This describes the central tension I felt living as a visible minority in Japan. It should be fun! But it’s sometimes hard. But not in the ways people think.
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My colleagues are still being told that their work on altgames or gender or games as personal expression or on personal writing is Important Work, quintessential, don’t-miss, but that unfortunately there is no job available for them, no speaker’s fee, no professional advancement.
I can’t relate to the rest, but…
I’m sure there are a lot of people here who, with a view from 10,000 feet, can relate to this in some way.
There’s no value placed on work anymore. My old job doesn’t exist anymore. it was one of those fields where conservatives hate you for working in a liberal space, and liberals hate you for making money off of advertising. Anyway. To add insult to insult, when I lost my job, it went to India, because the labor was cheaper. Hey, they need the money more than I do, but come on, why are we sending low-wage jobs overseas? People working at McDonald’s were making more than me, they weren’t stopping in the middle of their own work to diagnose problems with CAT5 cable, repairing the cable TV line because some idiot mowed it and the cable company charges to fix it, diagnose/recover a dying harddrive, or (no joke) plunging a toilet. But I, someone who has gotten multiple raises when minimum wage went up, was getting paid too much.
OK, so it was a small-town newspaper. I was on the production end, which was equal parts creative work and tedium. I felt sorry for the kids who got into it because those small-town papers have “resume killer” written all over them, and they get in there, thinking they’re going to make a difference, and they’re digging through mounds of press releases for ribbon cuttings and club luncheons, constantly shaking hands with buffoons who think they’re important because they hold down some government job that’s less important to society than a dogcatcher.
I cannot bring myself to just settle for something else, though, so I keep trying to hustle, to get freelance work. You’ll have people tell you, oh, it’s a simple job, it can’t take more than 5 minutes, so I can’t pay more than $5. Well, if it’s that simple, why don’t you do it?!
But no, you should be happy to get the experience, and if you’re not happy to just get the experience, people grouse about how you just don’t want to work, one of the biggest weasel phrases of the 21st Century so far.
You want people to do the damn work? Pay people to do the damn work. You can’t grouse about how people in these spaces are getting crapped on, then expect them to work for free to tell an audience of people about how they’re getting crapped on. And if you agree to do it? Hell, why not walk up to the mic and say, “They said I had to do this for free,” drop the mic, and walk off stage. Full fucking message.
Sadly, there’s pretty good evidence that only a small minority are willing to pay for solid, objective news coverage. The success of newspapers and the like may well have been a historical accident that followed the association of classified ads and news coverage. Once the profitable part was stripped away, news reporting and journalism in general was pretty much doomed. (Many Internet business models consists of splitting away the profitable part of a business from the part that provides customer or social service and only doing the profitable part.)
It’ll be interesting to see in the next 50 years whether a viable democracy is possible in the absence of the historical accident of well-funded journalism. My feeling is likely no, but I could easily be wrong.
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Mic drops are a billable in SFO, right? Little counters on the mic. for how many drops… It would make sense in that case.
Otherwise yes, it is tiring that one’s Institute of Human Progress In Game needs to have each department’s Counsel and Interagency Contact declared ahead of time in order to assert its fundraising primacy; definitely a place for a fine storytelling robot to (re-)explain terms until a journalist service is requested (resulting in the tiring barrage of Square, BitCoin, FICA activity prepayment coupons, lavender M&Ms, parking chits and whatever greenroom and saddlery passes go out on.)
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That is creepy and frankly smells of shit.
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Last year I bought GTA 5, and as a special “lure” offer, I was given free limited-time access to playing online. I have never done that before or since. The character I created was female. I wasn’t very good at the online version of the game, so I just assumed that the vicious attacks I immediately started to undergo were simply because I am not a ‘regular’.
As my one-night-only experience continued however, I started to feel like a very vulnerable person in a world of psycopaths. One guy actually picked me up in his car. You know? Asked me to join in a mission, then told me to wait, then pulled up in his car and picked me up. I felt really weird and used.
Every time I joined in with a group task, when it showed all the people involved, there was my character, this skinny woman in this white mini skirt and jacket, with a white spiky haircut and sunglasses, like a 1980’s outfit, like out of a synthpop band (when I went into the game I was pretty casual about it and thought the whole thing would be funny) surrounded by huge muscled guys in bulky body armor with huge guns.
In one mission it was actually because of my sacrifice that the team I’d been invited to join was able to steal a plane. I’d managed to sneak behind enemy lines and it caused enough of a breach to help my team succeed. I wasn’t thanked.
More than once I found myself hiding waiting to die as the team I was in was decimated and one of the opposing psycopaths eventually tracked me down. More than once, it felt like some kind of revenge fantasy borne of suppressed machismo was being enacted upon me.
I kept getting images of rich Republican teenage boys who could afford all the cheats, and who played this shit all the time, in their bedrooms, dominating the ‘world’.
I left the scenario feeling pretty abused and disgusted.
Maybe the same would have happened to me if I had created a ‘guy’ character, maybe it was just because I had only a pistol and no abilities built up. But because I had created a female character, somehow I felt it was worse. As if it was automatically set up that I would be weak and expendable.
That was just reality.
Oh I know. I feel your pain.
Used to work in hardware. Building Pc’s and selling parts and running a store and such. I ran out of there after six years with my hands up yelling lol…Men were horrible just aweful to deal with and I just coudlnt take it anymore. Harrasing, abusive comments, I would fix there machines and they would act like it wasnt me that really fixed there PC it was the guy next to me lol not kidding. It was almost as if they couldnt handel me female, fixed a dudes PC and now they feel inferior so they couldnt even think about that…so yea, they were either hitting on me or diminishing me into nothing.
Playing a game. In a guild. In a guild that I did help create. Reguardless that I was the very person that helped setup the guild, I rarely get treated like a creater and opinion maker of the guild. They set up a bunch of raids. They got stuck on the third boss of 8. They ( group of men mostly in 30+ age, can hear them on vent ) They needed help. So i joined up had done research on the raid. I discovered what the issues were, and the one guy that was in the raid got overly OFFENDED that I was helping at all, if a male gave an opinion it was ok, but Oh I know, i am female lol…and Know what I am talking about so that is a strangely large issue with many men online. Well, the guy left because I helped the group in few rough issues that he couldnt and got them past the boss. I recieved NO credit whatso ever and then few weeks later they basicly said they dont need me. nice. I stopped raiding and guess what? the group fell apart. I knew it would too. I was like the secret glue that kept the group together making it work that they never talked about lol.
I can honestly say, this type of thing happens a lot. Not only that, but a very new women joined the group - and decided to “put me in my place” by telling me that I should just basicly not be voicing my opinion because the men are in charge and they “know” what they are doing. nice huh? When women think they can gain the “Mens” attention and then push other females down its not right and its as big as an issue as men doing it. becasue they are enablers of this wrongful process.
Online, you take away the vissage of a human being and you can clearly see peoples personalities though their voice and ideas and thoughts. Maybe that is why it gets depressing, becasue so many people forget to work on their own details. I think to many people ( guys ) get online and have issues at home with their wifes or girlfriends then take it out on the next female they meet. its no fun when your in enviroments online a lot and really see the women bashing because it does happen quite abit.
Sometimes, you have to stand up and say something strong for it to stop. its the only way it typically stops. unfortuantly. And I have seen a few great momements when women collectively get together in the game and return the favor lol…it stops men in there tracks.
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I was raised with the idea that when you are weary, rest and let others shoulder your burden.
I see that you are weary, so rest and let some us bear your burden. How do we, as fans, help? How do we show you our support?
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