Jack Thompson Will Be Featured In BBC Film 'Grand Theft Auto'

New submitter requerdanos writes: Former attorney and professional troll Jack Thompson is set to become a major motion picture figure, played by Bill Paxton, in the upcoming film Grand Theft Auto. According to Cinema Blend, "Paxton is in line to play Jack Thompson. A Miami lawyer, Thompson came into the public eye by frequently blasting Grand Theft Auto, creator Rockstar Games, and video game violence in general. Before that, he was known for attacking media companies who promoted both hip hop and sex. In 2008, allegations of professional misconduct, including harassment, defamation, intimidation, and false statements led to Thompson being disbarred."

Comments

Well...

[garyisabusyguy]

I'm pretty sure that they will portray Thompson in a positive light... or maybe just in the headlights of a car trying to run him down

We lucked out

[gnaarly]

Jack Thompson was a man. That was the #1 winning point.

Re:We lucked out

[Anonymous Coward]

Having briefly interfaced with the entity known as Jack Thompson, I can absolutely confirm that it was not a man. It is a Crazy Fucker.

Re:We lucked out

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's all remember the good old days when people laughed at censors from the radical right.

These days everybody either cowers from the censors from the radical left (developers) or cheers them on (media). It's apparently the progressive thing to do to dress old bullshit in new gowns.

Re:We lucked out

[Anonymous Coward]

it's why he failed at linking video games to violence, but Anita was successful in linking video games to sexism without any research to back up their statements.

Re:We lucked out

[Fire_Wraith]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what took Thompson down was not online harrassment, twitter trolling, or IRL threats of violence/rape/etc - it was clear-headed dissection of his poor arguments and the legal sanctions against his own atrocious behavior. In short, he was given enough rope to show himself up as the idiotic demagogue he is/was. Twitter trolling, sending pizzas to his house, and other Anon-style pranks may have made people feel better, but they probably had no positive impact in the court of public opinion. At the very least, that sort of behavior wasn't going to convince anyone that didn't already hate him.

On the other hand, what about Anita Sarkeesian? Can we really say she's been responded to in any sort of rational way? No, what the public sees is a bunch of juvenile attempts to shout down a critic. We're not even talking about how inappropriate rape or death threats are, we're talking about how counterproductive it is to let the conversation change over to that, rather than pointing out how she's wrong, her criticisms are overblown and uninformed, etc. Hell, I would never have even heard of her if it wasn't for the threats and harassment, because THAT'S the story the media keyed in on.

That's why her accusations stuck, not because anyone was evaluating them on any merits, but because a bunch of trolls turned it into a conversation about her being attacked, which caused people to take her side. I'm sure it helped that she was in the role of "feminist critic under attack" rather than "overly litigious lawyer" and thus much more sympathetic in nature, but the ultimate point is that the Gamergate trolls' behavior isn't just objectionable on its own merits, it's also proved rather counterproductive.

Re: We lucked out

[Anonymous Coward]

You're joking, right? Her videos have been absolutely demolished by anyone who spends more than 3 seconds thinking about them. Some of her examples have been entirely debunked - she simply made up facts to back her argument.

Of course, you probably never heard of any of this because of the incredibly persuasive response to those debunking her bullshit: misogyny!

Re:We lucked out

[Coren22]

People who at rationally generally get treated rationally. People who foam at the mouth and freak out at everything/everyone that disagrees with them get treated as the nutcases they are.

Anita is not a rational actor, therefore is not treated as such. Anyone who calls up someone's boss to get them fired for daring to disagree on a public forum is not a rational person.

Re: We lucked out

[Grishnakh]

No, he's absolutely right. It doesn't matter if her examples have been debunked or not, or if they've been completely made up. What people believe is what's important, not objective reality, and people's beliefs are shaped by things like media coverage on the harassment she received. So basically, the harassment made everyone take her side, even though she may be (according to you) wrong. If she hadn't been harassed that way, and the critics focused only on the facts, this probably wouldn't have turned out this way.

Re: We lucked out

[tehcyder]

You're joking, right? Her videos have been absolutely demolished by anyone who spends more than 3 seconds thinking about them. Some of her examples have been entirely debunked - she simply made up facts to back her argument.

Of course, you probably never heard of any of this because of the incredibly persuasive response to those debunking her bullshit: misogyny!

You should try reading posts you reply to rather than spewing out a kneejerk "SJW-feminazi" response.

OP was pointing out that if the original response had been to debate and defeat her arguments, that would have been sufficient to put the whole thing to bed. Instead, it was used as an excuse to push out piles of unpleasant misogynistic crap which actually reinforced her argument that a lot of games/gamers are misogynistic.

It's analogous to gamers responding to Jack Thompson's claim that games make people violent by going out and shooting him.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Jack Thompson is a piece of shit

[MetalliQaZ]

He was reincarnated in the form of Anita S.

Wow...

[NecroPuppy]

Has it really been 7 years since he was disbarred?

I remember celebrating when he got the boot, but I didn't think it had really been that long ago.

Re:Can't wait!

[Kemanorel]

Bill Paxton was amazing in Independence Day!

Will Smith was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton...

Aflek was the BOMB in Phantoms!

Re:Disbarring

[jratcliffe]

First off, a majority of states DO mandate membership in the state bar association (32 out of 50). Secondly, even in the states that don't, you can't just hang out your shingle and practice law - you need to be admitted to the bar by passing the state bar exam and being admitted to practice law in that state.

Law is a profession where an incompetent or corrupt practitioner can cause customers tremendous (and not readily correctable) harm. Having a licensing process that ensures that practitioners are at least marginally competent, and a way to prevent the corrupt from robbing others, is by no means unreasonable. We do require licenses for far too many things in this country, but this isn't one of them - if your unlicensed DC tour guide screws up, you end up getting bad info on when the Library of Congress was built, but if your lawyer screws up, you can end up losing your home, or going to jail, etc.

Re:Can't wait!

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's your obligatory: "Whoosh".

I'll explain the joke: people seem to get confused between Bill Pullman and Bill Paxton. (And apparently so did you; Paxton was NOT in Independence Day.)

The OP wrote Bill Paxton, and given the length of the post, I assume the mistake was intentional. The standard response is, of course, that "Bill Pullman was in Independence Day, not Bill Paxton". The poster you quoted then took the standard response and twisted it around by correctly naming an actor other than Pullman who was in Independence Day.

It's of course no longer funny since I had to explain it, but it seemed necessary.

Re:Jack Thompson is a piece of shit

[ckatko]

Anita isn't the problem. It's all of the morons who take her seriously. Why? Because people want to believe that we live in a world where all women are oppressed. And once you subscribe to that narrative, you're going to read anything that anyone says that supports that ideology of victimization.

And news companies know their audience is a bunch of suckers that will react to "oh no, poor cute princesses are being excluded?!" and be outraged, which makes them quite a bit of readership money.

This is not rocket science. It's yellow journalism. It's money. The news didn't care about ethics when we went into Iraq, or when we send the innocent Central Park Five black kids to jail for a rape they didn't commit. All that matters, is sensationalism to generate money.

And the people that believe it are just as guilty as the news corporations that exploit them.

Well, it also stars Daniel Radcliffe

[Powercntrl]

He does have some past experience dealing with trolls.