Demonization of Moviebob and other Escapist Staff
- Thread starter firebobm173
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I know what you mean Jim is way more neutral and balanced. He looks at things from all sides and does not cast blame on anyone side because there is always more then one way to look at something. He said what was wrong from all sides and what was right.Kontarek said:
firebobm173 said:
Meh, I called this years ago. I've put up several posts making it clear that they should exercise some editorial control on the Escapist employees. By which I do not mean exactly censoring them, but they should require they run their material devoid of political or social criticism and attacks even against, or perhaps especially against, the right wing or those who don't agree with a socially liberal point of view.
Bob has gone so far in the past to do things like claim that people who liked the original "Expendables" were "the worst kind of people" in his own way, not to mention various leftist rants about race, gender, etc... presented as facts and attributed to movies and the like in order to make a social statement. As a general rule it's become sort of predictable that in being critical Bob will oftentimes say a movie isn't very good, but then lavish praise on a woman or minority (by American standards) as an exception to the cast when really they seemed to be just as bad as anyone else if your going to be critical of the movie because well... he's Moviebob. He's done so much stuff at this point that I can't exactly cherry pick exact examples... but in his case he's kind of sowing what he reaped. He's been at it longer than most Escapist employees and that's probably why he's at the forefront of the current wave of backlash. To be honest, despite disagreeing with a lot of his politics I think Bob is a fountain of knowledge on the subjects of geek culture, he very much deserves a platform for that, however his politics have been out of control for a long time. When I've raised the question and gotten responses, The Escapist pretty much said "no we're not going to reign in Bob" (publically) and I'm not surprised others have being saying the same thing, albeit less directly than I have. Now we're seeing the eventual backlash, since really you can only offensively present people who disagree with your politics as some repugnant minority equivalent to a mess on the bottom of your shoe, when they are really quite numerous, before there is going to be some backlash. Media control and trying to create a reality through denial only goes so far.
The "Critical Miss" team is another couple of guys that I've commented on needing to be reigned in, largely because of the whole "White Guy Defense Force" thing... which sort of demonstrated the whole problem here. They put up what was basically an attack piece, people got upset, and then The Escapist mods ran around swinging their banhammers turning that strip's comments section into a legendary bloodbath. Then of course they did the same thing again at which point I suggested The Escapist exercise some editorial control (don't censor what they release, but don't buy strips that exist specifically to piss off tons of people) and of course I was told that wasn't going to happen.... and chances are that contributed to some of these problems as well. After all when your being so one sided, and engaged in political and social censorship eventually it's going to come back at you. You ban that many people under those kinds of circumstances and then host a repeat performance people tend to notice.
Of course please understand that along with these comments, I have also mentioned that my preferred method of dealing with such things is simply to allow free speech on all sides. Basically, if someone like Bob wants to go around making pro-gay comments or Critical Miss wants to troll a bunch of people, they should have to reap what they sow and deal with the comments, basically no bans at all. The same applies to the "Religion and Politics" forum in a general sense. I however do not believe that anyone running a site will ever be willing to cede control and allow users full reign to
say what they want unless such becomes required by the government (and of course there is the question of maintaining order, keeping spam bots down, etc...), hence why I generally push for balance. Basically if your not going to let people strike back at the commentators for dropping their political bombs, then you shouldn't let the commentators drop them to begin with. Equal time, complete freedom of speech (my idea), or forced neutrality on political and social issues, those are the fair and functional options on the table. Basically if you don't want say strong anti-gay
comments on the site, don't allow anyone to make pro-gay comments either, and certainly don't let someone like say Jim Sterling do what he did when this was an issue over "Mass Effect 3" making options for a gay Shepherd.
Like it or not The Escapist has become fairly well known in the arena of geek culture, and as a result it's political slant is being called. A few years ago it wasn't as big a deal that someone like Bob was using his segments to be a "Social Justice Warrior" as much as talk about the subjects at hand (oftentimes by inserting a political agenda or opinion into what he thought of various material). Of course really it's just one front among many, given that the problem is one which exists all across the spectrum of geek culture.
To be honest I'll also say that I think part of the backlash is also because of how geek media has responded to various things like race-changing various super heroes and comic characters. For example you won't find many people with a platform saying that "Black Heimdall" was a stupid PC stunt (albeit one that worked). Or engaged in say an honest analysis of "Ultimate Spider-Man" which as some comics fans have jokingly pointed out is the best selling comic that almost nobody actually likes or reads. Milo Morales being in the same basic club as Sam Alexander and other hated comic change ups that still sell fairly well (basically people buy the books similarly to the old spectator boom, in hopes they will be worth something later). To put things into perspective if you say show up on a lot of forums and say "Heimdall isn't black, so he shouldn't have been black in the movies" you get attacked as some kind of racist, and won't find many people with a platform daring to agree with you. I've been in a few discussions on that subject here. Of course then again part of my entire opinion on the subject has always been that it's stupid to race-change characters when there are plenty of "minority" characters out there nowadays that could be promoted and given attention, much like they did with say "Guardians Of The Galaxy". I mean why do we need to make "The Human Torch" or "Captain America" black, when you have characters like say "Night Thrasher" and numerous others out there just waiting for a decent vehicle. Why does the world need "Black Captain America" when it has "The Black Panther"? (a comparison between the two, and even a few brawls is a classic comics match up). It's a publicity stunt, but one that the media that should be saying "you know, this kind of thing is getting stupid" rather than encouraging. The irony in a point like this is that I think it's actually counter-productive to the socially liberal agenda since it's making being a minority into a gimmick for someone else, rather than something a character just is right from their conception. Personally I think Mcfarlane should make another attempt at a "Spawn" movie in the current environment and show them how it's done.
If people feel that Bob Chipman was acting on twitter in a manner that was both unprofessional, and a poor reflection of the escapist, they have every right to ask for his termination. Just as the escapist has every right to ignore them, and then the people calling for his termination have every right to stop trafficking the escapist in protest. Whether you agree with what he said or not, the prior statement are all things people have the right to do. (for the record, Bob did act unprofessional on twitter, and it does reflect poorly on the escapist as a result, so nobody should be shocked that people are asking for his termination. That's how it works in the real world, people.)
This. A thousand times this.Colour Scientist said:
I don't always agree with Yahtzee or Jim. I don't always agree with Bob. In the same vein, I love DougTenNapel's work as an artist, but I don't agree with his ideological views. TenNapel might have Right-Wing tendencies, but Earthworm Jim and Ratfist are neutral players in any debate. I'm what a lot of American guys I've met would have called a "Bleeding Heart Liberal" or even a "Communist" (I'm Canadian, so yeah. Social Democracy's in my blood).
Guess what? I'm still friends with these Americans. I still read those comics and play those games, because I enjoy them. The only personal limit I've stuck myself with involves the works of Orson Scott Card, but you'll never see me condemning anyone for liking his books - works of fiction that are harmless in and of themselves, and that primarily exist as elements of entertainment. I hate the subtext in OSC's work and I personally can't get past it, but I'm sure better readers than myself can.
As a mature human being, I have to make it my responsibility to accept the fact that we won't all have the same opinions on the same subjects. Demonizing staff members for their held positions is fairly useless and a huge waste of time, especially if they otherwise tend to create content you're entertained or informed by. Trying to corral people into neat little "Pro-SJW" or "Anti-SJW" boxes is utterly and completely useless. Not only that, it runs the risk of being offensive if a few of your attempts at graph-building or chart assembly are ill-informed.
The medium has its problems. The state of gender equality still includes problems, especially in terms of team ratios in the gaming business. Gaming journalism has problems. We just have to fix these things without trying to accuse or victimize anyone.
I never got why so many people are so offended by Moviebob...
He's not a radical by any means, and doesn't even seem to talk about any real controversial issues.
Seriously, he's less offensive than Jontron's random ramblings, and people make him out to be the reviewer's equivalent of Amazing Atheist who really doesn't give a fuck.
He's not a radical by any means, and doesn't even seem to talk about any real controversial issues.
Seriously, he's less offensive than Jontron's random ramblings, and people make him out to be the reviewer's equivalent of Amazing Atheist who really doesn't give a fuck.
You must be only seeing him threw his Escapist videos, because he basically said things on Twitter that is... we let's just say, better men then him have been fired for less, and he did so by attacking his own audience. He doesn't bring that to the Escapist (usually) because to be quite frank the moment he did so he'd be fired and blacklisted, which ironically he already would have been in any other industry related to video games.keniakittykat said:
Because they allowed discussion of this #gamergate bullshit. Everybody who wanted to talk about how feminists and "SJWs" are the friggin illuminati and out to destroy gaming flocked here because it is one of the only places that allows people to talk about this, and the other sights banned discussion with good reason as I'm sure you've noticed. They gave The Horde an inch and they took the entire goddamn forums.Ylla said:
The whole situation reminds me of this [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XXsMaq0NU8c].
You say all that as if it's a bad thing, when really it's just the result of the horrid state of the industry when this all started. Hell, I wonder what would have happened if the Escapist too had censored everyone who mentioned the issue. Would they to have lost a very significant ammount of traffic? I mean hell, even with them allowing us to talk about it the advertisers still called the home corporation up because they where angry with other parts of this issue.firebobm173 said:
Uhhhhundeadsuitor said:
Where's anyone distrusting female gamers? The only time anyone's sex has mattered is either a) when the blind idiots who demand a lack of ethics and accountability try to use it as a shield, or b) when the rash idiots who are overly sick of feminism tell the feminists to shut the fuck up already. I haven't seen anyone in #GamerGate ever actually be misogynistic (though admittedly, I'm refraining from calling "gets mad at 'feminazis' and 'SJWs'" misogyny).
If you have links, please share them.
During the worst of his Twitter-outburst in wake of the #GamerGate/Quinnspiracy/whatever mess, Bob exposed himself as every bit as unsavory the very worst people he rails against. A real low point was his retweeting of a tweet from Devin Faraci (whom he basically idolizes) where the latter made fun of a Youtuber named boogie2988 for absolutely no reason, only for the both of them (Bob and Faraci) to tiptoe around or outright deny the fact that they attacked him.
Could somebody give me some links to these attacks? I know that they apparently got into a fight but all I've seen was Bob saying that he liked Boogie but was disappointed in him.Uriel_Hayabusa said: