The problem is, the examples you are using, while certainly not true when we can only chose between TRUE/FALSE (simplifying issues down to a worthless level), are so deeply rooted because there's more than a single statistic, certainly not just stereotypes, that help the most ardent propagators. You can call it a lie that has some truth about it (the best one) - others will call it the truth with a bunch of lies added by either extremisms or phobias. Heck, when you include experiences and PoV of a specific group or a specific region it gets even better - at some point an individual or a community might as well discount the difference between their everyday experiences and the truth, based on global average, as merely academic. Which story is more true to those people, I wonder?bobleponge said:Because there is another type of story we tell. This type of story is the Insidious Lie, because we unthinkingly accept it as truth. The violent black criminal is this type of lie. The over-emotional woman is this type of lie. The man without feelings is this type of lie. We tell these types of stories over and over and over, and if they are never revealed to be a lie, we begin to believe them. We believe these lies so strongly that we will defend them as truth. When we begin to tell our own stories, we unknowingly incorporate these lies into them as truth.
What's more, neither of your examples implied that those issues are "inherent", "endemic", that they form constitutive traits of a specific group - which would make them MUCH easier to categorize as lies. What if a story simply doesn't bother to claim whether it's "nature" or "nurture", just describes a slice of reality "as is", that, as said above, may be more familiar for a person A than a person B?
You are misrepresenting the story in this case then. It's not "sex worker whose life doesn't matter". It's "sex worker whose life matters as little as everyone elses". Wait, even that is false - "sex worker whose life matters either as little as everyone elses or matters MORE, if you choose to follow ruleset of the game". Which means reducing violence to bystanders, which means... you probably know where it leads at this point, plenty of people pointed that out already.bobleponge said:The sex worker whose life doesn't matter is this kind of story.
And yes, if a game includes such rule, then, by definition, it takes precendence - as rules are constitutive part of a game. The moment player chooses to defy those rules on purpose means they are playing their own version of the game, with custom rules. Might as well accuse checkers that players can throw checkboard at each other to score bonus points and therefore game promotes violence.
The same people's experiences can often tell the opposite story, especially if there's no "inherent" ingredient to that "lie". At some point you will have to resort to research or ideology to support a specific version. We've already seen what "research"*** was used in this case, so all there's left is ideology. And "challenging own worldview" would be fine, but it's also quite often "do as I say, not as I do", which has been shown pretty well by this guy - http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x1xv47_BrainwashingInNorway_hjernevask-english/1#video=xp0tg8bobleponge said:Now, what can we do about this? If you are a creator, step one would be to not tell insidious lies. In order to that, you have to learn what the insidious lies are, by listening to to people's experiences and challenging your own worldview.
(the subject, while related, is irrelevant, and I wouldn't dispute obvious issues the videos have, but you can witness how "challenging own worldview" works for certain group of scientists - and decide whether it resembles arguments/attitude of... a certain person )
The problem is, at least with Hitman and based on the example above, seeing "the obvious lie" can be what specific audience *wants* to see. Which leads to a situation, when someone goes out of their way to declare there's something false/offensive about it - even if this requires a LOT of mental gymnastic and "special rules". It shouldn't be surprising there's a group on every side of every issue that declares to be offended at every turn, so such declaration is pretty much worthless on its own. Regardless, after it's arbitrarily "decided" that "the obvious lie" is indeed present, all that's left is to determine what general audience sees/thinks about it. Or I should rather say "to decide for the general audience what it sees/thinks" - which leads to producing "gems" like the one mentioned below.bobleponge said:As the audience, you are responsible for learning the lies as well.
*** Those "research" pieces shown in earlier posts are probably the most depressing thing about this entire "Hitman controversy", as it shows both the intellectual and ethical level of some "social scientists" and those who cluelessly endorse this level as professionals (being able to publish such crap? I don't even...). And you just know there has to be more examples like this one, in any field that is either too new, too niche or too complex, so incompetency is both rampant and excused by the system itself, not in a small part thanks to "scientific" approach that is (that word again) inherent to some social sciences.