To be fair, that's a flawed example. Ganking is an intended course of action. A better example would be to say that you're walking down an alley alone and someone coming towards you bumps into you because causing you grief will make him happier. A few moments later, a second person does the exact same thing but because you have blonde hair and that person just loathes people with blonde hair and wants to make their lives miserable. Both actions cause the aggressor to feel better and the victim to feel worse. Is there really a point to saying one is more acceptable than the other? Both cause the victim to be grieved and both are only for the personal gain of the aggressor. Both are equally bad, though arguably more so aggressor #1 because his act is just evil for the sake of evil, where as aggressor #2 at least has grounds for a discussion as the grief is identifiable.DeadpanLunatic said:
OT: This article seemed promising but made me sad at the end. First and foremost, I'm not sure why questioning the credentials of someone is a bad thing. Isn't that what we're supposed to do before taking in the full breadth of a study? I mean, I could construct a study of equal worth this evening about how women are inferior gamers to men and get it published if credentials weren't a factor. I think it's a good thing that people are curious about the source of what they're about to ingest to see if it's the real deal or just another trash study done to skew the hearts and minds of people in this on going flame war.
The second, and worst, part of the article is the ending. While it doesn't completely discredit what's been said, it certainly changes the entire perspective of the article. Treating Shrine like a five year-old child is just petty and only goes to prove that the author is no better than Shrine himself. I know it's meant to be taken with a grain of salt but it's disgusting that for the entire article you praise the higher road and then stoop down to the sub-basement of mockery at the end to get that one last kidney shot in. In short, the article wraps up by mimicking the types of behaviours it spent debasing which then creates a paradox of hypocrisy.
In the end, everyone needs someone like Shrine. If people like him never existed, we'd never question our philosophies or affirm them as correct. Opposition is a driving force in our day to day lives and having a misogynist or two floating around will drive that many more women to achieve great things because someone simply said they couldn't. Creating articles like these, to me, is just another argument of "why doesn't everyone like me?" People are going to hate you just for being you but that doesn't mean it's right or wrong. If the women of the internet are confident they will be a driving force in the future without having to have these lone champions carving a path through all the men that are uncomfortable with them roaming about and making Chuck Norris jokes in The Barrens of Azeroth. I think Miss Ardent put it best when talking about women in the video games industry being prevalent when she said the best thing any women in the business can do is simply do her job to the best of her abilities and people will notice how great they are and I believe that to be true. Dramatic theatrics only serves to rile the forces within to reenact the deplorable behaviour you aim to avoid instead of simply being present and proving you're here to stay simply by playing by (most of) the same rules.
