Posted September 29, 2018
Telika: Actually not really. I liked her games topics, and some of her opinions, and didn't like others (at all).
But an important part of my little world is how people react to harmless atypical traits. This is something I'm sensitive to, on many matters - racism, homophobia, and the most mundane things. The objects of in-group out-group identities and validations, their mechanisms, at any subcultural levels. In this case I find fascinating how it transcends the traditional identity oppositions (left/right markers) by revolving around a trait that isn't on the predefined list of what progressives and conservatives are already "supposed" to reject or accept. So it illustrates a behaviour common to a certain kind of person throughout all accidental ideological identities.
It's a bit like the taste for physical violence, that is quenched by those who require it whichever their ideology - they always find a rationalisation for self-righteous beatings of vandalism. It's a more profound identity than the conscious ones - the conscious ones are just the wrapping.
You know people from their acts and attitudes outside of their predefined, stereotyped, list of stimuli/responses. Outside of their training. In front of what their peers didn't already label as good and bad. It reveals something below their supeficial discourses and self-perceptions, something about a deep love for uniformity itself. One has learnt that it is bad to exclude a black or an homosexual because it's not a valid reason to. Throw someone with a green antenna or a blinking nose at them, and watch their reflexes. And their rationalizations. "Oh that antenna would have scratched by ceiling anyway probably maybe, ah I cannot concentrate with that blinking nose, go back to where you belong".
Crowds. It's really less about Fairfox than about gogers and their hypocrisies. About humans and their thirst for righteous, rationalized, self-validating, exclusions. "Oh noes her writing was really ruining the forums we were suffering so much it was immoral of her...".
I liked Fairfox's threads about gameplay (and I do enjoy mild, harmless eccentricity in general). But I despise those forumers more than I like her. She's just interestingly revealing of their mentality.
A mentality that she shares when it comes to fat people. Just like some other forumers, previously ostracized for their own harmless quirks, share this mentality when it comes to hers.
Rejecting the abnormal is a human survival trait. What isn't commonplace is generally dangerous. Or so says our lizard brains. And it was true in the past. Don't eat berries that are unfamiliar, or approach animals that are unfamiliar, or go around people who are unfamiliar. Those things were deadly to you and your tribe when people were a bit less civilized overall. It's natural instinct. Not hypocrisy.But an important part of my little world is how people react to harmless atypical traits. This is something I'm sensitive to, on many matters - racism, homophobia, and the most mundane things. The objects of in-group out-group identities and validations, their mechanisms, at any subcultural levels. In this case I find fascinating how it transcends the traditional identity oppositions (left/right markers) by revolving around a trait that isn't on the predefined list of what progressives and conservatives are already "supposed" to reject or accept. So it illustrates a behaviour common to a certain kind of person throughout all accidental ideological identities.
It's a bit like the taste for physical violence, that is quenched by those who require it whichever their ideology - they always find a rationalisation for self-righteous beatings of vandalism. It's a more profound identity than the conscious ones - the conscious ones are just the wrapping.
You know people from their acts and attitudes outside of their predefined, stereotyped, list of stimuli/responses. Outside of their training. In front of what their peers didn't already label as good and bad. It reveals something below their supeficial discourses and self-perceptions, something about a deep love for uniformity itself. One has learnt that it is bad to exclude a black or an homosexual because it's not a valid reason to. Throw someone with a green antenna or a blinking nose at them, and watch their reflexes. And their rationalizations. "Oh that antenna would have scratched by ceiling anyway probably maybe, ah I cannot concentrate with that blinking nose, go back to where you belong".
Crowds. It's really less about Fairfox than about gogers and their hypocrisies. About humans and their thirst for righteous, rationalized, self-validating, exclusions. "Oh noes her writing was really ruining the forums we were suffering so much it was immoral of her...".
I liked Fairfox's threads about gameplay (and I do enjoy mild, harmless eccentricity in general). But I despise those forumers more than I like her. She's just interestingly revealing of their mentality.
A mentality that she shares when it comes to fat people. Just like some other forumers, previously ostracized for their own harmless quirks, share this mentality when it comes to hers.