Tag: SJW

A SJW Hugo slate

JASON SANFORD IS CAMPAIGNING FOR HUGO AWARDS! I REPEAT: JASON SANFORD IS CAMPAIGNING FOR HUGO AWARDS! Call the Thought Police! Alert the Social Justice Media! Sound the Raciss Siren… oh, wait a minute… never mind, it’s all right, he’s got his SJW card.

Best Novels

  The Mirror Empire: Worldbreaker Saga 1 by Kameron Hurley. See my original review of the novel.
    
    The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu, translated by Ken Liu. This is why we need translated fiction! This novel, which spans recent Chinese history as it revolves around a strange case of alien contact is one of the best hard science fiction novels I’ve read in years. Can’t wait to read the next book in the trilogy.
    
    Defenders by Will McIntosh. Just when I thought I’d read every type of alien invasion and military SF story out there, along comes Will McIntosh with something new.
    
    Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor. Wow. That’s all I could say after reading this novel, which explores what happens when first contact happens in Lagos, Nigeria. I’ve always loved Nnedi Okorafor’s amazing ability to create true-life characters which both resonate with readers and stories and twist you into new directions — and Lagoon does this and far more in superb ways. Unfortunately, the novel is hard to find in the USA (I had to order a copy from the UK). The USA release is slated for later this year.
    
    Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer. If I could, I’d nominate the entire Southern Reach series as one complete work. See my original review of the series.

He’s got a woman (check), a Chinese man (check), a white man (tsk tsk), a black woman with an African name (check, check, check), and another white man (seriously? Bad SJW!) Alas, poor McRapey. Too white, and for the first time in his life, too male.

But where are the Native Americans? Where are the Hispanics? Where is the transgendered handicapable lesbian Baha’ist from Papua New Guinea? Why does Jason Sanford hate Mexicans and Indians and Belgians?

Anyhow, I now look forward to seeing all the Hugo voters who pointed and shrieked at Larry Correia treat Jason Sanford in precisely the same manner. Don’t you? In the meantime, you can play SJW bingo! See if you can find all five!

  • “explores this topic in a unique and interesting manner.”  
  • “An all-too-rare fictional look…”
  • “a subgenre which until recently limited itself in unacceptable ways.”
  • “opens our eyes to new realms of possibility and imagination.”
  • “beginning an amazing journey as an author…”

My favorite part is the way Sanford uses the word “amazing” four times. But remember, he’s a PROFESSIONAL writer, people. Don’t try this at home.

    Be the dragon

    At Alpha Game, I comment upon the importance of being the dragon, not the self-styled paladin and self-appointed dragon-slayer. But one part of the Loneliest Paladin’s twitterstorm was relevant here for its illustration of rabbitology:

    MikeBrendan @MikeBrendan
    Things I don’t get: why Ghaters would rally around Vox Day. Dude is the epitome of loser.

    MikeBrendan @MikeBrendan
    Not only did Vox get kicked out of SFWA for being a racist homophobic sexist dipshit, he took sixth place on a five person ballot.

    Note that insufficient popularity with a small and specific group is equated with being “the epitome of loser”… by someone with no friends and not much of a life. Success, in the rabbit’s world, is something that depends entirely upon the level of acceptance by the warren. Everything else is irrelevant.

    Rabbits don’t understand that wolves respect strength and loyalty, even when exhibited in causes of no interest to them. Rabbits fear strength and have no loyalty, so the concepts are alien to them. They genuinely can’t understand the concept of standing up for someone because that someone stood up for you, even if you don’t like him, respect him, or want anything to do with him. For all that they are herd animals, they are not team players; in their own way they are more ruthlessly self-serving than the most ideological self-sovereign libertarian.

    And speaking of rabbitology, see how the rabbits cry when their warrens are invaded and they learn they don’t possess the power they flaunted so foolishly:

    GamerGate set out to writes its own story in Wikipedia – and to spread the dirt about the women who were its targets. These efforts were blocked by established editors under established Wikipedia policy. In retaliation, GamerGate planned an operation to get rid of its opponents – the “Five Horsemen” active in preserving objectivity and in keeping scurrilous sexual innuendo out of the encyclopedia. As a side-game, GamerGate also launched efforts to promote the idea that “Cultural Marxism” is a conspiracy of some Jewish academics to control the media.

    The original GamerGate operation targeted the “five horsemen:” Ryulong, NorthBySouthBaranof, Tarc, TheRedPenOfDoom, and TaraInDC. All were sanctioned in the draft decision.

    For months, these Wikipedia pages have been an escalating scene of daily – indeed hourly – conflict.

    The Purge

    Yesterday, ArbCom announced its preliminary decision. A panel of fourteen arbitrators – at least 11 of whom are men – decided to give GamerGate everything they’d wished for. All of the Five Horsemen are sanctioned; most will be excluded not only from “Gamergate broadly construed” but from anything in Wikipedia touching on “gender or sexuality, broadly construed.”

    By my informal count, every feminist active in the area is to be sanctioned. This takes care of social justice warriors with a vengeance — not only do the GamerGaters get to rewrite their own page (and Zoe Quinn’s, Brianna Wu’s, Anita Sarkeesian’s, etc.); feminists are to be purged en bloc from the encyclopedia. Liberals are the new Scientologists as far as Arbcom is concerned.

    No sanctions at all were proposed against any of GamerGate’s warriors, save for a few disposable accounts created specifically for the purpose of being sanctioned. The administrator who wrote, regarding Zoe Quinn’s sexual history, that

        I know other other allegations exist but will not state what those on WP are because that would be a BLP violation at the current time.

    was not even mentioned. The many brand-new accounts who arrived in December with no Wiki experience, but possessing a curiously detailed knowledge of Wikipedia policy jargon, are unmentioned, save for the fact that the decision rests almost entirely on their proposals.

    The extensive evidence of off-site collusion, which Wikipedia considers so improper that evidence must not be discussed on wiki but rather submitted in confidence, appears to have been entirely ignored. (I submitted such evidence myself, but received no acknowledgment or thanks; I have been told that much additional evidence was submitted.)

    Notice how the upset rabbit appeals to “established editors and established policy” (better described as activist editors and self-imposed customs), despite the fact that the editors concerned were quite clearly VIOLATING Wikipedia policy, and doing so rather egregiously. What appears to have happened is that Wikipedia is finally beginning to act against the SJW thought police who make a practice of attempting to define the public narrative by exerting personal ownership over particular pages of interest.

    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.