Mazinger-Z said:
maninahat said:
I think the danger though is that by giving the opportunity, you potentially treat two opposing views as a level playing field, even when they shouldn't. It's why, say, people like Richard Dawkins refuse to publicly debate creationists; because by even presenting it as a two sided debate, they have given creationists a level of legitimacy their argument doesn't deserve.
Also, this website has lost a lot of its more outspoken - dare I say lefty - content producers; if it is ideal to open the doors and get more view points, the escapist is going in the opposite direction.
Such is the consequence of free speech. In a society that values critical thinking and logic, such concerns should fall the wayside as evidence proves one side more correct than the other. Dawkins not debating creationists is a personal choice, but he hasn't called for them to be no-platformed or that others shouldn'the debate them for fear of legitimizing them.
And again, in a capitalist system, the Escapist is making a logical choice. With a surfeit of left-leaning publications, the Escapist is less likely to get the same return on a similar investment with left-leaning content.
Tho I'm really curious how an interview with the creator of Mine craft is somehow anti-left and not just public interest for gamers.
What I really enjoy is the idea of Brad selling this story to the Escapist as a freelance writer rather than as a staff writer like on other publications who have to dream up clickbait regularly for their income. A publication picking up stories based on their quality might help the industry.
Maybe this is just an american issue, although I don't wanna assume anything, but it's likely a result of a bipartisan system that divides left and right as if there were only two points of view.
As an example, here in Portugal we have 2 right wing parties, CDS - Essentially Ted Cruz-lite, very few supporters and then to ally with others to break majority ties) and PSD (Social Democratic Party, aka American Left.), one center party, PS (AKA Socialists but mostly in name), and two left parties, BE (Left Block) and PCP ("Dirty Communists", as one might know them. They have a political alliance with our green party, forming the CDU). Point being, although parties of the respective political spectrum tend to be in agreement, there's a lot of differing opinions.
For example, even though BE and CDU tend to have the same opinion when it comes to voting, they don't get along much, because BE is seen as a bunch of PR-loving bullshitters who only exist to rob PCP of votes, while the CDU are seen as bleeding hearts and Dirty Communists, plus extremists in some cases.
While we in Portugal, generally speaking, consider this whole genderist/feminist discussion a bunch of bollocks, and most people, save for the "radical" right supporters (IE: About 1/3 of PSD and a fair bunch of CDS supporters) fail to see why such an obvious thing is discussed with such fervour in the States, have some disagreements. For example, a recent bill was subjected for approval to allow for "rent bellies" (I believe it's called surrogate mothers - when you rent someone else's uterus to have your child), and while BE voted for it, the CDU abstained, saying the proposal left too many holes open for exploitation.
Why all of this explanation? Simple: Because we're not bipartisan, we can actually have a discussion without resorting to an Us vs Them mentality (Or at least it's much harder to do it when the Us and Them can change wildly for each topic). America considers feminist to be a left issue (even though most modern feminists, in my opinion, are a bunch of bigots that bring shame to the very people who's names they claim and attract attention from actual issues women face), so a site that has an opinion against it is automatically anti-left. And because of the polarizing nature of politics, only accentuated with the retarded system the USA have and refuse to change, any person with enough of a public voice which DARES have an opinion is immediately branded in the US or THEM category, and marked as a nonperson for the THEM, which means, you guessed it, harrass them freely. It's easy to insult you and your mother in 140 characters or less. It's harder to defend and explain a complex opinion of yours in the same number of words.