Idiot of the day 2014: Your one stop topic for everything dumb.

[metroid composite]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpDAAZM4bNU

I...what?

Has this guy never met anyone over the age of 70?

[Meeplelard]

As I said in chat, that qualifies as "Idiot of the Century."   How you want to define century here is up to you, it really doesn't matter.

[NotMiki]

:O

[SnowFire]

Not to be a killjoy, but he's obviously mentally ill, which is a little different than being an idiot.  It's no different than the likes of the Time Cube guy, he's likely schizophrenic.

[Cotigo]

aint u herd we dont need to sympathize with people with disabilities when they are saying really crazy shit they r barely people at that point /s

You have a point, though. That boy ain't right, and by that I mean he probably has a crippling mental illness. I mainly posted this because my initial reaction shut down all thought except for "goddamn that's dumb... somebody else has got to see this"

[Niji]

Not to be a killjoy, but he's obviously mentally ill, which is a little different than being an idiot.  It's no different than the likes of the Time Cube guy, he's likely schizophrenic.

Did you know "Idiot" a long time ago was used to describe the mentally ill or regressed ("Village Idiot").

Both definitions seem apt for that fellow. And speaking from experience as someone who went through a host of mental illness, it's no excuse to be an idiot!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Mentally ill people have the all the best YouTube channels.

[The Duck]

GamerGate

[Grefter]

Why are you teaching me terms for terrible things.

Had to google, found Forbes article, regret.

[The Duck]

It's so fucking asinine.

[Grefter]

I look forward to the day we bust Gatewalker doing something fucking evil like not checking the mail one day so we can have GateGate.

[The Duck]

On the use of -gate to denote scandals:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vB9JgxhXW5w

[Fenrir]

The reactions to Anita Sarkeesian's Feminist Frequency videos were very much of an eye-opener to me about just how terrible gamers are, honestly. (The last one was pretty good by the way!)


There are the obviously terrible misogynistic "GO BACK IN THE KITCHEN AND MAKE ME A SANDWHICH WOMAN" assholes who make rape/death threats for some totally innocent videos that threaten their worthless identities

But there are a fuckton of guys who see themselves as neutral and objective, but go through every dumb strawman argument in the world to prove she's totally wrong. They can honestly say shit like "But she's not a REAL gamer" or "What about how men are treated terribly in videogames" or "She just showed one particularly bad example, but the whole game isn't like that", with a straight face.

[Dark Holy Elf]

Don't forget my favourite, "I think she is using the money she collected via Kickstarter in ways I consider inefficient, therefore everything she says is invalid". (Not that any of the people saying this donated any of said money, of course.)

Yeah it's really awful.

[The Duck]

Another weird line of thinking is from people who claim to be angry and up in arms about "the integrity of games journalism," a phrase I had literally never seen before this shit happened.

[Fenrir]

Don't forget my favourite, "I think she is using the money she collected via Kickstarter in ways I consider inefficient, therefore everything she says is invalid". (Not that any of the people saying this donated any of said money, of course.)

Yeah it's really awful.

I've seen one guy say that the money could have been spent on getting female developers to work on games instead (because money works that way?)

Another weird line of thinking is from people who claim to be angry and up in arms about "the integrity of games journalism," a phrase I had literally never seen before this shit happened.

That happened before. From the top of my head, there's DoritosGate, and the Gamespot guy who got fired for writing a review that trashed Kane and Lynch 2.
(Women are still treated very differently than men in this sort of thing, mind)

[Grefter]

I think he means as in, what integrity in gaming journalism are they talking about?  It has been up shit creek since forever.

[metroid composite]

Don't forget my favourite, "I think she is using the money she collected via Kickstarter in ways I consider inefficient, therefore everything she says is invalid". (Not that any of the people saying this donated any of said money, of course.)

Yeah it's really awful.

I've seen one guy say that the money could have been spent on getting female developers to work on games instead (because money works that way?)

Oh ok, so you could take all that money and hire me for approximately one year.  That'll change the industry!

[Anthony Edward Stark]

Anyone who bases their identity on the fact that they like to play video games rather than, I don't know, anything that is an actual accomplishment, is probably going to be shitty.  This also goes for a bunch of other subgroups where ones identity is based on the products they consume and nothing else.

[Excal]

Eh, it's not so terrible for someone to base a part of their self image off of an activity that they actively get enjoyment out of.  The problem is when it's the sole source of identity they have, or where they have a compulsive need to have everyone use the lable in the exact same way they do.

[Anthony Edward Stark]

If it's the primary thing you identify as, you probably don't have much going on for you now or in the future and are highly prone to being shitty. It's the difference between putting "craft beers" on a list of your interests and leading off an overview of your life with "I drink a lot of beer."

[metroid composite]

Well...my life pretty much revolves around videogames.

I play them.  I make them for work.  I watch other people play them.  I just paid $90 for a Team Acer shirt.  I'm an admin of a videogame website.

Am I a shitty person?

[Grefter]

Do you singularly label yourself as a "gamer" though?  That is really the key here.

You describe yourself as a consumer, a developer, a spectator and a community figure in things surrounding Video games.  Those aren't the only things you have going on in your life.  They aren't even the only community you are a member of.

I definitely think the title of "gamer" as in self identifying as as someone that plays video games and is an active part of a larger community that enjoys playing them is being conflated with a smaller subset of the community that is an extreme that not only identify it as an important hobby in their life, but as a way of life.

It is like assuming all Hippies live in a commune.  There is definitely some that did/do, but there is a whole bunch more to Hippies and the Beat Generation in general than the ones that drop off the grid and form their own isolated communities.

It is a trade off to the ease of use of labelling.  It is important to social function but it kills nuance.

Edit - That is without going into the heart of what a bunch of the Gamergate stuff is trying to cut to (but doing it in as stupid a way as possible).  What you self identify as being "Gamer" is going to be different than random overreactive single issue close minded toolbox that is the kind of person that shits on something like Dinner Date because it doesn't engage the player through a strict subset of existing archetypes that have only been in existence for 20 years and have been decided as being the canon of "what makes a game".

[superaielman]

Put another way: identifying too much with any role is a bad thing. It's especially bad for video games, which don't have the secondary benefits of say being fixated on work or exercise.

(Related to this discussion: And I have zero use for Anita Sarkeesian and still find her treatment by gamers to be embarrassing, I would expect any functional adult to find it pretty fucked up regardless)

[metroid composite]

On the subject of whether something like Dinner Dash is a game, these debates are not new.  Game developers were having pretty much the same debates in the late 90s.  If you asked many game developers at the time "what if there was a game which you could not lose?" the response would be something like "then it is not a game".  And then the Sims came along, and outsold pretty much everyone, and developers were forced to rethink things.

So if you're asking whether I plan to reopen a debate which I have literally read about in history books?  (Game design history books, but history books nonetheless).  No, can't say that I have any intention of doing so.

If you're asking whether I'm going to post nasty things and death threats at Anita Sarkeesian?  No, if anything I would use logical debate.  Most of what she has provided so far I have largely agreed with anyway.  In her outline her list of tropes included "man with boobs"--and that's the trope where I suspect I would disagree with her views strongly.  I personally see no real issue with taking a male character, keeping almost all the dialogue the same, and just making that character female.  To suggest that there's certain things female characters should not be doing strikes me as inherently a bit sexist, and implies she subscribes strongly to the gender binary.  But I'm waiting to see the actual video and argument before I pass judgment.