Mr. Belding posted:

I'm having deep moral questions about whether it makes sense to respond to any of this, because I don't honestly feel at this point that any of the discussion being directed at me is about things that I've actually said. If I initially thought that I could convince anyone that the type of response I've received is an ideological purity test and a bad idea, suffice it to say, I've been dissuaded.

But I'm going to try and interpret all of this, including the insulting language and straw men as charitably as I can.


I didn't claim that anyone lied. I don't know what "discrediting the author's experience" means. If anything I thought (and think) that particular vignette is tied to what the author is experiencing presently.

Questioning my motives makes it impossible for us to have a discussion. I think that what is being done here is harmful. That is my motive. To express why and how it's harmful. You don't have to accept it. I would agree that it's entirely unproductive. I wish it hadn't been.


At this point, I should have just picked the most uncharitable reading of anything I wrote and assumed people would assume it's what I meant. What I was saying is that I touched something sacred to the community and the response was to be expected. I thought it would create productive dialog. It has done anything but. Just hurt some peoples' feelings.


"Should" doesn't mean anything absent an intended outcome. Nevertheless you are right because the outcome I was looking for was a productive conversation and that didn't happen at all.


I agree that this is the crux of why people are reacting as they are. The reason I feel that it is harmful is because any scrutiny, even the most genuine, casual, and non-invasive is reacted to in this way. All analysis is treated as attack, which is actually a trait I associate with the unfortunate movement of video game players who dislike Anita Sarkeesian videos so much. I think that all facts are friendly facts. Analysis and criticism are useful and valuable in and of themselves, and I don't think they should need to be defended. Knee jerk defenses feel anti-intellectual, and against the values of liberalism as I see them.


If I heard something I felt was unlikely I would say "That is unlikely. " This isn't a particularly high level of scrutiny. And certainly if the account was written in a format intended to be consumed by others and I was discussing it with a group I might go a good deal deeper. If it seemed like a surreal dream sequence, I may even call it Lynchian! I don't save this level of "scrutiny" if we can even call it that only for sexual assault or harassment cases, and I don't make the claim that she wasn't sexually assaulted. The only claim I made is that opening vignettes had a dream like quality and dramatization that I would imagine is the result of years between the events and the writing of the story, and that the first one I feel is unlikely true to the literal word.


Okay, so this is another situation where analysis is being perceived as attack. I did not say that she lied. I do believe that the hobby has a massive problem with marginalizing people who aren't white men. I had serious concerns running a one shot for my twelve year old niece and my brothers (one of which is obviously her father) because I am somewhat concerned that making her interested in the hobby could bring her in contact with people I don't want her around, and I'm certainly not talking about minorities and women.

I am missing no, forest for the trees. I see the forest. I've been living in the forest. And if my eyes weren't opened to it before they have been for well over a year now.

I make no accusation of malice, and the fact that one is presumed, and I am treated as if it existed when it never did is where I have the problem. Frankly, sometimes I convince myself that telling people what they want to hear isn't the way to go about things, and that it's better to talk things through. Reality usually tugs my leash real hard at that point. Thanks for being part of that reality. It's an important reminder.


Once more, this is uncharitable and not what I said. The dog pile was already happening/had happened. I thought that I could productively have a discussion about that subject. I must have overestimated my ability to articulate those positions given the strange and very non-literal interpretations of them many have taken. Yourself included. I'm sure it was an accident.

I am not trying to deduce the truth quotient of every sentence. I didn't examine every sentence. Hyperbole in this situation isn't only unhelpful it's borderline dishonest.

Point being that I thought I could have a useful discussion. It failed. Therefore I'm sorry I tried because the hassle wasn't worth it, and all I did was piss people off who are probably mostly well meaning and disillusion myself that I can find common ground enough to make common cause with people I agree with on probably 99% of things. So yes, I am very sorry.


Once more, I never accused her of lying, trying to achieve e-fame, or any similar such thing. Saying straightforwardly that a sequence is dreamlike or Lynchian isn't even a question. It's a subjective judgment about the nature of the art. I get that if you think I'm saying that she's lying then that's a reason to be upset. I also get that me telling you I never said that, and that I'm not saying that (even going so far as to me pointing out that I was talking specifically about the nature of memory and it being notoriously unreliable) that you will not believe me. But there it is.

Honestly I think this isn't doing anyone any good. This isn't a parting shot, I'll discuss it further if anyone wants to, but I think I know where you all stand, and anyone who was genuinely interested in my position can just read what I wrote at face value without assuming any weird intentions and get the picture. These ideological purity tests are harmful to this cause and push people away who are or should be allies. Consider my nose slapped. Tail between my legs in the corner.

Mr. Belding posted:

Can you draw me a line from A to Z here where reading what someone wrote, thinking about the things they said, and then having an opinion on those things is dehumanizing? Generally I would say that not considering what someone has said is dehumanizing. I get that I failed to follow the outrage ritual (despite being outraged, especially at her employer's negligence). But you're using dehumanizing as a blanket term for something, and I don't know quite what it is.

Gazetteer posted:

When you are being told that your treatment of this issue is "dehumanising", what that means is that you are taking someone's personal account of a real thing that happened to them -- something that has real consequences and real trauma behind it -- and you are attempting to address it dispassionately and "logically". And doubling down when you're being told that this is inappropriate. You doing this feels dehumanising to many people affected by this sort of issue, because you are here claiming you are outraged over her accounts of sexual assault... while at the same time spending the majority of your words and energy musing over whether or not one of her accounts actually happened exactly the way she said it did.

quote:

You don't actually have any substantial grounds to question this account -- there enough similar accounts from various women involved in gaming spaces, and of tabletop wargaming communities in particular that literally nothing about it should seem particularly far fetched -- but you're here, basically just voicing your gut instinct and your psychology 101 fun facts about how "human memory is so fascinatingly flawed!" and it comes across like that is more important to you.

quote:

Like, you keep saying that you're on the same page as everyone else, but what you're doing here is nitpicking this one part of the story because you think it would make an "interesting" conversation. As if the problems and the issues being discussed here are like... abstract, do not affect real people and exist purely as a spring board for idle speculation and debate.

quote:

I know you do not think you "said" that, but, like... this is how you come across, and this is what your words and actions convey. Like, I'm sorry, but I do not actually think that derailing a discussion of harassment and sexual assault in community spaces with "but oho, can we truly take her at her word? WOULD YOU AGREE THAT--" is not even remotely productive to... anything.

Mr. Belding posted:

It has produced two good jokes, one of which I told

Mr. Belding posted:

Maybe it made the poorly named Brainiac Five mad.

Mr. Belding posted:

If approaching a subject dispassionately, makes anyone feel like I don't take their humanity seriously, then I apologize. But, I would say that I'm obviously not dispassionate or else I wouldn't take the time think about or write about these issues. I wouldn't ask anyone else's opinion or try to take hostile internet strangers seriously. And certainly when I'm clinical that in itself is once more, almost exclusively human. We do not know of any animals that stoically distance themselves from emotion or instinct in order to attempt objective measurement other than ourselves.

I spent a sentence or two on whether it happened the way she said, and probably 5,000 words discussing whether or not that one sentence makes me a lovely person. And I already responded as to why I'm so willing to spend my words on this, and it's mostly been interpreted as concern trolling or JAQing off. I'm a self-proclaimed ess jay dubya. I eat poo poo for calling people out on racist or gendered slurs in online games all of the time. I get told I'm a Nazi for being happy enough that Blizzard removed the stupid Tracer victory pose. I wrote a few thousand words about it that I never bothered posting.

What bothers me is that any time I break lock-step over any minor quibbling issue the treatment I receive is so out of sync with what I would think that thoughtful people would produce that it really makes me realize that the people on my side aren't any more thoughtful than those on the other. They just lucked into being right. They don't have a well examined position that they think will make the world a better place. They picked the right team.

So congrats. You spun the wheel and you get to be right, but you aren't really that much better than the other guys.


It's not that important. It is a couple of sentences important. The response is important which is why I've been willing to spend so many words on it. If the imagery that appears in that first vignette doesn't ring the same way to you as it does to me, then that's subjective. That's art. I'm not saying it didn't happen. I never said it didn't happen. Weird things happen. I have never seen neckbeards chant a pedophilic slogan at a twelve year old before. But I would be slack jawed if in all of history it never happened. That's not a bet I would make.


Pretty well aware they effect real people.


I'm pretty familiar with "how you come across" as a form of argument. It's closely related to "it seems like you're saying". I don't believe I've heard that statement precede something that logically follows from the statement it responds to. Let alone something I've actually said, or would even agree with.

But you're right. If I had said, "but oho, can we truly take her at her word? WOULD YOU AGREE THAT--," it would not be productive for anything. Furthermore, the much more nuanced and less offensive thing that I said isn't either. It has produced two good jokes, one of which I told and a lot of words that were mostly ignored but occasionally just had their meanings twisted and restated.

Maybe it made the poorly named Brainiac Five mad. That would be okay.

I did that really annoying thing where I broke up your statement and responded to it in pieces. Hopefully it means that I was able to respond to your actual positions without misrepresenting you which is its purpose. I don't know if that sort of thing is valuable to you, but it is to me.

Mr. Belding posted:

So congrats. You spun the wheel and you get to be right, but you aren't really that much better than the other guys.

Mr. Belding posted:

It has produced two good jokes, one of which I told

Mr. Belding posted:

Maybe it made the poorly named Brainiac Five mad. That would be okay.

Mr. Belding posted:

I did that really annoying thing where I broke up your statement and responded to it in pieces. Hopefully it means that I was able to respond to your actual positions without misrepresenting you which is its purpose. I don't know if that sort of thing is valuable to you, but it is to me.

Mr. Belding posted:

I eat poo poo for calling people out on racist or gendered slurs in online games all of the time.

Mr. Belding posted:

It has produced two good jokes, one of which I told

Mr. Belding posted:

Maybe it made the poorly named Brainiac Five mad. That would be okay.

Mr. Belding posted:

Can you draw me a line from A to Z here where reading what someone wrote, thinking about the things they said, and then having an opinion on those things is dehumanizing? Generally I would say that not considering what someone has said is dehumanizing. I get that I failed to follow the outrage ritual (despite being outraged, especially at her employer's negligence). But you're using dehumanizing as a blanket term for something, and I don't know quite what it is.

Kai Tave posted:

Maybe, and I'm just tossing out ideas here, Mr. Belding isn't actually being very sincere when he says he's deeply concerned with being a good ally if only all these ritualistic far-left awful people would quit forcing him to write thousands of words of pedantic bullshit, maybe it's more than he sees a topic like this and thinks "sweet, easy low-effort trolling here I come."

dwarf74 posted:

So here's a weird thing. Guess how ENWorld is responding to this post?

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?482661-Harassment-in-gaming

a whole lot more sensibly than whatever has been going on here! At least until the top of page 3; don't shoot me if it gets lovely after this.

Ningyou posted:

i'd say something but my eyes rolled so far up into my head from the PERHAPS SHE HAS A POINT BUT THIS TITLE IS RACIST AND SEXIST A-AND INFLAMMATORY AGAINST WHITE MEN!!! thing and the poo poo about how welllllllllll curbing harassment is important but the only sexism i've seen in elfgames is misandry and women harassing men!!! stuff that i literally cannot see or parse anything any more and can only even type this post bc muscle memory

how will i contribute to this conversation?

how will i do anything anymore?

please send hel

Mr. Belding posted:

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."

Ettin posted:

Hey folks. I am catching up but in the meantime it'd be great if you could make less posts that are just "this other poster sucks poo poo". Cheers!

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Alien Rope Burn posted:

Gravy Train Robber posted:

When we don't have grogs.txt we become grogs.txt

Lightning Lord posted:

To think Magic players made a stink about Mythic Rare.

Asimo posted:

In fairness, this is because M:tG is actually a good game so dumb decisions stand out a lot more.

Zereth posted:

.. Wait is the lowest level of rarity "Normal Rare"?

Nuns with Guns posted:

i've never minded mythic rares, why are they considered a dumb decision?

LordSaturn posted:

Now, people just don't like that if a Mythic is good, it will cost substantially more than a good rare.

Ettin posted:

Hey folks. I am catching up but in the meantime it'd be great if you could make less posts that are just "this other poster sucks poo poo". Cheers!