the rebuttal

The Rebuttal: Easter Special + DOAX3 I-Told-You-So

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Happy Easter everyone! Unlike Christmas, Easter seems to be that holiday which Christian conservatives don’t seem to shove the “true meaning” of into our faces incessantly, for whatever reason. Of course, to pick up the slack, the neo-pagans have to get their word in:

Sigh… I know there’s a common conception that religious people are anti-intellectual and can’t accept facts, but it can be easy to forget that if you’re going to be pushing for paganism or atheism, then you have to do a quick Snopes check first. Beyond that, I think every Christian who celebrates Easter goes “why the hell do we symbolize this celebration with eggs and rabbits?”, it’s not like they thought that there was an actual religious significance to it.

There’s a similar vein running with that long-debunked nonsense that the gospels are ripped off from the mythology of Horus (or Mithras, or various other pagan gods depending on who is telling the tale this time). That is, of course, the problem with the Internet and the spreading of disinformation. If you’ve never watched CGP Grey’s “This Video Will Make You Angry”, then I would definitely recommend it as it explains the psychology of Internet communities and outrage culture extremely effectively.

The mention of Constantine was also rather interesting in that meme, as neo-pagans seem to have a really odd fixation on him:

Perhaps neo-pagans are salty about Constantine effectively ushering in the end of the biggest pagan empire? Do they wish that the modern world’s religious demographics were overwhelmingly pagan (after all, no Christianity also means that Islam would be non-existent or wildly different, effectively eliminating 2/3 of the current world’s religious allegiance)? Do they long for a day where the social conservatives are harping on about “In gods we trust!” and marginalizing those weird monotheistic Christian people which are popular amongst filthy hippies? I can’t help but feel that this line of thinking would be rather… vindictive and petty.

On a completely different topic, I put out a pair of posts a few months ago responding to the idiotic Dead or Alive Xtreme 3 “controversy” drummed up by people who freak out whenever someone says “SJW” (hmm… on second thought, this ties into “This Video Will Make You Angry” perfectly… seriously, watch it). Well the game is finally out and PlayAsia’s ploy seems to have worked well, as they’re raking in the cash importing copies of the game overseas to silly dumbasses who still think that us SJWs will give a shit.

As you might remember, my biggest criticism during the “controversy” was not so much that the game was sexist, but that the game was going to be a steaming pile of crap:

I can guarantee you that DOAX3 is not worth your outrage. I seriously question how many of these angry people have actually played a DOAX game, because they are utter shit. For a laugh, I tried out Dead or Alive Paradise, and it was absolutely wretched. If all you wanted to do is oogle girls in bikinis, you should realize that that is barely a feature in the game. Most of what you do is boring menu-based busywork until you decide to play a minigame for about 30 seconds. It has more in common with dating games than you would expect. Now obviously there is a certain niche market for that kind of game, which is fine, but I doubt that they’re the ones doing the bulk of the complaining here. The extremely creepy tone and general pervy-ness are just a veneer over a husk of a game which very quickly goes sour. […]

Well the reviews are in and from what I have read, DOAX3 is actually even more threadbare than previous entries in the franchise, having removed multiplayer, some of the mini-games and not making any real improvements on the stuff that stayed in (including apparent lag input on the pool hopping which existed in previous DOAX games, which rendered that activity practically unplayable). Of course, the graphics and physics have been praised, as they should be since that’s obviously where all the effort went. Reviews have been arguably somewhat harsh (although some are ridiculously easy on the game), but the overall feeling seems to be that, at best, the game is incredibly niche. I’m extremely curious to see how many of the people who were whining during the controversy will pick this up, play for about 15 minutes and then go “wait, that’s it?!” Considering that the people who complain about SJWs in gaming are also typically the “real true hardcore gamer” crowd, I can’t see them getting much joy out of DOAX3.

Oh and if that wasn’t enough, the game is actually even more cynically exploitative than even I was expecting:

Koei-Tecmo have demonstrated through DOA5:LR that DOAX3 is going to be packed full of many of the corporate practices that gamers have been rallying against for years now. If your favourite part of the old DOAX games was unlocking all the skimpy bikinis then prepare to be disappointed – DOAX3 is going to be a DLC factory. […] Oh, and all of those characters who failed to make the cut for the game, including such main characters as Tina Armstrong and Lei Fang? They’ll almost certainly be added in as DLC in the future as well.

While bikini DLC is still up in the air (at present there is only 1 in the store, but it seems like a 100% certainty that more will be added shortly) and upcoming DLC characters have been teased, I was not expecting Koei-Tecmo to introduce freaking microtransactions to the game. Apparently the game becomes a tedious grindfest as you do the same shallow mini-games over and over again to try to unlock anything worthwhile… unless you decide to spend real-world money (in a game which is already a full-priced release mind you), ranging from $6 to a whopping $190!!!! Just… why? You guys know that Youtube and Rule34 are things right? You don’t need to buy this game to experience it, and Koei Tecmo certainly doesn’t deserve to succeed with this game. As for you Team Ninja… can we just get Ninja Gaiden 4, please? At least make it better than Ninja Gaiden 3 and Yaiba: Ninja Gaiden Z, and I’ll be happy.

We get what we deserve, I guess. Sigh.

The Rebuttal: Context 101

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time again – another round of The Rebuttal! I’ve had lots of content to pick through, but since I don’t want every installment of The Rebuttal to be about me making fun of the same men’s rights activist, we’re going to shake it up just a little bit. In honour of #OscarsSoWhite, I present this little gem:

Hoo boy, I’ve got a few thoughts on this one. First of all, this feels like the sort of thing a white 16-year-old just starting to wrestle with the concepts of privilege and the disadvantaged might put together and then deeply regret in a few years when they start to get a better idea of how the world works. It’s pretty emblematic of the mid-90s-to-late-2000s liberal ideal of “colour blindness”, where us white, middle-class folks decided that racism was finally over and we can start focusing on other things. Naturally, the last few years have demonstrated very visibly that this was simply a wishful fantasy and that racism (and sexism for that matter) is still ingrained deeply within society at an institutional level, and until that is addressed, things won’t get much better.

For my own part, growing up I thought that Nazis and literal racists were a thing of the past*. However, in just the last week I have encountered and sparred with an honest-to-God white supremacist. I have already documented some encounters with a self-described “humanist” with some decidedly toxic views on women, gays, trans-people and minorities. I see all sorts of modern misogyny and racism on We Hunted the Mammoth on a daily basis. Hell, one could make the very realistic argument that a white supremacist is the frontrunner for the Republican party this year. The progressive backlash has gotten louder and more visible in the last few years, and so now more than ever we need to identify it and try to treat this ideological cancer before it can gain any sort of social traction.

The other thing that’s making me think that the person who made this is only around 16-years-old is because their examples are pretty freaking weak. I know they’re attempting to establish a double-standard, but I don’t see either of the given examples as being particularly sexist or racist. Maybe that’s just me, but that just highlights one of the major issues with this image: both a lack of context, and a lack of understanding of context.

First of all, “you boys/girls are stupid” is not a sexist statement in itself, but the context is going to be really important if you want to make the argument that it is. Like, what caused the statement? Is it a blanket statement regarding the person’s sex/race? Was their shitty opinion based on prejudice? Or are they just saying that they think that this particular individual is stupid based on some prior experiences? It’s basically impossible to pass a judgement of sexism/racism on this situation without some real context.

Secondly, the authour has a severe lack of understanding of context. Let’s just assume that the example statements did have a sexist/racist intent. In such a case then it is important to point out the prejudice in the person’s statement because they’re being much more than just a “big ol’ meanie”. If they’re being a racist/sexist prick, then there is some sort of underlying prejudice which is causing them to formulate a negative, dehumanizing picture of people, and one which needs to be identified, addressed and eliminated from society. It’s almost like the authour doesn’t realize that this is the case, as if they think that racism/sexism is just a synonym for being mean which only applies to certain people.

Don’t get me wrong though – being nice to everyone is ideal. I hope that at some point we can actually reach this state. However, the issue is that there are ingrained prejudices which make this obviously-ideal philosophy untenable in practice. Furthermore, much like humanism, egalitarianism, free speech and #GamerGate, this sort of ideal is co-opted by racists, sexists, homophobes and various other unsavoury groups which pollute the term and destroy any sort of attempt at using it as an actual platform for positive social change. It’s a great individual philosophy to internalize and pass on to others, but the authour has to realize that you’re targeting the wrong people – don’t target the people pointing out inequalities, target the assholes in society who make things worse for all of us.

*This in spite of the fact that in one of my earliest years in school, a black kid had joined our class. When my mom asked me what I thought of him, I snarkily and defiantly declared “I don’t like blacks.” I was probably 6 or 7 years old and had never encountered a non-white person before. Suffice to say, the smack that I received from my mother was well-deserved, and it’s easily one of my most shameful memories. However, it has been a source of some pondering for me – what caused me to be such a racist prick of a kid? I think it was down to “he’s different, and I don’t like things that are different”, which makes me kind of concerned for all the people who grew up around me in a town which has been called “the whitest town in all of Ontario”.

The Rebuttal: #MinifigLivesMatter

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

Oh looky, it’s time for another installment of The Rebuttal. What sort of dumbassery made its way into my Facebook feed this week? A friend of mine (we’ll call him Johnny) has an MRA/egalitarian friend, who made a ridiculous post this weekend. Johnny passed this post on to another friend of mine (we’ll call him Atlas), who then passed it on to me, knowing I’d enjoy it. Check it out:

Hoo boy… I’m not even going to bother going into his spurious claim that SJWs have “ruined” video games, STEM fields and have somehow destroyed every tech company… actually, wait, what the feth? Where the hell did he get that idea from? I assume that’s some sort of MRA talking-point, but for those of us not drinking the same Kool-Aid, the idea that SJWs are destroying tech companies sounds absolutely ridiculous. I didn’t really look into this very comprehensively, in part because it sounds like utter garbage, but the only site that I could find that was pushing this view was a damn pickup artist’s blog. Considering that I was searching for “women destroying tech companies”, you think that there would have been more results about women actually destroying the tech industry (in fact, most results showed how the tech industry is destroying itself via ridiculously long work hours… and by not hiring more women).

Anyway, getting back on track, I hadn’t heard any sort of SJW-types complaining about lack of diversity in LEGO, so I was curious if this was yet another case where a handful of complaints are conflated into a whole movement’s viewpoints. As a result, I came across this article which explains that LEGO decided to release their first wheelchair-bound minifig in an effort for more diversity. That is a fantastic move on LEGO’s part which has made many kids very happy, and has generally gotten a very positive reception. How can you possibly see this as a bad thing?

Let’s be charitable though. The original post alludes to Johnny’s friend not knowing the details of the situation, but just being annoyed by SJWs ruining everything. We all make those sorts of declarations without the full story. I mean, he’s not going to seriously advocate giving children with disabilities the middle finger, right…? Well, I wasn’t expecting this, but Atlas decided to sent Johnny the news article, which prompted Johnny to grill his friend for being overly-dramatic. His friend, unfortunately, doubled-down on his comments:

Sigh… First of all, he is relying heavily on the slippery slope logical fallacy* to try to make this seem like such a bad thing, but even then he’s on thin ice. So what if LEGO makes armless, trans (ooh, potential transphobia, nice!) or wolfkin minifigs? How is that going to “ruin” LEGO? Furthermore, it’s not like people can’t make armless, trans or even freaking literal werewolf LEGO characters already, so I’m not so sure that they’d even bother to acknowledge them. Either way though, this is the whole reason why LEGO is so amazing to begin with – it’s a blank slate which promotes creativity. Giving a paraplegic child an avatar with which to live out his fantasies as a hero with a disability is both empowering and absolutely awesome. LEGO is all about giving people the ability to live out their fantasy worlds, and I say the more people we can bring in under that umbrella, the better.

As usual, the real issue is that Johnny’s friend is deep in an ideological framework and the world is completely filtered through that lens (which is made worse by the fact that he subscribes to news sources which fuel this world view). He thinks that SJW-types have ruined all forms of entertainment (they simply haven’t, full-stop), or that “not being a prick” is not only self-censorship, but a truly henious thing. For an idea of why he thinks this, it’s worth mentioning that he is also seriously under the delusion that the disadvantaged have leveraged their status and supplanted white men as the real power within society.

Oh, and by the way, Johnny’s friend considers himself to be an “egalitarian”… which should more-or-less put to bed the argument that “feminists should try being more egalitarian!” Egalitarianism as a movement has been co-opted by MRAs and various other hateful organizations which have become deluded enough to believe that they have become the truly disadvantaged group within society. From that particular mindset, this is a reasonable view, but to anyone else… well, egalitarianism my ass. To all those who are stuck in such a mindset, I can only hope that you can one day you acquire the ability to take a step back and maybe admit that you were wrong.

To finish up, I’ve been ignoring the Taken reference this whole time because it is just your typical Internet tough guy, dick-wagging bullshit. Oh, you’re going to troll and debunk all of us SJW-types with your “egalitarian” knowledge? Well there’s only one thing I can say to that…

Good luck.

Somehow I think it’s going to work out better for me than it did for Marco from Tropoja though.

*Normally I hate throwing around accusations of logical fallacies when arguing with someone as they are often used the way “check your privilege” is, as a tactic to shut down an opponents’ argument without actually having to address it. However, in our one previous confrontation, Johnny’s friend was slinging logical fallacy accusations at me, so I figure that he more or less has it coming. Not to mention that his logical fallacy accusations were very strenuous (eg, he claimed that saying that I thought that most feminists would agree with me on something was a “No True Scotsman” claim, which it clearly is not, as I didn’t say “those who disagree with me are not true feminists”… and then he claimed that Reddit MRAs are not true MRAs and tried to explain that such a view was not a No True Scotsman fallacy… yeah).

The Rebuttal: Telekinetic Rape!

~ Barloq ~ Leave a comment

We’re starting up a new column here on IC2S (to go along with Quick Fixes, Retrospectives and Reviews) which I have decided to call “The Rebuttal”. I get a lot of stupid bullshit in my Facebook feed; I’m sure that you do as well. Sometimes however, we get something that is a new level of stupid though which can’t just be ignored – it needs to be corrected. That is where The Rebuttal comes in. Here, I will attempt to give a reasoned analysis of the post in question and hopefully dispel some of the ignorance it was fostering. Got it? Okay, let’s get started…

Oh look, feminism! Who would have guessed?

This was posted on a parody Facebook page called “Meninists” (sigh), and shared by a friend who thought that the 4chan reply was funny. Honestly, on a certain level the snarkiness of the reply is kind of funny, but that is only the case because of what the feminist wrote. Personally, I think that this is a great example of the issue of “not explaining yourself” and “picking your battles poorly” which I have suggested that fellow feminists should be careful of if they want to have a better public perception. Saying that “men can rape without laying a hand on a woman” isn’t one of those things that is going to get you to say “oh shit, maybe I do need feminism!”, but rather it’s going to raise a lot of eyebrows. At worst, it’s hyperbolic and trivializes “real” case of sexual violence. At best, it’s a poorly worded argument and weakens the definition of what constitutes “rape”. Personally I’m feeling that she tried to come up with something that would sound profound and compelling, but ended up wording things really poorly which made her look somewhat ridiculous.

That said, it shouldn’t be too difficult to understand what she meant. Women spend their lives being catcalled, objectified, pressured and threatened by men. I know that many women who go jogging are well aware that they get creepy men stalking them… and as a man, that’s horrifying. Most women live with the threat of rape hanging over their heads, whereas guys like me don’t really worry about it beyond “don’t take candy from strangers” when we’re little kids. This is demonstrated in the “only good rape joke” by Ever Mainard where she jokes about her relief at finally getting “her rape” which she has been warned about all her life. In any case, as badly worded as this feminist’s statement is, it should be pretty freaking obvious what they’re referring to, and not even all that controversial either.

It’s also worth noting that, by specifying that it is “men” who can do this, the feminist in question kind of ignores that this is a potential problem for both sexes. Obviously, rape is a MUCH more common problem for women, but of course men can be objectified and threatened as well.

That brings us to the other side of the issue. Someone obviously went and cherry-picked this picture and posted it to 4chan for maximum snark. By meme-ifying this image, it no longer becomes an opinion open for dissection, it becomes a case of “dude, check out how this feminist got PWNED!” It occurs to me that this is similar to how Merlynn132’s analysis of why there aren’t female characters in gaming was extremely troublesome, but throw in a stupid comment about how it’s the greatest thing on the Internet and suddenly it gains legitimacy and focuses the perception. That’s too bad, as I think that the original picture has plenty of room for reasoned discourse. What exactly is she trying to say? How are women subjected to sexual harassment in our society? Is her use of “rape” trivializing the more traditional definition of rape? Just how prevalent is sexual assault in society? There’s a plethora of dimensions to this.

…of course, instead the subscribers of the Meninist get to enjoy jokes about telekinetic rape. Umm… congratulations on having your world-view reinforced?