but..."s. Grow up, nerd community. Accept that it's all too easy for the oppressed to themselves become oppressors; in fact, its often too tempting for us to resist, to get a little payback. We were once (and sometimes still are) powerless, so the temptation to exercise power when offered is almost too powerful.

One needn't join any gay pride parades or write lengthy feminist book reports. But trolling those who do makes one the type of person who they resent. The abused becoming the abuser.

Here we have another great example of a common logical fallacy and flawed argument with the critique towards geek culture.
Do we have to just nod our heads and say: mhm, yup, youre right, yes that does need to be changed, yup its all true.

When people like Anita use misleading, misinformed, flawed arguments like:
There is sexual harassment at geek culture conventions
Therefore all geeks are schrodinger cat sex offenders.

No, not everyone who goes "Yeah...but" are trolls or haters that "need to grow up".
Most of them are actual intellectual people just pointing out the flaws in most of the critique aimed at this culture.
I mean how often do we not hear on the news: Video Games, bad for children, makes them into murderers, argh evil vidya gims!

Are we then, like you suggests, just supposed to say: Yepp, t hats how it is, we have to accept that critique, we are a huge training camp for terrorists and massmurderers.

Instead of going like most intellectual people would and say: Yeah but, that's not actually true

I'd be interested to see where Anita said that all gamers are 'schrodinger cat sex offenders', which, by the way, is something of a pseudo-psychological mess. I know it might be tempting to namedrop the one psychological thought experiment you know the name of in order to establish intellectual credibility, but it doesn't do your point very much service and somewhat muddles what you're trying to say. I've watched both of anita's videos and my impression was that despite her focused and pointed criticism, she has taken great pains to establish that she is not saying that all gamer culture is sexist, or that all gamers are sexist, but rather that available evidence points to a trend towards sexism. Which is a different statement altogether. Like many gamers, it seems you struggle to grasp nuance.

Also, be careful throwing the word 'fallacy' around, because sometimes you might not notice when you are guilty of it yourself, perhaps ironically in the very same post. Like where you compare people criticizing the nerd community for trending towards being sexist (for which there is supporting evidence readily available) to people claiming that video games make people violent (for which there is not). Your attempts to lump them together, to damn an idea due to a purely manufactured relationship with another more fallacious idea, is either borne from ignorance, or from a naked and shameful attempt to distract from the conversation.

I find your arguments un-compelling.

 

[Lono Shrugged]

A persecuted bunch of people attain "power" and choose not to persecute others themselves.

That would be a first in human history Bob...

 

[Daaaah Whoosh]

I would say that the whole point of geek culture is to create a world where the persecuted become the persecutors. Video games, before they had stories and invoked complex emotions, were simply ways to feel in control, to meet challenges and overcome them. Comic books were stories of people who weren't like all the others, who fought bullies and won. This culture has never been about keeping people from being bullied or ostracized, it's been about a personal saense of strength and control. That's why there's so much racism, sexism, and homophobia; people who live their second lives in control don't want that control taken away, and they're willing to crush anyone who doesn't have the power to stop them.

So maybe geek culture shouldn't stay around. Maybe instead of changing it, we should abolish it altogether. The best parts of geek culture have been absorbed by the mainstream, so let's kill what's left before it's absorbed too.

 

[Doom972]

Oh boy. Did someone forget to give Bob his meds again? I respect his knowledge and opinion on film and comics, but when he talks about video games or social issues, we get a guy who plays almost exclusively Nintendo games, and thinks that Internet trolls represent geek culture.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

The culture I tend to identify with is metal, which I'd say by its very nature is incapable of truly joining up with the mainstream. When elements of it (glam metal, nu-metal) do, they tend to be derided by the rest of metal.

Isn't that rather self-contradictory? There's plenty of mainstream metal, such as Metallica, Black Sabbath, etc.

That's just the same as certain elements of "geek culture" becoming mainstream, while those elements are still derided by other factions of geek culture for not being geeky enough. It's essentially the same with every human cultural endeavour, whether it be music, politics, religion, art, etc.

Has visual art become mainstream because your grandmother accepts Monet and Picasso as "great art" while simultaneously decrying more recent artists such as Warhol or Mapplethorpe?

Ultimately, there are no ultimate arbiters as to how we classify art. Just ask the punks about that. You appear to be claiming that there is some kind of authority on what truly counts as "metal" music, despite it being a very broad genre.

What the dickens are you talking about?

Whilst yes, Metallica and Black Sabbath are widely appreciated outside of the metal community, they're the two biggest metal bands in history, which does not equate to metal or even a subgenre being accepted. When did I say what could and couldn't be metal either? You seem to have completely misunderstood what I was saying.

 

[nightazday]

I hate when Bob goes on those "geek culture needs to be fixed" rants. They tend to be close-minded, have a lot of projecting and generalizing, and Bob kinda doesn't have the ethos to pull it off. He's telling an entire culture that they suck due to the few people, probably from sites like 4chan, who will probably remain assholes no matter how much you yell at them, and kids that will probably grow out of it.

 

[Lilani]

Geek culture is composed of male, white, heterosexual, cis-gendered, unatheltic, well-off people because that's the people who it appeals to. Try to make it more appealing to women, non-whites, homosexuals, trans-gendered, athletic, or poor people can only be done by diluting this culture so much that it becomes the same mundane sludge that everyone complains about because it lacks any sort of depth.

Orly? Then what is this little Science Fiction show I keep hearing about, that broke down racial barriers on TV like no other show had done in the past, and continued to in its future "Generations?"

Spoiler

This is what Bob meant when he said that geek culture has always fancied itself to be intellectually ahead of the curve. While yes demographics are still being exploited, as they were exploited in yesteryear, we now have the kind of numbers and communication networks that can cause multi-billion dollar corporations to completely change their products and business models before they even hit the shelves. I think, if exercised the right way, we can prove that the demographics of the 1950s no longer apply today.

Sure, it's a bit optimistic, but really we should care about this. Not just so that females and non-whites can start getting a bit more representation in entertainment media, but also to make sure our entertainment is of the highest quality possible. Do you really think sticking to demographics raises the quality of creative works that come out? Demographics are the product of consumer statistics, focus groups, and rudimentary sociology. Remember what else was the product of focus groups? Bioshock Infinite's "gunbro" cover with Elizabeth relegated to the back. And remember how Naughty Dog had to fight tooth and nail to keep their protagonist female in Remember Me? Do you really think that kind of pressure to homogenize and not have "minorities" is a good or healthy thing for the creative works that make up our subculture?

 

[Ishal]

I liked the video a lot. Particularly the first part, Bob you've gotten real good at making a convincing argument that everyone is at least a little geeky/nerdy now.

That said, there is also what Yahtzee said when referring to EVE online players. "They are to nerds what nerds are to normal people" and that describes me pretty well. I don't play EVE but what I do like is very niche and my being ridiculed for it hasn't stopped yet. However, I don't seek to return the favor. I'd rather just be left alone.

I haven't met many of the problems you described in real life so perhaps we are making progress? I don't know about cons, never been to one. I'm all for being more friendly and accepting though, generally speaking I'm having more fun when everyone else it too.

 

[DerangedHobo]

Maybe it's my myopic world view flaring up again but I don't see many racist geeks, Xbox live may have a bunch of 13 year olds spewing ****** and make me a sandwich every 5 seconds but those are all types of people. Of course people are going to spew racism and sexism and homophobia and hate, in a society where you're taught that thinking 'x' way is bad and muttering a 5 letter word will get you slandered a degenerate racist people are going to use the internet (one big soapbox) to express all of that repressed hatred.
Good video though.

If you haven't found racist geeks then you aren't looking very hard. Sure there may be fewer bigger cesspools of scum and villainy than X-Box live but it certainly doesn't stop there and when it doesn't stop there the excuse of it being a bunch of immature 13 year olds stops being the case. I can think specifically of my experience with the Magic: the Gathering community. A community that I would describe as a bunch of racist thieves. That community is comprised almost entirely of white and Asian guys (yes, I know that the game is also really big in Brazil) so if you're not one of those races you're probably going to be subjected to some pretty ugly comments. Hell even if you're a white male (and if you're Jewish in America there are good odds that you're white) you're going to hear the word 'Jew' used as a verb far more often than as a noun. It's not like this has gotten any better since I stopped playing Magic. I can recall a recent conversation that I overheard between a patron and and employee at a game store that specialized in both Magic and video games (in that they had lots of people in the store at the same time playing both Magic and video games)that went something like this:

Patron: Is it going to get dark around here this evening?
Employee: A little bit *smirking*.

In case you're wondering the patron is asking if there are going to be a lot of black people coming into the store later in the day. Wow.

Jew isn't a race, it's prominently an ideology and of course you're going to get people like that. You want to see some scummy motherfuckers then just mosey on along to 4chan, that place is a monkey house of hatred and racism. There will always be racism and sexism and homophobia and xenophobia in all subcultures in one form or another, 'it's human nature'. Personally, I like it this way, I see the internet as the last bastion of true free speech where you can find groups for anything and like minded people and you can call someone this or that without fear of repercussion (generally). It's freedom and to suggest that we should take that away in favor of some buddy buddy all holy goal is scarier than any ACTA or PIPA or SOPA or any censorship organization. You won't get everyone around a campfire singing Kumbaya, ever. Short of a mass lobotomy people will always be at eachother's throats for one reason or another whether those reasons be just or unjust.

 

[bravetoaster]

Bob, you had me until the whole plight of the white heterosexual male geek.

Can someone please explain how/why so many self-identifying geeks think they're a special case or hold onto harassment or bullying for more than 10 minutes after being done with school?

 

[Muspelheim]

Reading this thread has made one thing abundantly clear. Geek culture rightly deserves the treatment it gets in media.

 

[Lilani]

People who fit the sterotype of the detail-oriented physical unfit fantasy and escapism loving 13-40 year old are always going to be unfashionable at best, and the victims of outright hostility from almost every other facet of society at worst.

But is that because this person plays D&D in their spare time, or because they have tendencies toward introversion, social awkwardness, and quirks of behavior which in most contexts can come across as annoying or elitist[footnote]Referring to what you said about being "detail-oriented."[/footnote]? In my experience, the "nerds" who aren't accepted by the "in-crowd" tend to be the ones who have a penchant toward those traits. There were plenty of guys in my school who liked video games and science-fiction and fantasy, and openly talked about it. But some of them were "cool," and some of them weren't. And, rather consistently, the ones who socialized easily were the ones who were "cool." This is true of all people, whether they like professional wrestling or Magic: The Gathering. People who are socially awkward will always be marginalized and vilified. Their hobbies most often have little to do with it. If you are easy to talk to, people aren't going to care so much if you play tabletop games or read the Lord of the Rings and the Silmarillion every year.

 

[klaynexas3]

I can say that we should work on toxicity as a community, but using Anita as an example of unwelcome is a bad example. While she does get sexist comments hurled at her by trolls and the like, there are genuine reasons not to like her, for one that she does take a stance basically saying that any given moment where a women might be shown in any sort of danger is automatically sexist, even if men are in the same said danger, and acts like that that one moment defines that woman and that nothing else she does has any merit. Her points are all speculation at best, except that some tropes are over used specifically in video games.

I'm willing to accept others, I want more girls to play games and be into nerdy stuff, and while there are plenty of things about the culture that is male oriented, Anita is off, and I know I'm not the only one that thinks this.

 

[Combustion Kevin]

I don't think most of those trolls spew hatred because they actually think like that, but rather because they offend by themselves.
Trashtalking is not about putting minorities down, it's about provoking your opponent.
By extention, anonimity gives you a free ticket to pretty much say anything and get away with it.

Thing is, though, we can't do anything against those people, we don't have the tools to do go without compromising the things that make most internet communities so color blind and emancipated, anonimity makes the entrance barrier entirely equal for everybody involved, and places more responsibility on their quality of character.

As for the Anita thing, I'm kinda tired of hearing that mysoginy in the industry is caused by straight, white males, and only straight, white males, but I should not be offended by being chucked into a big group that "causes the problem".
Unless I do, do I? HUH?! PATRIARCH!?
If only there was a place for discussion that doesn't blow up into a huge division, the only reaction I've experienced to sincere sexcism or racism is denonciation, any joke that goes into that territory must be accompanied with a apology, and suddenly people tell me there is this huge problem about women and minorities being perscecuted.
And "people like me" are the problem.
WHAT IS HAPPENING!?

 

[Gridlock]

Mobilize the 40K nerd's mechanized infantry! We shall tear down all that oppose us!

YES! Let us take to streets Blood for the Blood God, Skulls for The Skullthrone!!

But seriously enough with the bloody feminist Anita´s videos have been more or less busted by almost every one out there (my favorite videos doing that, is Thunderfoots Feminism versus FACTS).
Feminism have more or less become a joke since its no longer about equal rights for both genders (within reasonable limits, i mean when we look at the biological differences between women and men there´s just some things that women can do and men can´t and vice versa) but about female superiority/a Drow society (big forgotten realms geek).

So no not a good video from my point of view.