Another tell is how many opinions are about all the other people in the discussion, rather than their ideas as presented (returned in craricature), or the topic at hand (derailing!)
I get the sense that we don’t deserve to talk about this without being insulted, at least no more than women and gilrls deserve to have opinions… on games.
The pattern is one of not actually being committed. Explaining themselves is WORK. this is a GAME (to hardcore games, everything is a game). Investment in community? i think we’d have to have more realistic graphics to get them to care.
I’m impressed with the swiftness of the arrival. 17 minutes including the account creation.
except you used black and white terms and then went for the fainting couch when your provocation got any response.
If you’re sensitive, then you have to be sensitive to what you say, also. Else you’re probably gaming us.
a ‘fictive ethnicity’
I don’t know why there is a presumed leap to ethnicity, when there are many other models of subcultures that are not “ethnic” by design.
Eh, I feel like I’ve already wasted too much brainpower bothering with them. They’re basically an intersection of gamers, dudebros, misogynists, entitled manbabies, and trollies.
Those were interesting and thoughtful pieces.
It’s almost as if I’m a regular BB reader who finally decided to create an account. Which was clearly a mistake, seeing that despite going to some effort to expand on my original point (above), I’m being attacked for being a suspected subversive from the Other Tribe whose statements should be interpreted in the worst light possible, whose attempts to elaborate should be ignored, because after all, if you’re not one of Us, you’re one of Them.
Let me conclude with the (apparently) obligatory disclaimer: I am not now, nor have I ever been a member of the GamerGate party.
You have to understand, there has been a number of people creating accounts for the express purpose of derailing the conversation on posts related to gamergate… That’s sort of why some around these parts are sort of wary of people with new accounts commenting on these stories.
Alright, let’s put aside the psychoanalyzing and guessing what group you are apart of then.
Here’s me:
That is a fair assessment of your first post, and it is completely absurd. I’m sorry I mistook it for a derailing tactic. Some variant of Poe’s Law applies where I felt is was more likely that someone was trying to derail the conversation then honestly believed that:
Your expansion on this idea (which was posted after my reply, and so I hadn’t read it yet) says:
So it seems that you didn’t really mean to say what you said in your original post: specifically, it some things are ethnicities and other things that someone might mistake for an ethnicity are not - it is not that case that either all are fictional or none are.
It looks like you posted something that didn’t come out right, and it was mistaken for a derailment by a gamergate enthusiast (because such things happen a lot in every thread that mentions gamergate). My mistake, and my apologies.
I just assumed that ‘fictive ethnicity’ was a meaningful term to some people. I mean, that storify is pretty jargon-laden. Didn’t she even tell us which book to read if we wanted to know more?
Indeed! But wow, storify. Is that where we’re at? The best way to express a thoughtful idea is to tweet it out one sentence at a time and then paste all the tweets together?
almost. not quite though, sorry, which of your virtues were you extolling?
Twitter is horrible for conversations. It plays especially well into the hands of people looking to derail. Storify is actually pretty neat though.
Granflloon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Granfalloon
Both ethnicity and race are, in the critical theory* world at least, generally accepted to be social constructs. And thus, roughly fictive or fictional or something resembling something mutable. Identify politics, anyone?
Anyway, that would pretty much be saying “all are fictional.”
* ogodnothatagain somebody is saying
#notallethnicities
If I show up again in this thread today, will somebody come to my office and slap me?
I need to stay over in the Awesome Song thread where the vibe isn’t so harshful to my mellow (and, conversely, I’m not so harshful either).
harsh
harsh
harsh
heh. it doesn’t even sound like a word anymore!
I completely agree that “all ethnicities are fictional” is something that a vaguely reasonable person could ascribe to, and they would mean something not terribly unreasonable by it (though I think it borders on allowing academic ideas to run ragged over real life). On the other hand, “gamergate is just a real an ethnicity as Scottish,” - which is expressed by the denial that it makes sense to call it a ‘fictive’ ethnicity to distinguish it from every-day use of the word ‘ethnicity’ - strikes me as bonkers.
But the idea that culturally constructed = fictional is pretty problematic. Culture is definitely real. Like I said in my original post, I don’t think the idea was to say that gamergate isn’t a real thing, just that it isn’t an ethnicity (a point that no one, including @voidfraction seems to disagree about) and so if we are talking about it as an ethnicity, we use the adjective ‘fictive’ to indicate that we are discussing it’s ethnicity-like qualities rather than saying it is actually an ethnicity.
Of course I’m just giving the storify a very charitable reading. If someone who knows more about this concept of ‘fictive ethnicity’ wants to chime in to tell me how wrong I am and say that the whole concept is actually stupid nonsense, I could easily be swayed.
…in black and white terms, while addressing the character of other commenters, and generally wandering off topic and then complaining that other people have terrible manners. It’s really got to be all six characteristics for it to be the pattern.
To be fair, the point wasn’t at all clear in your original comment and was highly misinterpretable. So chalk up the responses to reasonably-leapt-to conclusions based on a poorly written comment and move on, I think.
