By comparison to women, yes, men do ignore the fashion industry. There are real gender-based differences in behavior, and these are reflected in buying preferences. I doubt that we will ever see gender equality in the market for haute couture, or for videogames.
This is definitely true in much of the US, but the male indifference to fashion is new-ish even here, and even now, the most respected men tend to be good dressers (or have found people who can dress them well). Then go to Italy, and the game reaches a whole new level. I don't think this is a male thing. I think this is an expectation thing. In US culture today, men don't get nearly the impression that women do that it matters what they look like or how they dress. Go back 60 years or so, and any man who considered himself a gentleman could tell you about clothing items the average modern American man doesn't even know the name for.
Despite what certain groups have tried to say during the years, there are key differences in the genders. While there are always exceptions, there is a fairly obvious list of "things that guys like" and "things that girls like".
So essentially, if people point out how their personal experience differs from this, that's covered by "there are always exceptions", and yet you can get away with treating your point as self-evident.
I won't bother to list these as it's not the point.
That's a shame. I love being told what I should like, as a man. Clearly, I should be a big sports fan, for example. Also, I probably was far too amused and entertained by collecting and experimenting with all the clothing options in Saints Row 2. And finally, in order to maintain my manly cred, I probably shouldn't admit that I loved every romance story in every Bioware game I've ever played (oops).
But lest you think I'm just girlier than your average guy, I also have own every Halo game ever released, have had great fun with the Gears of War series and dabbled a bit in Call of Duty, and didn't mind one moment of staring at Lara Croft's ass in the Tomb Raider games I've played.
My point, since I should get to it, is the any real life person has diverse interests that can not be reliably predicted from incidental qualities like gender. I fit the stereotype in some ways, and I don't fit it in others. Just like everyone.
at least they can look at Lara Croft and see someone who looks like them.
Heh, because the typical chesty woman is also an athletically built gymnast.
However, does that percentage hold for every sector of gaming? For example, are 50% of console gamers women? It might be that there are certain areas where the desires of female gamers are being met abundantly, but other areas where they are not.
I did, however, think this was funny:
"Women not only exhibit different gaming behaviors than men, but also express attitudes about gaming that are dissimilar to those of their male counterparts," said Courtney Johnson, analyst for Intrepret. "For instance, they are much more likely to prefer to play solo than men, and play games for less competitive and more narrative- and character-driven reasons. "
That's exactly the sort of game I like, and I don't feel that my needs aren't met. In fact, I don't have enough time to play the games I have!
It certainly does seem that what made Duke Nukem 3D Awesome is missing from DNF. They've taken Halo and added Tits and dick jokes.
Not even that. Halo is a good game, even a great one, arguably.
I agree with what you're getting at here, but it's a poor analogy.
Well, it has one flaw, certainly, which is that it's open to the objection that crime-fighting puts me at risk.
Tell me if you think this is a better analogy:
I have the power to spend a large portion of my free time volunteering and doing charity work. This entails little or no risk to myself and would have a large positive impact on other people. Do you feel that I have a responsibility to sacrifice my free time to such an endeavor?
In fact, my odds of preventing crimes by spending my free time actively being a crimefighter are greater than the difference I make on Sony's bottom line by not buying their products.
This is where you lose me. This is obviously untrue. People buying Sony products is Sony's bottom line.
Yes, but my decision to buy a Sony product or not is a drop in the ocean. It is a measurable but tiny effect. You could similarly try to measure my chance of doing good as a crimefighter and estimate the effect there. I suspect that, every now and again, I could make a real difference in a real person's life, which is a much greater impact than Sony not getting money from me.
To try and offer a counter-analogy: You are walking to the store, and you see a woman getting mugged at gunpoint. You are unarmed. You have no opportunity to stop the crime in progress, but the criminal runs right past you as he tries to make his escape. Three big guys are chasing him. Do you have a moral responsibility to trip the mugger? Or, to bring this back around, do you have a moral responsibility to affect the outcome of the situation in a miniscule but measurable way?
I do not think you have a moral responsibility to do so, no. You probably *should* do so. It is the right and proper course of action as surely as the right thing to do when on fire is to stop, drop, and roll, but if the gunman escapes, you are not responsible for his actions or his escape. You did not behave optimally, but it was also not fair to expect you to behave optimally.
Maybe it would be different if you were an on duty policeman and you let him go, but that's because you have volunteered to take on that responsibility.
I do not think that having power or influence necessarily confers responsibility
I cannot imagine you rationalize that.
I don't have to. The alternative leads to absurd conclusions.
I would say that if you are in a situation where you can stop a crime being committed by means of physical violence, and the crime being committed is "worse" (for some value of "worse") than the violence you would inflict, yes, that is your moral responsibility. Neither more nor less responsibility than you have to boycott a company for their misdeeds.
This one is debatable. So let's change the parameters of the situation so that it is less ambiguous. There is likely a crime being committed right now somewhere in a 10 mile radius of me (I do live in a big city). My ability to prevent this crime by leaving my apartment, looking for it, and then taking action to stop it is extremely small... but it is not zero. If power *alone* confers responsibility, then I have a moral responsibility to do exactly that.
In fact, my odds of preventing crimes by spending my free time actively being a crimefighter are greater than the difference I make on Sony's bottom line by not buying their products. By power-based reasoning, therefore, my responsibility to be a crime fighter is *greater* than my responsibility to avoid Sony products. Do you think I have a responsibility to be a crime fighter? If so, I think we're done here. If not, then you should also not think I have a responsibility to avoid buying Sony products.
That is, unless there is more to responsibility than power.
Of course they do. Otherwise this would get no press whatsoever.
Good point. Most people don't know that 77 million PSN accounts were hacked due to the lack of press attention that it received. Now if they had published that information on the web for anyone to see, maybe a story or two might have been written about it.
Snark aside, Sony has been in the news almost continuosly for the last two months for a series of hacks (not just the PSN one), and this is the first one I am aware of where personal details were publicly shared. It's not necessary. As another poster suggested, they don't care about the consumers. Look at their name. They're in it for "lulz"
You honestly think that pretending you didn't see your neighbour getting mugged is more acceptable than failing to boycott Sony?
You honestly think that's a reasonable interpretation of what I said? If I see a crime, I'll report it, sure. If I stumble upon a crime I think I have a fair chance of preventing, I'll give it a try. I was talking about my responsibility to go patrol the streets at night and seek out evildoers. My power to do that is nonzero. Maybe not much above zero, but it *is* above zero. So power based reasoning suggests my *responsibility* to do so is also nonzero.
Presumably if you wanted the message to be clear, you'd have to send a letter or email or sign a petition. But I don't think consumers have an obligation to send a clear message. It is the company's responsibility to interpret their desires from their natural activities, and it is the responsibility of regulating bodies to make sure that the companies don't cross the line (whatever or wherever that may be). The responsibility of consumers is in their votes for public office, I think.
Which still does not confer responsibility. Buying a Sony product should not be taken as an endorsement of everything they do any more than boycotting Sony should send the message that you hate Playstation 3 exclusives (you certainly won't be playing them). Sony is a big company with a lot of activities, and not all of them are objectionable.
If we're really going to fall back on the invisible hand, then the conclusion is not that consumers are responsible for evil, but rather that Sony does more good than evil. Or that people are more evil than good (which I don't believe). Because ultimately the invisible hand assumes that, in aggregate, people will make the right choice and bad behavior will be selected out. So either the theory is flawed and thus not a good basis for determining responsibility, or people are evil and I guess they did deserve to have their personal details shared.
Solutions are obvious if one only has the optical power to observe them over the horizon. -- K.A. Arsdall
