Hbomberguy's Donkey Kong 64 charity stream.
- Thread starter Godzillarich(aka tf2godz)
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rough times indeed...I sill remember the Gamergate threadsDrathnoxis said:
The bans, The butthurt, So many good users gone...
Man, that hardly even counts as rough times anymore. How about when we had to abandon Gaming Discussion for like 6 months because the spambots completely overwhelmed the mods and took it over? 20+ pages of threads, all spam. Or when feature after feature of the site just started breaking down. No view counters on threads, quote notifications would reset to 'off' every Sunday, and the 'last active' part of the profile page becoming stuck in September 2017.tf2godz said:
At least during Gamergate people were active and not spambots trying to sell us fake IDs and black magic love potions.
For those confused about Mermaids and what they do.
Mermaids is a small charity which provides support groups and advice for gender variant (trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming) children and their parents. It also campaigns to promote awareness of gender-variance and gender dysphoria in children.
Gender variance in children is incredibly misunderstood. Even well-meaning parents can be tempted to resort to things like conversion therapy (which still happens even in the UK) and many medical professionals are unclear or ignorant on what best-practice actually is in treating gender-variant kids, leading to a poor standard of care. Being gender-variant as a child or young person can also be extremely socially isolating and often leads to bullying and violence. Many young people in this position attempt suicide.
The charity was due to recieve ?500,000 in lottery funding, and the plan was that most of this money would go into organising local support groups so that young people and their parents can meet in person. This is a great way of combating loneliness and helping children in this position to build their own peer support networks, which in turn helps build psychological resilience. It absolutely wasn't anything sinister and had nothing to do with the medical side of transitioning (which Mermaids isn't involved with).
The ironic thing about Linehan's campaign is how obviously it is based in the same fears about trans children that Mermaids supports parents in actually dealing with. Even if they're not transphobic, most parents generally don't want their children to be trans/gender non-conforming/gay/bisexual because they want their children to have an easy and "normal" life. The idea that most or all gender variant children will "correct" themselves if they are discouraged is tempting, because it offers a promise that such children can be "fixed". However, no study has ever actually measured the long term outcomes for individual gender variant children. Anyone claiming knowledge or citing statistics on this issue is making shit up.
Back on topic, it's incredible that this livestream took off to such a massive degree. For me though, the best part of it was seeing Mermaids CEO Susie Green appear on the BBC and basically be given a platform to explain the charity and what they do without it being structured as a "debate" over whether trans kids exist, which I never would have imagined could happen in the current British media environment. I don't think this is the "turning point" or anything, but it is a big deal.
Mermaids is a small charity which provides support groups and advice for gender variant (trans, non-binary and gender non-conforming) children and their parents. It also campaigns to promote awareness of gender-variance and gender dysphoria in children.
Gender variance in children is incredibly misunderstood. Even well-meaning parents can be tempted to resort to things like conversion therapy (which still happens even in the UK) and many medical professionals are unclear or ignorant on what best-practice actually is in treating gender-variant kids, leading to a poor standard of care. Being gender-variant as a child or young person can also be extremely socially isolating and often leads to bullying and violence. Many young people in this position attempt suicide.
The charity was due to recieve ?500,000 in lottery funding, and the plan was that most of this money would go into organising local support groups so that young people and their parents can meet in person. This is a great way of combating loneliness and helping children in this position to build their own peer support networks, which in turn helps build psychological resilience. It absolutely wasn't anything sinister and had nothing to do with the medical side of transitioning (which Mermaids isn't involved with).
The ironic thing about Linehan's campaign is how obviously it is based in the same fears about trans children that Mermaids supports parents in actually dealing with. Even if they're not transphobic, most parents generally don't want their children to be trans/gender non-conforming/gay/bisexual because they want their children to have an easy and "normal" life. The idea that most or all gender variant children will "correct" themselves if they are discouraged is tempting, because it offers a promise that such children can be "fixed". However, no study has ever actually measured the long term outcomes for individual gender variant children. Anyone claiming knowledge or citing statistics on this issue is making shit up.
Back on topic, it's incredible that this livestream took off to such a massive degree. For me though, the best part of it was seeing Mermaids CEO Susie Green appear on the BBC and basically be given a platform to explain the charity and what they do without it being structured as a "debate" over whether trans kids exist, which I never would have imagined could happen in the current British media environment. I don't think this is the "turning point" or anything, but it is a big deal.
Drathnoxis said:
Drathnoxis said:
I left sometime during or after the tail end of GG, right when the spambot invasions were happening. Saw some talk on Twitter (on a thread about this charity livestream, coincidentally) that things have improved, so I came back.tf2godz said:
It's definitely feeling like a refugee homecoming.
Still trying to process the death of the usergroups, honestly. Sure, they were kind of a mistake in retrospect, but still. At least R&P is looking less toxic, and Game Industry Discussion was put out of its misery at some point.
EDIT: Speaking of breakages, have everyone else's avatars disappeared? Or is that just on my end?
It's giving me a lot of hope, honestly. Like, maybe the recent transphobic stuff in politics and the media really is loud out of desperation rather than size, and maybe T people won't have to relitigate literally everything L and G have already accomplished.evilthecat said:
Pitts axed GID when he came back, as well as Biowarriors and the WW (best subforum ;__NeutralDrow said:
You probably need to make sure you have disable avatars set to 'no' in forum options and then you might need to clear your browser's cache too.
The last message in Anime Fans was lamenting Wild West being gone...never really used it, myself, but I feel its loss. I actually don't remember what Biowarriors was, though.Drathnoxis said:Pitts axed GID when he came back, as well as Biowarriors and the WW (best subforum ;__NeutralDrow said:
Yay, that worked, thank you!
That was another option I didn't realize this forum had. Weird, when I logged in for the first time, I must have still had the avatar images cached, or something. They were there at first, and disappeared suddenly.
When the Bioware forums shut down the Escapist thought it could scoop up some of that traffic by making them their very own special subforum. It didn't work. I think there was a total of 7 posts in it.NeutralDrow said:
I mean, I think it's definitely loud out of desperation, and it's interesting to see Harry/Hbomb echo a lot of my thoughts in commentary.NeutralDrow said:
Because this whole thing is exactly what happened to gay and lesbian people a couple of decades ago. In the late-80s there was a moral panic that "predatory homosexuals" were "indoctrinating" kids into being gay. Of course, nowadays, if you talk like that about gay people you sound like a crazy person, but at the time it worked. It got a lot of otherwise pretty decent people frightened and confused enough to believe that gay people were after their kids.
Fortunately, we've moved on, but the shitty core of homophobic conservatives who think like that never went away, they've just shifted to talking about trans people as a dog whistle to talk about LGBT people generally, because ultimately they hate everything remotely outside the norm, and because for some reason you can still say that trans people are going to indoctrinate your kids or trans people are going to attack you when you're on the toilet and not sound like a dribbling loon.
It also helps that transphobia is a convenient wedge issue, because a lot of well meaning people (even people who are normally pretty progressive) have been suckered into believing that trans people are a threat to women, or that trans people are going to get rid of all the gays by forcing them to be trans, or that trans people are somehow trivializing the concept of minority rights by talking about identity like it actually matters, and by pitting these groups against each other conservatives feel they can win.
But they can't, and ultimately the same thing is going to happen. The people who were taken in will eventually have to live in a world where trans people exist and are visible and aren't just scary bathroom monsters, and in the course of doing that they'll figure it out. In fact, I think they'll figure it out a lot quicker this time because frankly, we don't have the same degree of media gatekeeping. What the unexpected success of this stream shows, I think, is that many, many people were already there, and were just waiting for an excuse to speak back to how awful the climate has gotten.
For those like myself who missed it (I was in airplanes and stuff), HBomberguy uploaded a part of it on his youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_mvYUaZYtJk It's the part where Alexandria Occasio-Cortez (the leftwing democratic US congresswoman) shows up.
Somebody, I forget who, bought it from Defy and has done some work (or payed others, including Kross, I believe, to do work) to get the place basically functional again. But anyway, that is probably why your quote notifications are turned off.
For some period of time this website has had no staff at all. Kross had been fired. It was owned by Defy Media at the time who were content to host Zero Punctuation and to otherwise ignore the escapist alltogether. During that time stuff started breaking and certain options started getting turned on and off without people wanting that. For a while quote notifications became turned off multiple times a week for those who cared to turn it back on all the time.NeutralDrow said:
Somebody, I forget who, bought it from Defy and has done some work (or payed others, including Kross, I believe, to do work) to get the place basically functional again. But anyway, that is probably why your quote notifications are turned off.
That's really a shame. I like those shows.Chimpzy said:
Not generally, no.trunkage said:
That is...the same sort of logic that could be used the argue fandoms are inherently inclusive, which is just plain bullshit. Though to be fair, it's about what I expect from HBomberguy. I've only watched a couple videos on the subject and I'm aware it's not immune to issues of inclusivity.NeutralDrow said:
Makes sense. Looks like they're randomly turning off for me, still, but I don't mind turning the avatars back on, I suppose.Pseudonym said:
Sorry, "inclusive" was probably the wrong word (he wasn't commenting on tolerance or even necessarily lack of gatekeeping, that I can tell; he's a bizarre optimist, but I don't think he's that naive). "Communal" is closer to what he actually said.Something Amyss said:
I mean, the same criticism still sort of applies. There's an incredible sense of community in the gaming community as a whole until you'r a girl or gay or black ro trans or Muslim. There's the same kind of harassment within the speedrunning community to my understanding, the same "missing stair" issue from other nerd culture, etc.NeutralDrow said:
Watching histories of speedrun records, I've even seen the runners talk about people who hide their strats and keep things secret to the point they're accused of cheating, etc. I mean, I'm not part of this community as I don't have the patience to practice a single game that much, and it's always possible the videos I've watched and threads I've read were all forgeries, but...this still strikes me as an asinine thing to say.
There's always always always a sense of community in these cultures until you're excluded or attacked for some reason.
I should probably cut Htothebomb some slack, because running a speedrun for a trans youth charity is clearly a good thing and his heart is in the right place, but as someone who's tripped over a lot of missing stairs (including within his little circle of friends on YouTube), I'm tired of people in the majority talking about community. They usually have no cle what other people have gone through and so they're not being malicious, but they are often perpetuating the problem by papering over the cracks in their "communities".
So, while I'm with you in terms of not tolerating the missing stairs, I do have to raise my eyebrow a bit at the idea that an openly bi person is part of "the majority".Something Amyss said:
I get it, the B is silent, and for most LGT people being invisible probably sounds great. But we've all been invisible. We did it when we were closeted and it sucked.. so we stopped by coming out. Being closeted is not privilege.
If you want to call out a bi person, make it about something they've actually said or done (it's really not like there's no material here in that regard). Subtly aligning them with the "majority" isn't entirely cool, and it's reminiscent of the kind of "not really queer" language which, for a lot of bi people, is part of the exclusion they face.
No community is perfect. That shouldn't be an excuse for giving up on the idea of community, because in practice that means a kind of free for all where being an ass to each other becomes normal instead of a thing to call out. The imperfection of communities should be an incentive to do better. The irony of the past few years is that while Vivian James' Special Boys Club were claiming to represent Gamers, it was obvious on the ground that the actual gaming community was way more diverse and interesting than they thought it was. The solution to gate-keeping isn't to give up on community, but to break the monopoly gatekeepers think they have on that community.