This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Motte
Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023
Rowliphobia
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 6, 2023
Who Teaches the Teachers?
@gog:
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Notes -
You mistake me. I don't think there's any co-ordination at all, that's what is so comical. Person A starts a campaign, it gets picked up by their social media followers and spread around, like-minded others think it's a great idea and they all start copying each other (again, being a bitch, because the excessively online activist types love presenting themselves as tragically persecuted victims, and the idea of Rowling and the game being concerted trans genocide allows them to go full-on dying swan in their tweets etc.)
That didn't work, as pre-orders for the game, Twitch streaming (and that was a whole other kerfuffle) and reviews continued. So somebody decided they'd try the "goblin slavery = racism and pro-slavery" bit (didn't seem to get off the ground) and then the "goblins = Jewish stereotypes, anti-Semitism" angle, and that got passed around too. As I said, I've seen what could be copy-n-paste arguments all over the place repeating the same talking points. I don't think this was co-ordinated, I think it was the usual parroting of talking points that you get all too often, especially in closed communities (I see it all too often in fandom - how something becomes 'fanon' and gets treated as Gospel from then on).
So a bunch of Persons of Self-Importance did the dying swan bit about "literal genocide!!!!", their followers, hangers-on, and people who trip over themselves to be allies copied it and passed it around, they hoped it would become a campaign (e.g. reviews on Steam all downvoting the game) but it failed miserably. No co-ordinated action, no conspiracy, just an echo chamber. And occasional unintended hilarity and gems like the anti-semitic cheese.
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