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unpopularly-opinionated · 5 years ago

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This is going to be a bit of a long post so apologies, I’ll try to keep it brief and of course include a hider.

The TL;DR of it is: Some insane self-proclaimed SJW on Twitter made a ‘chart’ outlining how Men’s Rights and Gaming are responsible for neo-Nazis, and every website in existence is to be held responsible should anyone using their website ever commit a crime.

So, in essence, stupid people on Twitter.

To start off with, before we get onto the words, let’s discuss the Venn Diagram and how that’s immediately flawed:

Right off the bat, we have complete misrepresentations of the Men’s Rights Movement, and Gamer Culture. Men’s Rights has nothing inherently to do with Feminism, and it never has. While yes, it is typical that a Men’s Rights Activist might oppose Feminism, it’s only because Feminism has done plenty in the past to disenfranchise the movement, not the men, the movement. Very clear and important distinction. No, Feminism hasn’t “taken rights away from men”, and no one is claiming that they are, but it is also quite clearly not helping men either, despite openly claiming to be in favor of equality among the sexes and in fact they do more to inhibit the Men’s Rights Movement from trying to help men.

As for Gamer Culture, the definition here is only half-right and entirely disingenuous. It’s true that technically-speaking, men make up most gaming, but it’s still disingenuous to imply that it’s “overwhelmingly male”. We’re not talking about a 99:1 ratio here, not even a 75:25. It’s far closer to 50:50 than people seem to realize. Even being generous to this assertion, I would say 60:40 is significantly closer, albeit still too low compared to reality.

As for the claim that video games ‘objectify women’, this is a topic that has been thoroughly addressed numerous times by others, but the short and sweet response is: “women are objectified, but so are men”, and again the split isn’t as wide as you might think, however the focus might be fairly skewed which could be the problem. There are plenty of objectified men in games, but (at least in my experience) objectified women are given more of a spotlight, likely due to the fact that, for whatever reason, men AND women prefer to see women naked than they do men (don’t ask my gay ass why, I don’t know either).

What’s interesting here, is that they clearly outline a distinction between Pick-Up Artistry and Men’s Rights yet somehow fail to see that they’re separate and distinct. Pick-Up Artists aren’t interested in Men’s Rights, and neither are Incels, they just want their dick sucked, and they’ll perform whatever scumbaggery they think will accomplish that, so the definition for that is apt, but the implication that there is cross-over with Men’s Rights is laughable.

Is it possible there are Pick-Up Artists and/or Incels out there interested in Men’s Rights? Of course, but this diagram suggests that Men’s Rights is the cause of Incels, even though that literally does not make any sense unless you have a significantly warped understanding of what Men’s Rights is, which this author seems to have.

Then, of course, we have the misrepresentation of GamerGate. Honestly, that’s a can-o-worms I’m not looking to open right now because it’ll add another 10-15 paragraphs to this. There’s plenty of resources out there that are available for you to do the research yourself if you don’t know enough about it already. I suggest you start with @gamergate-news and work your way from there.

“Cool Girlism” is, admittedly, a new term to me but the definition of it is recognizable. It’s essentially saying any girl who happens to A) disagree with Feminism, B) is a gamer, C) is “red-pilled” or not immediately Far-Left, or D) All of the above, is considered a “cool girl” and is clearly just putting on an act so she can get some of that sweet gamer dick.

OR, in simpler terms, it’s an example of how misogynistic the author of this diagram is because she refuses to accept that any women can possibly disagree with their point of view and have a unique thought of her own. We’ve seen this all before, nothing new.

“Nu-Misogyny” is also a new term, apparently coined by the author as far as my research shows and is meant to be defined by the culmination of the entire graph. Frankly, even if we suspend disbelief and pretend these are all salient points, I don’t see how any of this is ‘new’ misogyny, except perhaps in reference to the method in which it’s received, that being the digital space (internet, online video games, etc.). As a completely personal gripe, I hate this fad of using made up language to replace old language. Just say new, not “nu” or “neo”, just new.

Great, now that we’ve covered that mess, moving on:

“Milo and Breitbart also used Gamergate to recruit nu-misogynists and gamers to white nationalism.”

While I won’t pretend Milo or Breitbart are bastions of integrity, the simple fact is that whatever they might’ve been using to “recruit” people (which is still a hilarious concept to consider) it wasn’t Gamergate. Never mind the fact that there’s little to no significant overlap between Gamergate and White Nationalists, there’s no overlap between Gamergate and Breitbart OR Milo. The only reason they are misconstrued as being a part of Gamergate is, perhaps, because they didn’t disparage the movement like every other media outlet did.

“As these communities grew more violently extreme, they were increasingly relegated to fringe platforms, notably 8chan.”

Now, at a surface level I don’t see anything inherently wrong with this statement, but allow me to extrapolate a bit:

Given the misconceptions of many groups throughout this post, I’m not inclined to believe they’re being genuine about these so called “extremely violent communities”.

If we were genuinely talking about white supremacist neo-Nazis actively rising up, then I wouldn’t care, but because outside of “the media says so, so it must be true”, there’s little to no evidence of this actually happening, I’m instead inclined to believe they’re referring to people genuinely critical of their world view. You know, the imaginary people harassing Anita Sarkeesian or Zoe Quinn; the people who are just pointing out how these people are wrong who are then vilified by them and their media peers.

What’s also interesting to note here is, again, if we suspend our disbelief, we see here she’s actively admitting that they aren’t doing anything to solve the problem either, something which later in the post she criticizes the chan boards for doing.

“On 4chan and 8chan, pro-terror nazis mingled with pro-terror nu-misogynists.”

Remember when I pointed out that her Venn diagram that was meant to define her coined term “nu-misogyny” didn’t define anything other than just regular old misogyny? Well apparently, it was supposed to define it as “violent” or “pro-terror”. Now, I’ve never been on 4chan, 8chan, or any chan board really, so I can’t comment on the validity of there being white supremacists, neo-Nazis, misogynists, etc. From what I’ve been told it wouldn’t really surprise me.

“Nu-misogyny (especially incel-inflected nu-misogyny) was already explicitly pro-violence and obsessed with evolutionary/racial pseudo-science, and they cross-pollinated more and more.”

I’m not too familiar with many ‘Incels’, but frankly other than right after the Joker movie released, I had never once heard exclaimed that they were “explicitly pro-violence”, let alone “obsessed with evolutionary/racial pseudo-science”. That last part doesn’t even make sense. What does “racial pseudo-science” have to do with wanting to get your dick sucked? Is it like “Yeah I had my chance to have sex, but the chick was Asian so I couldn’t do it. Whites only, ya know?” Whatever, I’m not about to defend Incels.

“And, that’s the (very) short version of the story of how you get a new generation of nazis marked by an unusually high level of hatred for women and advocacy for gynocide.”

In summary, video games and men’s rights will apparently mark the rise of Hitler 2.0.

Credit where credit is due, the sheer fact that she’s outlined this with a neat little diagram, and everything only helps to further the point that she has no idea what she’s talking about. Her chart alone never refers to an overlap between gaming and men’s rights with white supremacy.

At the absolute best, she’s made a point (albeit an easily disproven one) that gamers are sexist, but not once does this diagram point to a significant overlap, or any overlap at all, with white supremacy. All of this boils down to an argument akin to “Nazis drink water so water must be bad”, which hopefully for obvious reasons, you can understand why that logic doesn’t hold up.

“If we’d booted 8chan from the web earlier, if Reddit and 4chan had shut down extremist communities when they first started advocating violence against women, that cross-pollination might never have happened.”

Now we’ve entered the full authoritarian-brand delusion. Never mind the fact that social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are far far worse at this very thing she’s accusing the chan boards of, or that Reddit is quite obviously in favor of doing exactly this since they ban communities at the drop of a hat, what she’s asking for is quite literally impossible.

If not 4chan, then 8chan. If not 8chan, then Twitter. If not Twitter, then Facebook. If not Facebook, then Tumblr. If not Tumblr, then literally anywhere else, repeat ad nauseum forever. Removing their platform doesn’t prohibit them from speaking, it just prohibits them from speaking there, where we can see them, where we can mock them, where we can discredit their views. I don’t know about you, but I’d much rather be able to see and know people are talking about killing me than pushing them to some fringe site where they can do it without my knowledge.

Earlier, she pointed out that they pushed these people to the chan boards, thereby admitting to ‘solving the problem’ by simply making it someone else’s problem, and here she is now openly criticizing the chan boards for not dealing with this problem that they themselves created for them.

“That online nazi/gynocidaire population boom wouldn’t have occurred.”

Again, removing their platform doesn’t prohibit them from speaking. They simply would’ve organized elsewhere. You aren’t solving any problem by banning them from a website, you’re simply making it someone else’s problem, and then you blame whoever’s problem you just made it.

“But the platforms were greedy. And now, there’s blood on their hands.”

This is by far the most egregious part about this entire post. “We pushed the bad people off onto you and you didn’t immediately push them off onto someone else so that means you are liable for the blood they spill.” Never mind the overarching implication this borderline psychotic statement has. Apparently, every single website ever is to be held responsible should anyone on their site ever commit a crime. Holy fuck, the delusions from this woman.

Apologies if there are any grammar/spelling mistakes. I wrote this in a Word Document and then transferred it over because Tumblr is notoriously terrible when it comes to these longer posts.

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onceuponamirror · 7 years ago

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i was gonna let this rant die within the confines of a pm, but feel like i need to say this, actually

do y’all realize how much nerd and fandom culture created the political alt-right? because it unified these previously sparse group of terrible people under a common thread of misogynistic language and anger on sites like 4chan and reddit and yeah even tumblr?

for example #1: the social justice warrior

“social justice warrior”/ “SJW” as a derogatory term is something that went from being the tactic of online meninists nerds to something that not only filtered all the way up to mainstream politics, but literally now exists actively within the white house---a white house, which, as i type this, is currently trying to allow the department of justice to pursue action against colleges who have white people claiming poc/minorities “stole” their acceptance.

and that’s just one example. i mean jesus, we now have a supreme court seat that was supposed to be filled by obama; the ramifications of a new justice (who serve for life, remember) being the choice of a man helped put into power by online neo-nazis should be enough of a point

the lesson of 2016 is a simple one: the language and behavior in fandom spaces has led to a direct effect on political spaces

and also the laws being created and the entire state of the world, which is now biting its nails to see how trump will handle north korea. this shit is so serious

so when you, you yes you, throw around terms like “social justice warrior” or “politically correct” as derisive terms meant to discredit, you are talking like a fucking nazi. you’re legitimizing the social movement towards white supremacy.

i’m really not exaggerating, because this has already happened---language like this defined a presidential election.

for example #2: rage against the (twitter) machine

i see this tactic most brought up as a defensive reaction on the behalf of content creators/actors/writers getting bullied on twitter, but i think a lot of people don’t realize what they’re doing, honestly, when they criticize this kind of behavior using the terminology of the alt-right---calling people “crazy SJW’s”, when it’s used mockingly, it doesn’t just discredit the people who are bullying;

it also discredits the overall resistance movement against racists/anti-semities/islamaphobes/homophobes and systemic oppression because it normalizes the kind of language successfully intended as a smear campaign---against being a regular good person who cares about basic human rights for all

and obviously there are a lot of problems with the communication between fans and content creators/actors/writers, etc. it’s evolving and devolving all at once and it gets really ugly and often, the people who bear the brunt of that are completely undeserving---it is a huge discussion that has to be had within individual fandoms and at large, but not one that should be had using the lexicon that was created by neo-nazis.

i say all this not to call out individuals, bc honestly i see this across many spaces, but to just post a reminder about the ripple effect and the way language is incredibly powerful, especially in these huge, global online spaces

so just please, stop normalizing that kind of language that was used to funnel neo-nazi politics into the white house.

please stop using it. there are ways to talk about the problems of invasiveness and bullying within fandom that doesn’t fall into the trap that the neo-nazis currently running breitbart aka working in the white house have very carefully set up over time.

ok that’s it that’s my rant of the week, thank you for reading!!