I normally don't bother with posts that are older than a week or so, but I meant to reply here and it slipped through the cracks, so I'm doing it anyway.
Ishal said:
I suppose that makes sense, CoD has made more money than the biggest blockbuster in Hollywood or something like that right? Makes sense that the demographic would be bigger with so many people buying it. But there is something to be said about the community and it influencing people. Watching the rage at the CoD tournament in Europe was somewhat eye opening to me.
It really is that big, though I don't remember the specifics. I haven't seen this CoD tournie you reference, but I'm not actually surprised.
Of course, it still could go both ways. Maybe CoD players tend to be assholes, or maybe we only notice the loud ones and there are just more loud ones because of the size of the audience. I mean, I've come across very few positive players in Call of Duty, but is that just my experience? Is it common? It seems common, but is THAT just my experience? I mean, this site hates XBox Live and CoD players anyway, so there's a certain bias there.
Those are the common ways of dealing with that stuff though. People have lots of shit going on in their lives, and are rather selfish as we've seen in the gaming "political" threads around here. The jimquisition ones, the articles about gamer culture and moviebob's occasional big picture topic. The term I see thrown around with "white knight" is "social justice warrior" or something similar. That appeals more to gender issues, but the implication when its used seems to seek to degrade the person holding views that something must be done. Perhaps implying that they take extra time to dwell on issues that they themselves consider meaningless or fruitless. "
ex: "Why get all bent out of shape because of Hepler? It's just the internet.." then they go back to what they were doing.
I don't have the slightest idea of what to do other than report them or ignore them. Engaging them only ends up "feeding the trolls" as it were. At least thats what I've found.
Selfish is a pretty good words. "This doesn't affect me, so you're stupid for bringing it up." What's more, there's a lot of antipathy towards things that really don't concern people. I mean, if you (general you) don't like gender topics, ignore them. I don't get why there's negativity around CoD Ghosts adding female avatars unless the concern is cooties or something. I mean, how does the option affect anyone who doesn't want to use it?
This is, of course, just one example, but you mentioned gender and we're already on CoD, so it came naturally. Another example is the antipathy towards Gaymer cons. Which, by the way, are open to anyone, so the first argument of "why do they get to have gay-only cons but we can't have straight-only ones" right out of the window. I mean, yeah, you're probably not going to be welcome if you keep calling people "******," but that's not discrimination against your sexuality.
My absolute favrourite was the frequently repeated line that seemed to completely lack self-awareness:
"I wouldn't feel comfortable being the minority/being the only straight/being singled out for my sexuality."
Yeah, now apply that back to the LGBT crowd.
Like, I don't know a good example because I tend to care about these issues, so it's hard to counter-example. But yeah.
I tend to engage or not engage people on a case-by-case basis, though. Some people seem more reasonable than others. It sometimes happens that they just haven't thought much on it. Others seem to be hostile or trolls, and I tend to mark them, put them on ignore, or just move along. There's not much of a way to "win" that fight.
And maybe, when it comes to the online community, maybe marking the racist little five year old in CoD is good enough. I just don't know. I try not to police the interwebs.
On the flip-side, sometimes even just arguing can make these issues more public, force them to be dealth with.
On the "White Knighting" thing, it always amazes me. I mean, I theoretically abhor the practice of sticking up for women just because they're girls and they need it, or with the cynical hope of getting some, but I don't see that being what "White Knighting" is commonly used to describe. It seems to be anyone who is positive towards women in games, or not threatening to rape women because you dislike them, or whatever.
I mean, someone once said (and it's oft-quoted) that feminism is the radical notion that women are people too. And it seems like that's what a good chunk of the "White Knight" claims are: people who get offended at this notion that women are people and should be included as such.
I get called Politically Correct a lot, too. Because people don't understand what that word means. I can be offensive. I don't go out of my way not to offend people, I don't really dictate language, etc. It's just, you know, I demonstrate some level of empathy. And that seems to be what sets people off in the first place. The audacity to give a damn about someone who might not be just like me.
Oi.
Times were different then weren't they? I remember stuff like that too, but in arcades at kid friendly places like fairs or amusement parks. I'm not a nineties kid, or at least I don't think I am. I was born in 89 so I wasn't a teen til the 2000's. But my parents never let me have a gaming system til I was about 11-13 I think. My first console was an N64, and I wasn't allowed any mature games until years later. Goldeneye, Turok, Perfect Dark, and all the other the other ones were forbidden. While violence in cartoons has dropped off (MLP, Gravity Falls, etc) it seems to be increasing elsewhere and approaching the age of younger and younger children. It is interesting.
I was playing mature titles back on the SNES, though I don't remember if they were labeled mature at the time. Doom and Mortal Kombat were certainly some of the earliest controversial titles, and I played them when they were new. I mean, I know there were risque titles before, but they didn't seem to hit the media. My parents would have never let me get away with the crap a lot of kids are doing, but it was the 90s, so they only had to work 90 hours between them to stay above the poverty line. I don't entirely blame the parents, because we extoll the virtues of family, but pretty much require a 60 hour work week to stay above water. And I'm sure kids are going to get around it, anyway. I guess what I'm saying is they should get off my lawn. *shakes cane*
The other side of the coin on kids' entertainment, though, is that there also seems to be less educational material on TV. I grew up on Mr Rogers, Sesame Street, Reading Rainbow, Mr Wizard, etc. Also, one of my teachers in high school loved Bill Nye, so I watched a bit of him when I was older. These days, the first three on my list are actively decried by Fox News as bad. I don't even know if Reading Rainbow is around, but they took shots at it. And at Mr Rogers shortly after he died. And they actively hate the Muppets and Sesame Street because sharing and caring went from being standard to being a socialist plot! Viewership is evidently down because parents don't want to indoctrinate their kids or something.
Mr Wizard sparked my interest in science and technology, so I'm a little biased here, but it's a damn shame that's the sort of thing that's getting less frequent. But at the same time, I don't really mind violent cartoons. I don't think violent media operates in a vacuum or changes people. If a reputed scientific or medical journal publishes a study with a causal link, I'll pay attention, though.
Although I'm okay with shows like MLP. I'm not a fan, but it seems to be a well-crafted show that kids enjoy and preaches virtues of love and friendship. Although Pinky Pie scares me a little. Like, if she was real, she'd be the reason I locked my doors.
I was going somewhere with this. I forget.
Anyway, I guess one of our challenges is to ask how we do deal with kids being so plugged in. It's not changing. They're here and they're here to stay. I dislike all that "we need to stop the kids from...." Well, that would be great (maybe, I don't know), but it's like asking your dog to use a condom every time it gets it on. It's unrealistic and frustrating for everyone involved.
But then, as I already indicated, adults can also be a problem. So maybe it's just "how do we deal with people in an age of social media and constant connectivity?"