Meanwhile, in scamland..
(link to an explanation, not the scammer himself)

That warzone has definitely led to more acceptance of hate speech. Even when some people are, in principle, opposed to reactionary-xenophobic-racist-conspiracist argumentation, they tend to just ignore the loads of hate as it's coming from a seemingly clear cut 'side' they happen to think they support.

http://www.gog.com/forum/general/the_gamergate_news_thread/post5241

This doesn't poison the entire forum, but it's definitely a source where this shit creeps in and spreads in it. People have pledged allegiance with a movement, they swore to protect it against any and all, particularly truthful accusations, so even when their instinct would be to speak out at length against this crap right there in their very middle, they'd rather not create in-fighting. Just desperately ignore and post five times in a row until the embarrassing post is on the preceding page... and this utter bigotry is indeed thread defining.

Not that downvoting would help in any way. Jesus, I hate the downvoting. The above thread is cliquey enough that dissenting voices, the life blood of honest discourse, are just drowned in downvotes. On the other hand, of course I personally reserve the right to downvote hate speech, particularly posts using pejorative cultural war terminology ("SJW"). If GOG just abandonned downvoting, however, I wouldn't shed a tear, obviously.

Some of us think SJW is rather descriptive. And to some point even self-identify with it for diverse views on what social justice is - I know I have non ironically... I mean the link you posted for example, he's a pure SJW, not in the conventional sense of what his opinions are, but in an obvious sense of his activism methods.

As to it being pejorative, did you change your mind on that? I still remember when you had SJW posted where you now have human. I thought it was not ironic... You changed from warrior to bard at some point though... which I always enjoyed reading as bastard instead ;) Anyway maybe that was in the other forum? So I maybe think you are a tad conflicted on its usage. And maybe you're rationalizing why it feels so good to hit that - sign? Go on, you know you want to :)

As to ignoring certain people, the thing with motives that you folks omit is that no one likes to argue with crazies. I mean, is anyone that's been online for a while going to start an argument with anyone posting a page full of links? Also, the inaction = support heuristic is constantly applied hypocritically. I am mostly agreeing with you in this post * but you will probably interpret it as an attack and if I had not posted you would not consider my inaction as being implicit support to your position. Am I wrong?


* I agree the GG thread is a warzone and particularly good example of the problem. I agree the particular poster you called out is extreme - though this is partly prejudice because I never actually bothered to study his links. I agree downvoting is super shitty. All the above I can summarize as: Vaina, you're kind of right, but both sides are to blame.

And at a meta level, my overall disagreement I already expressed earlier after Telika posted - I don't see any increase in relative hate speech in GOG than before. There's more posts in general, the percentage of shitty ones being same logically means there's more shitty posts in absolute terms. Certainly the time it takes a thread to disappear from the front page has reduced significantly over the years. What has changed relatively is the civility and tone has deteriorated because the "cultural wars" arrived to gaming. No one took personal insults about consoles, Steam or DRM as seriously as they do this stuff... for obvious reasons.

When I think there has been a very long and for the most part friendly and open discussion about religion only last year...

In fact this thread brought me to the forums, something I haven't regretted in the least, since I've met so many wonderful, generous, intelligent and open minded people here.

Sounds about right. :/

Seth Rollins retained his heavyweight title last night.



There. Someone said something.

What in god's holy name are you blathering about?

Was it a classy fight?

It's pro wrestling. What the hell do you think!? :P

Wrestling... Stopped watching it after WWF vanished and this ugly WCW stuff took over. Went back to WWE shortly, but... Meh, this black and red is not the same as my colorful WWF (which fittingly looks a bit like He-Man - and [url=http://www.madman.com.au/wallpapers/he-man_and_the_masters_of_177_1280.jpg]He-Man).

WCW went out of business ten years ago.

SJW filth invading this thread. Abandon ship!

God I hope you're trying to be silly. :P

Just trying to prevent another thread from being hijacked.

*flees with the popcorn*