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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   37167 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 2024

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I am willing to extend someone enough charity to accept that "Pro-Palestine" does not necessarily mean "Anti-Israel"

I agree, in principle. In practice, in my experience, anyone with strong views on the matter tends to seek ideological purity. I have a number of problems with Israel, which are often difficult to express without either being accused of antisemitism, or being praised by outright antisemites. I have many more problems with "Palestine" (in any of its many incarnations), which are all but impossible to express without being accused of Islamophobia, being pro-genocide, being racist, and so forth.

Boardgamers are the fucking worst. (I can say this, I'm a boardgamer. Although I'm a dirty hex-and-counter wargamer, and only old white supremacist men play those.)

I agree, as a boardgamer, that boardgamers are terrible, and online boardgame forums are excellent demonstrations of Conquest's Laws. What amazes me is how the same can today be said of pretty much every hobby that was ever demographically "geeky white male." RPGs, video games, anime, comic books--but also science, engineering, philosophy, and information technology. These spaces have been absolutely overrun with people insisting "it's not just for you!" and for maybe the first decade of the new millennium, the response I usually saw was... this, basically. But post-Awokening (and with the help of "Woke Capital") a lot of old school nerds and geeks have been hounded to the edges of the space. It's weird to watch properties that weathered and survived the "moral majority" censorship of the late 20th century cave with zero resistance to the new millennium's church ladies sensitivity readers. You could kill children in the original Fallout. Warhammer 40k was not PG-13. It used to be okay for something to not be for you.

Maybe it's different in the UK where GW is based and Warhammer stores themselves have a notable retail presence alongside independent stores that sell it, but I'm pretty sure Warhammer has always been PG-13, if not marketed even younger. Sure, it's stuck in a weird place where it has to combine an ultra-violent and occasionally horny setting with that, but the sales pitch to parents has always been something like: Here's a hobby that appeals to boys which is indoors, quiet, creative, doesn't involve screens, and requires some mathematics. Loiter in one of their stores for long enough and you will hear something like that pitch being given to some parents by the staff. Maybe even "like cooler airfix" (though that's so old a reference that it might only work for grandparents now). More formally, there's also this.

As an aside, I think their failure to offer brush-on primer even though it would be worse than spray primer is a mistake in this context. Sales of aerosol paints are age-restricted here. Sure, their parents can buy it, but I think some fraction of them will refuse because of the association with graffiti and hooliganism.

The "if not marketed even younger" image is the box of MB Games' 1990 Space Crusade - which alongside OG Heroquest was a deliberate (and not repeated) attempt to extend the Warhammer IP to mass-market board games (MB was already a Hasbro subsidiary by 1990) through a licensing deal. So it was deliberately targetting an audience that was less geeky than the core Warhammer audience, as well as younger. The aesthetic of the box art is consistent with other MB Games of that era.

GW did a similar deal with Fantasy Flight which lasted from 2008-17, but given Fantasy Flight's business model that was an attempt to broaden their reach within their core ubergeek audience.

GW still does smaller box games that are sold through Target, but you are right that they're no longer aiming for a younger audience with those. But if we take the strongest possible interpretation of this, then contrary to the comment I was responding to, GW has actually narrowed the demographic it sells to, not broadened it.

This is definitely something I've seen in Warhamer stores in the UK - I've seen mothers come into those stories with their young sons, and the staff simultaneously try to pitch it to the young boys as something cool and exciting, and to the parents as something that's creative, healthy, and so on.

They were going for something like this - which looks lame to teenage boys, but that is definitely how you would sell Warhammer to parents.

always been

...

doesn't involve screens

I'm thinking about a timeline that reaches back quite a bit earlier than widespread parental concern over screen time (other than television). Many figures do not rate "PG-13," though of course in the late 1980s the UK had "Page 3" and the U.S. was often portrayed by its internal critics as quaint and backward in its insistence on stuff like sexualizing breasts, so maybe things really were/are just different across the pond.

Of course, "get 'em hooked young" has been part of their marketing approach for a long time, too; as with the Japanese pulling cross imagery out of video games in that era, "just don't mention Slaanesh" is a pretty low bar. But woke capital seems to have accomplished what church ladies couldn't, as these days it seems like the true Emperor of Mankind is the diversity consultant heading up HR.

Reminds me of this old warhammer ad. http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=du0emDgJ-L4&pp=ygUYd2FyaGFtbWVyIHR2IGNvbW1lcmNpYWwg

Go back far enough and the screens of concern would have indeed meant TV. But by the 'awokening', phone and computer screen time would be the concern. Either way, pg-13 was already a Warhammer thing long before 2014.

It used to be okay for something to not be for you.

It pains me that this is such a lost thing nowadays. There's nothing wrong with things that don't appeal to everybody! In fact, I would go so far as to say that's what makes life interesting - we can each be into different things that others would find unbearable, and we are better off for it because each of us is happier than with something that tried to appeal to everyone at once. But for some reason, that's now treated like it's morally abhorrent.

Also, maybe it's just my skewed perspective but it seems like the actual rule is even worse than "we must water everything down for everyone". It seems to be only the things that nerdy men enjoy which get this treatment. Board games have to be PC, video games must remove any trace of sex appeal because that scares off women, programming must be packed full of diversity statements and codes of conduct, etc. But nobody expects the local crochet club to change to appeal to men, etc. Basically, it feels like society kicked nerds out in the 80s, we went "ok whatever we're going to do our own thing", and now 40 years later the bullies are back to kick us out of the communities we built as a refuge from them in the first place. It really grates.

Obligatory Degradation of a Fanbase/Hobby.

Basically, it feels like society kicked nerds out in the 80s, we went "ok whatever we're going to do our own thing", and now 40 years later the bullies are back to kick us out of the communities we built as a refuge from them in the first place. It really grates.

This is a startlingly accurate summary of the last 25 years of my life.

The problem with this argument is if everybody was actually on your side in nerdy spaces in the first place. There were plenty of people who wanted to kick you out from the jump.

Again, I've made this analogy before, but in 1997, if among your friend group, one of the guys in your local area that is into anime, Warhammer, Doctor Who, or whatever thing you're deeply into is kind of off, occcasionally says cring things or whatever, you may put up with it, because that's the only option you have. But, this did make a current brand of nerd think they had more support than they actually did.

But, in 2024, you don't have to deal with that guy anymore, and thanks to the increased popularity of nerdy things in general, there are plenty of people with more normal views on stuff.

If the option is somebody who might know less about cool thing y you're into, but also doesn't complain there are now non-sexy women or non-white people in prominent places within said cool thing, a lot of people are going to side with the person who knows less because they're less annoying to be around, even if you don't care one way or another.

I'd also argue video games are part of the capitalist system, while crochet groups really aren't, even though there have been rows about crochets involving race. But yes, it turns out people who own businesses want to make more money, and they'll drop their appeal to males 18-34, if it'll help them also win over older males and women.

I think a big thing your side doesn't get is the actual reason for the desexualization of games is actually less evil SJW's, but the fact that programmers, engineers, and actual gamers are getting older, having kids, and it's far more defensible to a wife to be playing a game on the lbig living room TV with characters that look like the modern Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, or whatever the game people have determined is full of 'ugly' people, as opposed to the polygons with boobs of the late 90's.

Ironically, I would compare this to a refugee situation, where refugees sometimes put up with extremist or less than fantastic parts of their refugee community because they all have to stand together. Well, some of the refugees found a new country and they have to follow certain rules and stop saying certain things and don't find that a problem, while there's a smaller group that wants to hold on to outdated traditions because that's the way it was.

  • -19

But yes, it turns out people who own businesses want to make more money, and they'll drop their appeal to males 18-34, if it'll help them also win over older males and women.

The word "if" is doing a lot of work here, what with the corpses of Star Wars, Marvel, etc. smoldering in the background. Has this idea ever worked out?

Meanwhile, you could just make the fucking Barbie movie and get all the wimminz' moneys without pissing on your other properties. God forbid you make a distinct product that appeals to ladies specifically instead of flattening your other golden geese with a rolling pin.

Part of Disney's problem in particular is that the company is just so gay now that it has a lesbian activist's idea of what women want, and it just doesn't comport with reality. Like Wonder Woman, with her bare shoulders and hunky boyfriend, made money in her first movie while drawing a substantial female audience. Then Disney comes along and says "Well if they liked that then they'll love bitchfaced pseudo-lesbians in onesies!" and The Marvels turns out to be a humiliating bomb.

If Disney were to remake Aliens, Newt would be right out, because a woman being motivated by maternal instinct is patriarchy or something. Ripley would be a gay-coded obnoxious know-it-all whose biggest problem is men telling her to smile more. It would flop horribly and we'd have to read a bunch of clickbait about how sexist everyone is for not giving a shit about it.

In any case, they're learning whether they like it or not. There'll never be another The Marvels. Deadpool/Wolverine is about to come out and make a billion dollars and blow the "superhero fatigue" excuse out of the water, too.

The idea there wasn't big political entryism leading to this change is easily refuted nonsense.

If it were true, then the current political overlords wouldn't be endlessly trying to denounce the fathers of the hobby. You can't claim to always have been a part of this and want to kick Gary Gygax and his friends out of D&D. It doesn't make sense on the face of it.

The smarter adaptation to this argument is to lie about history, like the scholars now claiming Catholic Tolkien was just fine with LGBTQ actually, but it too is transparent nonsense that people only say because they have to justify their imperium.

I've seen colonizers with more respect for the cultures they subdued than this vile usurpation.

scholars now claiming Catholic Tolkien was just fine with LGBTQ actually

Please, please say you made this up just for rhetorical effect. I think I might have an aneurysm if that is indeed a real thing people are claiming about Tolkien.

Gentleman, it is with great sadness to inform you that...Tolkien Society

https://archive.is/LvLTa

Archive link to the papers of the summer seminar. Corruption from start to finish.

Oh dear. That's really dumb. It really makes one wonder about what's wrong with some people, that they can't envision two people being close without romantic or sexual interest in each other.

there are plenty of people with more normal views on stuff.

Those "normal views" being insane fringe leftism that the exact same people would have considered ridiculous only a few years ago doesn't give you pause? At all? No introspection whatsoever?

If the option is somebody who might know less about cool thing y you're into, but also doesn't complain there are now non-sexy women or non-white people in prominent places within said cool thing, a lot of people are going to side with the person who knows less because they're less annoying to be around, even if you don't care one way or another.

This doesn't really track, because if you don't care one way or another, then it'd make more sense to find the annoyance in the people complaining more, more loudly, more violently, more disruptively, etc, and the amount of extraneous noise and controversy created by people complaining the exact opposite - that there aren't enough non-sexy women or non-white people in prominent places within said cool thing - is about an order of magnitude greater. If one is less bothered by calls for this ideology than against it, then that would mean that they certainly do care one way or another.

I'd also note that the description of these types of people "complain[ing] there are now non-sexy women or non-white people in prominent places within said cool thing" is highly uncharitable at best and just downright strawmanning at worst.

I think a big thing your side doesn't get is the actual reason for the desexualization of games is actually less evil SJW's, but the fact that programmers, engineers, and actual gamers are getting older, having kids, and it's far more defensible to a wife to be playing a game on the lbig living room TV with characters that look like the modern Tomb Raider, The Last of Us, or whatever the game people have determined is full of 'ugly' people, as opposed to the polygons with boobs of the late 90's.

This also doesn't track for a few reasons. One big one is the fact that the very idea that it's more defensible to a wife to have the modern visuals versus polygons with boobs of the late 90s on the big living room TV is an ideological one. To some extent, what visceral reaction someone has is outside of ideology, but deciding whether or not to submit to that visceral reaction certainly is within ideology. This was one of the core arguments in the fight for gay marriage in the 00s - some attempt was made to convince people just not to find the idea of gay men viscerally disgusting, but the larger point was made that even if you do find them gross, this should play no part in the way you treat them. If there was some movement to get rid of gay men in media because it's just far more defensible to display non-gay men on the big TV due to people tending to just find gay men gross (whether or not this is actually true isn't relevant), most people would recognize that this would be ideologues pushing forward their ideology.

And speaking of movements, another big issue here is that we do have explicitly ideological movements that explicitly call for the kinds of changes we're talking about, with self-proclaimed examples of changes made explicitly for hewing to the ideology. This doesn't mean literally every last case of these types of changes is ideologically motivated, but it certainly points in that direction generally.

And the types of changes we see are consistent with the explicit goals of the movement and not so much with just wanting to put more defensible stuff on the big screen (which, again, would still be due to ideologues pushing their ideology). If the motivation were just that, we'd expect to see changes generally limited to taking costumes from stripper-level to, I don't know, something like dinner party-level. Maybe make some armor more properly covering. But we're not limited to just that, including androgyni-fying women and adding racial/sexual-orientation diversity. "Defensible on the TV" can somewhat track for jiggle physics on women wearing stripper outfits (again, still ideological), but really, not at all for having characters that aren't sufficiently diverse in a racial/sexual-orientation dimension. That's the kind of thing that's barely even noticeable to a typical viewer, and the ones who do notice it almost always tend to do so for ideological reasons (the very idea that there's something to notice there is, in itself, ideological, of course).

Furthermore, all this taking place in the context of the general increased accessibility of media that, in the past, used to be considered inappropriate makes it rather doubtful that this particular case of media transformation is driven by some secular desire to avoid what's inappropriate to show on the big TV. Often, the very same individuals who call for putting less-sexy women in games are also the ones who call for exposing kids, wives, and other general laypeople to media that's even more sexually provocative than a sexy woman jiggling around in a stripper outfit. So the push for these changes is primarily a push for changing what people do and don't consider appropriate to see on the big living room TV - which is almost explicitly a goal openly espoused by a massive ideological movement right now (and has been for, well, I'd guess longer than I've been alive). Given all that, the idea that these changes aren't being driven by ideologues (who have openly said that they want to cause the types of changes that we're talking about now) but rather by individuals making decisions about the type of media they themselves would feel comfortable showing to others just doesn't hold water.

The causal connection between "type of game devs would feel comfortable showing on their living room TV" and "type of game devs would want to make" is also something that seems to have greatly weakened since the 90s as well. Because of the more niche, less lucrative nature of the industry in the 90s, dev teams tended to be small enough that you could believe that the main decisionmakers in major titles were ones who actually enjoyed those games and were working towards one that they would want to play. Today, due to how much those things have changed, the executives making these decisions have other priorities they have to meet. One would normally think that the overriding priority would be profit, but other entertainment media, namely movies and TV, have shown that ideology is an even more pleasurable drug than money to plenty of executives.

Exactly so. See the press eg. lambasting Stellar Blade while being ecstatic about very detailed gay sex and fucking bears in Baldur's Gate 3. The common denominator in the whole thing is that the activists are deeply against anything pleasing to heterosexual men.

It's the same sort of thing where if you track the various forms of cultural leftism for the last few decades, the common thread in all is that normal, European men and their culture are Bad and should be done away with. You won't find a single iteration with normal white men not at the bottom of the totem pole and at blame for all of society's ills.

This is the first I’ve heard of stellar blade. I guess since I don’t own a PlayStation?

I was paying attention before BG3 came out. They’d already built up a lot of more normal hype. Sequel to a long-neglected franchise, popular AA developer, good teasers…then they had that livestream.

Which of those apply to stellar blade?

But yes, it turns out people who own businesses want to make more money, and they'll drop their appeal to males 18-34, if it'll help them also win over older males and women.

I disagree with most of your assessment because it simply does not track my own experiences--but this particular sentence did catch my attention. I was recently reading this Atlantic article about how Boeing became such a terrible company. The complete picture is of course complicated, but a quick-and-dirty version goes like this: once upon a time, Boeing made money by making airplanes. Over time, they did less and less actual making of airplanes and more and more putting their stamp on airplanes that were mostly made by other companies. By outsourcing this work, Boeing was able to increase its profits! But over time, this resulted in an "airplane company" that could not rightly be said to understand airplane-making in the way it once had.

I see this sort of thing all over the place. Amazon was a fantastic bookstore. Then, it became a remarkable everything-catalog. Now, it is a kind of shitty logistics company with a lumbering stranglehold on a couple of important channels of commerce. Each step down the path was a step toward greater profitability, but also a step toward enshittification.

The enshittification of geek culture is probably not entirely attributable to the Great Awokening--personally, I suspect that bad copyright law plays a bigger role than is ordinarily appreciated, as "control" over "key properties" comes to trump creativity and risk and so forth. But as I noted in another comment--"It used to be okay for something to not be for you." That is not something today's marketers seem to understand, or agree with. Everything has to be for everyone (except, maybe, straight white men). But even from a capitalistic perspective this is probably an actual mistake; short term, you might think "I want everyone to like this and buy it, because that will maximize profits" but long term you just end up with shitty planes literally falling apart in the sky--and whatever the cultural equivalent of that is.

Again, I've made this analogy before, but in 1997, if among your friend group, one of the guys in your local area that is into anime, Warhammer, Doctor Who, or whatever thing you're deeply into is kind of off, occcasionally says cring things or whatever, you may put up with it, because that's the only option you have. But, this did make a current brand of nerd think they had more support than they actually did.

But, in 2024, you don't have to deal with that guy anymore

Just a quick sanity check - do you think there were absolutely no changes in the sphere of nerdy-left beliefs, and thus in what is considered cringe, between 1997 and 2024? The fault lies 100% on the guy that got kicked out?

I think to be a “nerd” in the past required a commitment that served as an effective barrier to entry that allowed the social misfits the ability to build a culture around weird stuff that doesn’t really work anymore. To be an anime fan before Crunchyroll required learning to stream from the web, likely learning Japanese to dub or sub them for the community if not simply to watch the show itself. If you wanted to be a super fan of a show, you had to find that trivia and memorize it. That doesn’t exist now because nerd media and hobbies are normal now and Nerds in the old school sense are too weird to be tolerated by the normies that now dominate those things.

I don’t count most fandoms as nerdy in the 21st century as truly nerdy. It’s mainstream now and trying to compare the fandoms of the 21st century to nerd culture from the 1990s. A niche interest naturally changes upon entering the mainstream.

That's a good point. Even with politics out of the picture, nerdy spaces are fundamentally different in that way, and I remember that particular feature of them being directly attacked as "gatekeeping".

I mean, yes, there has been social change, but the vast majority of that has been positive in my view, and in the view of the vast majority of people. It's up to those guys to determine if their deepest worry is about the gender or race of their favorite superheroes or the average bust size of the women in video games or whatever is proof that SJW's have taken over. I truly do think 'the SJW's have ruined everything' types do really overrate how much everybody in nerd culture was really on their side, as opposed to people who weren't opposed to the nerd culture of 1994, but also aren't opposed to the nerd culture of 2024.

If your deepest view is culture was great in 1995 and everything was fine, yeah, you're going to be left behind, just like if you're belief that culture was great in 1970, even in 1995, you'd be considered an out of touch old guy that's being passed by. 1995 is actually a long time ago now, when it comes to culture.

I've also made this point before - in 1994, if two nerdy (likely) white dudes are having a political argument, they probably don't have too deep a connection to many of the political arguments, even if they have different views on something. On the other hand in 2024, the left-leaning person is far more likely to have non-white people, LGBT, or other groups that are effected by conservative policies, so it's not a shock that now they have a closer relationship with those folks, they're less likely to be seen as just arguments.

Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse? I'm fair about this - I don't expect somebody whose pro-life, anti-transgender rights, or super anti-immigration whatever to be my friend if they deeply care about those issues.

  • -23

... I'm a bi furry, so I get what you're coming from. 'Ew, gay' wasn't just a joke limited to samef**s on 4chan, but a mainstay both in and outside of fandom spaces, tolerated in schools, and something I got from even my own family. I was a furry before SomethingAwful discovered The Easiest Target, and despite how much worse it got, it wasn't great before that.

But I also don't think it's terribly honest to compare that to a 'deepest worry' as the 'average bust size of the women in video games'. In tabletop, we're not just seeing people try to establish XX-phenotype'd space marines -- for screw over the lore or themes of 40k, it's not like the non-woke behavior from Games Workshop has been slow to do the same problems either. We just had a recent D&D history that couldn't hold its fire on calling its original authors every type of intentional evil under the sun, while people start reading entrails of games they've disemboweled for signs of The Dreaded Enemy. But those aren't concrete.

In literature, Correia's rant argument stands on its own, and there's been a prolonged campaign to try to get Sanderson, and then there's Mercedes Lackey. For video games, I'll point again to a guy getting driven of an open-source project he's run for more than a decade, in part by threats at his co-contributors' employment if he didn't step down, because he made rude comments about a (trans) spree shooter.

Nor are these rules that 'just' impact the big-names.

And I think that's kinda a distraction. The argument for against using 'gay' as an insult wasn't "we're gonna do it to 'straight white male', and it'll be fair, then". The argument for having options for a female character other than 'tits out McGee' or 'fridged' wasn't to make the only acceptable character archetype variations on Velma from Scooby Doo. I can (and have) made the argument that this was in part for the benefit of many of the people the LGBT and woke movements are themselves claiming to protect, jettisoned in favor of a world of bubble wrap.

But even that's a distraction: this retreat is bad not just because it hurts the subaltern, or betrays its own promises, but because it is wrong at its core, and to all it impacts.

Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse? I'm fair about this - I don't expect somebody whose pro-life, anti-transgender rights, or super anti-immigration whatever to be my friend if they deeply care about those issues.

I think it's worth noting that if you want to drink beer and talk sports with these people, they're generally more than happy to stick to sports(/barbecue tips/home maintenance tips), and in fact one of their bigger complaints is "why do these people insist on making a friendly conversation political when it's obvious the group disagrees?"

On the other hand in 2024, the left-leaning person is far more likely to have non-white people, LGBT, or other groups that are effected by conservative policies, so it's not a shock that now they have a closer relationship with those folks, they're less likely to be seen as just arguments.

Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse?

This flows both ways. Politics was interested in me personally in 2020 in a way that it wasn't before, and also in a way that disproportionately affected nerdy activities like board gaming. Why would I want to be friends with people who want to make the lives of myself and my other friends worse by supporting lockdowns, which were far more egregious than the average social conservative's demands not least because it also involves partially criminalizing homosexuality anyway? Well, it turns out that I don't really have a choice, because 90% of the people around me want to make my life worse, and the option to join a gaming community with a consensus that opposes lockdowns doesn't exist.

Am I'm banging my usual drum again? Yes. But there's a point: You've given no reason why board games should have gone left to protect LGBT friends who suffered from conservative policies, instead of going right to protect the LGBT friends (hello) who suffered from progressive policies. To go even further, the entire nerdy ecosystem depends on capitalism, freedom of speech, and freedom of assembly to function. It also has a bit of an obsession with everything military. All things that have (for one reason or another) clustered into Conservatism. If nerdiness is going to have a political slant, why is that slant not for it's natural ally? If anyone's going to get politically purged, then why not the Communists whose political ambitions are mostly incompatible with the continued existence of these nerdy activities?

Is that a rhetorical question, or do you really not understand why a ban on homosexuality qua homosexuality is taken more personally by a leftist than a ban on homosexual sex by way of banning all assembly of non-household-members, regardless of sexuality or indeed the intent to have sex, with a purpose that doesn't stem from decrying them besides?

Yes, the actual problem with the Confederacy was that they didn't enslave enough whites, and the actual problem with Nazis is that they didn't gas enough Germans. If only they did that, they'd have been goodies. Hurrah equality!

Rights can't work from a basis of equality. Was the solution to gay marriage was actually to prohibit all marriage, and sodomy to instead criminalise all sex? No. To be even more flippant, gay people were already legally allowed to have straight marriage, and straight people were already prohibited from gay marriage.

You do realise that I am a LGBT person who was pissed off at the government de facto recriminalizing homosexuality with lockdowns? The bracketed hello might have been too subtle... Leftists are okay with certain forms of bans on homosexuality, but that's because the aesthetics of LGBT rights takes priority over actually giving us any rights, because it turns out that they in fact do want the government to care about what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedroom. Hence it's okay to violate our rights as long as it "doesn't stem from decrying them", whatever that's supposed to mean (though really it still is decrying us because it's about reducing humans to disease vectors on a spreadsheet in general).

And to get out from the weeds and back to the point: It's trivially incorrect that nerdy political purges are based around some sort of propensity to make the lives of their friends worse, or damage the relevant hobby. The target prioritization is totally wrong for that to be the motive. Lockdowns actively criminalized in-person Boardgaming, Dungeons and Dragons, Magic the Gathering (last I checked, lockdowns killed paper Standard), Wargaming, Conventions, and all other nerdy face-to-face activities. And politically, those were supported more by the left than the right. Therefore, if you're going to use attacking friends and their ability to participate in any particular nerdy activity to justify nerdy political purges, there's your actual target. Anything else would be ad-hoc excuses to disguise an ulterior motive for purges.

I'd be way more comfortable playing with a social conservative than a mask addict, even if because of demographics this is very unlikely to actually happen. At least I could trust they'd still be interested in playing when ligma 28 rolls around, and they wouldn't be motivated to call the police on me for suggesting it.

You do realise that I am a LGBT person who was pissed off at the government de facto recriminalizing homosexuality with lockdowns?

Why do lockdowns de facto criminalize homosexuality? By that logic, shouldn't lockdowns have criminalized all sexuality, homosexual or otherwise?

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Huh? Last I checked the latter is exactly how systemic isms work, and they're consider bad enough to riot over.

Last I checked systemic isms are isms because they affect the ismed demographic disproportionately highly, and that's the central definition of systemic isms.

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All you young'uns talking about gaming in the 90s like those were Ye Olden Days making me feel so old...

Look, I see your side and @ArjinFerman's a little. I think the anti-woke types do underestimate how shitty things could be in the 80s and 90s. I remember taking a couple of female friends to a con (yes, female gamers existed back then!) and first thing we were treated to was a table of young men loudly talking about using mind control to make the princess give them all blow jobs... They thought this was hilarious. Yes, that's a real incident, not something I made up /r/thathappened-style, and I saw a lot of that sort of thing. The looks on my friends' faces were what you'd expect.

Today, if you pulled that at a con, you'd probably get kicked out, and I think that's a good thing. Keep your juvenile cringe sex fantasies out of public spaces.

That said - you are also overstating how "bad" things were "back then." Most gamers, even straight white male gamers, were liberal and/or accepting, off-color blowjob jokes notwithstanding. Things weren't "fine," maybe, but people were not actively trying to keep girls and POC out of gaming (quite the opposite!). You are also understating how bad things have become for those of us who used to be on the liberal and tolerant side since.

And this whole argument that "straight white guys can talk calmly about politics and tolerate people with different views because it doesn't actually threaten them" just infuriates me. Like yes, politics is serious. But stop catastrophizing every damn political difference as an existential threat. That's how we got to where anything less than 100% validation of trans people is "wanting a trans genocide," and people who have qualms about abortion - any qualms! - "want to take away women's bodily autonomy."

I am unironically reminded of this reddit post I just read today. (tldr a woman who's been in a "mixed political marriage" for years is now contemplating divorcing her very good husband who is a good father to their children because he will probably vote for Trump). Now even granting that the post itself is very likely made-up ragebait, it's not the first time I've seen sentiments like that, and if you read the comments, well, the vast majority are basically affirming her decision to divorce her loving husband and become a struggling single mother with a special needs child because her husband "is literally aiding fascism and doesn't consider her or her daughters human."

Ok I know I’m probably falling for bait but holy smokes that reddit post is mind-boggling.

They have two notions that cannot both be true: A) My husband is a good person, B) All Trump supporters are bad people. It just seems so backwards to conclude: Therefore my husband is a bad person. Can’t they see it would be more reasonable to break the other proposition and conclude that not all Trump supporters are bad people? They are trusting Twitter/Reddit over their own experience with the guy? Gosh I need to stop reading this stuff or I’ll go crazy

Some people are really, really deep into culture war bullshit to the extent that they would rather believe their ideology than believe "this person I know is actually ok" when confronted with the cognitive dissonance you describe. That's just the sad truth of it.

It is probably not real, and I would strongly recommend using that thought as open and close brackets around any reaction you have to it.

They thought this was hilarious. Yes, that's a real incident, not something I made up /r/thathappened-style, and I saw a lot of that sort of thing. The looks on my friends' faces were what you'd expect.

I might need to walk back the thing about gender-blindness being a good idea (as I explicitly rejected it recently), but in my defense, the idea that men and women are literally the same was the assumption of those times, and it was promoted by feminists. And in defense of these guys, under that assumption, that's a pretty tame and harmless joke.

I think the anti-woke types do underestimate how shitty things could be in the 80s and 90s.

That fact that you are also boiling my views down "everything was great back then" is even more frustrating than the fact that he was doing it.

I mean, yes, there has been social change, but the vast majority of that has been positive in my view, and in the view of the vast majority of people.

Citation very, very badly needed. With all due respect, I think you're completely out of touch with what actual nerds (as opposed to the bullies colonizing nerd spaces) think. Apart from vocal progressives in Extremely Online forums, I have never encountered nerds who think that the invasion of politics (left wing or otherwise) into their beloved activities is a good thing.

Like, why do I want to be personally friendly with people who want to make the lives of my other friends worse?

For one thing, because you're wrong and approximately nobody wants to make the lives of your other friends worse. If you can't see that, then you need to take a step back (many steps back) and learn to view things from your opponents' perspective rather than your own.

For another thing, because that is how society works. We all have things we disagree strongly with each other on. Having a functional human civilization requires that we live and let live as much as we can. And sure, kicking people out of your hobbies based on your political disagreements does not by itself destroy that social contract. But it does undermine it, and like clockwork the illiberal attitudes of "let's kick the baddies out of our social club" turns into "let's kick the baddies out of good jobs" turns into "let's kick the baddies out of society altogether". It's important to fight this sort of toxic thinking on the small scale before people start to apply it on the larger scales.

I'm going to tap gattsuru's sign here. This is what they are under the mask; Outlaw83 is doing you the favor of taking it off. They want to crush you. They want you out of society, or at the very least on some ignorable margin. This is how society works... for them. There's no need for them to tolerate disagreement if they can simply boot out anyone who disagrees. Yes, it's a very illiberal attitude... but they're not liberals.

I think you mean faceh's sign!

And then it's not politics, it's basic decency, and if you can't understand that then you are the problem.

I apologize for this heat-post.

The problem there has always been that the line between 'politics' and 'decency' is itself a political question. Moreover, when there are conflicts between your sense of decency and my sense of decency, whose sense of basic decency should prevail?

There's a joke that goes around some of the circles I'm familiar with - "Your politics are politics. My politics are just basic human decency." In other words, the other side's politics get treated as politics, and so downgraded in importance, whereas my side's politics are so important - they're common sense, just being kind, etc. - that they must be maintained or enforced at all times.

At some point I think it's best to just skip over the meta-debate about which view is 'politics', which view is 'decency', etc., because that's ultimately just a semantic dispute, and focus instead on the actual conflict. People have different preferences when it comes to the unspoken rules of conduct in a given social space. How will we reconcile those preferences?

[A]proximately nobody wants to make the lives of your other friends worse.

Prefacing this response by stating that I am on the side of Team Nerd rather than that of your interlocutor: this statement in particular seems false. In particular, it seems false in a quokkic, mistake-theorist’s way. There are absolutely many right-wing nerds who want to make e.g trans people’s lives worse. For example, when a poster suspected of being trans on 4chan is met with countless replies of “you will never be a woman”, I doubt that those replies’ authors are not intending to cause pain. Granted, one can say that this is a defensive reaction to an SJW takeover of nerd hobbies—hence that old “why did you make us do this? We just wanted to play video games” image. But if that’s the case, then this is just arguing that the conflict is justified instead of arguing that there is no conflict.

But if that’s the case, then this is just arguing that the conflict is justified instead of arguing that there is no conflict.

In topic-oriented spaces, there are 2 genders: male, and political. Especially on the internet, where nobody knows you’re a dog- the only reason one would want their gender to be relevant is because you’re looking to leverage it as an advantage.

Which is why “tits or GTFO” is the expression- you either disclaim your protected status by doing something that demeans it, or you don’t participate. It is a gatekeeping expression to keep women away, but if you assume that at least some of them are naturally driven to make it all about themselves and that the highest-value women aren’t bothered, then it is useful.

Again, how is gatekeeping your hobby from those gosh-darned attention whores morally different from gatekeeping your hobby from the microaggressive white creeps?

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For example, when a poster suspected of being trans on 4chan is met with countless replies of “you will never be a woman”, I doubt that those replies’ authors are not intending to cause pain.

On 4chan? 4chan specializes in being outrageous, which also serves as a filter to keep outsiders away. Everyone gets attacked on 4chan.

Sure - I don't deny that there are culture warriors on the right as well. That's why I said "approximately nobody", to try to make it clear that I meant the colloquial usage where people say "nobody" to mean "only a small minority". But I feel like maybe I should've just changed the phrase entirely, to make it more clear.

For example, when a poster suspected of being trans on 4chan is met with countless replies of “you will never be a woman”, I doubt that those replies’ authors are not intending to cause pain.

In defense of assorted chuds, personally I see this less as a dreadful voodoo curse summarily invoked upon any transperson who dares show their face in chud-adjacent places, and more like a general chastisement against bringing identity politics into supposedly anonymous spaces. YWNBAW is basically "tits or GTFO" of the modern age - an insult that seems general on the surface, but in practice is levied specifically against those who claim to be women to get something out of it, be it attentionwhoring, enforcing consensus or jockeying for clout.

I could say the same about the treatment pale stale males like me get in today's mainstream board gaming. As long as I'm not trying to get something out of it, I do not receive the white genocide threats. (Neither do I see those threats in general, that seems to be mostly a twitter thing.)

Yeah, I think that’s true in a lot of cases. But I also see a decent number of posters who seem to be absolutely “OBSESSED”, as it were, with “trannies” in a qualitatively different way than the former crowd. Working it into unrelated posts, bringing out barrages of buzzwords…. (Using your example, there’s a difference between your average anon who replies “tits or gtfo” to a low effort “as a girl, I don’t see why guys like these stupid cartoons so much” post, and an /r9k/ native.) At the very least, these latter anons’ actions are best described by conflict theory.

I mean, yes, there has been social change, but the vast majority of that has been positive in my view,

Your previous argument was basically "we didn't change, we always wanted to get rid of you, we were just stuck with you, and now we're not". If there was change, that argument is fudamentally false, even if you consider the change to be good.

If your deepest view is culture was great in 1995 and everything was fine, yeah, you're going to be left behind

What if your deepest view isn't that everything was fine, but we had some good aspirational principles like freedom of speech, color / gender blindness, and meritocracy, and then those principles were explicitly rejected as something wrong to aspire to, and not just something we failed to achieve yet?

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