Tag: SJW

The importance of rejection

esr explains why it is vital to categorically reject the premises and principles of the SJW shriekers:

Whenever I see screaming, hate-filled behavior… the important part never turns out to be whatever principles the screamer claims to be advocating. Those are just window-dressing for the bullying, the dominance games, and the rage.

You cannot ameliorate the behavior of people like that by accepting their premises and arguing within them; they’ll just pocket your concessions and attack again, seeking increasingly abject submission. In one-on-one relationships this is called “emotional abuse”, and like abusers they are all about control of you while claiming to be about anything but.

Third-wave feminism, “social justice” and “anti-racism” are rotten with this. Some of the principles, considered in isolation, would be noble; but they don’t stay noble in the minds of a rage mob.

The good news is that, like emotional abusers, they only have the power over you that you allow them. Liberation begins with recognizing the abuse for what it is. It continues by entirely rejecting their attempts at manipulation. This means rejecting their terminology, their core concepts, their framing, and their attempts to jam you into a “victim” or “oppressor” identity that denies your lived experience.

The identity-jamming part maradydd clearly gets; the most eloquent sections of her writing are those in which she (rightly) rejects feminist attempts to jam her into a victim identity. But I don’t think she quite gets how thoroughly you have to reject the rest of the SJW pitch in order not to enable their abuse.

This is the challenge of #GamerGate and Blue SF and Hacker culture and the Androsphere, to say nothing of a myriad of other singular interest groups. We are opposed to precisely the same thing, precisely the same phenomenon, sometimes even the very same individuals, and yet, because we don’t share interests, we tend not to recognize that we share the same enemy. We have the numbers, and yet we fail to ally and support each other cross-interest because most gamers couldn’t care less about fiction and most fiction readers are not hard core gamers.

The Orwellian imperative

I was thinking about why the SJWs make such a mission of celebrating sexual aberration as normal and elevate the acceptance of those who are deluded about their sexual identity as secular saints as a moral imperative.

In addition to the way in which it reveals the intrinsic illogic of the SJW Left – on Alpha Game, I observed that the logical Left’s position would be that it was a tragedy Joshua had to kill himself rather than permitting someone to legally kill him – it occurs to me that their linguistic demands are another example of their Orwellian imperative.

By weakening the independence and strength of individuals’ minds and forcing them to live in a constant state of propaganda-induced fear, the Party is able to force its subjects to accept anything it decrees, even if it is entirely illogical—for instance, the Ministry of Peace is in charge of waging war, the Ministry of Love is in charge of political torture, and the Ministry of Truth is in charge of doctoring history books to reflect the Party’s ideology.

That the national slogan of Oceania is equally contradictory is an important testament to the power of the Party’s mass campaign of psychological control. In theory, the Party is able to maintain that “War Is Peace” because having a common enemy keeps the people of Oceania united. “Freedom Is Slavery” because, according to the Party, the man who is independent is doomed to fail. By the same token, “Slavery Is Freedom,” because the man subjected to the collective will is free from danger and want. “Ignorance Is Strength” because the inability of the people to recognize these contradictions cements the power of the authoritarian regime.

In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.

In other words, if you are willing to call a HE a SHE, if you are willing to address Joshua as Leelah, you are willing to pretend that XY is XX or XX is XY, you are signaling your intellectual slavishness and that you will be willing to declare that WAR is PEACE, FREEDOM is SLAVERY, and 2+2=5 upon demand.

Of course, to paraphrase one AG reader’s observation, if Joshua Alcorn had really been a woman, he would have taken 30 Advil in a failed suicide attempt.

Astroturfing 101

Rule No. 1: Post BEFORE screencapping:

A Spacedad appears! @SuperSpacedad
Yes Gamergate, it’s clearly other people making you look bad and not your own fault. Here’s your bottle and bonnet

Exposing Jihad @XposingJihad
@SuperSpacedad Wouldve been more effective you hit post before screencapping

Isn’t it fascinating how we’re still supposed to believe #GamerGate is all about harassing a few individuals despite the fact that no one has mentioned them in weeks? The SJWs are so desperate for evidence that they have to manufacture it themselves.

Remember, rabbits always lie. They have no sense of honor or self-respect.

UPDATE: Speaking of fascinating, we have a real rabbit here. Never heard of the guy before, so he must be blocking #GamerGate en masse while simultaneously trying to spoof us.

You are blocked from following @SuperSpacedad and viewing @SuperSpacedad’s Tweets. Learn more

Anti-game is anti-human

A fascinating article on the anti-GamerGate focus on narrative and how that anti-game perspective is intrinsically anti-human:

Life doesn’t have innate structure, even if you can awkwardly cram cylindrical tropes through square holes to try and illustrate relationships between things you experience and media you consume. But this gets even worse when examining other media. Films and novels are heavily rooted in narratives, because they must have a plot to carry them forward, excepting some very experimental films. Some songs carry a narrative, but you can’t have music that’s just someone talking. That might qualify as poetry, but even some poetry isn’t narrative, merely descriptive. You can have music without a narrative, and for centuries this was the most popular form of music. Likewise, games are another medium which can exist without any narrative at all. Just as music can be art merely for the composition, a game can be beautiful for its game mechanics.

A classic game that can qualify as art based on nothing but core mechanics.

One of the major problems with game criticism—the “subjective” kind that many detractors say is unacceptable—is that it is rooted in Narratology. Instead of focusing on the mechanics, and commenting on how well they work together, critics focus on the narrative and what the mechanics mean for the story, not what the story means for the mechanics, or even if the developer had the intention of making such a statement.

Personally, I love it when a game merges story and mechanics. In fact, I think the best way to tell a story is through mechanics, and not exposition or traditional narrative delivery. But that concept has been rejected by critics, opting to use Narratological deconstruction and insisting that this is the only way to evaluate media. When games naturally don’t pander to this benchmark, they receive failing marks. There’s a bigger reward for developers catering to this cabal of “journalists” than for catering to the actual audience. When the standards of the reviewer and their audience differ so greatly, the reviewer cannot be said to speak for their audience. Despite this flawed approach, proponents of New Historicism insist that all media must be evaluated this way. It conveniently allows them to cite Post-Structuralist reasoning to defend themselves from criticism of their methodology, since the reviewers subjective opinion and any conjecture they can express are consider to be at least as important as the media being judged, no matter how self-evident it is that the reviewer has missed the point.

Papers, Please tells a compelling, interactive story using its mechanics.

To a degree, it’s inevitable that this outlook supports “experimental” titles that don’t really fall into the bounds of “games.” It’s not a medium they’re capable of properly digesting, so content has to be restricted to something they can process. Funny, you never hear the opposition supporting non-narrative films, but they do support games that are top-heavy with narrative. It’s not actually about something “new” or “better.” It’s about something “different.” Labeling it “experimental” is the only way it can get a pass in the wrong industry. If held to the standards of a medium it actually belonged in–one with Narratological standards–it’d fall apart.

Ultimately what these ideas boil down to is an overarching philosophy called Anti-Humanism. This social theory comes as a reaction to Humanism, and the belief that it was too idealistic. While Humanism is all about free will, placing humanity and human actions at the center of life, and using rationality and reason alone to reach moral decisions, Anti-Humanism detaches humanity from inherent meanings (via Post-Structuralism) to “de-center” subjects and remove their agency. In other words, you yourself lack free will, since you’re a product of the world around you, and working towards an ideal self is futile. Interestingly, Nietzsche (credited as a “founder” of Existentialism, a philosophy that places great emphasis on human agency and the absurdity of life) often criticized humanism for being a form of “secular theism.” Anti-humanism finds itself equally religious in practice, but with a much more oppressive set of goals.

Gaming is the natural enemy of anti-humanism. When you play games, you yourself have personal agency. Only a player truly has free will inside of a game. You are playing by a ruleset, but you have choice within that ruleset, and likely have goals and motivations. These are informed by your situation and by the gameplay systems, but some of the highest-praised games have allowed you to set your own criterion for success, and provided you with a system open enough to facilitate that. Many strategy and 4X games are good examples of that. The belief that all humans are free and equal is a core tenet of Humanism, which Anti-Humanists reject.

The idea that the average individual has agency, of course, is anathema in the world of the Social Justice Warrior. Because then he would be responsible for his actions… and his failures.

Rhetorical discourse with an SJW

A dialogue on Twitter, prompted by my tweeting a paraphrase of a quote from Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead, specifically her explanation of how destroying men’s values is the first step in exerting control over them:

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Build up John Scalzi and you’ve destroyed SF. Hail Anita S. and you’ve destroyed game review. Glorify Lena Dunham and you’ve destroyed TV.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
How are any of these things destroyed by differing perspectives? Are they that fragile?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Yes, that difficult and fragile. Kill Man’s sense of values and you kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
If a man’s sense of values of killed by a single differing opinion, either his values or weak or the man who holds them is.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
You’re totally missing the point. It’s about the STANDARDS. Fuzz the definition of “inch” and no one knows how tall anything is.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
That sounds very rigid and a self-defeating philosophy if one is interested in expanding knowledge.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
You don’t seek to expand knowledge. You’re just a deceiver who seeks to tear down and DISQUALIFY. You’re not fooling anyone.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
You clutch your brittle twig and I’ll ride the waves lifting us higher.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Look at how many lies you’ve tried already. 1) false dichotomy, 2) “single opinion”, 3) “self-defeating”, 4) “expanding knowledge”

Vox Day ‏@voxday
And wrapping it all up with a false accusation and an appeal to progress. You are classic SJW scum.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
Do you love life?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Don’t try to retreat to false dialectic after that racist rhetorical performance. It doesn’t suit you.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
racist?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
Yes, obviously.

Sam Fredericks ‏@Wyldawen
How?

Vox Day ‏@voxday
First you’ll have to explain how completely redefining standards and awarding mediocrity is “a single differing opinion”.

You probably won’t be surprised to learn that Mr. Fredericks promptly disappeared after that. You can learn a lot from this dialogue, a lot that is useful for future engagements with SJWs and other rhetorically minded individuals.

First, notice how he begins with a question, and a dishonest, passive-aggressive question at that. That is how I immediately knew he was not an honest interlocutor, even though I answered his question in the same manner as if assuming he was. You always want to draw the SJW in deeper and force him to commit, even when you know, beyond any shadow of a reasonable doubt, what he is.

Second, he tries another passive-aggressive dig, this time in falsely characterizing the subject and setting up a false dichotomy. Remember, SJWs always attack; they don’t know how to defend their own positions due to the contradictory and oft indefensible nature of them. They HAVE to stay on the attack if they are going to come out on top and they know it.

Third, after I point out how he has failed to understand the point, he doesn’t back off, but immediately switches to another attack, this time one that involves him claiming the philosophically superior position. What he wants is for me to defend myself, instead I point out, for the first time, that he is lying. Notice how he doesn’t even defend himself against his lack of interest in “expanding knowledge”, which is a non sequitur anyhow, but doubles-down, this time implicitly appealing to a nebulous, yet inevitable progress that is superior to the “brittle twig” of having traditional standards.

Observe that at no point has he made any attempt to actually make a coherent, rational case. It’s all pure rhetoric, all meant to put him on a higher plane that permits him to pronounce judgment on me.

After I openly call him out, he suddenly retreats, realizing that I am aware of his game. He tries another approach, this one prosecutorial, despite it being a non sequitur even more egregious than the first. Then, I drop the r-bomb on him. Notice that he can’t ignore this one. He doesn’t mind being called a liar, he doesn’t mind being called out as SJW scum, he doesn’t even mind it being pointed out that his argument is incoherent rhetoric, but he can’t ignore the r-word. It’s magic, you see. Magic rhetoric.

Suddenly, for the first time, he needs to ask questions and have things defined. And that’s when I kick him in the teeth, pointing out that he’ll have to start defining all of his many rhetorical claims before I define my single rhetorical claim. There was no need for me to define any of the other assertions I made, because they are all coherent and explicable. But the racist charge makes no sense, which tells him that I not only recognize the game he is playing, but understand it and can play it better than him.

Which is why he throws in the towel and vanishes. After which, Aquila Aquilonis ‏comments in his stead: And that is how a Native American takes a scalp on Twitter. #DreadIlk

#GamerGate crushed Gawker

Nero reports on the costs to Gawker of attacking #GamerGate:

The cost to Gawker Media of its ridicule and viciousness toward video gamers was “seven figures” in lost advertising revenue, according to the company’s head of advertising, Andrew Gorenstein. In addition, founder Nick Denton has stepped down as president and editorial director Joel Johnson has been removed from his post and will probably leave the company, reports Capital New York….

And now here is a chance to kick the SJW while he’s down. An Ilk suggests action:
A few of us were inspired by that stupid Change.org petition that got GTA5 banned to try to use the same tactic against Gawker’s biggest revenue sources. I figure it may be especially effective to kick them when they’re already reeling from the previous damage we’ve done, while Hulk Hogan’s suit and their insurance company threaten to bleed them further. The petition is here: Get Google and Amazon to stop advertising on Gawker Media.

We’d
like to spread this around and get the signature count up before
posting it in the usual GamerGate avenues (ie our Twitter accounts,
8chan, KotakuInAction), so that anti-GamerGate won’t know it’s happening,
and won’t realize that it’s coming from us or be able to respond to it until it’s too late for them to do anything about it.

They’re down. Kick them hard and keep them there.

Hunt the trolls

Or the trolls will hunt you:

“I wanted to work towards a tech industry that exhibited true tolerance of everyone and allowed free expression, but Shanley and people like her have made it impossible,” Dickinson says. “The people in the tech industry who actually contribute to innovation need to realize that if they don’t fight back against the Shanleys of the industry, they’ll be allowing people like her to kill the goose who lays the golden eggs.

“[Former Mozilla CEO, forced out of his job for his objection to gay marriage] Brendan Eich is the canonical example. If they can force him out they can force anyone out, no matter their technological contributions.”

There are problems not only with Shanley Kane’s brand of feminism, which is sociopathic and divisive in the extreme, but with her approach to argument, too. It’s not just that she doesn’t like men discussing women’s issues. She doesn’t even like other women discussing them, complaining when she is not treated as the de facto authority on women in the technology industry, despite her loathsome treatment of everyone around her.

Another good article from Nero. Of course, it is pretty easy to deal with SJWs. You simply have to refuse to give them any ground. Don’t accept their assumptions, don’t allow them their assertions for the sake of argument, don’t accept their appeals to fairness or equality, and above all, don’t give them the inch that permits them to take the mile.

No matter how much they hate you, they will soon go in search of easier, weaker prey. Look at how every single SJW who used to attack me regularly has fallen almost entirely silent where I am concerned, despite there being considerably more people who read me now.

Something is wrong with these people

VERY wrong. PZ celebrates the decision of a publisher to stop marketing books to boys, as are his few remaining readers:

  • Holy crap. Somebody did the right thing for a change. I am blown away.
  • What do I think Lego should do? I think they should make half of all
    their future minifigs women. Construction set? Half the construction
    workers are women. Airplane set? Make one of the pilots a woman and one
    of the flight attendants a man. Police set? Not just a token woman, half
    women. Half the crooks, half the cops, half the bystanders. How hard is
    that?
  • Best news I’ve read all week.
  • This was enough to draw tears from me today.
  • My hubby the engineer bought electronics kits for our kids, and it was the oldest daughter who loved them. She happily joined him on any science project while her siblings ran off to do other things. She’s 37 now, and holds degrees in engineering, computational neuroscience and neurobiology. She’s been working for the NSF on a project to interest more women and minorities in STEM.

That last comment is my favorite. She has three degrees, but instead of actually doing any science, engineering, or biology, she’s using them to work in marketing. And what do you bet she hasn’t given her parents any grandchildren?

SJWs are much worse than useless. They are active participants in the ongoing implosion of civilization.

Sic semper cæcis

If you don’t feel even the smallest touch of schadenfreude about this man’s alleged murder, you’re either a saint or a self-deluded SJW:

David Ruenzel knew, better than most, about the white privilege that killed him. As a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center, one of his favorite topics was rooting out racism. And how white racism is permanent. White racism is everywhere. And white racism explains everything.

This mantra of the Critical Race Theory and the Southern Poverty Law Center applied to all white people because, even if they were not personally cracking the whips, or breaking the skulls, white people benefited from a racist system that did all that — and a lot more.

Ruenzel was writing about white privilege for the Southern Poverty Law Center as far back as 1997 — long before it became the rage at college campuses, newsrooms, churches, high schools and even grade schools.

By the time of his death, Ruenzel had accumulated many of the trappings of the white privilege he exposed: The job. The home. The intact family. And most importantly in his case, white privilege endowed Ruenzel with an expectation of safety in the Oakland neighborhood where last week two black people are suspected of killing him.

One would like to imagine that the progressive white equalitarians would wake up before they get themselves, and large quantities of other people, killed, but the lesson of David Ruenzel informs us that we shouldn’t count on it. It’s rather like the aid worker who was raped in Haiti; not even a callous denial of her appeal to racial brotherhood and subsequent rape was enough to convince her that black skin does not render one morally unaccountable.

Listening to the equalitarians and taking them seriously is a very good way to get yourself beaten, raped, or killed. Because eventually, objective reality asserts itself, and it asserts itself all the more cruelly to those who willfully pay it no heed.

Speaking of cruelty, granted, it may be the artist in me, but I rather like to think that before he was gunned down, David Ruenzel explained to his killers, a little indignantly, that he was a writer for the Southern Poverty Law Center and that what they needed to understand that he was on their side. Of course, what he didn’t understand, and now will never have the chance to understand, is that it doesn’t matter.

Ironically, the only way David Ruenzel’s death will have any meaning at all is if people reject his foolish philosophy as a result of it.

SJW review of games

It seems to me that just as we have a useful metric for dividing Blue SF/F from Pink SF/F, it would be helpful to have one that allowed people to summarize, in a single number, just how SJW a game is. Here is an initial pass at a points list, with 0 equaling not at all SJW and 10 indicating full SJW.

+1 has homosexual or bisexual character
+1 per token Black/Hispanic/Asian
+1 has Magic Negro and/or Saint Gay
+1 contains left-wing political message
+1 core plot concerns left-wing political message
+1 protagonist or sidekick are kickass waifu
+1 female developer mentioned in marketing and PR (see: J. Raymond, Z. Quinn)
+1 takes shots at Christianity or traditional Western morality

Any ideas for improvement? I was considering “+1 produced by Bioware”, but that seemed too obvious and redundant.nt