DizzyChuggernaut said:
Zachary Amaranth said:
Which were strawmen to begin with. Which are a part of your overreaction. Which is a double standard.
You won't take a "joke" like that from others, why would you make it yourself?
I know that they ARE strawmen. Strawmen constructed by both sides of the dichotomic gamers vs journalists "controversy" that has been going on. That's why people are characterising it as "misogynists vs SJWs" or even more ludicrously, "left wing vs right wing" (and this has happened). I'm just mocking the fact that countless discussions have been ruined by one side or another stereotyping their opposition to avoid dealing with more complicated questions.
And I welcome jokes at my expense. It'd probably hurt my feelings to be called a "tranny" or whatever but most of anything else is fair game.
Strawmen are a intentional or unfair misinterpretation or mis-reconstruction of somebody else's argument in order to plant logical missteps or fallacies in them to prove that their CONCLUSION is invalid (the arguments are just a tool, the conclusion is the purpose). I don't think either side of this 'debate' have legitimately used strawmen (in an actual argumentative way). From my understanding (I have not specifically read any of the "gamer are dead" articles") the "gamers are dead" articles are EDITORIALS/opinion on how the games media journalists/and members should target their content for their audiences. They use a loaded definition for "gamer" that people disagree with (that is motive for discussing the meaning of "gamer" in this thread). Using a false or loaded definition of a word, however is not a strawman, per-se. Saying "gamer" means x, while it may be false, isn't specifically trying to discredit somebody else's argument, conclusions, or ideas. It is simply a bad premise. So we can say that the "gamers are dead" articles are based on a faulty premise, and they should be refined and corrected to rectify the issue.
Here is the thing, these articles shouldn't be considered a waste and an affront to video games writing. They are not irredeemable. They do not specifically exist to reinforce an incorrect definition of gamer. The articles, themselves are an attempt to re-define the term "gamer", but it seems that that point is completely missed in the discussion. These articles pronounce gamer as dead, not to defames anyone who associates with the label, but to throw off the (potentially false) cultural perception of the term "gamer" and to allow the term to be re-defined by the press and the community. This is the meat of the articles. This is the point of the articles. And there is something to note about their arguments. The original, or current, definition of "gamer" is an irrelevant point to these articles. One shouldn't fixate on how they currently see the term, because they are arguing against it's current use.
What is everybody arguing about now? People are arguing that the premise of these articles, is wrong. That "gamer" means what the articles are saying. I won't call the discussions against these articles strawmen. That would give them too much credit for actually understanding the conclusion of the original articles in the first place. They simply miss the point, they argue about one of the premises (which is a legitimate way to discount a piece of writing), however they completely miss the conclusion and intent of the original argument. Nobody is calling the conclusion of these articles false. The conclusion, that we want to ignore the negative perception of "gamers" and that we must continue in a fashion that allows us to disregard the negativity, is something we, in fact, all agree with. We have simply gotten caught up on how these articles have framed the term "gamer" in order to come to their conclusions. Some people may disagree on how poorly the mainstream defines "gamer", but that is besides the point. The idea that we need to rip away negativity with the term is universal amongst all members of this community.
The articles aren't perfect either. These articles would have been better written with the premise "'gamers' is dead" to reinforce the use of 'gamer' as a label, the use of "are" instead of "is" is a grammatical error (when we consider the actual intent of the phrase). Using 'are' means that you referring the a plurality using the label, and using 'is' clearly indicates a reference to the label itself. I imaging that most are talking about the label, but simply fall into a grammatical error because they follow what sounds correct while forgetting that they are using the term in an abnormal way. Some of the articles do seems to go into way more details about what gamers are than necessary too. And that just makes the article a long rambling statement without focusing enough on it's own conclusion. It is just poor writing in general, but maybe they have a word count quota (which is also a terrible thing, because writing should be about making arguments and conclusions, not about filling a piece of paper with words) to fill. Perhaps this very post has too many words and padding, but I assure you, that I don't intentionally write long posts, I'm probably just a bad writer that needs more practice in being concise (This very sentence in itself is tangential padding, but I just want to disclaim that I may be a hypocrite for decrying bad writing while writing poorly myself). These faults, do make the articles seem anti-gamer, and for that I can sympathise with people who feel attacked, but I want to also give the benefit of doubt to these writers. I don't want to discuss how the articles poorly addresses the issue on the definition of "gamer", but how they can contribute to the discourse.
'Gamers' is dead.
It may sound grammatically wrong, but it isn't. It is a declaration that we will no longer accept the negative connotations of the label "gamers".