No-one's allowed to change their mind, it's the rules of the internet. You are to be held to everything you ever said on social media for all eternity.
Gena Davis institute on Gender in media tries to link violent games to mass shootings and police violence
- Thread starter Dwarvenhobble
- Start date
People can change their mind but part of the issue is Anita has tried to present herself as a life long gamer and fan of gaming since and a complete expert on video games and depictions in them and uses that appeal to authority fallacy to try and dismiss criticism of her claims about games and present her claims as objectively right and her opponents as objectively wrong because she's an expert so clearly knows more because she claims to be an expert.
Hmmm... did she? Or did she just not say "IT IS MY OPINION"? Because not saying that doesn't transform a statement of opinion into an objective claim.
I think you can get away with it if you have a certified Gamer licence, which I suppose Sarkeesian didn't have. Maybe it was revoked after she spoke ill of Gaming.
I don't think I've ever heard her actually use the phrase "In my opinion". She generally tries to dress her things up as having factual accuracy and research backing her claims but has a tendency to be somewhat misleading on what the research says vs what she claims it supports.
About 5 years between that and
People would give her the benefit of the doubt more if she weren't so often wrong in her claims about stuff. E.G. When she claimed Dota 2 has no female characters in it that aren't traditionally attractive. A game with a giant female spider called Brood Mother in it and the ancient female hero Winter Wyvern that is a Wyvern........
At the very best Anita's "facts" can only be considered half-truths and often only then when you look at her topics from a outsider perspective without any prior knowledge or experience in the space.
At worst they are outright lies much in the same way that Young Earther's claim that mankind walked with the dinosaurs until Noah's flood.
The biggest problem is that Anita could have some valid points if she had done her research and approached these topics from a position of actually giving a shit. That will never happen because she doesnt actually care, she is a snake oil salesman and the fact that her bullshit speaks some occasional half-truths is simply by accident.
At worst they are outright lies much in the same way that Young Earther's claim that mankind walked with the dinosaurs until Noah's flood.
The biggest problem is that Anita could have some valid points if she had done her research and approached these topics from a position of actually giving a shit. That will never happen because she doesnt actually care, she is a snake oil salesman and the fact that her bullshit speaks some occasional half-truths is simply by accident.
I am once again asking you to care about something important
No, this is just trolling.
Stating/doing something controversal to grab attention and hopefully backlash to then ask for help and donations. That has been Anitas shtick for years and now that institute, fully aware how controversial she is, to do the same thing.
And of course it works and we got this thread.
Just ignore it.
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As for the study itself, it does provide a lot of interesting numbers but is in many cases imprecise when describing methods and some of the numbers seem quite fishy (it seems like far more then 100% of characters are killed if one takes the statements as true. There is obviously something off with how they count. They also make statements about details of minor characters that should generally never be accessable in the game). But there is still a lot of good information.
The discussion of the numbers at hand is atrocious, at least in one case openly contradicting the listed numbers and in many others quite far fetched.
Calling it a study of online gaming and then getting nearly all the data data from a couple of twitch streamers and not adressing the obvious sampling problems in even a single paragraph is poor form. But at least it also has the questionairies.
Another strange decision is, while acknowledging that nearly half of gamers are female, only men/boys got asked and there is a lot of focus on how online gaming is a space of men/boys interacting with other men/boys. Female friends only appear in a single question of the whole questionairy.
So while the study certainly does have some value, it is not actually good. But it is also not pure bait or provokation. Numbers are always welcome and you can use those where the methods are clear well enough.
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The point is that it's entirely unnecessary to include the disclaimer "in my opinion" when you're stating your opinion. It's still obviously a statement of opinion and not an objective claim.
Her arguments and speeches are never framed in the form of an opinion. Every video and every speech is her behaving in a manner of authority. So calling her commentary "opinions" is disingenuous.
You dont do a bunch of supposed research, then report on what you found as opinion. Drug makers dont do millions in testing and research only to present a drug like, "in our opinion this drug should cure bleeding ass lesions".
Be honest, do you really think she actually changed her mind? Do you really buy that she isn't just CLAIMING to have done so, to lend credibility to her project? I'm sorry but this is totally bad faith argumentation in my eyes.
People try to make this about people expecting some sort of act to come together with claims of a changed mind and call that expectation gatekeeping but what do you go by to accept those claims? Do you just believe everything you hear without any sort of critical analysis? Isn't that what usually gamers are being blamed for doing with regards to those games? Why is it ok to do it only when it is about the claims of feminists? Why aren't you gatekeeping when you put standards and critically analyze what game is good for gender equality or race equality? It's all just totally unevenly applied and selective. Pure inconsistency where it suits one.
If you're speaking on a subjective topic, it's completely unnecessary to state that it's your opinion, because it's literally impossible for it to be an objective statement.
That would be because the efficacy of a drug is not a subjective issue.
In the social sciences, you absolutely do get researchers doing years of research and then publishing a paper stating, "It is our view that...."
Points to the thread about Afghanistan that I actually made before the fall of Kabul
There's room for all kinds of current events and well I tend to think art is important and making sure bullshit narratives don't take hold that want to try and censor it is important. I'm sorry if you don't feel the same way.
Except Anita's work wasn't being presented as some youtubers opinion but critically thought out fairly objective academic research. At least initially. These were being presented as academic essay videos. Critical thinking isn't just some meme phrase it does have academic meaning to it and what Anita did would not match her usage of the term.
Funny considering I only mentioned her in part in the first post and the topic was about the Geena Davies institute research. Funny how people chose to focus on Anita so that's where the talk went more.
In the context of academic writing it would mean presenting an argument based on reasoning, rather than feelings and opinions, trying to look at a subject from different perspectives rather than purely your own, and so on.
I was in the middle of an English degree when I first became aware of Sarkeesian and watched her videos. My essays would have been ripped to pieces by the tutors if I tried to do what she does.
It's worth remembering as well that she stated that she wanted her videos to be used as educational tools, so really they should meet academic standards.
Even social science has standards (well most bits of social science) where you opinion on what the data shows has to be backed up by data and specific wording such as the idea of things being significant doesn't mean it proves something just more than a random chance.
Also Critical thinking and critically thought out / Critically done research has a specific meaning which Anita presents.
So to answer your question yes I know what objective means and lets not go down the obvious pit of an argument about how nothing is objective due to subjective world views and personal experiences etc etc.
What Anita didn't present her work as (which it is more) is advertising or propaganda because it's rather often deceptive in it's claims or presentation.
But... but she wants to take away our video-game tiddies! Look what she did to Tifa in the FF7 reboot; that was all her fault! If we don't stop her, women will castrate us all and force us to carry their purses!
Even if that purpose makes you miserable? Not worth it for something like this; especially for a schemer that doesn't have much impact in the long run at all. Still don't like Sarkeesian, honestly don't care, because the research is bullcrap. Stuff like this is always been bull crap and adding her name won't make much of a difference. You'll get a few of her sycophants, but that's about it. A majority of her hardcore fan base ditched her a long time ago. Sarkeesian is not a threat, but she should still be called out on all the bull crap she did.