WHITE GUY DEFENSE FORCE GO!
- Thread starter The Wooster
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This basically sums up how I feel about the facebook and the forum comments. I always find people who are 'what's the big deal?' to be shameful, it's closed minded. It isn't any different than saying someone's going to hell for not believing in your god/no god exists. Or demanding the world is flat -.- That you're being permissive rather than restrictive isn't important.
I laughed because I know people like this, and they typically come in these three categories. I don't mind ponies, and I occasionally wear a fedora-like hat. I do not, however, argue on the Internet in every single situation like this where race or sex is brought up and point out how much men are disadvantaged or something in today's society. I don't feel offended by it because I don't do this.
a) Zimmerman stalked no one. Look up the word, or at the very least, my previous posts that spell out the word's definition.JimB said:
b) Zimmerman becoming suspicious of, exiting his car, and following Martin is also not a crime.
Then, I suggest you go back and watch the tapes of the trial.
Yes, because getting your head beaten into the ground is quite an effective tactic.
While they don't do it "in the name of Zimmerman" do exist. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klux_Klan] Although those groups aren't really the ones being satirized here.DjinnFor said:
As for my own personal opinion, I think the comic had some incisive criticism and that the hyperbole contributed well to the satire; if I had one criticism though it would be that the comic was a bit "all over the place." While they're both deserving of satire and their attitudes likely descend from a similar place, criticizing both internet racists and "MRA types" tends to muddy up the message a little bit. Plus the comic just jumped around so much that I feel a lot of the message was lost, I think it could have been communicated better had the "White Guy Defense Force" been made into a group of "semi-recurring characters" and brought back throughout several issues to deliver the same arguments, but give an individual issue to each individual criticism. Thus this comic would have been only satirizing their ridiculous views on race and they could have saved the sexism jokes for a later comic.
Perhaps not by the legal definition, but by the definition of a predator following his prey, I think he did, and I use the word with a clean conscience. He decided that young boy was his prey, and my proof is, rather than leaving the supposed criminal to the police as he was instructed to do, he followed Martin and forced a confrontation.madwarper said:
I will grant you, though, that my wording was open to misinterpretation like that and was therefore imprecise. That's my fault. I apologize.
I never said it is. All I did was imply my belief that as the adult in the situation, Zimmerman bears more responsibility for the conflict than does the child he killed.madwarper said:
I have faith in my memory. If you think it's inaccurate, I invite you to link me to evidence, but as it stands, I am quite positive I've heard trial coverage explaining that the forensics do not bear out Zimmerman's story.madwarper said:
The usual argument here is one technically doesn't "have to" post anywhere. The CoC even states, to some degree or another, if you have nothing constructive to say (or cannot say something without being destructive), then simply don't say it. Not every debate needs personal attention, especially when you know it's something you'll become particularly inclined to argue about. As a mod, I do it a fair amount, passing threads, posts, or comments to other mods to handle where personal biases or feelings might get in the way.knight steel said:
But failing that, it's also that posting that way is a choice. I can't speak to psychological issues (as I'm unaware of them), but there are always options with posting. Even if one chooses to post in some thread, or in some user group, they're still making the decisions. Phrasing, tone, word-choice. All of it is conscious, to some degree. It's a user's imperative to make the decision about how to post, when to post, and what tone to take. In the same way that it's up to you to decide if yelling is okay. Concerts and across large distances, perhaps. In a crowded bar with a belligerent drunk? Maybe not ideal. Choices define who we are, and how we choose to appear. I made the choice to post this here, formally, and address possible alternatives. If, psychologically speaking, one would have difficulty not-arguing or not-fighting in a way that breaks the Code of Conduct, they also have the choice to have someone change their password, or not post anymore. Doesn't mean it's the right choice, or the best one, but it's always an option.
Personally, I think if you really like the forums and want to contribute, take a half-hour between posts. Write your post out, then get up. Go make a sandwich. Eat while watching your favorite half-hour TV program, or do the Sunday crossword, or whatever helps you relax. Then, with fresh eyes, go read that post again. Dissect it for tone, for style, for anger. Cross-reference the CoC. If it looks good, post away. If it reads even a little like it could be an issue, feel free to ask a mod. My message inbox is always open.
Granted, these aren't perfect solutions, in the same way that no website that accommodates this many people can ever have a "perfect" rule set. They're just options, like anything else.
Unfortunate nature of the beast, though. It's like that with people, though. It's why courts exist to debate the finer points of laws, which are written by politicians (and lawyers) to get the exact, precise, perfect phrasing that will end up being insufficient for day-to-day issues. When you add people into the mix, even the best laid foundations will get a little wobbly. To point, moderation standards have changed since I've become a mod, much less since I've been a user. As time passes, rules change, tones change, and mods change. None of the moderators I spent time with (as a user) are around anymore. The mods I trained under are likewise no longer modding. I've seen three different Community Managers personally as a mod, much less as a user.
Sadly, "inconsistent enforcement" is a thing. I do my best to communicate with all the mods, I try to talk to other mods when I see posts they flag that seem innocuous or maybe just a little too theoretical. But ultimately, it's something that will happen anyway. Same with police. Same with lawyers. Same with anything. Systems do the best they can to keep the human element standard, but they're imperfect.
Thankfully, that's what the Appeal system is for. I encourage people to use it, I encourage people to ask questions and learn things, and I encourage people to debate if they feel they've been mislead or mistreated. And I try to get better about consistency myself. But yes, if you feel any moderation action has been out of line, please use the contact page [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/contact/], subject line "Forum Posting/Moderation Issues", and keep an eye on the e-mail you put down.
Again, unfortunately true of all rule sets. Someone who's convicted of a felony at age 18 will still have that felony on their record at age 80. That prevents them from all sorts of jobs, even if it's just being a secretary at a law enforcement office. Appeals are in place to address this to the best of their ability, and it's a function that has worked in the past. (In fact, the former moderator Ultrajoe had been banned previously. Although the moderation standards had been significantly more strict at the time.)
The question is, better to err on the side of caution with a user? Or risk having someone who upsets parts (or all) of the community endlessly around making those other users feel uncomfortable? It's our job to moderate risk for everyone, yet still make sure everyone gets their fair due. By extension, it's up to the Appeals board to make sure we haven't made a mistake in that endeavor.
We don't really classify the banned as bad members, though. It's just a method of risk-management, as stated above.
I just have to wonder how much of it is the issues being misunderstood, rather than the issues being implied. The mindset seems to me to take offense at the comic as a whole. A collective attribution to a joke targeting a specific. In the same way some are misreading the comic in casting too wide a net, so too are its defenders reading too wide a rhetoric. It seems more likely that the "If you don't like it, don't read it" crowd is reading collective offense where some are expressing targeted displeasure. Proof, I think, that the flaws themselves lie as much in human nature as they do in rhetoric or expression. Language is still imperfect, despite its practice, so they'll always be misunderstandings. Either from a comic that perhaps is a little too liberal with its humor, or perhaps in those who feel its defense deserves the same vehemence perceived, even though there was less projected.Sexual Harassment Panda said:
As for the echo-chamber, I think that's just a flaw of communities. The longer one exists, the more a collective consciousness seems to form. Same reason half of reddit is just subreddits calling other subreddits circlejerky, then in the same breath, creating their own shorthand of memes and references, which earns them the very moniker they were made to mock. So too, it seems, forums have that same poison. Just the nature of people, the desire to fit in makes them very well-suited for fitting in, often at the expense of variety.
Doesn't mean everyone is that way, though.
I don't really like playing "The blame game" or anything.TopazFusion said:
But even from the first page of these comments, everyone was well aware of the reaction that this comic was going to provoke. Seriously, naming a comic "White Guy Defense Force" alone is just asking for trouble, regardless of the writer's intent.
It was an offensive comic, and bringing up the Zimmerman trial was in poor taste. Some people have handled it worse than others and definitely deserve bans. But when you speak of the devil, it's hardly a surprise when he shows up.
He was 6'1", 170lbs, and a football player. He was nearly a head and shoulders taller than Zimmerman in height. In all likelihood, he would have been tried as an adult had he survived the conflict. The only question is how many years Trayvon would have spent in jail. It's not even a question whether he would have been guilty or not.JimB said:
There is only one person that bears responsibility for his actions that night, and it is the man who attacked Zimmerman without provocation.
I think this is a very good point.N3squ1ck said:
The sites name after all is The Escapist, but if it wasn't for this place I wouldn't know anything about half of the issues that I do. Pretty much every controversy I have stumbled across in the last year relating to games has been on this website and it kind of defeats the purpose in many ways.
That is not to say such issues should be ignored and never brought up, but it's at saturation point right now, and has been for quite some time. The "Escapist" isn't a particularly apt title for this website at this moment in time.
I don't think that bears up. Let's ask ourselves what could have been done differently to avoid this conflict.Sarcasmed said:
Trayvon Martin could have not attacked George Zimmerman. That's fine, but it doesn't hold up, because if Zimmerman is justified for shooting Martin on some "stand your ground" principle, then Martin is equally (and probably more, since he didn't use a lethal weapon) justified for standing his own ground.
George Zimmerman could have not shot Trayvon Martin. No, that is apparently off the table because he was smaller than Martin, so it's a wash when it comes to actively participating in the conflict itself. If one person was justified attacking, then the other was as well. Let's go back in time further.
George Zimmerman, having alerted the police, could have not followed Trayvon Martin, as the 911 dispatcher said. I think that's fair, but let's see what Martin could have done.
Trayvon Martin could have stayed home to not go buy Skittles so George Zimmerman would not have seen him to be suspicious of him. That's fucking ridiculous.
Viewed purely from the lens of "whom could we reasonably ask to have done something different that would not result in a dead child," George Zimmerman is the one who erred. He bears the responsibility for creating this conflict. It did not exist before George Zimmerman made it exist.
Indeed. Committing "crimes" on the escapists are very different than in real life. That's why instead of jail time, or the electric chair. When someone breaks the rules here, they get a warning, suspension, or banned.knight steel said:
Wouldn't that really depend on what crimes thy have committed? If they just committed a lot of petty thefts that didn't amount to a lot of value, perhaps. If they were killing innocent people, the law would reflect my view.knight steel said:
Here on the escapist there are things that if you do too often after being warned(not given a warning, but warned to stop) like posting really big pictures. You will get a warning, but if you only do it once in a while, you are likely to have it slide. However, if you brake one of the direct rules, like insulting people directly, or say you try to advertise something of yours in threads. Then you are punished accordingly.
Even then, you can get an appeal and have the charge removed, if you can make a good enough case.
In the end if someone is banned, they earned the ban though their own behavior. [sub][sub]Unless their account got hacked, and it was someone else wearing their face around here being an ass.[/sub][/sub]
Well doesn't that kind of go against your point that there shouldn't be perma-bans?knight steel said:
You said that people can post here for years, and end up banned for only a small number of their total posts made over the years.
But with what you said above, doesn't that mean the people should have changed over those years? Learned the rules, and heeded their multiple warnings. If they didn't, doesn't that mean they didn't change? It's not like the Escapist doesn't give a lot of time for you to not break the rules, and have the health bar empty out. During that time, you can change you're behavior.
After all, the rules are not that complex, so it's not that hard to follow them enough to not get banned.
Yet, people still break the rules, or sometimes even ask for a ban(though that's a different topic I think).
Plus, I've seen lost of people who get banned long before their post count even gets to 200 posts. So letting people not get banned just because they have a high post count wouldn't really be fair to those that got banned really early on.
But in these cases of people who have already been here for years, they have already been given chances to change, and yet don't. If they've been here for ten years, I don't think just a two year break is going to make them change.knight steel said:
Besides, a ban just means they can't talk in the forums. They can still come here to view the content, and read the forums. Chatting here on the escapist is not a right, it is a privilege. The cost of it members must pay is to act according to the rules.
If they don't do that, they lose the privilege.
In the end of this debate is an impasse. Because no matter the conclusions you and I make. It is still very likely that the rules of the escapist will remain, as they are. Some unofficial warnings, followed by official warnings, followed by suspensions, and then followed by bans.
When you get this, I just what to say I hope you have a very good day.
I shall end my post saying once again, thank you Cory, and Grey for a great comic. =w= b
Actually, I think the ones responsible are the guy who came up with the whole "stand your ground"-law idea, the guy who came up with the idea of neighborhood watches and taking the monopoly on violence away from the police and general gun culture.JimB said:
Trayvon Martin didn't deserve to die for being afraid of a suspicious guy following him in the middle of the night and attacking him in what he well likely thought to be self defense.
George Zimmerman didn't deserve to go to jail for murder for being a vigilante asshead which resulted in him killing a boy in self defence.
In my language there are two different words for "justice" as in subjective justice (for example a bully beating up a small kid and then getting beat up by the small kid's big brother) and the actual justice given out by a court on the basis of law.
Sometimes the first kind is not to be had, it just doesn't exist and a court cannot give that kind of justice. A court can only give the kind of justice that fits between two book covers. Zimmerman being completely innocent is that kind of justice.
If that book is stupid though then that's on the conscience of everyone. Every single man and woman in Florida.
Ech, I think CM should stay out of politics. On this particular one I've seen several layers and I'm not even sure where the bottom is so I'll decline comment regarding its content. However, it does seem to have been designed to... "Elicit a reaction", shall we say, and I can't really approve of that. Anyway, I've just looked at some of the CM back-catalogue, and frankly, the political ones just aren't funny. It's just not a good idea TBH - the chance of pissing off half of your fanbase is simply an unnecessary risk, regardless of how justified the artists' (or anyone else's) position may be and what's more, a "customer" who's been driven off, even if from only that section of the site, doesn't see [as many] ads so that translates to income lost for the Escapist and presumably the artists personally. Plus, while I keep getting sucked into other threads (I should really stop myself), gaming is what I come to the Escapist for, not politics. If I wanted political cartoons, I'd go somewhere like this [http://www.theguardian.com/cartoons/archive]. Unfortunately the political comics seem to be getting more frequent, so I'll probably stop reading CM if it doesn't pick up in the next week or two. On the offchance the artists see this post - consider this a vote, for whatever it's worth, to go back to gaming and forget all this political nonsense.
TL;DR:
Better to stick to jokes about gaming. They're funnier, fit the site's theme better and tend not to piss anyone off.
TL;DR:
Better to stick to jokes about gaming. They're funnier, fit the site's theme better and tend not to piss anyone off.
Games are not just used to Escape though. They are also used as a safe place to investigate a topic. This has been true for a very long time. All the way back in 1980 with the game Missile Command.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_CommandLegion said:
Exploring the idea of what it would be like to try and defend a place from nuclear annihilation. During a time when many thought such was just around the corner.
Not an incredibly "deep" investigation I guess you could argue, but such things are still around today.http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/criticalintel/10593-Endgame-Syria-Updates-the-Civil-War
And with the better technology we have today, we can do an even better job of investigating such hot button topics with video games as the safe tool for doing so. Much like films, songs, and books.
The Escapist tries to be that place to talk about things too. It doesn't always work, but they don't stop trying.
Does everyone want to talk about such things on the escapist? No. And they don't have to.
That said, even if someone doesn't like the topic, but goes to it anyway(and hopefully reads/views it). Then goes even further to comment on it. I think it's would be safe to say that the topic held some importance to them.
Whether they do well or don't, isn't only up to them. After all, we are the ones who comment the most.
Please look into the case more before you spout this misinformed opinion off. There were witnesses that all testified that Zimmermans story was correct. The 911 call was doctored and the news station that ran it got tons of flak and the people involved were fired. Also Zimmerman walked up to Trayvon and asked if he had a problem. Trayvon ran away, and then the officer told Zimmerman not to pursue. Then Trayvon came running back and said "now you have a problem" and attacked him". Trayvon held him down slammed his head on the ground repeatedly and had him in a full mount. Then after all was said and done, Trayvon tried to take Zimmermans gun. I don't know about you but if someone is trying to take my gun away, I am pretty damn sure they are going to shoot me with it. This was all held up in a court of law, shown with facts and evidence, your biased little opinion means nothing and its completely wrong.JimB said:
Lets have a large black man attack you and try and steal your fire arm, and lets see what happens? Also he known for violence, a drug dealer, and was suspended from school for fighting, also he initiated the fight, after running away. Lets see what you do, are you gonna just let him shoot you?RoonMian said: