Zero Punctuation: Papers, Please and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons

[J_Russell]

Poor Yahtzee, I really enjoyed his videos, now the legions of tumblr are descending on him, he wont survive this.

 

[Carnagath]

What the hell is going on in this comment section?

It started as comedy. It then got promoted to comedy gold when the Escapist removed the thumbnail for the video. I believe that it still has the potential to become even better.

 

[EvilRoy]

What the hell is going on in this comment section?

It started as comedy. It then got promoted to comedy gold when the Escapist removed the thumbnail for the video. I believe that it still has the potential to become even better.

Thumbnail on the main page still shows for me.

Poor Yahtzee, I really enjoyed his videos, now the legions of tumblr are descending on him, he wont survive this.

Legions nothing dude, there are like three maybe four people who made accounts today complaining about this. Most of what's going on in this thread is the same crap the escapist does to itself every other day.

 

[JimB]

I mean, if you suck a dick, you are obviously aroused by that meant part of the body.

The ability to bob one's head up and down is not proof of arousal.

One person flat out admitted that he doesn't mind jokes about the Holocaust because he isn't Jewish but he does mind the trans jokes. He's apparently totally unaware or uncaring that this just might make him look like a hypocrite.

I do not see anything hypocritical in the statement "I am offended by things that hurt my feelings, not by things that hurt another person's feelings." It's selfish, sure (not necessarily in a bad way, either), but it is not inherently hypocritical.

 

[chinangel]

allow me to kill the trans joke.

A fantasy of a girl with a penis is actually a very heterosexual fantasy. Hey I didn't write this stuff :/

 

[wAriot]

I mean, if you suck a dick, you are obviously aroused by that meant part of the body.

The ability to bob one's head up and down is not proof of arousal.

What the fuck am I reading here.
Seriously.

 

[Reeve]

OT: Papers, Please looks great. I think it has one of the more sophisticated ways of implementing moral dilemmas than most games that try their hand at it. e.g. Bioshock. Jim Sterling sort of did a let's play of it:

 

[lylemcd]

The thing is, Yahtzee is saying that anyone who would have sex with a pre-op transgender person would be gay, which implies that any pre-op or non-op people cannot be considered in any way to be their desired gender. Now, the thing with the definition of gay and straight is that they are not based on genitalia, instead being based on gender. As strange as it may sound, being attracted to penis does not make you gay. Being attracted to people of the same gender (regardless of their genitals) does. This can be seen in that MtF transsexual porn is exclusively consumed by straight men (Details on FtM porn is hard to find and its existence is often debated). Gay men (such as myself) are not attracted to women, regardless of their genitalia, and MtF transgender individuals are not considered attractive to gay men due to them being distinctly female.

Actually, Yahtzee is not 'saying' anything unless you can show where in the review he explicitly stated what's in your first sentence. In that you can't it's clear that YOU are overreacting to something/inferring meaning that is clearly of personal interest to you and putting words into his mouth and losing your mind over a joke on the Internets by a man known to be offensive for a living.

You're taking a throway joke and simply projecting your own personal issues deeply into it as are the others who are basically saying "Offensive humor is fantastic UNLESS it happens to offend me personally" These are people justifying a Nazi joke but saying "Sorry, a joke at the expense of the tran community isn't ok." Which, well. Sheesh.

Get over yourselves. A video game forum isn't the place for you to have your own political soapbox about this issue.

Try Fetlife.

 

[JimB]

It's not hypocritical to be offended, but when you've listened to someone make Holocaust jokes without complaining then suddenly start complaining when they make jokes about you...well that's when it gets a tad hypocritical.

Again, though, that's just selfishness. I generally don't complain about problems unless they affect me or at least someone I care about, because I care about myself and those people. I don't see any reason to complain on behalf of someone I don't care about; and if I did start complaining on their behalf, people would be throwing out "white knight! white knight!" so fast I'd probably get a concussion from the impact. What I'm saying is, it's not hypocritical until it becomes self-contradictory, and I don't see any self-contradiction in "I care about transsexual people, not Jews who died three and a half generations ago." It's a bit cold-blooded, maybe, but it's not a contradiction.

I mean, if you suck a dick, you are obviously aroused by that meant part of the body.

The ability to bob one's head up and down is not proof of arousal.

What the fuck am I reading here.
Seriously.

I'd love to help you out with that, but you haven't given me enough information to isolate your complaint to address it. If you actually care and weren't just being snarky and dismissive, then please feel free to ask again, but with more detail so I actually have something to respond to.

 

[JimB]

Almost every argument you could give for why trans jokes are offensive you can give for Jew jokes as well.

Yep, but until someone says, "Making jokes about transsexuals is as bad as making jokes about Jews," there's no hypocrisy involved.

It's really similar in my view to "I can dish it out but I can't take it."

Did the person you were originally talking to ever actually dish anything out, such as by making a Jew joke?

 

[gjkbgt]

So yes, the game does in fact present a stark picture of the banality of evil.

Evil...
there's a house on fire. Your dad is trapped inside, so is a the only man in the world who knows the cure for cancer.
You only have time to save one.
saving your dad isn't the evil option.

The point was to show who meaningless terms like good and evil are in the real world.

 

[Warachia]

something

No we don't NEED to debate this.
we can, not. And we shouldn't be debating something that is we have no need nor ability to talk about

as for sex acts without attraction
Money, curiosity, maybe part of a threesome.
Most likely being you are a homeless desperate junky and someone offers you money to suck there dick.

If you do not want to debate this, then don't reply, or try to find a middle ground.

So you are ignoring the fact that in the video the person very clearly did it because they wanted to? Did they say they were doing it for money or curiosity, or as part of a threesome? No they didn't.

Personal attacks are far more inappropriate than any comment Yahtzee made in his video, if you want to be taken seriously despite horrific grammar then please don't use them.

as i said man is also a label.
if we're talking about the same guy. it's not the "gay" label he disputes, it's the "man" label
cause there partner is not a "man" he's not "gay" he's not attracted to "men"
I can though stuff like this at you all indefinitely so don't try to agree with me on this.

I the interest of that i'm going to stop debating. let me know if i convinced you to stop too.

Yes, man is a label, there is a man, sucking off a man, despite what that second man thinks himself to be he is still genetically a man, and the entire reason he is getting sucked off is because he is genetically a man, therefore, the first person is gay, this is a little more of a grey area where you are free to have your own opinions on this, I already had a similar (much nicer) debate with another person in which they believed the first person to be straight because the second did not think of himself as a man, and they are free to do so, but since I view it alone on physical gender (as does the rest of society) the first person (to everyone outside the LGBT community) is gay.

 

[Warachia]

So yes, the game does in fact present a stark picture of the banality of evil.

Evil...
there's a house on fire. Your dad is trapped inside, so is a the only man in the world who knows the cure for cancer.
You only have time to save one.
saving your dad isn't the evil option.

The point was to show who meaningless terms like good and evil are in the real world.

I think you missed the point he was making about the game, in the game you can support terrorist groups, because they pay you well, and you need that to feed your family (who can leave due to that money for a better country), though the main country becomes worse off as a result, that's the banality of evil, not just some "good or better" choice.

They could have dropped the issue and moved on, the reason I didn't like that was not only were they were deliberately being assholes at that point, they were also beating a dead horse.

Are we talking about the second comic or the merchandise now?

They could have dropped it at any time, they could have chosen not to make the response, if they did people would have moved on and eventually forgotten about it, they could have chosen not to make the merchandise, people would have seen the response as a bad way to reply, and moved on, when they started merchandising is when they were beating a dead horse, bringing an issue back again and again and again will never make it better.

I said it didn't help, and for emphasis they should've known it wasn't going to help. It was basically a big middle finger to the people complaining about it, nothing more. All I said was I can totally understand them doing it, not because it would look like a good idea, but I could see the appeal of venting like that.

I get it too, I certainly don't like it, which is what I was trying to get across.

 

[JimB]

Well he's saying they're worse by tolerating one and not the other.

No, he's saying he cares about one but not the other. Like, let's take the ever-popular Holocaust example. It's probably the worst thing I can think of, but I don't really care about it. At least half of the people who were ever interred in a concentration camp would have died before my birth, and I never would have met the other half anyway, so it doesn't affect me enough for me to really care about it. If I ever meet, I don't know, the grandchild of a survivor who was affected by his ancestor's suffering, then I will have a basis to care, but until then my distaste is entirely intellectual.

The second some person with a mental illness comes along and starts using his diagnosis as a shield against criticism, though, that I will care about. It's not even close to being in the same league as the evil of the Holocaust, but it will piss me off infinitely more because that hypothetical fuckwit is dragging me down with him. Fuck him and the horse he rode in on.

 

[Caiphus]

Almost every argument you could give for why trans jokes are offensive you can give for Jew jokes as well.

Yep, but until someone says, "Making jokes about transsexuals is as bad as making jokes about Jews," there's no hypocrisy involved.

It's really similar in my view to "I can dish it out but I can't take it."

Did the person you were originally talking to ever actually dish anything out, such as by making a Jew joke?

Eh, not to get super involved in the discussion. If it isn't hypocrisy, it certainly smells like it. Hypocrisy is a false claim or pretense that one possesses certain positive characteristics.

And in this case:


You shouldn't make jokes about transsexuals.


Why?

Because you shouldn't make jokes that are likely to offend people, especially when they do not deserve it. (Making a pretense of possessing a sense of empathy).


What about Holocaust jokes?

I'm fine with those; I'm not Jewish.


Now, I don't know how many people actually took that position in this thread. I only saw one. So I'm not passing judgement on *everybody* who got offended by the transsexual joke. Now, I'm also not going to pass judgement on the quality of the joke that Yahtzee made. Clearly people are offended. Sometimes that happens. And it's a shame.

I used to be of the opinion that people shouldn't be offended by jokes until an American comedy show poked direct fun at a man, whose family I knew, after he was killed by a shark:

http://www.stuff.co.nz/entertainment/tv/8419821/Shark-death-mocked-in-US-comedy
And yeah, I got pretty pissed off at that.



Edit for clarification

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

It's hurtful and it needs to be taken down.

I'll do you the service of assuming you are here under the best of intentions, and not question whether you are a troll.
I won't attack you for your name.

But I am going to tell you to grow up.

Now let me tell you what I know and understand about the trans community.
I know you have, do, and will suffer ignorance and prejudice against yourselves and your loved ones.
I understand that to be so fundamentally at odds with your perception of yourself and what you have to live with is an incredible burden, that I as a sexually secure man cannot hope to grasp.
I understand that you face persecution not only from the sexually normative heterosexual "norm" but homosexual groups as well.

I also understand that being trans does not make you special

What you need you understand is that, while you're busy claiming you aren't any different from any other group of people, you really AREN'T different from any other people. You have no special class granting you immunity from ridicule. Is it offensive? hurtful even? of course. but that's the whole point.

Let's look at a black joke. In fact, let's look at one of YAHTZEE's black jokes. "Maybe if the world was a little less prejudiced and a little more accepting, people might see that we all have the potential for much more, and then we could all work together to build a better world for everyone. Not that they'd know anything about WORK, the lazy nig-THEMESONGTIME" That joke is INCREDIBLY offensive. It belittles EVERY person with "black" skin. So many black people stand proud of their heritage and culture, and it is a major facet of their identity (I am not just a person, I am a BLACK person), and that joke indiscriminately reduces those people to "lazy murderous thieves" (through context of the review). But did a flood of black users (of which this site has many, believe it or not) come in demanding the video be removed? No. How is your sexual identity more important than that of an entire race of people?

And look, transexuality is not nearly as persecuted as you want to believe. Consider how fashionable it is to insist that you identify as the opposite gender even though you've never had a disassociative thought about gender in your life (which is, of course, not good for your CAUSE, but its acceptance nonetheless). It's become so prevalent that words like cisgender have been been created and thrown around so much that it causes me severe annoyance. You are accepted here. you are just another one of the group.

We don't care who you fuck. We don't care what you have in your pants. All we care about is that you come in, share a laugh, and don't try to ruin everyone else's good time.

So grow up, and get over it. It sucks that the joke offended you. We're sorry it wasn't a fun episode because of that.
But stop trying to find enemies in groups that aren't out to get you

EDIT: I don't mean to say you shouldn't be offended. That's fair. But stop complaining about it and trying to claim that your offense is any more legitimate than anyone else's

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Poor Yahtzee, I really enjoyed his videos, now the legions of tumblr are descending on him, he wont survive this.

bullshit he wont, he'll have fodder for an extra article

 

[JimB]

Because you shouldn't make jokes that are likely to offend people, especially when they do not deserve it (making a pretense of possessing a sense of empathy).

If that's his reasoning, then sure, that's hypocritical. "Quit saying things that piss me off" isn't, though, and that's about as far as I am aware of the conversation going.

 

[tomoyo]

Transgirl, just starting her transition, coming here to weigh in. I've been watching Yahtzee for years and he has made fun of just about everyone. I've found it hilarious. This is just continuing his routine, and I found it funny as well. People willing to complain about one offensive comment to a group but not the 99% of others he makes is a little selfish. If generalizing, using stereotypes, and making off the cuff derogatory remarks about one group really hurts you then it should be the same to all groups. It's just comedy, and if you think everything in life needs 10 foot signs reading "Trigger Warning" on them because they might offend people who wear yellow shirts or people with large noses then you want a sad reality. I really hope he makes a video making fun of all the crusaders who came to be mad and demand censorship.

 

[Caiphus]

Because you shouldn't make jokes that are likely to offend people, especially when they do not deserve it (making a pretense of possessing a sense of empathy).

If that's his reasoning, then sure, that's hypocritical. "Quit saying things that piss me off" isn't, though, and that's about as far as I am aware of the conversation going.

Fair enough. Like I said, there was only one person in the thread I've seen that made any kind of argument like my example.

Anyway, it's probably not worth getting worked up about other people getting worked up . I just wanted to wave my opinion around.


But you're absolutely right. If there is no pretense of empathy, in this case: "I don't care about other people, just don't say things that offend me", then there's no hypocrisy.