“Was this place raided by 4Chan recently or where has all the good faith gone?”
Every discussion board has. Good faith pretty much up in smoke since the election. Online discussions took a turn towards the cretinous since then.
Frankly I don’t believe you are a “lurker” who just decided now to join. But that is just my opinion. 
Yeah, there’s inevitably going to be that response too.
But there’s also the Pet Shop Boys song “I’m with Stupid” which suggested that Tony Blair only put up with George Bush’s stupidity because he was in love with him. If Neil Tennant is a homophobe he certainly hides it well.
I’m pretty sure the fear is that she’s a big shill for Big Mom. As in: “Get out of my roooom! Mooooom, stoooop, I’m with my friends, you don’t even get videogames! She dresses that way because that’s her uniform! What? It doesn’t matter if she would be able to run in that outfit! Ugh, mom, I hate you! bring us pizza.”
I guess I’ve been dodging US message boards (apart from Reddit) for quite a while now. Good faith is still in business here in germany, but our election is also nigh so we’ll see if it survives 
[quote=“gregor, post:20, topic:101364”]
Out of curiosity, has anyone here watched the criticism by Thunderf00t and what did you think of it?
[/quote]https://global.discourse-cdn.com/boingboing/original/3X/1/f/1f8d7ced9bf1e906ee087da6fc579fad602a5d13.gif
Care to elaborate?
Oren, if you haven’t read any of those old Sarkeesian threads, I humbly suggest you visit one or two. There’s a pattern that repeated in every last one of those threads, and straight out the gate, we can see it repeating on this one.
I don’t see how that relates to the images in question. We’re not talking about that song or Neil Tennant.
Could I also be enlightened? I simply found the arguments leveled against the points she made in the videos more convincing. Was there a response to the criticism that I missed?
Clearly, you have missed the several years worth of comment threads merely mentioning Sarkeesian’s name. There’s a magnifying glass at the top right hand side of your browser window. Click on it, then type in her name. Get yourself up to speed if you’re attempting to comment in good faith.
But Sarkeesian isn’t engaging in journalism, as Fox News ostensibly does, so it doesn’t make sense to hold her work to the standards of journalism. Because it is not journalism.
Similarly, it shouldn’t be held to the standards of peer reviewed science. Because it is not peer reviewed science.
It’s just a person’s opinion. You can agree with it or disagree. As I demonstrated a moment ago, it’s totally possible to disagree with Sarkeesian’s opinions and criticize them even in a very pro-feminist online space.
If you disagree with Sarkeesian’s opinions so strongly that it makes you angry – or if it makes you angry that other people agree with her opinions and occasionally endorse them – I’d just like to suggest that maybe you should not watch them. Similarly, I think there’s a lot of white supremacists making videos out there that I would disagree with on the basis of both facts and opinions, but rather than posting on white power message boards about how disappointing it is that people take this stuff seriously I just…don’t watch it.
Sarkeesian is presenting her opinion. Unless you think that she’s lying about what her opinion is, then she is making honest arguments. You may disagree with those arguments, but saying they’re wrong is different than saying they’re not honest. There’s a really big difference between “factually incorrect” and “dishonest”.
Do you really think Sarkeesian is lying about what her opinions are? If not, then on what basis do you imply that she is not making honest arguments?
I think that Thunderf00t has a personal animus against anything connected to social justice or feminism and that his criticism of Sarkeesian is more about his personal bugbears than about Sarkeesian’s work. I think, like most critics of Feminist Frequency, that Thunderf00t is holding the content to inapplicable and unreasonable standards, and almost all of his criticism is irrelevant as a result. I don’t think Thunderf00t engages with the material in good faith, and I think he comes from a perspective of trying to attack rather than trying to improve, and so his criticism is not constructive and can be safely ignored.
Oh, ethics in games journalism?
I think this is false, based on the fact that I wrote an extended criticism of one of her arguments and no one accused me of being a woman hating he-man. Reasonable, constructive disagreement seems to be tolerated.
Since a lot of bad-faith criticism is aimed at Sarkeesian, you have to watch your tone to avoid looking like a gamergater, but if you’re serious about making constructive criticism, then you should be watching your tone already.
Well, I think if one’s job is to critique and one’s opinions are being professionally presented, I think that it should be based on some evidence and reasonably “fair” evidence. Of course there is wiggle room for interpretation, context, and view point.
An exaggerated example would be someone who thinks the world is flat based on one sample image that is a computer composite, or doesn’t show the curvature of the earth. They aren’t a liar, per se, but their opinion is based on partial, misinformed data at best, or purposefully selected because it fits the narrative at worse.
Well if you watched the series, maybe you would be of the opinion that some of her criticism misses the mark.
I am not screaming at her, nor has really anyone in this thread. Honestly, the criticism is mild at best.
Though I acknowledged that some people seem to blow a gasket at the mention of her name, hence ending with “Nor is the savage reaction some have acceptable.”
I think any issue with a vocal minority acting ugly, or using statistics or facts twisted them around to present an undesirable view poisons many topics and makes them instantly topic. I am sure you can think of several hot topics where if one takes anything to the side of one view, they are eyed with suspension of having ulterior motives.
I have criticized such people in the past, both here and other places. (“Nor is the savage reaction some have acceptable.”) Though that doesn’t really matter as I don’t get any sort of Internet Karma doing so. I guess I’d urge people in general to not automatically assume all criticism is screaming/unfair/toxic/part of a bigger attack.
He tends to cherry pick as well. Some of his criticism I think is valid, but too often he meanders into silliness and being condescending. It would behoove him to edit his thoughts better, clearly point out the issues he has with some specific examples and evidence, and edit out the click baity gotchas and the childish snark.
You can clearly have experiences that are different. But a lot of places, including BB, give a squinty look at any comment that doesn’t quite toe the line on several topics. No idea who @gregor is or his intentions, and while I can’t say there wasn’t some snark in his statement, it wasn’t exactly full bile either, yet instantly a target, vs perhaps encouraging more constructive criticism.
So tone policing. Got it. Not that I don’t agree with you, (eta some of the gun-shyness for some topics are understandable, though it can lead to people jumping to conclusions.) but as I under stand it, it’s a bad thing. And in my experience you can even try to go out of your way to monitor your tone, and still get in trouble.
In a recent thread I had to walk on egg shells, called out a small, specific group of people, and I still got lumped in as someone wanting to demonize a whole culture and country. Literally.
But this isn’t a FF forum is it? At leastI thought I was posting on a forum for people who are interested in intelectual internet culture (or whatever BB’s tagline is).
I agree about the distinction. But given the blatant errors she makes and the lack of response to the most striking criticism (at least nothing like that surfaced in my direction), it looks more like dishonesty to me. But in the end, her intention, opinion or honesty doesn’t even matter to me. What I’m interested in are intriguing sound arguments and I didn’t think her videos lived up to that.
This is definitely true but I don’t think this makes his arguments any less valid. What’s constructive in his (to be honest) overly brutal takedown is discovering where her arguments are falling short. And if you believe in her narrative you can take that as material for making better arguments. Imo it would be an error to only see Tf00t as a sophisticated trolley. Not everyone who disagrees with FF is a GamerGate trolley and plenty of people are torn between the extremes. Those are just not the people who are the loudest on YT & other sites. And those people might be convinced by more sound arguments (I certianly would be).
Yes, thank you, I wasn’t pushed in a corner enough. Keep up the mob mentality! 
Uh, as I mentioned I am already of that opinion.
I just take it for granted that for any person whose work is primarily putting out opinions that I will disagree with a lot of them. I basically feel the same way towards Sarkeesian as I do towards Paul Krugman. I frequently agree with both, I frequently disagree with both, but I don’t really care enough to try to shout either of them down or insist to other people that their opinions are WRONG and based on a lot of bullshit.
As I showed by criticizing her in this very thread, people seem to be perfectly able to distinguish between reasoned constructive criticism of Sarkeesian’s views and spittle-flecked apoplexy, so this doesn’t really seem to be very much of a concern.
@gregor’s comments caused people to do some pattern matching because that is how human brains work. He started with the same talking points every gamergater uses. If you don’t want to be accused of being a gamergater, then give your own opinion instead of someone else’s talking points – especially if you’ve only just now enrolled a BBS account to comment on this very matter.
I think “target” is a mischaracterization, though. Some people were skeptical that he was arguing in good faith for the reasons I already mentioned. The first reply to him was me, and it was trying to encourage more constructive criticism. So I think you’re misrepresenting the response to his comments somewhat.
Uh, no not tone policing.
See, you’re complaining that you’re in some sense not allowed to criticize Sarkeesian’s videos. (Please correct me if I’m misrepresenting you.) That’s obviously not literally true, so you probably mean something more like: “A bunch of people will act like jerks to you if you try to criticize Sarkeesian’s videos.”
But as I just showed, that’s not literally true either. What’s actually the factor that makes people act like jerks in response to such criticism?
Being a jerk.
So you’re basically complaining that you can’t act like a jerk without a bunch of people acting like jerks back to you. At this point, the discussion has very little to do with Sarkeesian at all and is just about tone.
It’s not tone policing to point out that if you act like a jerk, some people might act like jerks back at you.
Uh, yeah, me too. All the time. Welcome to the internet.
I didn’t even follow GamerGate, nor do I really know what it is about. So I if really matched the talking points, that’s by chance.
Honestly, right now I don’t find this much different to the YT comments section experience. Which I find rather surprising, given the quality of the BB content.
BoingBoing posts a lot of content I don’t like and I don’t feel the need to go into those comment threads and let them know I find it really disappointing that the editors like stuff that I don’t like. I guess I just don’t understand the impulse that led you to post your initial comment here.
It sounds like these videos make you really unhappy and I would strongly recommend you try to ignore or avoid them.
Unfortunately, you don’t provide any specific arguments for why I should agree with you, so that’s as far as I can say.
Notice I’m not accusing you of dishonesty as part of my disagreement, though. I can think that you don’t have good reasons for your opinion and still not accuse you of being a liar.
Since we’re talking about opinions and not facts, I think his clear bias makes it impossible for him to give constructive criticism – he’s against Sarkeesian’s project and wants it to stop, so his criticism is not going to be fair or reasonable or be phrased in such a way as to be useful for improving the videos.
If it’s “overly brutal” then it is by definition not constructive.
TF goes out of his way to make an emotionally charged video. It can be difficult to accept even good-natured criticism offered in good faith – it’s nearly impossible to accept unrelentingly negative and unfair criticism made in bad faith with the intent of tearing down rather than building up. If he wants Sarkeesian to take any of his advice, then he is shooting himself in the foot by being so negative and nasty towards her.
Even if TF has useful criticisms, it is unfair to expect Sarkeesian to respond if he has hidden it in an “overly brutal takedown” that goes way out of its way to verbally abuse the target of the criticism. If someone has useful criticism, they can be polite about it – or expect the reception to be less-than-polite as well. It’s only fair.
Unfortunately for you, you’re a stranger on the internet who signed up to the BBS just to complain about Sarkeesian’s videos, so your saying so probably isn’t going to convince anyone either way.
