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Comment Re:Google Plus Defined Itself As a Hazard (Score 1) 210

Google was being pretty hard core about their real name policy on Google+, to the degree that people who Google determined had violated it ended up having their entire Google collection of services canceled.

No, pretty sure that's a myth. The one person I heard about who did get obliterated from all google services, turned out to be an artist who had deliberately tried to push the boundaries for what constitutes child porn or not. That's the sort of thing they do to avoid complicity in crimes, not what they do to push you to use their services.

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

Listen, words are just words, they can mean different things to different people.

But there are some people who have an individualist attitude to equality. They will say that if a Roma is disallowed from entering a store, that's wrong because people are entitled to be treated as individuals. Even if it's true that Roma on average shoplift like crazy, that particular Roma has a right to be judged as an individual, and unless you caught that particular person stealing you must treat them just like you would treat anyone. Because people can't help what ethnic group they were born into.

Then there are some people who say, no, the problem is that Roma are a historically disadvantaged group. They have been wronged in the past, they deserve our pity, therefore we should be nice to them. That's why discriminating against them is wrong. Some other groups are privileged, and those are totally OK to prejudge as a group. It is groups who are good or bad, Roma just happen to be a good group on account of their historic discrimination, that's all.

I am one of the first type. It is people thinking like the second that I label SJWs. See the problem with them? Note that I do not dispute that Roma have been wronged in the past, and are still wronged I don't even dispute that they deserve pity. But I insist that whether you pity them or not, you meet each and one of them as individuals.

An advantage of my viewpoint, is that if it turns out Roma do shoplift more than other people, that's not a problem for my conclusions. It does not change anything. Whereas SJWs are forced to strenuously deny or excuse anything that casts their supposedly oppressed group in a bad light, I can just say, "so?".

Actual bigots, like the Pegida folks marching in Europe right now, love the SJW logic. They love that it's groups that are good or bad, not people - because that gives them excuses to feel better than they are, and it gives them plenty of avenues to attack muslims, Roma, or whoever the main outgroup is today. It affirms their us-and-them world view. It leads inescapably to the conclusion that segregation is a good idea! And the racists love that conclusion! (and when SJWs demand that white 14-year olds don't get braids, or complain of appropriating culture, they are of course demanding segregation too).

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

Social justice was originally an ideology from the early 19th century, a competitor to Marxism. Like Marxists, they were biological/social determinists, believing that no one, ever, did anything that wasn't dictated by his circumstances. Like Marxists (and any sane people) they agreed that the living conditions of Britain's urban, working poor were an affront to humanity. Like the Marxists, they were atheists (at least at first, SJ later caught on with Catholics as an alternative to Marxism - and arguably, Quaker and nonconformist religious industrialists were the proto-SJ's until Robert Owen came along).

But where Marxists saw the revolution of the workers as the way out of that mess, SJ people said that's bullshit. The workers are living from hand to mouth, they are slaves of their circumstances, they can't change society, with violence or not. It's up to us, the rich factory owners, to change the social circumstances so that workers can escape poverty, misery and crime. So they built model villages and factory communes. Marx derided that as utopian socialism, which was easy enough as there were plenty of failed efforts to highlight.

Modern "social justice" has almost nothing to do with this. Catholic social justice activists were still primarily fans of paternalistic factories, where the factory owner has a moral responsibility to care for his workers' material and spiritual well-being, but they did do a bit to promote the idea of privilege, i.e. that it can be hard to see things from the disadvantaged's perspective. Modern SJWs, aided by some upper middle-class academics, took that concept and twisted it into unrecognizability, and made it the centerpiece. In their world, privilege means that you're bad and I'm good, and you are totally unable to grasp that with your reason due to your privilege, so you must take it on blind faith and do as I tell you.

Comment Re:Slashdot stance on #gamergate (Score 1) 693

If you aren't, go follow a couple of the high-profile ones on twitter and tumblr for a couple of months. That might adjust your view of the world a little.

A social justice warrior is someone who thinks:

1. Has a very particular and narrow view of "social justice" where groups, not individuals, are the only relevant actors, and where there is a set additive hierarchy of oppressed groups.

2. that "we are at war", in other words, that anything is permissible to win.

They think of themselves as the heirs to the civil rights movement and the anti-slavery movement and every righteous movement ever. But those movements tended to reject both 1 and 2. Note that the historical users of the phrase "social justice", mostly catholic activists and positive to paternalistic industry ("utopian socialism", model villages, worker communes etc. etc.), have especially little in common with modern SJWs

Comment Re:It Remains a Journalism Scandal. Deal With It. (Score 1) 693

Now you're repeating exactly what I replied to with comment #48863757. No, it was not a falsehood, because the media rallied around Quinn largely to protect their own nepotistic behinds. Yes, there were no reviews, but that wasn't the allegation. Yes, the guy wrote many articles giving Zoe and the game publicity.

Do you think you're "drawing fire" by persisting to waste people's time or something? In that case, I'd like to inform you I haven't harassed anyone. So Zoe Quinn is going to get exactly as much (or as little) harassment as she otherwise would, regardless of whether you keep up this nonsense.

Comment Re:It Remains a Journalism Scandal. Deal With It. (Score 1) 693

Now you jump from one argument (that the central allegation of "corrupt media" in GG was a falsehood) to an entirely different one, without acknowledging any errors.

I did not even say that gamergate is "truly" about ethics in journalism. Gamergate is about many things, for different people. But the supposed disparity you point out is nothing nefarious about. It's easily explained by the other things people have done - both the things they have done in the past (e.g. having an encyclopedia dramatica track record) and the things they currently are doing.

If you ask me, I think it's far worse for people to have an affair with someone whose career they can make or break (whether they do so or not), than the opposite. But I also think that Zoe is cynical, attention seeking and abusive, from reading the Zoe post and the accounts of people who've worked with her. And it's really alarming that the gaming media circled the wagons to defend someone like that, just because the case made them look bad too.

Comment Re:It Remains a Journalism Scandal. Deal With It. (Score 1) 693

You've got a couple of small things wrong. Eron Gjoni never said she slept with a journalist "in order to get a good review". Go and read the post yourself. Even the job Quinn got (from a guy she was having an affair with), Gjoni said she probably would have gotten anyway, and certainly was qualified for.

You're right there's no review involved, but that was never the allegation. You are, however, wrong that there is no article involved. Depression Quest (and Zoe Quinn personally) got lots of positive press from Nathan Grayson.

Comment Re:Thank you, President Obama! (Score 1) 105

Oh to hell with "class and dignity". It would be nice if this was actually what it pretends to be, but here are some questions Obama will never be asked:

- Mr. President, you've prosecuted more people under the espionage act than all previous presidents combined. Why do you think that is?

- Mr. President, the only person in jail over torture at the CIA is the person who blew the whistle on it, John Kiriakou. Why is that?

He never answers such questions in person, only if he absolutely has to does he even let his PR people defend him. When he's going so "folksy" and talking to youtube hosts now, it's because he wants to invite those too into the sphere respectability - the sphere where such questions aren't asked.

Right now youtube is a sphere of the media with a huge audience, but where the media's notions of respectability doesn't exist, the regular rules you have to follow to get ahead don't really apply. They want to nip that in the bud, with a carrot rather than a stick. Want to play with the big guys? Then fall in line!

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