WHITE GUY DEFENSE FORCE GO!

[magicmonkeybars]

I'm offended by this comic, it has hurt my feelings and I'm disappointed with its casual use of racism disguised as comedy.
I would like an apology from its creators.

 

[wearesoneutralthatithurts]

My problem isn't with a position, it's with an attitude. The WGDF quite obviously represent a small, but vocal, subset of largely white males who respond to any perceived threat to their cultural dominance with hyperbole and hostility. They also tend to interpret criticism of one sub group as criticism of an entire culture. In that respect, yes, you have proved my point.

Well I'd like to invite you to take this same idea and make a comics poking fun at Muslim terrorists or cheap Jewish people or maybe lazy blacks on welfare. That wouldn't be offensive in the least because you wouldn't be making fun of the entire culture just a small subset of Muslims that happen to be terrorists or a small subset of Jews that happen to be cheap or a small subset of blacks that happen to be lazy and on welfare. It's their problem if they take your criticism of one sub group as criticism of an entire culture after all. Right?

the small difference is that over the last 50+x Years the Jokes that you Want are there. And they are made by people with privilege, by people who NEVER will have to live with the consequences of their harmful stereotyping which sticks in the heads of people, adds to the cross-race effect and the existing inequality.

These "jokes" are made up to 9000-well, they are not jokes because they are not used that way. They are used to harm people who just demand equality and fairness and they are used without thinking which leads to the notion that "all" or "Most" X are Y..

Spoiler

In germany there is a new twitter hashtag about the small everyday racism and after few seconds, white butthurt people were there who were never in the situation of PoC but just knew better that there is no racism.

Stuff like that you are born in a country bot not seen as german because your parents are Turkish, and your are not white* that people say to you, day for day that you are soooo good in german (and imply that the "other" people of your group are bad. No, most dont imply, they mean it, like teachers who say "you are a good person, unlike the other of your group who sell drugs and are violent" or "you will never learn german(because you look turkish)-and well, that person who got addressed by his german-teacher writes now for big newspapers.. Or people who get searched just because of their colour, one young student of law 13 times in one month without any reasoon because he is black and the policemen thinks that black people are just more criminals

most media who write about muslims, write about terrorist. Not about the neighbour who gives lessons, not about the importan part which the small economy made by immigrants has in the country.Not about the peoples in the mosque, about nice people or just normal people, about the problems one PoC faces in a society which denied for 40 years that there are immigrants here and that the racism don't go away after the nazis were beaten.
rant

Spoiler

Attacks by immigrants are big in media, attacks ON immigrants only if the immigrant is killed. And the state know that there was a group of people killng immigrants but NEVER though that the perps could be nazis. 10 people dies and the police ONLY questioned relatives, asked about drugs and gambling and after the relatives begged them to believe that the victim never was criminal-the police never believed them. they though that these immigrants stick together and lie and that the victims HAD to be criminals because a german person never could be such barbaric (jes, this is something a policeman write..)
german children of immigrants arent seen as german

and one Politician who said "I dont have to respect someone who lives of welfare, hates our state, doenst care for the education of his kids and who produces little headscarf-girls all the time. This holds true for 70 percent of the Turkish and 90 percent of the Arab population in Berlin." (jes, he said produce. And he said that ~80% of all muslim immigrants do nothing, only fuck and produce kids, are worthless, dumb and hate the state
(why, i ask me if we have so nice politicians who say such nice stuff.. also he ignored that a Person with Turkish origins has often 30%lesser chance of a job, the children of poor parents here in germany stay usually dumb(white or not is not important, our school-system is just fucked up, if your parents are rich, you have luck, if not, well say hello to wellfare. And his idea was to cut welfare for this people. Well thats not necessary because if you don't take any job they give you you can/will become homless because they cut your money. Thats how social we are.^^ An there are not that many jobs here and if you have 30% lesser chances because every ass thinks like the racist a-hole above-that all turks and arabs are dumb and such-then you wont get a job and will get in serious problems. I knwo a low people who emigrated because they didnt get jobs -went to england or turkey and got jobs in instant.)and he implies that people who are immigrants dont respect germany. well, if you have to take up with such shit every day, beginning with school and your country denies that there are immigrants living there, then you respect for that country will hardly grow..

So there are a lot of negative Perceptions about Muslim terrorist which are applies on Muslims. I know people personally who got beaten and attacked, spit on, ignored, harassed because they wear hijab.(these assholes don't have balls enough to act against male muslim-they usually sadly attack women. Also the muslim-ness is better seen) The media-reports are in 80% negative, the "white west" is perceived as victims (although 70% of all victims of djihadi-terrorist are muslim..) and even AI says that there is a hell lot of racism and discrimination going on.

tell me in USA or in Germany, which white male gets discriminated because he is a white male? does someone not ge a job because he is white or has a shlong? (of you look at the numbers and see that white males a group are usually over-represented everywhere, in media, in the police, in the government(these are old too) in science and schools (unless the first school and kindergarten-there are usually more women)in free economy.. So tell me how a group which has the most % of jobs in high and low income, has lesser risk of age-poverty, stays in job after getting kids and makes less household chores(although telling that both are equal bladibla)? How does is work getting SYSTEMATICALLY (and thats the thing here, its not just about racism as person/individual, its about the system)discriminated against if one is in the group which is in majority almost everywhere relevant?

back to topic:

The Anti-Semitism has killed ~6 mio Jews here in Germany and is distributed due to Israelis position and policy towards Palestine people and one thing that was there and is now there is the Stereotype of the lazy jew. Its not used because we have seen what happens if enough people buy into harmful stereotypes MADE BY THE MAJORITY (Then white, german, cissexual nationalistic racists, and now?)


Most righwigng media who bitches against any kind of organized, state-help for poor people will use the "lazy-black-on-welfare" joke-but no joke about the institutionalized racism which makes it so much more harder for PoC to get jobs, a flat,a decent education, a living without harassment through police and racial profiling..

On the other hand most white men dont have that problem. If you steal or bomb, there wont be racial profiling for whites. And most terrorists attack in USA and Germany are by White terrorists. But no racial profiling, the state here ignored nazis or gives them money("v-mann-system") no one follows you in shops because there was one white gus that stole and now are all whites schrödingers-thief.
that wont happen.


so there IS a difference-most jokes you want are made, but not in the form of jokes but Assumptions and Bullshit in the media and in the internet. If you make a joke, you are not special ,you just chime in the choir of people who make these "jokes" and pretend that these stereotypes which you see a jokes are realistic and the truth and therefor society needs to be more right wing and has to be saved of muslims and gays and whatever.


but jokes about the white majority? unless that are stereotypical man-woman jokes, you wont find them until you look in the left anti-racists corner. and i hope this one is one of such corners. Because the normal media is not. The media-diversity dies out and with it the diversity of jokes

 

[SlashCo]

Personally, I "get" the comic and what it's trying to say. I don't find it funny, however, because it's very ham-handed and strawmannish.

First of all, who said that gamers can't identify with black people in a video game? Hmm, that must be why GTA San Andreas, The Walking Dead series, or hell, Diablo 2 were such flops that no-one heard of, right?

Secondly, oh look, it's time to make fun of white people again. What I find ironic is that the comic mocks someone saying that (hetero) white guys are the only remaining acceptable target to make fun of, then proceeds to prove it by doing exactly that.

What's next? Mocking fat guys and people who wear fedoras. Because anyone who isn't an ultra-leftist social justice warrior who deeply cares about feminism, minority rights and all the other popular causes du jour, must be a fat basement-dwelling fedora-wearing neckbeard, right guys? LOL, so funny and original!

Moving on - mocking charts and figures as if they're useless? This is coming close to "leave me alone with your facts and logic, all that matters is how I feel!!!" Tumblr-SJW territory.

And finally, "Zimmerman mode?" Really? Al Sharpton would be proud.

 

[Shadowstar38]

There's also no evidence to support this "friend" wasn't a connection for illegally obtaining prescription strength Codeine.
I mean, Martin was found with Skittles and a fruit drink, it's not like he had candy and soft drink that's two thirds of a narcotic cocktail which induces paranoia that Martin had been known to consume when he had bragged about it almost a year prior on his facebook chat.

I wouldn't care if he had a bag of backing soda and some zip lock bags. Point is, he was doing nothing illegal at the time. Painting Martian is a criminal is just a red harring to distract from the fact that Zimmerman could have prevented this whole thing.

Anyway, the proof thing was just some random bullshit to pour fuel on the fire. As you can tell by some of my responses, I'm not taking this all too seriously. Kind of astounding that this case is taking up so much of the discussion when there's so much else going on in the comic.

 

[Ickorus]

No, in the first-world you are not going to get discriminated against if you're a straight, white man.

I disagree, the funniest thing about discrimination is that it is indiscriminate; anyone, anywhere can discriminate against another person for any number of reasons.

 

[Mrsoupcup]

"lol look at them they're fat and wear fedoras and have WRONG opinions, let's make fun of them"

"but hey, it's totally not cool to judge someone based on their appearance. sexists"

When will this end?

 

[RJ 17]

Good god...IT'S STILL GOING! Granted this post doesn't help since I'm just adding to the post count, but seriously...I don't think I've ever seen a webcomic generate this kind of response. Then again...

Ugh. The hypocrisy in this thread is rather galling.

ATTENTION: Anyone who was offended by this comic and has ever expressed annoyance and/or displeasure at the discussion of sexism or racism in gaming is a massive hypocrite and needs to physically castrate themselves immediately to prevent your particular brand of stupidity from contaminating the gene pool.

If you fall into that category, i have but three words for you: "Deal With It"

Now, I'm not offended by the comic, but what if you're annoyed and/or displeased at all of the discussion of sexism and/or racism in gaming because the threads constantly clog up our forums and dissuade people from making and engaging in otherwise much more interesting and potentially amusing threads? Because the threads about sexism and/or racism in gaming always end up the same way, with the same people shouting the same arguments at each other and no one gets anywhere because we're a bunch of people on an internet forum and there's nothing we can do to actually impact the situation in the industry?

There's a good discussion to be had about potentially racist or sexist individuals making the decisions in the industry. I won't deny that. But the day it's actually had on the internet is the day people stop starting flame wars over My Little Pony, the day people stop smugly accusing rap or metal of "just being noise", the day people can acknowledge that Call of Duty is generally a solidly-built game and not literally the worst thing in the history of the human race (exaggeration). And I, for one, don't think that day will come in my lifetime.

This brings up a fantastic point, and this comic's comment section is a perfect example of what shrekfan is talking about. What with "the same people shouting the same arguments" over and over again. And shrek's right: I do groan every time I see a topic about genders/racism/sexism/anything that's "controversial" because I know 2 things are going to be true about it:

1: It's going to have a MASSIVE post count and I suspect that's really the only reason the topic was created in the first place.
2: It's going to have two herds of goats just bleating repeatedly at one another and, as shrekfan points out, nothing will ever actually get resolved because we're all just a bunch of random jackasses with a keyboard and a computer screen.

The values and beliefs that one has certainly aren't going to be changed because some faceless name on the internet was more than happy to tell them how wrong their values and beliefs are. But I suppose that's why they call these things "flame wars", because that's all it ever amounts to: "You're stupid because of x, y, and z!" "Oh yeah? Well you're a hypocrite because of Straw Man, False Equivalency, and other fallacies that I just learned about in Public Speaking 101!"

Just for the record though, shrekfan, CoD doesn't get hated on because of the way it's built. It is indeed a fantastically made FPS with good controls, good customization, and fun game modes. CoD gets hated on because of the stereotypical types of players that play CoD. By that I mean your cursing 13 year olds, your racial-slur spewing jackasses, your perfectionist "I dashboard-out if my KDR falls beneath 10 to 1" people. Basically the types of people that send death threats to the game developers because a patch made the reload time for their favorite gun go from 1.02 seconds to 1.07.

 

[ShakerSilver]

Is this supposed to be funny? Yes, I got the comic, but where's the joke? Is the joke that white people are racist? Because if it were, then that's an awful generalization. And even if the joke is about a vocal minority, the comics still mocks the use of charts and stats, and calls these people murderers.

Remember when we used to talk about video games? I don't. Seriously, almost all of the "hot topics" I hear about games now are about all the different "-isms" that make conversations about politics and agendas of the creators/critics than the actual game content.

Spoiler: Reminds me a lot of this conversation on /v/.

I'm actually saddened by the fact that 4chan, of all places, is the only place where I can talk about games without any of these topics being brought up.

Spoiler: They also seem to be having a good time editing the comic.

 

[Hover Hand Mode]

Congratulations. You've thoroughly rattled enough cages to earn my respect and caused me to join the forums. Congrats! Will be following your comic from now on.
I decided to share this comic on Facebook before heading to work yesterday. Once I got there, I started to worry. Why worry? Because I have friends who resemble the members of White Guy Defense Force! Thankfully, everyone's still talking to me and my roommate appreciated the comic as much as I did.
So I just noticed that Alpha is sporting a popped collar. Nice touch!

 

[shrekfan246]

Just for the record though, shrekfan, CoD doesn't get hated on because of the way it's built. It is indeed a fantastically made FPS with good controls, good customization, and fun game modes. CoD gets hated on because of the stereotypical types of players that play CoD. By that I mean your cursing 13 year olds, your racial-slut spewing jackasses, your perfectionist "I dashboard-out if my KDR falls beneath 10 to 1" people. Basically the types of people that send death threats to the game developers because a patch made the reload time for their favorite gun go from 1.02 seconds to 1.07.

It's a little bit of both.

The overreacting people are certainly a big part of it, but that doesn't really make the game itself terrible, as many people around here love to claim. It can be argued that a multi-player-centric game lives or dies on its community and as such the relative quality of the game can be judged on the quality of its community, but for some reason I don't get the impression that many of the CoD-haters are really considering it that deeply. Or at least, I never see the arguments get that type of actual backing; Usually it's just "CoD sucks because of all the idiotic kids playing it!!!" And I don't really approve of that kind of unsubstantiated claim, because years of playing World of Warcraft has taught me that no matter what game you're playing online, if you're going into something with a group of randoms, there's an 85% chance it's going to suck and you're going to be miserable. (And before somebody jumps on me over that, yes, I know "85% chance" is a made-up statistic and unsubstantiated claim. That's not the point.)

Of course, occasionally you also get the people who claim that CoD is terrible simply because it's a massive seller in the industry right now. I've tried to engage on this point, as well, as "Well, [Previously Single-Player Franchise] is adding multi-player!" isn't indicative of a developer trying to 'appeal to the CoD crowd' (especially if the franchise in question isn't even a shooter). I've tried to ask them to prove the impact Call of Duty has had on even the influx of military shooters; Medal of Honor is dead, Spec Ops only just became relevant after years of being around because it satirized Call of Duty, Battlefield is the only other direct competition to Call of Duty, and things like ArmA are too niche to really be considered as having the same effect on game releases. On the grand scale of things, that's a tiny number of games being released per year that are military shooters, regardless of how many copies they might move.

...

Er, I went off on a tangent. Sorry 'bout that.

Anyway, looks like this thread might finally be winding down. I wonder how proud Grey is feeling of his work right now?

 

[madwarper]

Point is, he was doing nothing illegal at the time.

I completely agree. However, neither was Zimmerman doing anything illegal when he saw Martin, grew suspicious, got out of his car and followed after him.

Painting Martian is a criminal is just a red harring to distract from the fact that Zimmerman could have prevented this whole thing.

First, simply saying this could have been prevented by Zimmerman is ignoring the vast, complex chain of events that lead to that event that night. There are several people that could have prevented this.

Second, portraying Martin as he was is not a red herring. His parents claiming that he was a sweet, innocent little cherub, that in no way could have started the physical altercation is, though not unexpected from parents, the red herring.

Anyway, the proof thing was just some random bullshit to pour fuel on the fire.

So, you admit to being a Posting inflammatory, extraneous or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotional response or otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion...

As you can tell by some of my responses, I'm not taking this all too seriously.

No, I couldn't. Poe's Law and whatnot.

And, I am a bit sad that this tragic incident can be treated so flippantly by people to serve no purpose other than a cheap laugh by trying to get others in trouble.

 

[Hover Hand Mode]

Is this supposed to be funny? Yes, I got the comic, but where's the joke? Is the joke that white people are racist? Because if it were, then that's an awful generalization. And even if the joke is about a vocal minority, the comics still mocks the use of charts and stats, and calls these people murderers.

Remember when we used to talk about video games? I don't. Seriously, almost all of the "hot topics" I hear about games now are about all the different "-isms" that make conversations about politics and agendas of the creators/critics than the actual game content.

Spoiler: Reminds me a lot of this conversation on /v/.

I'm actually saddened by the fact that 4chan, of all places, is the only place where I can talk about games without any of these topics being brought up.

Spoiler: They also seem to be having a good time editing the comic.

A lot of confusion about this comic tends to come from a lack of familiarity with certain men's movements on the internet. Personally, I've had enough run-ins with Men's Rights Activists and Pick-Up Artist types that the comic made perfect sense to me. If you haven't seen paragraphs of gibberish from an MRA type, then I envy you.

The comic deals more in racism than sexism, but I think the parallels are there regardless. I'm not too surprised that an individual who is racist would also have a bit of a sexist streak to them (Alpha jumping straight to hitting on the one woman in the room at the time).

 

[Superlordbasil]

Big old note to any would be reader of this comments thread...

Don't it will only annoy, upset, get your hating hat on, cause despair, make you part of the KKK or the black panthers at the same time (go figure), make you decry the fall of western civilization, hail the rise of the ubermensch, turn you gay and homophobic at the same time(go figure again), and cause butt(something)

you have been warned

 

[RJ 17]

The overreacting people are certainly a big part of it, but that doesn't really make the game itself terrible, as many people around here love to claim. It can be argued that a multi-player-centric game lives or dies on its community and as such the relative quality of the game can be judged on the quality of its community, but for some reason I don't get the impression that many of the CoD-haters are really considering it that deeply. Or at least, I never see the arguments get that type of actual backing; Usually it's just "CoD sucks because of all the idiotic kids playing it!!!" And I don't really approve of that kind of unsubstantiated claim, because years of playing World of Warcraft has taught me that no matter what game you're playing online, if you're going into something with a group of randoms, there's an 85% chance it's going to suck and you're going to be miserable. (And before somebody jumps on me over that, yes, I know "85% chance" is a made-up statistic and unsubstantiated claim. That's not the point.)

Well you're certainly right about that. I too served my time in WoW from the very start till the end of Burning Crusade when I decided enough was enough. I thoroughly enjoyed my time spent there and don't regret it.....much. Though I won't deny the negative impact it had on my social life.

However I hated going with PUGs for a dungeon. The chance of finding a quality group was slim to none, and you're right about how that translates into CoD. I played Modern Warfare, World at War, MW2, BLOPs, MW3, and just a bit of BLOPs2. In all my time with CoD I hated playing with anyone who wasn't in a party formed of people on my friends list. Why? Because I knew my friends were players that I could count on, while randoms (or Green Arrows, as I liked to call them :3) were almost entirely undependable. It really was pretty amazing how more often than not a formed party of friends would beat out a team of randoms almost every time. It got to the point that I started living by a motto: "If a Green Arrow is behind you, you're about to get shot in the back." Obviously the reason I call random teammates "Green Arrows" is because that's how they show up on the mini-map, so if you see a green arrow behind you, chances are they're NOT going to shoot the guy who just came around the corner behind you. The sad part is that once I actually started taking this joke-motto seriously, my skills actually improved noticeably. >.>

Of course, occasionally you also get the people who claim that CoD is terrible simply because it's a massive seller in the industry right now. I've tried to engage on this point, as well, as "Well, [Previously Single-Player Franchise] is adding multi-player!" isn't indicative of a developer trying to 'appeal to the CoD crowd' (especially if the franchise in question isn't even a shooter). I've tried to ask them to prove the impact Call of Duty has had on even the influx of military shooters; Medal of Honor is dead, Spec Ops only just became relevant after years of being around because it satirized Call of Duty, Battlefield is the only other direct competition to Call of Duty, and things like ArmA are too niche to really be considered as having the same effect on game releases. On the grand scale of things, that's a tiny number of games being released per year that are military shooters, regardless of how many copies they might move.

And I was going to touch on this in my previous post as well but it slipped my mind. A lot of people don't like it purely because of how popular it is. I think it's just a form of good ol' fashioned "Hipster Mentality". "Look at all these juvenile, immature pleebs playing their modern military shooter. PISHAH AND PISH! I'm far too refined to find such a mainstream game to be entertaining." As I mentioned the one thing you can't criticize CoD for is being poorly made. As Yahtzee pointed out in his Gears of War 2 review: "Sometimes it stands to remember that popular things are popular for a reason." Really the only reason I fell out of CoD was simply because my friends stopped playing it. And the only reason they stopped playing it was because they suddenly received the genetic enhancements necessary to join the PC Master Race.

EDIT:
As for how Grey is feeling about unleashing this monstrosity of a comment section upon the forum, I'm pretty sure this sums things up:

Spoiler: I've already posted this twice, might as well post it once more:

 

[ShakerSilver]

snip

Heh, that last panel is just golden.
Never change, /v/.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

Oh man, that was good- One of those comics that creates a comment thread possibly even funnier than the comic itself. Mocking all of the worst cliches that some people on the Escapist fulfill only to have them come and defend themselves in the same manner (really badly) is comedy gold. If you feel offended by this and come here to defend yourself with a load of pretentious tripe, you are the punchline. Good job.

Also, it's pretty admirable (although perhaps a touch misguided) to see Grey actually getting involved. Not many contributors do, but I can't say that I could be bothered to engage some of the people who are outraged about it.

 

[Abomination]

Why did YOU assume I was trying to paint black people as worse than white people?

Because that's what you did.

How is that not clear?

No, it is not what I did. It is how you read it or what you assumed I meant.

Again, why did you assume that's what I intended?