Jimquisition: Fake Nerd Girls

[Orekoya]

I believe that fake nerd girls exist only in the context of games advertisment and games marketing in general. I don't think I have ever met an ordinary female gamer in real life, not even a faker I would say.

Meh, even that rings hollow, I mean if they truly did not care about video games why would they be doing this as a job. I don't see how putting up with mealy-mouthed jack-offs that constantly treat them with open belligerence could be born from anything other than a labor of love.

I'm sure there are female gamers, but not as many as they want us to believe. And from the few cases of female gamers I have known and talked to via the internet, they are nowhere near the male gamer standard, in terms of skills, devotion, knowledge and taste about games.

What sort of horrible conspiracy theory is this? 'they want us to believe.' This just sounds so contrived. What possible advantage is there behind this thought process? I mean what is the motive behind them wanting us to believe they are game nerds because I gotta say speaking from personal experience with this style of treatment, I don't see the benefit of choosing to be ostracized and berated when the alternatives seem so much easier.

Also what are the standards? What even sets these standards? Because I have never been asked to meet them to prove I was one in all my years of being a male nerd and nobody has ever had any problem accepting my submission of being one.

I believe that we have a communication problem, and I'm mostly responsible for this since English is not my first language.

Forget about "they want us to believe", I didn't mean that there is a conspiracy, I was speaking with terms of a general impression that is around, according to which female gamers is supposedly a noticeable group. I simply can't see that. Female gamers are like 3% of the total gamers' number. And don't ask me if I have proof for what I say, they might be 7%, or 11%, is it okay? The point is that based on my experience and perception, I think they are few in number.

Now to the question why one would want to masquerade as a gamer and go through all this, I'm covered by the explanation that Jim Sterling gives, that they seek attention of the male audience. This attention basically means two things: Firstly they enjoy the narcissistic feeling that boys are fantasizing about them, and secondly opportunities for promotion, either it's just views on Youtube, or careers in games industry. Also fake gamers don't "go through" anything. It's all for the show. They don't really play that much, neither they love video games, that's why Jim calls them fake gamers.

About the "standards", I didn't mean that there are any standards set by some global gaming organization. Male gamers' standards as I understand them is that boys-gamers usually play a lot and with passion, and they develop skills in certain games that they love. A few male gamers even become exceptional in what they are doing, with extraordinary records. Girls don't show that devotion. For example, I haven't ever watched a speedrun video on YouTube posted by a female gamer. And speedruns are in my opinion the biggest proof of someone's proficiency in a game. I haven't even read a walkthough guide submitted by a female gamer. Is it just coincidense? Why do you think this is happening, if not because of the different approach in video games between the two genders? I made the mistake to name it "standards", you call it as you think.

I would think it and this entire topic as peevish quarreling. I have never made any effort nor have been requested to show that level of devotion. It is also not expected of me to do so in order to be called a male nerd. To hint or request a female nerd to meet such requirements that wouldn't be requested of a male counterpart just to prove equally worthy of being called a nerd is folly. Furthermore obsession does not require any level of proficiency or active engagement such as writing walkthroughs or doing speedruns. I obsess over heavily violin music and manga style artwork: this doesn't require me to know how to play a violin or be able to draw.

I would say it is exactly coincidence. Let's say if you want that there is such a low number of female gamer nerds (there aren't, overall it's a 6:4 ratio) and walkthrough guides being the finite subsistence that they are (there is a finite number of games of which no more than a handful of guides are made for each game at most) then the likelihood of finding such a guide would be low (because I'm willing to bet nobody out there has read every guide ever written much less tracked of the personal stats of everyone who wrote them). Most online guides are published under a moniker, which is to say not much of anything about the person who wrote it is known, and published walkthroughs likely come from publishers that still operate under a boy's club mentality. The only female employee writing guides for Prima Games is Catherine Browne, whose work has incidentally been greeted with hostility from readers. From what I've seen, a lot of the complaints are that they don't like her writing style. I don't buy/read Prima guides; however, so I cannot say how much of it is warranted. Regardless, she isn't welcomed by fans and publishers could be picking up on that as well.

If one notable female gamer that writes walkthroughs for the love of it is something needed in order to accept that female nerds can be just as obsessive then I would supply Andrea Castillo [http://www.gamefaqs.com/users/IceQueenZer0] as an example, who's written over 200 FAQs for a wide variety of systems from the Atari up to the Wii U.

 

[Orekoya]

Most online guides are published under a moniker, which is to say not much of anything about the person who wrote it is known, and published walkthroughs likely come from publishers that still operate under a boy's club mentality.

An what evidence do you have that book publishers operate under a boys club mentality exactly? Orekoya you've just tried an appeal to motive on an entire industry, one that can be & has been proven demonstrably false. The fact is that there is not this huge set of women just chomping at the bit to produce game walk throughs, being kept out by the big bad menz... It just doesn't happen.

The fact is that the trend for game walkthroughs these days is publishing externally to a publishing company, via a service like lulu. An yet women are still in the extreme minority when it comes to writing walk throughs.

I don't agree with Rheinmetall's point, but your rebuttal wasn't just wrong, it was slandering an entire industry on the basis of your personal ignorance.

You're great at quote-sniping! Also, appealing for my evidence, claiming I have none, then following it with "has been proven demonstrably false" with no evidence in a single paragraph: classy. I will gladly call you on it. Demonstrate it.

 

[Orekoya]

You're great at quote-sniping!

I think you may be confusing being concise for quote sniping. If i replaced your quote with the word "Snip" or "snipped" or "snipe" then yes i'm quote-sniping. However removing anything not relevent to the concept i'm refuting is not quote sniping, its just removing irrelevency, so people don't get confused over which point is being addressed.

Quote-sniping is the practice of responding to a single sentence within a larger post, or responding to a post sentence by sentence. There isn't anything inherently wrong with this practice, at most it's frowned upon because it does make conversations on forums slightly harder to follow. However concise you think you were, that was still quote-sniping. Quote-mining is the deceitful tactic of taking quotes out of context in order to make them seemingly agree with the quote miner's viewpoint or to make them contradict themselves. There is a difference and I think you might be confusing the two definitions or what I was saying. Because of that I'll explain plainly what I was implying with that sarcasm: that you seem to have responded to just one sentence of a longer post from a longer conversation as if you could prove my entire rebuttal of this being peevish quarreling spanning several posts was wrong by refuting that single sentence, one that was part of imagined scenarios for his coincidence issue claim that had nothing to do with my rebuttal. You then used that to claimed that my entire rebuttal was not only wrong but ignorant. I suppose I could've just as easily accused you more sincerely of quote-mining since you took it out of context too.

Also, appealing for my evidence, claiming I have none, then following it with "has been proven demonstrably false" with no evidence in a single paragraph: classy. I will gladly call you on it. Demonstrate it.

Which part would you like me to demonstrate? The existance of lulu, women complaining about the lack of female writers working for a publishing house 10 years ago, the existance of game walk throughs not produced through one of the regular publishing houses, or just the fact that your statement is wrong?

If you are referring to the statement "Orekoya you've just tried an appeal to motive on an entire industry, one that can be & has been proven demonstrably false," i'd say this to you: As i've not made a positive assertion, i am required to supply you with no evidence. The burden of proof is always on the side of the person making a positive assertion & also on the side of someone making an existance claim: ANY existance claim. You've made a postivie assertion ABOUT an existance claim: At this point i can't offer you a refutation until you provide me with evidence for your existance claim.

Until you provide evidence i can't actively refute your data... In fact at the moment, we've reached that point in the conversation where until you make your case to back up your statement we can't go any further... I cant refute your points, because you've yet to make them. Once you make them, they can be objectively, demonstrably refuted, as has happened with everyone else who has ever made this kind of claim before you.

So please supply your evidence for your statement of: "and published walkthroughs likely come from publishers that still operate under a boy's club mentality."

This is rudimentary foundational logic... I really wish they taught this in schools, i'd make life so much easier.

First off if you re-read the entire paragraph my "claim" is part off, it's noticeably all part of supposition guesswork for his coincidence issue with qualifiers that insinuate with no actual claim. This is something I think your conciseness is overlooking. Oh you can fault me all you want for the insinuation, and I can accept that. It may have been a poorly frame guess on his coincidence claim, but I did not say "I know for a fact that the game publishing industry operates this way" therefore there wasn't really a claim on my part. In the sentence you quote is one of the many qualifiers I hedged that entire scenario guessing paragraph with: likely. You can choose to interpret that however you like but that is not a claim. You're the one who ramped up the response with a 'No it doesn't and I can prove it.' which most definitely is a claim. Note that even in my response (or original post for that matter) I did not claim what you quoted to be fact or having evidence either, I simply pointed out how crass the structure of your response was.

Secondly, since you wish to bring up what is or is not a claim: "one that can be & has been proven demonstrably false" IS a positive assertion AND an existence claim. You're asserting you can prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that entire industry is completely past the boy's club mentality AND claiming that it has been proven before. I mean whether or not I have any data is irrelevant if it's already been proven, which is what you've claimed. That is definitely a positive assertion which does carry burden of proof as you pointed out. Trying to assuage and avoid your burden of proof by pretending I didn't already state in the previous post what I requested to be demonstrated, the "has been proven demonstrably false" part, was cute but I find it abject.

You've made a positive assertion about an existence claim: At this point I can't offer you a refutation until you provide me with evidence for your existence claim. So please supply your evidence for your statement.

 

[Orekoya]

First off if you re-read the entire paragraph my "claim" is part off, it's noticeably all part of supposition guesswork for his coincidence issue with qualifiers that insinuate with no actual claim.

Gibberish to english translation: You made a claim, it was bullshit, you got called on your claim & now are trying to find a way in which you didn't write the thing you clearly wrote. I'm not buying it mate: If you want to come right out & say you were talking shit, then do it. But please don't try to maintain some sort of faux moral high ground... You lost that the second you made an industry wide appeal to motive. An please don't pretend you were talking in hypotheticals, because you were not.

See what you said was

likely come from publishers that STILL operate under a boy's club mentality."

Note the use of the word "STILL." Now had you said

likely come from publishers that operate under a boy's club mentality."

Without the still, you might have been able to pull off the "its a hypothetical" statement. However with the word "STILL" in there, you've moved into making a positive assertion about an industry & that assertion is that the industry was a boys club & unless somethings changed, is still a boys club.

So enough with the red herring statements, either renounce the claim & admit that you were making a sexist apeal to motive, or back up your claim.

Wait, your issue is with the word 'still'? So, what? Does your claim now encompass that the publishing industry has never engaged in any sort of practices in place that resembles boy's club mentality ever too? Maybe next post you would likely to further dissect this post, reply to a single sentence and take issue with the 'operate' from that sentence taken out of context. Here's a suggestion for your next belligerent post: maybe you could distort that sentence to imply I was claiming that it works well under that mentality since operate can mean 'to act effectively'.

But boy you sure are continuing to expand your claim while talking about that faux claim within the hypothetical scenario paragraph of my first post. If you want to misconstrued what I wrote this time as an assertion that 'there was a time that women weren't treated fairly in those workplaces', which again if that's how interpret it now and you said that my 'assertion' has been proven demonstrably false then that means you have data to prove it never happened, then I would probably start off supporting such a claim by pointing out that first video-gaming centric publication started in 1974 and that things have changed since 1974. In 1986 Meritor Savings Bank v. Vinson, United States Supreme Court recognizes sexual harassment of women as a violation of Civil Rights Act of 1964 Title VII. In 1992, women were then paid 71 cents for every dollar paid to men with the range from 64 cents for working-class women to 77 cents for professional women with doctorates. Gaming publication does not exist in some intangible glass bubble, it is part of this world too. But really all of that is irrelevant; because I didn't really claim anything, you've just been twisting my words and taking them out of context: I'm sure you'll take one of the little blurbs from this paragraph to respond to that and only that, treating it as my submission of proof for you to tear down and feel better about yourself while you continue to ignore your burden of proof.

In summary: You made a claim, got called on your claim, denied your claim's existence by pretending if the claim is about something being false then it isn't a claim and have been trying to drag me into making a claim with how well you twist my words as if that somehow alleviates you from proving your claim.

So enough with the red herring statements: either renounce the claim and admit that you have no evidence, or back up your claim and produce the data that this has already been proven demonstrably false.

 

[Sindaine]

For me personally this distrust comes from years and years of brutal bullying. Bullies often fake an intesrest in their victims' hobbies and interests, pretending to befriend them only to use what they've learned against them later. As a result I'm loathe to open up to anyone about things I like and now inherently wonder WHY they want to know these things about me--are they going to try and use it to hurt me later?

So while in many cases this may be rooted in sexism, I'd wager that in not a few cases it's rooted in fear.

And for what it's worth, I'm a chick.

 

[Orekoya]

So again i ask: either renounce the claim & admit that you were making a sexist apeal to motive, or back up your claim.

I'm not going to continue debating my hypothetical non-claim statement. Enough with your red herring posts: either renounce the claim and admit that you have no evidence, or back up your claim and produce the data that this has already been proven demonstrably false.

 

[Orekoya]

Orekoya you've just tried an appeal to motive on an entire industry, one that can be & has been proven demonstrably false.

Orekoya, thats not how this works mate. I can't refute the evidence you haven't provided

So what you're saying is that your claim of has been proven demonstrably false requires evidence from the present provided before a previous demonstration of falsehood can exist? The foundations of logic sure are hard for you, I wish you'd have learned it. Possibly I'm being too harsh. For all your nitpicking on the meaning of my words, maybe you just don't know what 'been' means. It's a past particle of be: as in you're claiming that a demonstration of falsehood already exists.

Enough with your red herring posts: either renounce the claim and admit that you have no evidence that this has been proven demonstrably false, or back up your claim and produce the data that this has been proven demonstrably false.

 

[Orekoya]

Thats because other people making this claim have had there claim demonstrably proven false by first supplying evidence & then having the evidence refuted.

Okay, so you do know what been means. Why are you still refusing to supply that data where it was previously refuted? Display that.

This is why positive assertions require evidence of existance, before a refutation can be made. Its kind of like you demanding that a scientist saying "there is no evidence for big foot" & you say "we'll i have evidence for big foot, but you need to refute my evidence without ever seeing it."

How are you not wrapping your brain around this? This has been proven demonstrably false IS a positive assertion! You are asserting that this has been tested and proven false, and that there is evidence of that occurrence. I am and have been asking for that evidence.

By your flawed logic if you are found not guilty of being a rapist then the evidence of you being tried as a rapist ceases to exist until you've been tried for the same crime again.

Here, let me demonstrate how a claim of 'has been proven demonstrably false' works:
The Earth being flat has been proven demonstrably false.
Here is the evidence:
In 276 BC, Eratosthenes proved it demonstrably false with his calculation of the circumference of the Earth which meant he had evidence that the Earth wasn't flat. More recently it was demonstrated false when we went into space and took pictures of our spherical planet.

Do you notice how I do not require anyone to provide evidence for the Earth being flat to supply any evidence of how it has been proven demonstrably false? I didn't even have to flail about with a bunch of the weak excuses for my evidence's existence until someone provided the evidence for the Earth being flat for me to refute that data as if that's proof of previous demonstrations. You know, like what you've been doing this entire conversation.

Most online guides are published under a moniker, which is to say not much of anything about the person who wrote it is known, and published walkthroughs likely come from publishers that still operate under a boy's club mentality.

Now my claim to you was that this statement is demonstrably wrong & has been proven demonstrably wrong. What this means is that other people who have made this claim have been shown to not have a case.

You're even acknowledging that what you meant it has happened before and yet you still refuse to supply any of the data from those previous events? A link, some quote, an article, anything! To go to such lengths to avoid providing any data has required more time and effort on your part just copy-pasting anything, that I can only assume you have nothing to go on.

You have made a claim: This has been proven demonstrably false. Every one of your posts have been an attempt to shift your burden of proof away from yourself. Much of it is as if you think that if I would provide data for you to refute now that it is somehow proof of when it was refuted before. Before you tried to go over the fallacies I supposedly use for a claim I didn't actually make, a claim I do not and have not supported. I even offered a correction and retraction of the statement if you misinterpreted it, that it might've been a poorly framed as an insinuation when I was speaking about hypotheticals for someone's coincidence issue, but you wouldn't accept that. Let's cover your logical fallacies:

Proof by Verbosity - I don't know if it has, when it was or how you would prove this kind of recent social events demonstrably false; but then again, I'm not the one that made the claim.
Appeal to Motive - You keep heaping motives and meaning onto a hypothetical statement as if that was evidence thus you continue to not support your claim.
Argument from Ignorance - Since we are talking about something so recently I don't know if it has not been proven demonstrably false or if the data of those demonstrations are even available for ease of use, and it seems you don't either.
Argument from repetition - Despite your claim being challenged all you seem to post are repetitive comments about the hypothetical statement that spawned the claim that you have so far refused to back up.
Fallacy of division - You seem to think that just because you think you can prove it demonstrably false now that that's proof of how it has already been demonstrably false.
Ad hominem - Just about every one of your posts has included some form of insult regarding my intelligence or my grasp of logic. Incidentally, every one of those posts that contain said insults also contained zero evidence for your claim.

Good job.

 

[MorganL4]

Fake Nerd Girls

The latest flavor in the restaurant of controversy is the concept of the fake nerd girl -- women who pretend to like videogames and similar media, all for the express purpose of tricking honest, hard-working Americans.

Watch Video

Hey Jim, I always thought this was rather a non issue.... Outside of a few crazy guys who can't get laid and want to take that out on the opposite sex.... But over the last 2 weeks it seems to have set you and the rest of The Escapist Contributors into a bit of a tizzy.... Do you mind if I ask.... What was the catalyst for all of this? Was it something recent that I just have not heard about?

 

[DioWallachia]

Maybe this is the reason of the controversy is such a big deal?

http://thebestpageintheuniverse.net/c.cgi?u=youre_not_a_nerd

I am TRYING to understand here.