The Big Picture: Tropes vs. MovieBob

[Newblisk]

Such a hard topic to not just say STFU EVERYONE christ almighty. no one is right in this argument so why keep having it? women are unrealistic, well so are men. but the men's is there for guys to feel good about themselves, why can't women take the same approach? women can't get a job because they don't look like lara croft? PLeaSE, men and women can't get jobs by virtue of there being none.

I don't even know what the point is. are you trying to say tomb raider would have been better if lara was fat or flat chested? if the goal was gender equality for the world then yeah fine do it, but i think it's gender equality for video games which is ridiculous. i don't really care if my main character is male or female, i just want to have some fun.

Hearing another chick whine about digital boobs doesn't sound like a good investment to me in my time or money. the games industry already has it's head far enough up it's ass not to listen to male gamers, do you really think their going to blink at female ones? anyways the industry is already Slowly changing with gender selects and create you own character. it's just not moving fast enough apparently.

 

[Bmagada]

A bunch of people just paid for a feminist hipster who already can afford to do these videos in which she never whines about anything that actually maters to the feminist cause, just makes everything seem like its sexist. She once went off about Legos being sexist. She just got a $150K shopping spree on you. Way to go. Couldn't perhaps feed the homeless or donate that to kids who need medical treatment. Didn't even want to spend that on something like a game or a prize for games made to combat this particular issue. No you just gave her enough money to make her video, with enough money left over to buy a house btw and a car, and she's going to sell the video for profit. Thank you internet. You have proven that our generation not only wastes more money than any other before it, but that we are willing to in fact do so in the name of a good cause instead of finding an actual good cause to go for.

 

[Bmagada]

Gladly. I have donated a month's salary (around $2000) to disaster relief in Japan. I was in the army and I didn't have to pay room and board thanks to living in the barracks and just getting back from deployment, so that wasn't hard. After Katrina happened I went down to Louisiana with a group from Ohio University and volunteered to help build houses for low income families who lost almost everything. Here recently I've been trying to find IAVA events to volunteer at but they are mostly out of state so it's been kinda hard with time constraints and gas being the way it is. Seeing as a lot of the unemployed population are military vets, that seems like a way better cause than this. Lol I don't think I'd be searching Kickstarter for good causes, besides there are way more things you can do that mostly don't require you to give money, 95% of which I will say are better causes than hers, though that is a matter of opinion. Not to mention I don't think anyone will be pocketing most of the donations. Just putting that out there. I do believe in equality for the sexes, but not blind ignorant feminism. There's a line between fighting for equality and just nagging about it and calling everyone with a counter point sexist.

 

[CaptOfSerenity]

Yeah, she spent a lot of money on that shit. It could be that she needs to get it back. Could be she used loan money from a bank or a friend or something.

Also, my other reasons still apply

I gotta say you are really missing the point and going so far to make yourself in the right. First off she's been making 720P videos since 2009 and also been using picture in picture video editing software for the same time.

I'd also estimate that for at least two years she's had a room that has been sound proofed and also improved her audio quality with a dedicated microphone setup and not relying on the microphone built into the camcorder.

You really going to say that she needs to recoup money she spent on equipment she has clearly owned for three years? Cause if that logic applies hey start me up on a kickstarter cause I need to get my money back as well.

That is how much of a stretch you are making here and it honestly is pathetic. Heck I'm not even arguing with you, just telling you that she doesn't need the money for equipment cause she already owns the equipment. That's it. Anything else you are reading into this is honestly just you thinking this is some adversarial post and you have to be correct. Christ, no wonder I don't post here anymore. People aren't willing to ask a question for clarity anymore.

How do you know she's been working on videos since 2009?
Your "estimates" aren't facts.

She didn't ask for money for equipment; she asked for money to make the fucking thing. That includes everything she is going to give to people, like the DVDs.
You don't know everything about her, stop writing like you do.

She didn't ask for $150,000. She asked for $6000. She didn't demand it from you. Why are you so mad about her getting money that isn't yours for a project that will cost money?

From the page:

Your support will go towards production costs, equipment, games and downloadable content.

She has to buy a lot of shit for research (playing games for research, isn't that a deceptive dream?), so, yes, she needs money.

But my confusion rests on one point: why do you care? Why shouldn't she make these videos? Do you really think it's okay for her to be viciously attacked online by a bunch of horrible men?

Why the fuck?

 

[Zetsubou^-^]

I agree with bob. its probably not gonna be the end of the world every time someone brings up this topic,and reacting with venomous ferver probably is overkill.

i don't even think its really to deny the fact that sexism exists. its more like a kneejerk reaction to being accused of wrong doing. is it objectification to look for or enjoy specific qualities? then much of the world's population (including non humans) are guilty.
now obviously we consider ourselves mentally superior to animals, and that such objectifications should be considered beneath us. however little people like it, people who sell it knows attractive figures sell to the masses.

this is a topic that will never end as long as humanity is stretched between morallity and instinct. it will be an ever reoccuring topic that will go back and forth as society shifts. its natural for women, who have had to deal with alot in history, to bring this up now with the movement for "equality" ever raging, and its natural for men who are arguably more easily tied to instinct, to defend it.

basically, "humanity" is always going to be a muddy mess, so strap on your floaters and either ride the current, fight it, or cross as quickly as possible and be done with it.

 

[Ragsnstitches]

EDIT 2: Also what makes you think all those people that attacked her were just men?

I'm just going to say that there isn't much evidence to the contrary, considering the context of the language, and I seriously question the self-esteem of a woman who lashes out with lines like:

Spoiler: examples... very crude but straight copied examples

Tits or GTFO

You're a bolshevik feminist Jewess

LESBIANS: THE GAME is all this ***** wants

Why do you put on make-up, if everything is sexism? ... You are a hypocrite fucking slut.

Would be better if she filmed this in the kitchen.

I'll donate $50 if you make me a sandwich

Spoiler: Youtube comment screenshot

But you're right, there might be women attacking her too, but what's saying they have the right of it either? This logic can cycle endlessly and get nowhere. The only thing evident is that the comments, in a particularly vulgar manner, directly attack Anita rather then criticising her goals or the work she has presented.

Personally, if I had people like that on my side of an argument, I would rapidly try to shut them up before I continue with my own analyses. These people are detrimental to any argument, regardless of whatever side they take. Can you imagine any scenario where such wanton bigotry and vitriolic language would help a cause or promote awareness to false or skewed opinions?

No, me neither.

Unfortunately, ignorance isn't an excuse. No matter how much you would like to turn your nose up at them, their mere presence degrades the oppositions (to Feminism/Anita) reputability.

Regardless of the success or failure of Anitas relatively small fry contribution, we will be seeing this event pop up regularly in the coming months, and I wouldn't be surprised if we see REAL world ramifications because of it.

 

[Machine Man 1992]

Me? A jerk? Surely you jest!

I mean it wasn't like I made an off hand suggestion on how she could further her goal only for some internet voice come out of the woodwork and deny my ability to comment on this by virtue of being male... OH WAIT.

So how's the weather up on that cross you've nailed yourself too?

I hate to break it to some of you boys, but women are not in the position of privilege you think they are. There are a lot of women out there who only have a degree of power over men because those clueless man-children see a pretty girl and immediately become a lovesick puppy in the hopes of getting laid (which they won't).

What is this I don't even.

You sir, are clearly projecting.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

I get where Bob's going with this, but his points don't really stand up under closer scrutiny.

1: "You can't use the 'well men are always depicted as buff He-men, therefore it's ok that the women all look like Pam Anderson" argument because women are more discriminated against for their looks when it comes to jobs."
Sorry, evidence is lacking for this. Do a google search of "effects of physical attractiveness on job hiring". Women are far from immune for being given preferential treatment for looking a certain way. ANYONE who fits the mold of being "more attractive", man or woman, is at an advantage, regardless of the gender of who's hiring them. It's also been found that being good-looking gives you an advantage in getting loans, getting elected to office, and even helps you sway Juries in your favor. So everyone gets treated differently for not looking ideal, not just women.

2: "Society judges the worth of women by their appearance, not their ability".
True, but so do women. Ever notice how on the cover of every Cosmo, Redbook, Glamour, etc. you never, ever see pictures of unattractive women? This is because women don't like to look at unattractive women any more than men do. Once again, going back to the aforementioned studies, human beings naturally tend to have a "beauty is goodness" belief, that attractive people are intrinsically better than unattractive people. Likewise, arguing that video games are somehow a contributor to this ignores the fact that the stereotypical large-breasted, skinny waist "ideal woman" standard has existed for long before video games existed, and existed for long periods of time when sexism was far worse and more rampant.

3: "It's unfair because it's acceptable when a male character is unattractive (ie. Mario) but not acceptable when a female character is unattractive".
Again, reference the Cosmo and Glamour argument above. Likewise, this argument of Bob's falls flat on its face if one is willing to accept the simple fact that men and women are not the same. It wouldn't matter if every pornstar on the planet looked like Channing Tatum, women still wouldn't watch close to the amount of porn men do. Why? Because women are wired differently than men for what they see as attractive. This goes to the next argument:

4: "Women don't generally find buff male characters attractive, therefore it's unfair that there are so few attractive male characters for women."
Going back to the previous argument, women are wired differently than men and generally need their characters to have some level of depth, emotion, and character to find them attractive. So why don't game companies make more male characters like this? For the easiest reason imaginable: because it's hard. It's difficult and takes lots of work and trial and error, where as just cranking out another Marcus Fenix look-alike is easy. In an industry where game companies can live and die on the success or failure of a single game, it's far too risky to invest that much time in effort in something that may fall flat on its face.

People are examining this way too in depth and forgetting what the video game industry is: a multi-billion dollar industry that needs to make money. If a video game company thought it could sell 10 million copies of a game by creating a female character who looks "average" and a good-looking male character who didn't look like Chris Redfield, they would. They don't because they have no faith that a game like that would sell anywhere close to what they'd need to recover the cost, so they go with what works: Ivy Valentine and Chris Redfield. And if the female gamers who take issue with the "business as usual" approach in the industry truly believe that they could make a game like that and sell them like hotcakes, then I challenge you: make the game! If you aren't willing to take the risk and make a change, then you can't expect the games industry to shoulder the risk.

 

[Bmagada]

Yeah its my opinion. isn't it nice. BTW I know that this wasn't directed towards me, but not every game that doesn't try to put sexual stereotypes on an level playing ground is crap. Not that you would take into account that not every story has to have a strong female character in order for it to be compelling or inspirational. Oh and I don't think she'll damage the industry, but she does damage the feminist movement every time she releases one of those completely one sided videos. My line by the way is that of watching her videos and seeing little to no merit. My line is there is effective ways of fighting for a cause and effective ways of paying for someone to just complain about it in a video. My line is that one takes effort and caring enough to devote time to a cause if it's worth it, as to say would actually change things.

Oh and I didn't say to buy any games, I said you could use that money to either make a cheaper game with with a better female narrative, which is a positive step, and the people whose opinions you are trying to change will actually play it, or use it as a prize to promote a contest where people do in fact create indie games to get funding that might further that cause on a bigger version of that game. I also didn't say to make a movie just to make that clear. I know that's why you're on your soap box right now, because you're a "film maker"(seeing as everyone with a webcam can be called that. It's like saying if you finger paint you're a painter and by that standard Kim Kardashian and Ray J are film makers. It's about quality and substance not if you can operate a camera) but I said there are way more worthwhile pursuits if you feel like fighting for a cause then funding a hack who argues for feminism in a way that paints anyone fighting for that cause in a bad light and those pursuits would actually make a difference.

I think someone is trying a little too hard or is trying so hard to defend a "film maker" because you believe everyone should have respect for someone's art and the value of that art, which sadly you seem to be doing with your comment on games being crappy if they don't meet your standards or your beliefs, which makes you a hypocrite, and to you I say this, good riddance. Trying to call me out on my contributions to causes (which I have made) then immediately after that squeezing an argument out of a statement because you skimmed through what I said in the first place instead of reading it and only seeing the final statement. When you couldn't find an argument, you have now tried to twist a secondary statement to try and make it sound like I said "Fuck everyone for having an opinion, because I'm right and you're wrong". Yeah that's exactly what I said. Now you have the same arguing style as the "film maker" you're so happily defending, which to say is just to keep arguing instead of changing my opinion. Either that or you threw money at kickstarter and now you're angry because I called it stupid. I was actually going to take you seriously for a minute and read out your argument. I responded in a civil way with no malice or ill intentions because I actually read what people post, but now after reading that, it's just not worth it.

Keep on trolling sad troll, keep on trolling...

 

[Matt_LRR]

Well of course my estimate isn't a fact, that's why they are called estimates . The only facts I can say is that she does have top of the line equipment in all areas of production. I really don't see how that money can improve that compared to her existing equipment. I mean hell not even Will of DC has a soundproofed room for his videos and from it looks like it this youtuber I would estimate got a professional soundproofed room for a much longer period of time compared to willofDC who just a couple years ago was still doing the entire show in his bedroom.

You have literally no idea what you're talking about.

Just saying.

She couldn't afford "top of the line" equipment even WITH the $200,000 she's raised. And that "soundproof room" is almost certainly a wall in her house. LRR produces five videos a week professionally, and we have a dinky little office space and some mid-grade equipment. WE don't even have a soundproof room, and the technical quality of her production looks to mirror the the sort of equipment we were using years ago.

But I really don't see how you can be confused and yes it is going to be sorta lazy of me but...have you really sat down and read my posts on this very topic? I do care cause I do believe she is not qualified to actually do this project as she has proven in her previous projects to be destructive instead of constructive as well as she cares more about her bias than the actual subject matter to which she doesn't perform the due diligence to research the subject matter from the actual pop culture product to all the people involved from the director, producer and for the video game simply sitting down and playing through the game. She really just runs with the glossed over fan concept of the subject matter instead of doing the research. You can read my previous post on page 23 and I think on another page that will go into much more detail.

This paragraph is also dubious. you have no idea whether she played through Bayonetta or not (she doesn't specify in the video) but that much is largely irrelevant, because she spent the majority of the video discussing an advertising campaign used to market the game, rather than the game itself.

Now, you have, on several occasions, taken issue with her claims regarding the effects of that campaign? well, tough. the general sociological and psychological understanding of the effects of imagery of the sort used in that ad tend to agree with her, not you. Furthermore, discussion of that ad with you is going to be basically fruitless, unless you accept the validity of such (fairly well understood and accepted) phenomena as desensitization [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desensitization_(psychology)], reinforcement [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinforcement], priming [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priming_(psychology)], and so on. If you DO accept the validity of those phenomena - the reason the content and placement of that ad is problematic becomes obvious. If you do not, well, there's no common ground on which we can even begin a discussion on the validity her claims.

I also care because as noted on this page that just because she calls herself a "gamer" doesn't actually qualify her to speak as some figurehead of the "gaming community"(you really had to read my previous post to understand why I put gamer and gaming community in quotation marks).

At no point does she ever claim to speak for all gamers. She is simply presenting a a critique of certain aspects of female characterization in video games from a feminist perspective. She makes this bias explicit and apparent in the title card of her videos.

Having her rise to some status of authority with her current set of bias and beliefs does more harm than good as well as noted that she does truly believe that playing video games /interacting with video game ads encourages people to be misogynistic. That is quite literally the same logical leap the video game industry has been fighting and won here in the states on the logical leap that playing violent video games makes people violent. If her viewpoint is considered correct then the video game industry is going to very quickly lose that free speech we just recently earned from years of going up against lawyers like Jack Thompson and State Senator Leeland Yee and run head long into regulation that will affect every single developer, publisher and artist.

At no point does she advocate for any kind of censorship, banning, or restriction in the creation of video games. In fact, what she is trying to do is draw attention to the fact that games represent women in very narrow and detrimental ways - with the stated goal of encouraging developers to create more games, representing women in a wider variety of more interesting and creative ways, in order to make games appealing to more people and bring them to a wider market. She is straight up advocating for more art, and perhaps, along the way, encouraging developers to consider if they really want to continue to represent women in trite, played out ways in their art.

Maybe some asshat politician makes it his mission to try and restrict gaming based on this premise (though fat chance, considering how much American politicians ALSO seem to hate women) but that's on the politician, not Ms. Sarkeersian. We don't benefit anything but ignorance by keeping our heads buried in the sand on these issues, and as already noted, the easy solution to this issue is not BANNING speech (in the form of games) but actually MAKING MORE OF IT.

I should also note here that she completely ignores more important factors to a person's development that would affect their view of people such as being raised by their parent/parents, social interaction growing up or social ostracization and finally relationships with both genders. Factors I find much more important to a person and their world view when talking about race and gender than how viewing or interacting with an ad is going to make a person molest another person on a train. Once again please read my previous post cause I am REALLY tired and it is explained in much greater detail there.

Because she is criticizing MEDIA, not PEOPLE.

So yeah that is why I care. She can actually do harm to the video game industry given the lack of quality in her work and her personal embrace of her bias and if she does rise to where her beliefs become the consensus of the video game industry we will lose that free speech.

No, she really, actually can't, and when Vornoff accused you of being apocalyptic about it, he was 100% right.

Is it okay for her to be attacked? Well no, but then you have to then ask is it okay for her to spam another website with her work that is most well known for people who love to spend part of their time to be assholes for fun?

No you don't have to ask that. You might consider asking "why would people want to be assholes for fun", or "why do we find the fact that they do acceptable" though.

Like I said she certainly spammed the hell out of 4chan for a reaction to most likely energize her fanbase once the hate remarks came in but something she isn't familiar with the works of groups like anonymous that can paralyze world governments by the time you snap your fingers. The hard truth is that she or one of the most dedicated fans I've ever seen who can post a video link within SECONDS of the video being uploaded brought it upon herself.

That is not at all certain.

That's just part of the consequences. I know if I was running a message board or an active member and then all of a sudden my forum explodes with spam of a person I have no idea I'm gonna be pretty miffed as well. I don't want people to shamelessly advertise their videos on my forums, even the Escapist has a forum rule where you can't promote your own youtube videos in forum posts. So by The Escapists own forum rules she would have her account suspended.

Account suspension is not the same as being visciously harassed.

Also when it comes to advertising there are so many more positive ways she could of taken. She could of networked with other youtubers like the vlogbrothers and get into vidcon. Get in contact with other youtubers and do specials, she already has some of the highest quality equipment compared to your youtube channel.

She did lots of that - I saw numerous major web personalities tweeting about and referring people to her kickstarter long before the shit hit the fan.

Her approach was a negative approach, she hit down by spamming 4chan and while it isn't okay for her to get death threats she does have to face the consequences when you do take the time to promote your work without a websites consent.

You don't know it was her. She DID engage in positive advertising. Stop apologizing for the assholes.

 

[Matt_LRR]

Ultra snip

For now, I'm just gonna run with sweet zombie jesus on this one until I actually get a chance to read all of your comments. Cheers Matt.

That's cool. And if I sound like I'm being combative, I really don't mean to. You're a cool enough guy, I just think you're in the wrong here.

-m