The Big Picture: Remembering the Real Jack Thompson

DarkBlood626

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I personally hate Anita, but before anyone calls me a sexist or any other such nonsense I suggest you watchThunderf00ts video's to find out why.

here's a good example.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuRSaLZidWI&list=PLQJW3WMsx1q3BAZh3XsK1cSwCiaqjSulc&index=13
 

A3sir

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Mar 25, 2010
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What? How is this a thing? No one is talking about Jack Thompson. You are the first person I've seen talking about him in years.
 

DaViller

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Sep 3, 2013
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Oh man now I'm gonna imagine jack thompson running around in a batman costume all day, that alone makes the video awesome.
 

zelda2fanboy

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Well done, moviebob. Just when I think I can start ignoring your stuff, you put out something pretty brilliant. I really could go for a full length documentary about this odd period of the 90s and 2000s where people were trying so hard to "protect the children" from video games.
 

JimB

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piscian said:
Bob, dude, seriously...

It's your show and technically you can do whatever you want but regardless of ideological difference no one came here to listen to you rant about this issue.
I did. I don't mean that in the "I came here to watch whatever the hell he put out this week" way, but literally. Someone brought up this video on another site I visit, spoiling that it was about the Sarkeesian comparisons, and I thought, "Huh. Okay, yeah, I want a piece of that action." Then I clicked the video and got a piece of said action, so...yeah, call me a satisfied customer.
 

KazeAizen

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Jul 17, 2013
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The_Kodu said:
I'm sorry but this is too good now.

Are you really saying you didn't even watch the video before passing judgement ?
It really sounds like you are.

You know that Listen and believe thing ?
That means go in with an open mind and judge for yourself not automatically believe on blind faith alone.

I don't know how you can write a post claiming there are no good points to be had without killing yourself of laughing knowing you've not watched the video. The Irony is just so comedic there.
Oh I've seen some of his videos. I couldn't stomach them. So no its not blind faith alone. Thunderf00t really is just a sexist idiot that thinks Anita is some kind of bogeyman. Whatever "good" points he may have had is built on a foundation of so much crap its laughable.
 

josemlopes

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Jun 9, 2008
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Darxide said:
Dunno, Bob. I hadn't heard the name Jack Thompson in years until I watched this video.
Same, and the whole "Hating Jack Thompson was the foundation of what it was to be a gamer", I dont know what pills Bob is taking but he really needs to stop thinking that the world sees everything the way he should because that thing never happened. The foundation of being a gamer always was playing games.
 

Mikeyfell

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Aug 24, 2010
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The_Kodu said:
Mikeyfell said:
Oddly if you analyse Anita's work not as an academic analysis but as a piece of advertising similar to lets say this advert you get worrying similarities
Here if you watch this

Now stop.
and think.

What happened last time you had a paper cut ?
Did you go out to buy medicine for it ?

Note the language used.
If you spit blood while brushing your teeth it could be an early sign of gum disease A leading cause of tooth loss.

So what other reasons could you be spitting blood ?
well you pressed too hard
A bit of food moved and stuck in your gum
You somehow popped a mouth ulcer

So let's de-construct the advert

It talks directly at you to tell you what your actions would be to make you believe the advert is on your side.
It then scares you by creating the fear you have gum disease and could loose a tooth.
It then tells you everything is fine and there's an easy solution.

You brain readily accepts the solution not fully thinking it over in it's nervous / fearful state as any solution that could stop or end the fear must be good.

If you now go back and do a similar analysis on Anita's videos and not simply a product one like this example you might notice a worrying pattern.

This pattern explain why she so regularly brings up information about real life domestic assaults and domestic violence statistics at around 12 - 15 minutes into the video. It works to scare you into believing it could be you, I mean it's so common what if you do it next. You couldn't possibly be like those guys right ? Right ? It really does work on people.

Oddly it didn't work on me because I guess I'm too used to being called the asshole and blamed that that kind of blame is water off a ducks back when you've been blamed for picking education over a relationship.

Her videos really do play out like 30 minute long adverts.
Fascinating, If her videos were supposed to be advertizing something I think they backfired a little.
Since most of the conversation is about her persona, rather than her points.

"better rolls for female characters" is a concept that should be able to sell its self.
 

delroland

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Sep 10, 2008
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Gorrath said:
delroland said:
piscian said:
Bob, dude, seriously...

It's your show and technically you can do whatever you want but regardless of ideological difference NO ONE came here to listen to you rant about this issue. Do yourself a favor and take this discussion to another outlet unless you want to alienate viewers who enjoy the big picture for discussing geek nostalgia and other "fun" topics.
Actually, that's exactly what I came for, as well as to see the garglegoat bandwagon whine like the misogynist white male privilege babies they are.
I find this sort of thing to be fascinating. There's a certain mindset that leads to one boiling a movement down to a series of derogatory statements and that mindset is one I've never been able to wrap my head around. I find it particularly interesting that you refer to them as "babies", since your message conveys the idea that you, yourself are engaging in the most juvenile behavior imaginable. I also find it extraordinary that you seem to think everyone who is pro GG is a male or white. I don't imagine you actually believe that though; I am thinking it's just easier to ignore the actual makeup of the group so you can engage in a bit of slamming white males.

I'm not being devious when I say it is fascinating though; I really do find it interesting how people can set their minds this way. The harshness of my criticism is because I also find it deplorable. And surely it doesn't matter, but I am not pro GG myself. I simply find that your description of that movement to be so wacky that it makes a caricature of you more than them.
I use caricature simply because I find nothing serious to take in their stance, and I'm tired of explaining it to people who won't listen. Also, by your definition of immaturity I am well within my rights to point it out in a group that paints their opponents as "LW#" or "SJW" or "left-wing radical". Furthermore, while it is given that GG is not entirely made up of white males, they certainly make up the overwhelming majority. Hell, I'm a white male, and I don't have this sense of entitlement that GG seems to have. It's like they've never read "The And and the Grasshopper", or even seen the Disney adaptation; maybe they could learn a thing or two from it.

I also can't stand GG apologists who "aren't pro-GG" yet don't hesitate to rise to their defense at every opportunity. Where are the criticisms of the ridiculous and short sighted demands made by GG that wouldn't actually fix anything that they purport to want fixed? The lack of such criticisms demonstrates a clear bias toward supporting GG.

(I'm talking about you.)
 

Tono Makt

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Mar 24, 2012
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Izanagi009 said:
UberPubert said:
If anything, doesn't this just support peoples comparisons of Jack Thompson to Anita Sarkeesian? I mean, if indeed Jack Thompson is just a guy with ideological hangups about violent cultures across a political spectrum, isn't that a word-for-word definition of Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency youtube channel?

Please do keep in mind she also criticizes movies, hip-hop and mediums of art besides gaming; she is - to me at least - someone very interested in pushing a certain agenda, not a video games critic. Same as Jack Thompson.
One was outright suppression of free speech, the other was the use of free speech in poorly supported criticism of media.

I would say the latter is less of a concern.
To a degree it might be of lesser concern, but it is something that all fans of gaming should be aware of and watching with some interest. The direct comparison between Thompson and Sarkessian is hyperbolic, but the comparison between the "Games cause Violence!" and "Games cause Misogyny/Racism!" ideas is one that we cannot dismiss. The way that Sarkessian and others are going about spreading the message is likewise a poor direct connection but unlike with Thompson, it's much harder to fight against Sarkessian because she is not calling for government intervention to protect people, she's trying to shame gamers and developers into changing themselves. That's a far harder thing to fight; you can't write letters to your congresskitty and senator to get them to oppose censorious legislation, you can't email Best Buy and Wal-Mart to say that you want to buy uncensored games and that you'll take your business elsewhere if they support this legislation, etc.

About all we can do is email AAA developers and say "We like the games you already make, and we aren't going to buy new games if you change them to suit the needs of the talking heads." which is an empty threat - they know that we're going to buy whatever it is they put out. They may have more flops than before, but we're not going to suddenly stop gaming or switch to entirely independent games; we likes our awesome graphics, our huge sandlots, our online multiplayer, our cinematics, etc. Stuff you just can't get from independent studios. We may grumble and *****, but we're still going to go out and buy "Fallout 4: Utopia!" where you play the only progressive woman in the Big Apple Wasteland and you get to create a new and totally equal society in every way. Even if the things we're killing are fat zombies that look suspiciously like "Gamers", they'll still get to kill things and that's enough.



For me, the worst case scenario in this situation is two-fold; one part is that this will cause companies to not make games like Fallout: New Vegas or Grand Theft Auto at the AAA size and scope. There will be no government legislation saying "YOU CANNOT MAKE THIS GAME!" but you will see big chains like Wal=Mart and Best Buy decide not to carry these games due to their troubling content, or deciding that these games will ONLY be sold to adults in a very similar way to how movies rated R only admit adults. (yes, people get fake ID's, people sneak into theatres, mistakes happen, etc.) For a potentially applicable example, the upcoming Deadpool movie NEEDS to be rated R to be able to truly capture the character of Deadpool. But R Rated movies don't make nearly enough money (with some exceptions) for studios to justify bigger budgets, so few R rated big budget movies get made. There isn't a government body saying "YOU CANNOT MAKE R RATED MOVIES!", it's just that there isn't enough business for R Rated movies to take many chances on them.

The second part of the scenario is that it will drive games into almost purely digital download before the market is ready for it. Companies will begin to avoid the big box stores like Wal-Mart and Best Buy to avoid the problems of having to sell the "R-Rated" games in store (which won't entirely eliminate the problem as it's not exactly easy for people without credit cards to buy things online, so the under-18 market won't have an easier time of it with digital downloads), so games won't be quite as easy to buy in store. This means that gamers will have to start paying more for their games... because they'll have to start paying higher prices for internet service to accommodate for the increased bandwidth that comes with downloading the game online. For many gamers right now this isn't an issue - they're a small segment of the market, they already download quite a bit so they are aware of their internet package limits and can plan accordingly. But they're not yet a large enough majority, and too much of America (and Canada) have sub-standard affordable high speed internet right now to support a large shift to digital download. So a shift too soon could cause a great deal of trouble in the industry.

Now, I don't see this sort of worst case scenario as being likely (hence why I call it a Worst Case scenario, not a likely scenario; it would require AAA studios in particular to be utter morons and much as I like to rag on them, they aren't utter morons), but I think it's important to keep an eye on the "Games Cause Misogyny" discussion to see if it will start to cause games to self-censor themselves. And if they do, to see how the market reacts to these self-censored games. The topic doesn't deserve the time and attention it's been getting for years, but at the same time it isn't something to dismiss.
 

Zontar

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Feb 18, 2013
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zelda2fanboy said:
Well done, moviebob. Just when I think I can start ignoring your stuff, you put out something pretty brilliant.
That's.... pretty scary. This video is far from brilliant. It's a stretch to even call it insightful, and that's with the assumption of interpreting it as a follower of his pretty radical ideology instead of a rationalistic perspective.

(Basically what I'm saying is the video isn't very good in quality and the only people who will like it are those who already agree with it going in. Especially for those of us outside the US where the very existence of the notion of 'gamers' debunks one of the most fundamental premises to his rant. I dare not call it an argument because that would insult the art of debate, and also imply that Bob was willing to respond to anything which he doesn't agree with in a civilized manor)
 

EternallyBored

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Jun 17, 2013
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josemlopes said:
Darxide said:
Dunno, Bob. I hadn't heard the name Jack Thompson in years until I watched this video.
Same, and the whole "Hating Jack Thompson was the foundation of what it was to be a gamer", I dont know what pills Bob is taking but he really needs to stop thinking that the world sees everything the way he should because that thing never happened. The foundation of being a gamer always was playing games.
There was just a 10+ page thread on the offtopic forums about a week ago that hung around for multiple days where the title had his name in it, something along the lines of, "Anita goes full Jack Thompson", a good chunk if not the majority of the debate was over comparing Anita to Thompson. Before I stopped caring much about the internet's hate-boner for Anita, pretty much every Anita thread in existence that I participated in had at least a couple posters comparing her to Thompson, she still gets regularly compared to Thompson pretty much anytime somebody talks about her, hell, I just saw the comparison yesterday in one of the various gaming politics threads on the R&P forum.

Thompson himself may be irrelevant, but the point of Bob's video seems to be true enough, there are a lot of people drawing comparisons between Anita and Jack and doing it quite often.

As for the gamer comment, whilst I don't know if I agree totally, I think I know where Bob is coming from on this. I remember hanging out on a few gaming related sites and communities in the late 90's and early 2000's when Thompson was at his height, and the controversy surrounding him did bridge a lot of gaming sites together, and brought a lot of gamers working and talking together who were otherwise separated by hanging out on their own little genre or system related corners of the internet.

The internet was often very fragmented back then, it was a lot easier to completely isolate yourself in one tiny corner or website without the prevalence of social media in everything. Thompson was a ton of gamer's first real interaction between their hobby/fandom and the American political stage at large, it actually did sort of string together a number of communities that never really communicated much before. It was sort of like gamings first big internet controversy, and any gaming site you visited at the time was talking about it, that seems mundane nowadays, but it was kind of new and novel back then, I remember interacting with a lot of sites and gamers I had never really encountered before who were all discussing and sharing information on the fight for video game artistic expression in the American court system. Even non-Americans were drawn into it as a good chunk of Western development at the time kind of hinged on the U.S. so they were worried it could start a domino effect.

This wasn't just a Jack Thompson thing though, it was an event triggered by quite a few congressmen and senators talking about violence in video games at the time, Jack was just the figurehead. I don't think it was the catalyst that created the gamer identity, but it was certainly one of the formative events of what would become gamer internet culture moving into the 2000's
 

Magmarock

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Okay bob, I have written down in a text document my thoughts on Anita Sarkeesian and Michael Atkinson. I withheld posting it in the forums because it was a little while since I wrote it and it didn't seem as relevant.

now it seems more relevant then ever. When I compare Michael Atkinson ( a man who actually succeeded in censoring and banning games) with the likes of Jack Thompson and Anita Sarkeesian; I have a lot more respect for Atkinson. The man was wrong about many things but he was also transparent.

When people compare Jack to Anita what they're doing is point out that the harassment that Jack received was okay and no one cared but when Anita gets it, it's suddenly bad.

No one cared when Atkinson received death threats at his door step, but when Anita get's a few angry emails from some internet trolls everyone terns themselves inside out. It's a bullshit double standard Bob and it's not okay.

I am a gamer Bob and I don't like Anita Sarkeesian. I think she's disingenuous, liar and a con artist who seeks attention. However, I have never spoken to her nor have I made any attempt to talk to her. I have nothing to say to her and don't even consider her a gamer. Her presence on websites such as this is what I find the most troubling.

One final point I want to make is the customer is always right. If gamers don't like something then all we have to do is stop funding it. Remember Bob, gamers are keeping you employed, but who is keeping Anita employed.
 

Drummodino

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Jan 2, 2011
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The rage and backlash to Jack Thompson was what unified and served as a base for gaming culture?

Yea... I don't agree with that at all. I'd put it down to the explosion of the internet and online communication allowing us to interact and share our love of games. Or is that too naive?
 

webkilla

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Feb 2, 2011
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Damn, there are a lot of people here white-knighting their fair maiden Sarkesian - and in turn vilifying Thunderf00t and KiteTales

It seems quite pathetic. I've seen loads of Thunderf00ts vids, both the ones where debunks Anita, where he debunks silly pseudo-sciency kickstarters (solar roadways, hoverboards, etc) and then some - I think the man is quite on the spot, though not perfect or infallible.

I mean, his work championing science studies in school against religious fundies and history revisionists is nothing short of exemplary - but to decry him because... he's had some genuinly nasty experiences with feminists via the Atheism+ thing?

Those of you who just flat out reject anything the man says: Have you even seen whats in those videos of his regarding Atheism+? I can assure you: Titles like "How feminism poisons everything" are kinda warranted once you actually check out the content.
 

Mikeyfell

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Aug 24, 2010
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Jumplion said:
You can't talk about sexism being bad if you believe the gender of the subject has an effect on the connotation of the exact same action.
...sexism is based on gender and how it affects us...
I'm not sure I see the relevance of that.
Yes, that is true
The relevance is that you said that one cannot claim sexism if they believe gender effects how people, or events, are perceived.

That is patently ludicrous and fundamentally misunderstands sexism.

Wow... way to misquote me when my unaltered quote is right in front of you.

"You can't talk about sexism being bad"
some how turned into
"One cannot claim sexism"



Thirdly, she has never specifically gone after individual, personal developers nor has she ever stated, or suggested, that the developers are intentionally or inherently misogynistic. She does state that developers and content creators often use these sorts of tropes because of laziness or lac which is totally true and several developers have supported this statement.

Yes she does. She exclusively does that. in every Tropes Vs. Women video.
She attacks individual developers. and claims that the products they make are inherently misogynistic.
That is literally what Tropes Vs. Women does.
That is exactly what the title implies, that is exactly how the evidence is presented, that is why she cherry picks scenes from Sleeping Dogs where a woman in a mini skirt gets thrown into the trunk of a car when Wei Shen can throw any NPC into the trunk of a car.

That's why she says the women are put there to be spied on when you can spy on any character in Hit-man or the Saboteur.
She completely ignores that anything you can do to a female NPC you can also do to a male NPC
Except for the Watch_Dogs part where she says that all the male NPC's who get beat up or gunned down had it coming by calling them active aggressors

Older than dirt sales techniques and older than older than dirt storytelling techniques are bent to her will to make the uncreative out to be sexist

2) She never even suggests that these are representations of "all" women.
Tropes Vs. Women...
Her series is called Tropes Vs. Women
If she was capable of seeing a fictional character as an individual she would never call her series Tropes Vs. Women




Or such a basic story telling tool like "The bad guy does something bad, and warp that to make video games look sexist and the worst part is that people fall for it.
It's this type of thinking on what stories tell us that prevents us from being able to actually intellectually analyze our media. Essentially, you're suggesting all critics be out of a job because they're just "warping" a simple story of "guy tries to get suitcase full of valuables" (Pulp Fiction) or "Guy saves a bunch of Jews" (Schindler's List) to mean something that they supposedly aren't.
What the fuck are you talking about?
What is it that you think you just said?


1) My original point remains unaffected.
No, it doesn't, because she never said that. I rewatched both of her most recent videos and there is nothing like that stated.

Again, great job providing your evidence.
What original point? that is what you said. You were wrong.
I provided you with the exact quote instead of a paraphrased version
You said it was never said, I gave you the exact quote and the time stamp in the video. several time stamps



How 'bout 16:10
"When men are depicted using female npc's as tools or commodities" I'll continue with the quote but do you see how she said "men" and "female npc's"
She's putting arbitrary gender divides into her speech
She is the one doing the dehumanizing.
How is it "arbitrary"?
by the dictionary definition of arbitrary
based on random choice or personal whim, rather than any reason or system.

there is no logical reason to refer to male NPC's as men and female NPC's as female NPC's so her diction was arbitrary.


You're basically trying to say that "gender doesn't matter" when it clearly does. It's attempting the "I don't see color" argument when it comes to race, completely ignoring the very real effect that race has on us. This is why I feel more secure in my assessment of you not understanding sexism when trying to go for the "You're the real sexist" claim.
Not even close, I'm saying Anita Sarkeesian is sexist.
http://youtu.be/GpDnr2s9yxQ?t=1m34s
Listen to this clip and tell me she's not sexist (Up to 2:15, or fuck if I care watch the whole video)




She is not "talking down to whores", nor is she shaming women for liking sex.
How can you when the context she used was a failable mini game where the male character had to pleasure a female until he got rewarded with sex?


Your stupid Pulp Fiction/Schindler's List comment threw me off, so clarify that one if you would be so kind