The Great Debate

PoolCleaningRobot

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Grey Carter said:
Holy goosefucks
My sentiments exactly. LOOK WHAT YOU'VE STARTED!!!

My mind has seriously been blown by this. I just don't understand how people can care about YouTube comments and it's fucking rating system. Did anybody know that the escapist doesn't have a rating system!?. Gasp! How can I tell Grey that I agree with him with without a green thumb up? Oh wait. I'm doing it right now. Turning a debate into a competition for the most up votes and likes is stupid. It's not a debate anymore, it's a poll. You all know what would have happened if she kept the comments and ratings so why bullshit yourselves.

Also, disabling the comments doesn't only disable the dissenting options but also the options of people who agree with you. It seems like a fair trade to me
 

PoolCleaningRobot

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Desert Punk said:
Grey Carter said:
You're missing the point there; deliberately I expect. Peer reviews require people from the same field with a reputation to uphold.
So only people who make shitty youtube videos are qualified to comment on her videos is what you are saying? Or is it women? Or women and white knights? Or what is her peer group that is allowed to be peer review her videos?

Because she claims to be a gamer, that makes gamers her peers.
For the love of Christ. THIS IS WHY EVERY ONE ON THIS THREAD NEEDS TO STOP SAYING PEER REVIEW!!

You can't peer review someone's opinion. To try and call criticism the same thing as a "peer review" is the stupidest thing I've read. It implies you can give or take away legitimacy to an opinion in a purely factual way. She can't be peer reviewed because these peers people keep mentioning don't exist
 

The Deadpool

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I think the youtube commenters being idiots thing is blown a bit out of proportion. I find the percentage of idiots to be relatively small.

In Ana's case, she disables comments in ALL her videos... Except for the one that would make her money. In that case she took a few choice AWFUL comments and paraded it around as proof of how everyone hated her for her Kickstarter and managed to make an inordinate amount of money to continue doing exactly what she has always done.

Someone took a picture of said comments. Out of the first two hundred or so comments the grand majority were NOT offensive. Maybe 15% awful, 10% mindless and the rest either agreeing with her or reasonably disagreeing with her.

Overall I find it counter productive. If you aren't trying to start discussion then why are you making the video? I mean, you DO know you don't HAVE to read all the comments right? You could just ignore it and let the people who see it discuss it amongst themselves if reading stupid and awful things truly offends you that much...
 

Iridium Dawn

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Father Time said:
First, it implies that anyone who makes a video is honor-bound to lend their credibility and popularity to the opposing argument, they are not.
How are you lending your credibility and popularity to the opposing argument by enabling youtube comments?
Because it can create a false equivalency between the comments and the arguments being made in the video. It's why Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't debate astrologers or Richard Dawkins doesn't debate creationists: putting some idiot like Ken Hamm on stage with Dawkins makes it seem like Hamm has something of value to contribute to a discussion of evolution. Obviously, he does not. For Anita, regardless of whether you agree with her or not, she's not engaging in the same sort of harassment as some of the people in the Youtube comments. Allowing the comments only enables those trolls to harass a greater a number of people. People with something constructive to say have had no real avenues to speak cut off. Grey pointed many of those out.

Numerous people have said it already, but nobody on Youtube is obliged to allow comments, votes, favorites, or anything else. They can disable those features for whatever reason they choose, and it's not censorship.

But really, let's cut to the chase. She can't win, can she? If she enables comments, then she enables an environment where people can threaten her or others with absolutely no repercussions, and where it's easy to create a mountain of turds that swamp anything of value in the comments. If she doesn't, then she's a "coward or a hypocrite", "weak", or any of that other horsecrap. If there's comment moderation, she can be accused of only allowing the comments that agree with her or whatever ludicrous conspiracy theory fits the bill. But if she enables comments and doesn't read them, then she's not responding to dissent, is she?

There is no situation that allows her to meet the standards people have been talking about in this thread.
 

Mr F.

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wizzy555 said:
Mr F. said:
Sorry, I catch a lot of flakk for my degree. Most of my friends are either hard scientists, historians or engineers. And, well, its taught, its used, but its not necessarily necessary. I write 2500+ word essays that do not contain a single statistic or, alternatively, 2500+ word essays that are two thirds statistical analyses. It really depends on the essay. I do wonder why you are bringing it up because at no point in the current series is statistics needed. It seems rather irrelevant. Whether or not she analysed statistics wrong (In your eyes, at least) is rather irrelevant, she obviously analysed them well enough to pass. I do not know how well and I do not know why that matters. That said, perhaps she did a different aspect of sociology, I mean I am going into research to prepare myself for the MA course I want to do in sociological research (As in, becoming a trained researcher) so I bounce off statistics more often then some.

And with regards to her thesis? Again, I ask for the relevance. My siblings MA thesis has very few similarities to their PhD thesis and even fewer with the book she is writing. I hope that after I am done with my thesis I will continue to improve, much like my sibling is improving, and will produce better work.

Lets try and keep this discussion about the video series.
Well I do get somewhat considered when people are pointing out social trends without statistics, although certainly there are cases when it is not applicable.

In her thesis she attempts to identify racism (and homophobia) in science fiction by comparing the number of female characters that die based on their race, the numbers actually slow a lack of discernable racism but she claims otherwise. This doesn't necessarily prove everything she says is academically invalid (and certainly not the whole field in general), but I do think it does highlight the dangers of self deception in these issues.

Anyway, you asked for a genuine academic criticism of her work and there it is. I'm not qualified to comment on the other aspects.
Well, would that not be a criticism leveled purely at her thesis? Having not read it, I cannot comment, but I would assume there was a lot more to it then one level of statistical analyses. However, having not read it, I will refrain from commenting.

I just find it incredibly annoying when people with no understanding of the nuances of social sciences, people who have never even heard of Butler (Seriously, somewhat important with regards to this particular topic) who attack her points despite having no grounding from which to do so. It is, honestly, akin to questioning the laws of gravity without ever having read anything to do with the subject. Or, something less tangible, questioning string theory because "The world is not made of strings you are wrong". That is the level to which it is stupid. Someone with absolutely no understanding of the subject claiming some level of understanding.

And now we get to the crux of the matter, the subject which the webcomic addresses. Youtube comments. You are making that statement here, would you make the same statement, and ask the same question, on youtube? What happened when Rebecca Blacks "Friday" started trending because of how bad it was. It became an avalanche of hatred, comments were posted at an incredible rate, 99.5% of which were just pointless abuse. You know (And, apparently, choose to ignore) that this would be the case, that if those comment sections were open it would simply be a tide of people calling for her to die, get raped, hurling abuse, just saying she is wrong, making racist remarks, insulting her, demeaning her, using foul and sexist language... You get the idea. You KNOW this is the case.

I know one of the reasons she gets some abuse from people here is her videos found their way to /v/ and 4chan promptly was what 4chan is (The fact that its acceptable is foul but thats another topic entirely) and people blame her for how they reacted (Which is utterly stupid, but whatever). If her videos had comments open, that would happen again. Not only would every attempt at rational debate be drowned out by the insults and threats, but fuel would be poured onto the fire that people are claiming does not exist. You would be giving her more interesting followers ammunition, and plenty of it. Hell, slippery slope argument here, but what if an actual REAL news provider grabbed onto it?

"Jewish academic abused for pointing out the inherent sexism in some video games", that would be a BRILLIANT headline for us on, say, the Guardian. It would damage the hobby.

People like to talk about her academic credentials (And claim that she has none). I would state that it is academically dishonest for such people to turn around and then state that her removals of the comments and ratings is "Dishonest" and stifling free speech. You all KNOW that it would just be abuse, that any discussion would be drowned out. You mention statistics and how she misused them. I state that you are willfully ignoring statistics if you claim anything rational would appear from the youtube comments.

The fact of the matter is she is trying to start a discussion about these topics. But she knows it is a discussion better taken to places other then Youtube. If nothing of any value has been lost I fail to see what the issue is.
 

The Deadpool

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Iridium Dawn said:
People with something constructive to say have had no real avenues to speak cut off.
And people who feel the need to say something awful and pointless and useless ALSO have had no real avenue to do so cut off.

The thing, by turning off the comment section, you are splitting the discussion. Some people talk about it here, some there, some over there... But differing opinions is what makes discussion valuable. The split diminishes the discussion. And discussion is, theoretically, the whole point OF the video...
 

The Deadpool

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Mr F. said:
You all KNOW that it would just be abuse, that any discussion would be drowned out.
Except for the one time she did allow comments. That time it wasn't ALL abuse. Hell, it wasn't even MOSTLY abuse. It was actually most "Yay, this is awesome." and actual discussion.
 

Darken12

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I pretty much completely agree with Grey and Cory on this one.

Nobody is obligated to enable comments on youtube. Using that as the main thrust of your argument speaks very poorly of your capacity for rational argument and discussion. You're latching onto something tangential to the point they're making in the video in order to avoid having to deal with the contents themselves.
 

Iridium Dawn

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The Deadpool said:
Iridium Dawn said:
People with something constructive to say have had no real avenues to speak cut off.
And people who feel the need to say something awful and pointless and useless ALSO have had no real avenue to do so cut off.

The thing, by turning off the comment section, you are splitting the discussion. Some people talk about it here, some there, some over there... But differing opinions is what makes discussion valuable. The split diminishes the discussion. And discussion is, theoretically, the whole point OF the video...
It does split the discussion, but that seems almost unavoidable. Youtube does allow for comment approval (though I think if she took that route people would still ***** about censorship), but it's also globally accessible. The first "Tropes vs Women" video got, what, 1 million+ views? If even 1% of those people commented, that's 10,000 comments to review and approve. That doesn't seem manageable for 1 person. Actually, that doesn't seem manageable for a team of people.

On that note, even with comment approval and moderation, does Youtube's format really allow for a discussion once you hit that kind of response size? I don't really bother with comments sections there, but unless you can change how the comments are presented, they are incredibly disorganized. How do you sift through hundreds, let alone thousands of comments? I mean, we're taking advantage of the Escapist mods and forum structure...

I guess that's why I disagree that splitting the discussion diminishes it. People having the discussion in multiple places only seems like it increases the number of people exposed to the discussion. I feel confident any venue capable of having a decent discussion will guarantee differing opinions get into the mix.
 

Lieju

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I don't get why she isn't allowing comments. I mean, it's inevitable it would be filled with misogynistic shit, and then she could just point at that and go 'yeah, you're kinda proving my point here'.



AJey said:
I would like to disagree with the premise. Had plenty good quality intellectual debates on youtube comment sections.
How? The character limit is laughably small, it's the thing that always annoys me, and even discussions that have potential to be intellectual get muddled and misunderstood because you have to get your meaning across in such a short message. And you can't post links, can you?

Makes giving references difficult.

The only kind of discussion I really get into on Youtube is small positive stuff, like talking about how my ferret also does this cute thing, or how bunnies are cute but kittens are more adorable.
 

wizzy555

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Actually I have no problem with her disabling youtube comments. But I am reluctant to hale someone as a great academic just because because they have a degree and some videos on youtube, I'm not sure why I should take her more seriously than say ... moviebob.

That said the abuse is totally unwarranted and unacceptable.