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dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Evil Mastermind posted:

The second-best part of it was when the store owner got mad that I "went behind his back" telling the guy he was banned from the store (I didn't, I was only going to kick him from our table), like somehow I shouldn't have told the guy he wasn't welcome. Bear in mind this was also YuGiOh night and the store was close to a school.

The best part was when the guy I kicked out messaged me through the meetup and tried to guilt me about kicking him out.

So I think we talked about this before. On the one hand, I try to be an optimist, and if the guy has served his time and is going through therapy and whatever other sorts of things he has to, well, isn't that what society expects? If he hasn't been ordered by the court to stay away from schools or public places with kids, is he an actual danger to others?

On the other hand, I wouldn't want my kids playing at that table and I wouldn't want him in my house at my own game, so it's not like I can say I disagree, either.

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SpaceViking
Sep 2, 2011

Who put the stars in the sky? Coyote will say he did it himself, and it is not a lie.

dwarf74 posted:

So I think we talked about this before. On the one hand, I try to be an optimist, and if the guy has served his time and is going through therapy and whatever other sorts of things he has to, well, isn't that what society expects? If he hasn't been ordered by the court to stay away from schools or public places with kids, is he an actual danger to others?

On the other hand, I wouldn't want my kids playing at that table and I wouldn't want him in my house at my own game, so it's not like I can say I disagree, either.

This isn't really the thread for this discussion, but it also depends on his rules/orders from a judge. If he's still on probation/parole specifically.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

dwarf74 posted:

So I think we talked about this before. On the one hand, I try to be an optimist, and if the guy has served his time and is going through therapy and whatever other sorts of things he has to, well, isn't that what society expects? If he hasn't been ordered by the court to stay away from schools or public places with kids, is he an actual danger to others?

On the other hand, I wouldn't want my kids playing at that table and I wouldn't want him in my house at my own game, so it's not like I can say I disagree, either.
See, then this turns into a "yeah, he's making literally everyone else at the table uncomfortable, but..." situation. Has he done his "time"? Presumably. Is he seeking help? No idea, but I hope he is.

But at the end of the day, it's my table. I'm the GM, I'm the guy driving the metaphorical bus. I feel responsible for their fun, their enjoyment, and their sense of safety. If people at my table don't feel safe around one of the players, then I need to deal with that poo poo. And if it's person A making persons B though G feel unsafe, then I'm sorry (not sorry) but person A is the problem and needs to be dealt with. And despite his attempt to try to make me feel guilty, I did not lose a wink of sleep over it. I've never once felt that I might have made the wrong decision.

dwarf74
Sep 2, 2012



Buglord

Evil Mastermind posted:

See, then this turns into a "yeah, he's making literally everyone else at the table uncomfortable, but..." situation. Has he done his "time"? Presumably. Is he seeking help? No idea, but I hope he is.

But at the end of the day, it's my table. I'm the GM, I'm the guy driving the metaphorical bus. I feel responsible for their fun, their enjoyment, and their sense of safety. If people at my table don't feel safe around one of the players, then I need to deal with that poo poo. And if it's person A making persons B though G feel unsafe, then I'm sorry (not sorry) but person A is the problem and needs to be dealt with. And despite his attempt to try to make me feel guilty, I did not lose a wink of sleep over it. I've never once felt that I might have made the wrong decision.
Absolutely. There is no duty on you to run a game for anyone you're not comfortable having at your table.

RiotGearEpsilon
Jun 26, 2005
SHAVE ME FROM MY SHELF
And, realistically, I suspect that would not have been cause to kick him out by itself if he hadn't already been doing things that made you go see if he was in the sex offender registry. I mean, it's not like you just stumbled across that information.

Evil Mastermind
Apr 28, 2008

RiotGearEpsilon posted:

And, realistically, I suspect that would not have been cause to kick him out by itself if he hadn't already been doing things that made you go see if he was in the sex offender registry. I mean, it's not like you just stumbled across that information.
Well, again, I'm not the one who looked him up. One of the other players did after their first session with the guy, then passed the word along to myself.

I still feel like an rear end because I didn't realize at the time that this guy was making everyone uncomfortable. I tend to say that it was because I had to keep track of seven players, but really there wasn't any excuse for me not at least picking something up.

paradoxGentleman
Dec 10, 2013

wheres the jester, I could do with some pointless nonsense right about now

Evil Mastermind posted:

Well, again, I'm not the one who looked him up. One of the other players did after their first session with the guy, then passed the word along to myself.

I still feel like an rear end because I didn't realize at the time that this guy was making everyone uncomfortable. I tend to say that it was because I had to keep track of seven players, but really there wasn't any excuse for me not at least picking something up.

This, or some variation of this, is my greatest fear when roleplaying. That by either action or inaction, I am ruining the game for everybody else.

whydirt
Apr 18, 2001


Gaz Posting Brigade :c00lbert:
I'd rather go a store with a sex offenders night than a YuGiOh night.

Edit: to be fair, there's probably a lot of overlap

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!

whydirt posted:

I'd rather go a store with a sex offenders night than a YuGiOh night.

Edit: to be fair, there's probably a lot of overlap

This came up either here or in the chat thread, but apparently the vast majority of yugioh players are either preteens or mid-teen scumbags who bully/cheat the younger players. but it's still an inSANEly toxic scene because no parent wants to deal with that.

Jedi425
Dec 6, 2002

THOU ART THEE ART THOU STICK YOUR HAND IN THE TV DO IT DO IT DO IT

Countblanc posted:

This came up either here or in the chat thread, but apparently the vast majority of yugioh players are either preteens or mid-teen scumbags who bully/cheat the younger players. but it's still an inSANEly toxic scene because no parent wants to deal with that.

I played YGO for a brief while with a friend of mine (mostly because we loved shouting dumb anime poo poo about trap cards at each other) and it really struck me even back then (which was like, 10+ years ago at this point) how much the game is designed to basically reward whoever can be the biggest rear end in a top hat to the other player as quickly as possible. I can only imagine it's gotten worse in the decade-plus since I actually played a game, and the one time I ever met other people near my own age who played YGO made it clear that this was a scene I didn't want to be part of.

Countblanc
Apr 20, 2005

Help a hero out!
it sounded like a lot of the awfulness could be traced directly to the company itself. they made no effort to grow a positive player-base or local communities, and in fact the game itself was basically one big Legacy format so it was really easy for kids to own cards that a 15 year old could easily spin at a tournament for some crisp funds but that an 11 year old (or their parents) wouldn't necessarily understand. certainly when I played the game as a kid I was downright distraught when I pulled a Mirror Force - an incredibly busted card that was basically a staple until it was banned - from a pack just because it didn't seem cool or it wasn't a monster i liked from the show.

FMguru
Sep 10, 2003

peed on;
sexually
I thought YGO had a strong pay-to-win element where rare cards were strictly better than their more common equivalents (and there were something like a dozen different levels of rarity) so the only way to be competitive was to spend spend spend.

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
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<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
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V
The first vignette in that tumblr post sounds surreal, like something straight out of a David Lynch movie.

The human memory is notoriously unreliable, and dramatic events often becoming further dramatized over time as re-remembered and retold.

Anyone who doesn't believe that event happened word for word as she wrote in the post is a scumbag even if they feel for her and think her experiences indicate a larger problem in gaming culture.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib

FMguru posted:

I thought YGO had a strong pay-to-win element where rare cards were strictly better than their more common equivalents (and there were something like a dozen different levels of rarity) so the only way to be competitive was to spend spend spend.

YGO's pay-to-win element is so extreme that the reason that Konami pulled everything back out of the hands of the American printer/distributor that was initially responsible for it stateside is they found out that they were printing counterfeit sheets of ultra-mega-rares to flip on the secondary market, no joke.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Mr. Belding posted:

The first vignette in that tumblr post sounds surreal, like something straight out of a David Lynch movie.

The human memory is notoriously unreliable, and dramatic events often becoming further dramatized over time as re-remembered and retold.

Anyone who doesn't believe that event happened word for word as she wrote in the post is a scumbag even if they feel for her and think her experiences indicate a larger problem in gaming culture.

If we held up the narratives of disaster victims and combat veterans and people who had to wait unacceptably long times for their lattes to the same scrutiny, I guess that would be the downfall of civilization something. But we don't, not the way we do to stories of sexual assault.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

Countblanc posted:

This came up either here or in the chat thread, but apparently the vast majority of yugioh players are either preteens or mid-teen scumbags who bully/cheat the younger players. but it's still an inSANEly toxic scene because no parent wants to deal with that.

It was here about a week ago. Basically boils down to the Yu-Gi-Oh playerbase at the store being incredibly toxic and scaring away the Pokémon players, so they banned people from playing YGO at the store. The magic players weren't affected because there's little to no overlap between it and YGO anymore.

FMguru posted:

I thought YGO had a strong pay-to-win element where rare cards were strictly better than their more common equivalents (and there were something like a dozen different levels of rarity) so the only way to be competitive was to spend spend spend.

And like someone brought up earlier, outside of the really really obvious not for play promotional cards, anything that wasn't on the banned list was playable. Even that one card that only 8 people own a copy of because it was a reward for the top 8 finishers at that one tournament twelve years ago.

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
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<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V

homullus posted:

If we held up the narratives of disaster victims and combat veterans and people who had to wait unacceptably long times for their lattes to the same scrutiny, I guess that would be the downfall of civilization something. But we don't, not the way we do to stories of sexual assault.

If someone ordering a latte involved the whole store chanting rude things to them, I think the scrutiny would be similar. Which isn't even to say that it didn't happen, weird things happen. The weirder they are, the more incredulous people will be.

And anyone who understands how memory works doesn't trust their own, let alone anyone else's.

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

FMguru posted:

I thought YGO had a strong pay-to-win element where rare cards were strictly better than their more common equivalents (and there were something like a dozen different levels of rarity) so the only way to be competitive was to spend spend spend.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

Mr. Belding posted:

If someone ordering a latte involved the whole store chanting rude things to them, I think the scrutiny would be similar. Which isn't even to say that it didn't happen, weird things happen. The weirder they are, the more incredulous people will be.

And anyone who understands how memory works doesn't trust their own, let alone anyone else's.

Memory is, as you say, unreliable and creative. As you said, stories get re-remembered and re-told differently. Why do we trust narratives of sexual assault less than other narratives, including narratives of other crimes?

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
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<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V

homullus posted:

Memory is, as you say, unreliable and creative. As you said, stories get re-remembered and re-told differently. Why do we trust narratives of sexual assault less than other narratives, including narratives of other crimes?

I don't know, I'm not a sociologist. I do believe that sexual assault reports are often not taken seriously enough. However I'm not willing to accept that the result of that truth is that all retellings of sexually traumatic experiences be treated as if they are literal gospel.

This one in particular strikes me as obviously dramatized. And is likely that way for a number of reasons.

Kurieg
Jul 19, 2012

RIP Lutri: 5/19/20-4/2/20
:blizz::gamefreak:

I love how something having a rarity of "Normal Rare" is, within the greater scheme of things, seen as "Common".

Mors Rattus
Oct 25, 2007

FATAL & Friends
Walls of Text
#1 Builder
2014-2018

I want to know what the difference is between Holofoil Rare and Holographic Rare.

Serf
May 5, 2011


Mr. Belding posted:

I don't know, I'm not a sociologist. I do believe that sexual assault reports are often not taken seriously enough. However I'm not willing to accept that the result of that truth is that all retellings of sexually traumatic experiences be treated as if they are literal gospel.

This one in particular strikes me as obviously dramatized. And is likely that way for a number of reasons.

Check out this loving hot-rear end take right here.

"So yeah, she was probably sexually assaulted, but just the way she tells it is overly dramatic, so this is the thing I'm going to focus on rather than the actual point of the post."

Holy poo poo this has been a goldmine, except instead of precious metals we keep digging up shitheads.

LordSaturn
Aug 12, 2007

sadly unfunny

homullus posted:

Memory is, as you say, unreliable and creative. As you said, stories get re-remembered and re-told differently. Why do we trust narratives of sexual assault less than other narratives, including narratives of other crimes?

We do this to correct for the cultural bias towards blaming and repressing the victim, which is a unique feature of sexual assault. Would you like me to explain why it isn't #AllLivesMatter?

Alien Rope Burn
Dec 5, 2004

I wanna be a saikyo HERO!

Mors Rattus posted:

I want to know what the difference is between Holofoil Rare and Holographic Rare.

From what little I have looked regarding rarities at the answers are inevitably excruciatingly dull.

Also, it bears mentioning from what I understand is that the US gets a much worse rarity distribution / value than Japan gets, presumably because Konami thinks they can squeeze Americans harder. For example, a Japanese pack might cost $2 and have four commons and one rare. An American pack, on the other hand, will cost like $4 and have eight commons and one rare. The price of American rares are, as a result, dramatically higher, and it really is completely shameless.

Gazetteer
Nov 22, 2011

"You're talking to cats."
"And you eat ghosts, so shut the fuck up."

Mr. Belding posted:

I don't know, I'm not a sociologist. I do believe that sexual assault reports are often not taken seriously enough. However I'm not willing to accept that the result of that truth is that all retellings of sexually traumatic experiences be treated as if they are literal gospel.

This one in particular strikes me as obviously dramatized. And is likely that way for a number of reasons.

Okay. Let's revisit that.

quote:

“Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed!” he chuckles in glee. The Warhammer 40K gamers at the table behind him take up the refrain. “Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed! Old enough to bleed, old enough to breed!”

"Undisclosed number of 40K players at this one table share terrifying in-joke with this one other guy" is... uh... something that's so unbelievable for you that you need to die on this hill, dude? Like, she didn't say an entire coffee shop. She could be talking about 2 guys for all you know. You have no reason to assume otherwise.

And, like, let's say you are right, and that she's remembering this wrong. Maybe it was only one other guy at the table taking up the chant, and the others just sat there quietly. I'll offer a counterpoint: Who loving gives a poo poo? The crux of the story is "13 year old girl goes into store, gets terrorized and driven out by 40K players chanting jail-bait jokes at her". Does it actually like... matter, at all, in any way, even slightly, if there were also people in that store who were not actively taking part? I'm personally going to say "no", because even if that's the case, any hypothetical dudes at that table who were not chanting were still willing to come to this store every week and push little plastic army men around with the guys who were. The entire article is about the game community's willingness to tolerate, overlook and be apologists for poo poo like this.

Like, what are you trying to prove here? Do you think this makes you come across as smarter or more skeptical or whatever? It doesn't. You're just latching onto this one, utterly unimportant detail and acting like it's some kind of smoking gun that calls anything into doubt.

Gazetteer fucked around with this message at 23:33 on Apr 4, 2016

JerryLee
Feb 4, 2005

THE RESERVED LIST! THE RESERVED LIST! I CANNOT SHUT UP ABOUT THE RESERVED LIST!
While it's true that people sometimes overdramatize or misremember things to their own benefit, I think that when determining how much it should worry you, you have to ask what the endgame is, what the cost or downside of taking them at their word would be. Right now, and correct me if I'm wrong, it seems like the only sorts of things being asked for is that nerd culture not harass people (much less send them death threats), not do things that make other users of a public space intensely uncomfortable, not marginalize women and minorities out of the hobby, etc.

If it ever comes to the point that we're leading a satanic-panic-style witch hunt against folks, sure, then you can point to unreliable memories as an actual relevant problem. For whatever it's worth, I do get an uncomfortable vibe when listening to some of the more... enthusiastic dogpilers in internet spaces, such that they come off to me as the sort of people who would be on the wrong side of such witch hunts. I do think it's something we need to be on guard against, just because humans aren't good about things like that. I also think that in general it's important to be as intellectually honest as possible, just out of principle. But please don't use the justifiable fear of witchhunts as an excuse to delegitimize or derail from perfectly reasonable requests like the ones in my previous paragraph.

Kai Tave
Jul 2, 2012
Fallen Rib
The Games Workshop Death Thread will gladly regale you of stories of warhams behaving incredibly offputting in public, giving their best Orkish WAAAAAAAAGGHH or following those fee-male hyo-mons who came within proximity like some silent, unblinking sentry, so if that particular anecdote strikes you as too fanciful to be real I think the actual takeaway here is that you simply haven't interacted with enough hams.

homullus
Mar 27, 2009

LordSaturn posted:

We do this to correct for the cultural bias towards blaming and repressing the victim, which is a unique feature of sexual assault. Would you like me to explain why it isn't #AllLivesMatter?

This reads as though you think I wrote "why are people saying we should trust narratives of sexual assault more?" when what I wrote was, I think, the opposite, that we trust literally every other kind of narrative more.

LatwPIAT
Jun 6, 2011

The sheer number of women who can relate tales of the many, many times they were made feel unwelcome, belittled, verbally harassed, sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and raped in nerd spaces points to the fact that there's nothing unbelievable about this woman's story.

canyoneer
Sep 13, 2005


I only have canyoneyes for you

LatwPIAT posted:

The sheer number of women who can relate tales of the many, many times they were made feel unwelcome, belittled, verbally harassed, sexually harassed, sexually assaulted, and raped in nerd spaces points to the fact that there's nothing unbelievable about this woman's story.

https://np.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/3249ff/women_of_reddit_when_did_you_first_notice_that/

Yep. There's a depressing read for you (and in true Reddit style, the top voted comment was written by a dude)

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008
This thread raises a lot of good questions about what a company can do when one consumer of their products harasses a fellow consumer of the same products.

Unfortunately it really seems that the answer is "not very much at all"? I mean they can post about how harassment is bad and only lovely people do it while linking to their Code of Conduct again, but that's already been done. Given that the post included Wyrd's phone number, I'm really not sure what calling them up is supposed to accomplish.

"Hello, I would like to inform you that a guy buying your miniatures is harassing a girl who also buys your miniatures, step in and do something?" They don't know who the harassers in question are, even if they did know who it is it isn't an MMO or a forum where you can just ban an offender's account, and the only suggestion given to them is to tell them to support and believe women and POCs.

And the latter essentially amounts to them reposting the stuff from Gravy Train Robber's post until people get the message, I guess, because what the gently caress else are they supposed to do?

If the harassment is coming from Wyrd employees, they can and should be fired, but from the sound of his post Caroland has no way to follow up from his end. I mean, most of the criticism here comes from the tone of Caroland's post, more than anything else.

I guess what they could do, from a public relations standpoint, is just say they're addressing this, hire more women and POC for their company, and then make lots of noise about how this is a big new step for Wyrd in addressing the issues of the hobby. It'll at least help to make people feel good, even if it still leaves them in precisely the same position as before.

Brainiac Five
Mar 28, 2016

by FactsAreUseless

Bedlamdan posted:

This thread raises a lot of good questions about what a company can do when one consumer of their products harasses a fellow consumer of the same products.

Unfortunately it really seems that the answer is "not very much at all"? I mean they can post about how harassment is bad and only lovely people do it while linking to their Code of Conduct again, but that's already been done. Given that the post included Wyrd's phone number, I'm really not sure what calling them up is supposed to accomplish.

"Hello, I would like to inform you that a guy buying your miniatures is harassing a girl who also buys your miniatures, step in and do something?" They don't know who the harassers in question are, even if they did know who it is it isn't an MMO or a forum where you can just ban an offender's account, and the only suggestion given to them is to tell them to support and believe women and POCs.

And the latter essentially amounts to them reposting the stuff from Gravy Train Robber's post until people get the message, I guess, because what the gently caress else are they supposed to do?

If the harassment is coming from Wyrd employees, they can and should be fired, but from the sound of his post Caroland has no way to follow up from his end. I mean, most of the criticism here comes from the tone of Caroland's post, more than anything else.

I guess what they could do, from a public relations standpoint, is just say they're addressing this, hire more women and POC for their company, and then make lots of noise about how this is a big new step for Wyrd in addressing the issues of the hobby. It'll at least help to make people feel good, even if it still leaves them in precisely the same position as before.

They could ban people that are known harassers, and stores that are permissive with harassment, from hosting Malifaux organized play. Even just pledging to do so would have an effect without having to follow through.

Plutonis
Mar 25, 2011

*while suppressing giggles and laughter* Tabletop Gaming has a White Male Terrorism Problem

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Bedlamdan
Apr 25, 2008

Brainiac Five posted:

They could ban people that are known harassers, and stores that are permissive with harassment, from hosting Malifaux organized play. Even just pledging to do so would have an effect without having to follow through.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not already the case if their PR statements are any indication?

quote:

It is because of this that we do not tolerate or condone any behavior that harasses, makes uncomfortable, insults, or otherwise diminishes another person. We don't tolerate it within our company, and we don't tolerate it within our community.

We don't believe in words without actions, though. Our forum rules are intended to ensure users can be comfortable within the community. Our Code of Conduct for our Henchmen ensures that they understand the standards of behavior we expect from them.

And if you, as a community member, see behavior that harasses another person, we hope that you'll step up and help to make your local community better. If there is a problem with a Henchman, please let us know immediately so steps can be taken to enforce our Code of Conduct.

I mean, there's no way for me to see if they'll actually follow through with this, but they've deffo made the right noises even if they don't take the right actions.

Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
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<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
|
V

Gazetteer posted:

Okay. Let's revisit that.


"Undisclosed number of 40K players at this one table share terrifying in-joke with this one other guy" is... uh... something that's so unbelievable for you that you need to die on this hill, dude? Like, she didn't say an entire coffee shop. She could be talking about 2 guys for all you know. You have no reason to assume otherwise.

Okay, so since your being reasonable this is worth responding to. From the start of this whole conversation I thought not posting would probably be the superior choice, but then some familiar dog-piling happened, and I got frustrated enough to engage, so I did. Then all of the the things that I thought would happen happened and here we are.

So. Let's start with "hill to die on". Do you think that it's fair to say that someone who agrees with the sentiment that piece of writing engendered, but doesn't believe the account word for word, and states it in a non-insulting way has chosen a "hill to die on?" Is this a fair characterization to make? I didn't like her use of the word "terrorist" either. In general, if I read that usage anywhere, I would criticize it, because to my ear it's bad writing. It draws the reader out of the story to puzzle over the word selection. And in general I find the early vignettes puzzling. I struggle to tell if they are literal accounts of events or an impressionist piece where her jumbled memories and the feelings they evoke are constructed into a wholesale narrative. Either of those things are fine, but I don't think an ambiguity between the two is helpful because it will cause strange analytical breakdowns when some people read it. Certainly when I read it.

So, I didn't like that aspect. I agree with the sentiment that gaming (both tabletop and video) is male (often white male) dominated space and hostile to females and minorities. I agree that it's a problem, and I love to be a voice arguing that we should be doing all we can to make it more inclusive, but I really struggle with my feelings that the people who share that view with me are obsessed with ideological purity tests.

Here's an example:

Serf posted:

Check out this loving hot-rear end take right here.

"So yeah, she was probably sexually assaulted, but just the way she tells it is overly dramatic, so this is the thing I'm going to focus on rather than the actual point of the post."

Holy poo poo this has been a goldmine, except instead of precious metals we keep digging up shitheads.

The long and short of this story is that if I disagree or disbelieve any account of potential sexual assault or harassment or often anything written by feminist writers or bloggers in general, then I failed the test and can be inarticulately insulted. I've been banned from communities where I was an active and seemingly well liked participant for months for calling an article "lovely". I agreed with the sentiment of the article. But it was not well done, and I said so. Therefore, I'm not a part of the tribe and I get a mean PM and told to go away. And that's fine. If I'm not welcome, then I'm not welcome, but I feel like the (let's go with this term) "new left" is very hostile to deviation from a set of quasi-religious rules, and if you aren't 100% on board then you've opened yourself up to lame insults and abuse for basically no reason.

quote:

And, like, let's say you are right, and that she's remembering this wrong. Maybe it was only one other guy at the table taking up the chant, and the others just sat there quietly. I'll offer a counterpoint: Who loving gives a poo poo?

Well, I do because I enjoy the process of reading and analyzing things I've read. Wondering what's true and what's not and how and why, along with issues of tone, word selection, intended audience, etc. That conversation is interesting to me, and I'm sure I'm not the only one. I don't think it's insane to question whether a particularly dreamlike sequence is "real" or something else.

quote:

The crux of the story is "13 year old girl goes into store, gets terrorized and driven out by 40K players chanting jail-bait jokes at her". Does it actually like... matter, at all, in any way, even slightly, if there were also people in that store who were not actively taking part? I'm personally going to say "no", because even if that's the case, any hypothetical dudes at that table who were not chanting were still willing to come to this store every week and push little plastic army men around with the guys who were. The entire article is about the game community's willingness to tolerate, overlook and be apologists for poo poo like this.

And in general you can throw a rock and find an apologist for poo poo like that, but I'm not sure I've seen one in this particular comment thread. What I have seen is a lot of (often hostile) quibbling over specifics when people generally agree over both the problem and the solution.

Let's put it this way. I already agree, despite this tumblr post's existence or not, that gaming is hostile to women. So insofar as the general point of this is something I already 100% believe and agree with, the details are in fact the ONLY thing about it that is interesting to me. So questions about those details do matter. To me. Because I find them interesting.

quote:

Like, what are you trying to prove here? Do you think this makes you come across as smarter or more skeptical or whatever? It doesn't. You're just latching onto this one, utterly unimportant detail and acting like it's some kind of smoking gun that calls anything into doubt.

In what way did I "latch onto" a detail. I made a single post. Granted, I knew full and well it would invite a poo poo storm. But I said one thing, and let everyone else do the latching to prove that not passing this purity test would cause a ridiculous fight, and it did.

All I was pointing out is that it's story that a person might have plenty of reasons to question and that being aggressive over the most minor of disagreement over it is stupid, which I stand by. This childish tribalism doesn't help anyone and runs off potential allies, and why? I believe that the core idea that gaming needs to be more inclusive is absolutely true and can stand up to scrutiny well enough that we don't have to act like literally every single shred of evidence or support for it is 100% beyond reproach or even analysis. And I wish I believed that all of the poo poo kicked up whenever any of that analysis happens was actually well meaning instead of being just an excuse for the low self-esteemed to belittle outsiders. But I really don't.

I'll end with a quote that I really like and agree with, and that I think is a good starting point for "fixing" your average gaming table.

quote:

It is almost impossible to convince gamers that sexist and racist jokes are unacceptable and that they make others uncomfortable and drive people off. Indeed, raising this issue at all often results in threats and more terrorism.

She probably should have used a comma before the "and" in the first compound sentence.

drat, I did it again. I guess I'm a "shithead."

(USER WAS PUT ON PROBATION FOR THIS POST)

Ningyou
Aug 14, 2005

we aaaaare
not your kind of pearls
you seem kind of pho~ny
everything's a liiiiie

we aaaare
not your kind of pearls
something in your make~up
don't see eye to e~y~e

Bedlamdan posted:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but is that not already the case if their PR statements are any indication?


I mean, there's no way for me to see if they'll actually follow through with this, but they've deffo made the right noises even if they don't take the right actions.
The problem with the PR statement is that when Nathan's first response is ranting about how he's not sexist because women work at Wyrd and jeez it's not like he grabbin' he dick and telling all those gals how they give him boner feelings!!! and painting this picture of wossername as a tyrannical ~SJW crybully~ stereotype (among other things) it kinda poisons things.

When they come out with this dispassionate-ish PR statement about how oh gosh nooooo they don't tolerate lovely behaviour fostering good community is very important to them etc. only after Nathan's response got around and people were like hey what the poo poo it comes off a lot less like making the right noises and a lot more like the right noises had to be dragged out of them by inches after someone realized hey wait poo poo this is going to become a PR mess and impact our bottom line

which, y'know, doesn't inspire a ton of faith that they're actually committed to improving the community or addressing harassment.

Serf
May 5, 2011


Mr. Belding posted:

drat, I did it again. I guess I'm a "shithead."

Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. Or at least in this case to shutting the gently caress up.

E: As for solutions to the issue of terrorism in the tabletop community, I'm not sure how much more the gaming companies can really do. Cracking down on harassment at events, adopting zero-tolerance stances, that sorta thing is a good start. The real work has to be done by the community, starting by calling out gross loving nimrods and expelling them from our circles. The established communities are pretty lovely and resistant to change, so in a lot of cases you will have to work at carving out a space for yourself and your friends and making a place where people can just play games and not have to worry about being harassed.

Serf fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Apr 5, 2016

Evrart Claire
Jan 11, 2008

Gazetteer posted:

"Undisclosed number of 40K players at this one table share terrifying in-joke with this one other guy" is... uh... something that's so unbelievable for you that you need to die on this hill, dude? Like, she didn't say an entire coffee shop. She could be talking about 2 guys for all you know. You have no reason to assume otherwise.

"Guy makes hugely inappropriate comment to a girl, other guys find it funny and keep repeating it" is totally a thing I've seen on multiple occasions at game stores/cons. I don't find it hard to believe that that story in the post is a literal account of the events.

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Mr. Belding
May 19, 2006
^
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<- IS LAME-O PHOBE ->
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V

Serf posted:

Admitting you have a problem is the first step on the road to recovery. Or at least in this case to shutting the gently caress up.

Hey, this guy has thoughtful stuff to say.

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