Was it fair how Jack Thompson was treated?

[QuietlyListening]

Did he deserve to be mocked? Certainly. Did he deserve to have his arguments shot to bits? Absolutely. Did he deserve personal harassment? Absolutely not.

The main difference, although this is hardly a saving grace, is that the anger towards Thompson manifested in people tearing him down because of his opinions and tone, rather than his identity. The use of gendered threats and insults brings in an identity element that wasn't there before.

Still, harassment should be condemned in all forms by all parties.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

Bullcrap. I just googled Jack Thompson threats and I found several articles from 2005-2006 from game sites talking about them.

Funny, so did I and the best things I found were this bit from IGN:

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/death-threats-recently-sent-jack-thompson.95327721/

Which is actually a forum post an not even a proper article.

And this Gamespot-article:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/teen-charged-with-harassing-antigame-activist/1100-6141010/

Which goes out of its way to again paint Thompson as the asshole even when he was the one being threatened.

 

[WhiteNachos]

Bullcrap. I just googled Jack Thompson threats and I found several articles from 2005-2006 from game sites talking about them.

Funny, so did I and the best things I found were this bit from IGN:

http://www.ign.com/boards/threads/death-threats-recently-sent-jack-thompson.95327721/

Which is actually a forum post an not even a proper article.

And this Gamespot-article:

http://www.gamespot.com/articles/teen-charged-with-harassing-antigame-activist/1100-6141010/

Which goes out of its way to again paint Thompson as the asshole even when he was the one being threatened.

I didn't read the articles to be honest.

I just remembered the threats being talked about and I had to do was find articles from back then to disprove your idea that they never even acknowledge them.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

I didn't read the articles to be honest.

Oh, I see.

Granted, I made a bit of a hyperbole (which you took at face-value it seems); but my overall point still stands: the threats and harassment Thompson received didn't receive any sort of widespread condemnation from the gaming press even though it really should have.

 

[Uriel_Hayabusa]

That being said, I don't condone the way Mr. Thompson was treated.

I just want to say that this is a guy, however, who claimed that video games made us violent and were murder trainers. He then encouraged making a game where the player shoots up developers. He was a bully and a thug who harassed people. And while I don't condone the notion that two wrongs make a right, I suspect if the current group of people in question had done anything actually approaching that (rather than conspiracy theories), we'd be having a very different discussion right now.

Your disapproval of the death threats and harassment made towards Jack Thompson would seem much more sincere if your post didn't include several paragraphs (some of them your own, some quoted) worth of qualifiers/explanations. Going ''I don't approve of harassment BUT Thompson was kind of a dick, still.'' isn't very convincing.

my overall point still stands: the threats and harassment Thompson received didn't receive any sort of widespread condemnation from the gaming press even though it really should have.

Thompson is deeply conservative. Of course the industry writers didn't condemn his harassment.

Indeed, I've joked that Thompson was perhaps too ''privileged'' to earn the compassion of the so-called ''Social Justice'' crowd, what with him being white, cisgendered, heterosexual Christian man and all.

 

[WhiteNachos]

It seems like the most simple answer to this whole thing is....

Of course no one thinks him getting death threats was appropriate, but he also had an entire lobby industry behind him, and the media, including Fox news, so if we're comparing him to Youtube personalities we're really comparing apples to grapes here. But we should never condone harassment of any kind.

The end!

There we go, so the conversation is over now, right? We're done? No huh? Right, well, I'm going to go stand back in my corner and wait to chime in again.

Those YouTube personalities aren't exactly standing alone. They've got the media behind them, as well an entire lobby industry.

Really, the only difference is that Thompson is a deeply conservative male and the women in question are deeply progressive females. That's the sole reason for the difference in coverage. That's it.

What lobby industry do they have?

 

[small]

he wasnt a very nice person and despite all the comments about protecting people and especially children from video game violence, etc all he seemed to care about was using the platform to gain fame at what he perceived was an easy target.

that said the fact he got death threats ,etc to me at least is a warning sign of some of the nastier elements in the community and what they are willing to do when they perceive some sort of threat

 

[aliengmr]

It seems like the most simple answer to this whole thing is....

Of course no one thinks him getting death threats was appropriate, but he also had an entire lobby industry behind him, and the media, including Fox news, so if we're comparing him to Youtube personalities we're really comparing apples to grapes here. But we should never condone harassment of any kind.

The end!

There we go, so the conversation is over now, right? We're done? No huh? Right, well, I'm going to go stand back in my corner and wait to chime in again.

Those YouTube personalities aren't exactly standing alone. They've got the media behind them, as well an entire lobby industry.

Really, the only difference is that Thompson is a deeply conservative male and the women in question are deeply progressive females. That's the sole reason for the difference in coverage. That's it.

Well, minus their intentions and a legal means to do anything in the US. Both got harassed and threatened and only one was an actual threat.

 

[aliengmr]

he wasnt a very nice person and despite all the comments about protecting people and especially children from video game violence, etc all he seemed to care about was using the platform to gain fame at what he perceived was an easy target.

that said the fact he got death threats ,etc to me at least is a warning sign of some of the nastier elements in the community and what they are willing to do when they perceive some sort of threat

The fame "angle" might have been applicable in the beginning but towards the end the guy had gone crazy.

 

[small]

he wasnt a very nice person and despite all the comments about protecting people and especially children from video game violence, etc all he seemed to care about was using the platform to gain fame at what he perceived was an easy target.

that said the fact he got death threats ,etc to me at least is a warning sign of some of the nastier elements in the community and what they are willing to do when they perceive some sort of threat

The fame "angle" might have been applicable in the beginning but towards the end the guy had gone crazy.

very true. its almost like he viewed gamers as an easy target and when they responded he caught focused on fighting them. honestly he seems like someone who seriously cant cope with people challenging him