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Game Company Receives Complaints About Bad Example Set By '%FEMALENAME' (kotaku.com)
ArenaNet narrative designer Jessica Price was fired last week after she accused a Twitter user of "mansplaining", and adding later "Don't expect me to pretend to like you here." (Her employer characterized this as "attacks on the community.")
So what happened in the week that followed? An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit user indicated he'd been speaking satirically when he posted that "We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," and expressed surprise later that no one had disagreed with him. But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman). The letters also complained her Twitter account set "a bad example for the letter-writer's children, who supposedly play this game." The company's CEO received "a three-digit number's" worth of angry letters -- though "Fifty or so of them glitched out with a lot of variables exposed, including %FEMALENAME."
"A deeper look at the names and emails associated with the letters went to Facebook bot profiles and people whose profiles indicated associations with Gamergate or 4chan," reports Kotaku -- and Brianna Wu made a similar charge on Twitter last week, citing research by a team of volunteers. "The overwhelming majority of people harassing Jessica Price today on Twitter are bots and sock puppets. These are throwaway accounts that are used as toys. Almost no one claiming to be upset is an established, normal Twitter user." The Verge reports that Wu monitored Jessica Price's account, and found harassment "as bad as she's ever seen," blocking at least 600 different accounts.
Another female narrative designer at Arkane Studios says her employer was messaged with a complaint that she'd "verbally abused" a Twitter user -- and discovered a (since-deleted) online petition calling for her firing. And an angry message was also sent to Opaque Space (collaborating with NASA on VR games and training), complaining the company should take responsibility for the "man hating ideals...spread through social media accounts" by their game design lead. "I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out," she posted on Twitter.
The latest furor began with an accusation of mansplaining which a YouTube streamer defended as "my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion", calling it "disheartening" that Jessica Price didn't "correct me in my false assumptions."
So what happened in the week that followed? An anonymous reader writes: A Reddit user indicated he'd been speaking satirically when he posted that "We can probably fire anyone on the GW2 dev team as long we make a big enough stink," and expressed surprise later that no one had disagreed with him. But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman). The letters also complained her Twitter account set "a bad example for the letter-writer's children, who supposedly play this game." The company's CEO received "a three-digit number's" worth of angry letters -- though "Fifty or so of them glitched out with a lot of variables exposed, including %FEMALENAME."
"A deeper look at the names and emails associated with the letters went to Facebook bot profiles and people whose profiles indicated associations with Gamergate or 4chan," reports Kotaku -- and Brianna Wu made a similar charge on Twitter last week, citing research by a team of volunteers. "The overwhelming majority of people harassing Jessica Price today on Twitter are bots and sock puppets. These are throwaway accounts that are used as toys. Almost no one claiming to be upset is an established, normal Twitter user." The Verge reports that Wu monitored Jessica Price's account, and found harassment "as bad as she's ever seen," blocking at least 600 different accounts.
Another female narrative designer at Arkane Studios says her employer was messaged with a complaint that she'd "verbally abused" a Twitter user -- and discovered a (since-deleted) online petition calling for her firing. And an angry message was also sent to Opaque Space (collaborating with NASA on VR games and training), complaining the company should take responsibility for the "man hating ideals...spread through social media accounts" by their game design lead. "I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out," she posted on Twitter.
The latest furor began with an accusation of mansplaining which a YouTube streamer defended as "my obvious attempt at creating dialogue and discussion", calling it "disheartening" that Jessica Price didn't "correct me in my false assumptions."
I know MANY people like me, especially women, who have frequent experience with people calling for their employers to fire them for speaking up, speaking out
Yeah, #metoo
At least this time it's all been well documented and understood, so that the attacks on these women seem to have ultimately failed and if anything backfired. These kinds of sloppy mistakes with mail merge apps are nothing new, but unfortunately sometimes the messages look genuine to the victim's employer.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
when you use your army of 9 year olds to spam a game company and then spam the upvote system on slahsdot about that event with the same army. ^__^
Is anyone really surprised that identity politics only lead to more and broader generalized hatred?
How many troll armies have been unleashed on the United States, trying to stir up dissent and unrest using tactics like these?
She was fire for insulting the clients, she was not hire to speak garbage in twitter.
These days, it doesn't matter which group you're in, there will be a group targetting you. Be it scammers, hate groups, or trolls. The more you reveal about yourself, your beliefs, and your work... the more you'll be torn into. Also, uninformed people telling you how to do your job has always existed. It very rarely leads to any improvement and instead usually distracts. It all comes down to how you respond. Lashing out on social media just ensures logs exist. Don't give these people ammunition to use against you. Do not encourage them with a response. 'Do not feed the trolls' is a saying for a reason.
These tactics are bad and evil when used by one side, but when the forces of social justice band together to get conservatives silenced or fired, it's ok?
Seems to me they don't like the taste of their own medicine.
P.S. Are you really sure you want to make this woman your test case? I mean, seriously.
Given the trend to hoax responses like this, history suggests that the "attacks" are damage control. Whatever slight this was against them, a sloppy "harassment campaign" would only serve to benefit the targets - as they could point to the variable names and incidental joiners-on as a call to harass ArenaNet.
"Forget the engineers." -Carly Fiorina, briber of MIT Technology Review.
What makes you think that the 4chan trolls are gamers? Maybe the groups overlap, but they're by no means the same.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The dude was perfectly polite in his question. She just went off on him because she obviously knows better as SHE is the dev and he's just a player, that she's doesn't have to explain why he's so wrong that warrants her going off on him and basically called him sexist for bringing her gender into the mix(which he NEVER did, she assumed it herself, it was NEVER a gender issue yet she keeps on repeating it was.)
This whole thing is ridiculous and all stemmed from that one awful dev, the same one who said she was glad Totalbiscuit was dead (you may not like him, but ffs, that's not something you say about someone that died of cancer and wasn't a criminal).
It was never a mansplaining or a gender issue, the gender of the dev was never bought into this other than by herself to "justify" her actions.
She deserved to be fired, this is no way to conduct yourself. A dev online is like a clerk in a store, you represent your company regardless of whether or not you put a disclaimer saying "the views expressed here are your own and bla bla bla".
Don't like it? Don't respond, simple as that. No one forced her to reply to him in such a manner.
If you talk on your private account exclusively about private matters, I can very well see how your views expressed there are yours and yours alone. I doubt your employer (or people caring about who you work for) is bothered by you not liking your pet's doctor because your pooch still got worms after alleged de-worming or you trash talking your kids' elementary teacher 'cause that's the only possibility your genius offspring gets Fs.
It's VERY different when your "private" account talks about work related stuff and your followers are more likely than not following you because of your twitter talking near exclusively about your work.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I regularly see %FEMALENAME in spam Subject and From lines. Obviously a better lure than %MALENAME. So it's possibly an edit of a spam template.
Anything that is merely being said, and not experienced by my own senses, is not real life. All it does, is make you feel bad, about something that is so far out of your control, that you literally cannot even tell if it is real.
Then I noticed, how much of it actually completely does not exist in my world.
All those "wars"...
raging feminist vs neckbears or whatever
americans vs russians
refugees vs nazis
christians vs muslims
you name it.
They were just not happening in *real life*.
This is why the US military forced German civilians to bury bodies in concentration camps after WW2. So that they could experience it with their own senses. It seems that, prior to that, they were all big fans of your philosophy.
Nice post, your secret crush will surely want to sleep with you now!
Just because you have a vagina doesn't mean you can be a jerk without retribution.
Sure, like Buddhists in Myanmar, Jews in the West Bank, and Christian terrorists in the U.S., religion can lead to bad outcomes. The thing is, it's universal, so why would you blame religion unless you are an ignorant piece of shit?
Worse, he gave *positive* encouraging feedback. Exactly the type companies want. I say, "He" but the name doesn't indicate male or female. Perhaps she ranted at a women for all I know. Either way it was bad. Then she double down on it publicly on Reddit, and it became a much much worse, a big problem for the company, to the extent they couldn't ignore it.
And she got fired, the CEO explained to her personally why, and she took that even badly, suggesting he sacked her personally to gloat. When I read it, that he thought highly enough to sack her personally, and explain why.
Serious personality issues.
As to the rest of this shit:
"But another female developer told Kotaku she saw a real call to action on 4chan, and that it was followed by angry letters to the game studio she freelances for calling for her firing too, complaining their games had declined since she was hired (along with another woman)."
A targetted letter aimed at a particular woman, yet supposidly a generic template with %FEMALENAME in the template as if its a generic letter sent about all women to every studio?
And %FEMALENAME, not just %NAME?? The word 'FEMALE" in there to back up the agenda claim. That doesn't ring true, and a google search does nothing to back it.
So I think this is just bullshit.
Jessica Price could be *Jeffry* Price for all it matters, he would still need to be sacked for that behavior.
"Was only speaking Satirically" = "It's just a joke, lighten up". The classic capper to a round of bullying, trying to delegitimize the grievances of the bullied.
Could this thing be re-written so that it makes a bit more sense? Its like several disjointed story lines melded into an incoherent whole.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
No, the answer is 0): STOP USING TWITTER
How dumb is it to get in text based public flamefests limited to short sentences? The only thing profiting are companies like Twitter who call it "engagement", which drives up ad revenue. Just stop using Twitter for anything. If you really have to use it, use it for entertainment. So called "social media" is not a place for serious discussion - especially not Twitter! The fact that our President uses it is outrageous enough. Just stop using it. Nothing good comes out of it, unless you are a Twitter shareholder.
The topic of discussion and the depth and quality of the subsequent commentary gives me great hope for the future. My hope is that arthropods are back at the top of the food chain again. And the way this discussion and ecological changes are going, they have a good chance. I for one hail our new lobster overlords.
Just the washing instructions on life's rich tapestry
Nobody can cause you your job if you don't throw hissy fits for goodness sake. Don't be trolled into saying something stupid.
If you cannot watch how you respond using an account with your real info then really you should have known better.
Imagine a waiter who serve a difficult customer and manage to professionally diffuse the situation.... then went home and spout verbal garbage online and it went viral.... do you think he/she will keep his/her job? She was perfectly professional at work.... spouting garbage is her private life...
It's obvious right?
Some idiot brings gender into a discussion on the internet. We don't hate you because you're a woman, we hate you because you're trying to get in our face about being a woman. On the internet. Where you aren't a woman. You're a collection of bytes. Bytes don't have a gender. So shut the fuck up already.
Employers need to stop bending over and letting the mob fuck them in the ass
Maybe we should tell James Damore that?
Part of the original griping was that 'hissy fit' only ever seems to apply to women. When a guy tears down a user like that they usually end up getting neutral to positive feedback.
No, the answer is 0): STOP USING TWITTER
Now, that may just be the most important bit of advice to come out of this whole affair. Facebook, too.
Resistance is futile. Reactance buggers it up.
Well, maybe employers will finally notice that just because a bunch of internet trolls get worked up over someone, whether that someone "deserves" it in the eyes of some assholes, this ain't no reason to fire him or her.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have been following this since it started. I have yet to see any evidence whatsoever of the '%FEMALENAME' letters that are being referenced in blogs, social media, etc. Until I see a pastebin, photocopy, or something published by an actual company who received it, I'm filing that under "shit-that-never-happened".
The facts in this that we KNOW to be true are as follows. 1: Price received some feedback she didn't like. 2: She got offended over nothing and reacted badly. 3: She and a colleague were fired.
In the real world, a business' bread-and-butter are its customers. (This is doubly true for entertainment related businesses) Treat them badly, and your business suffers. Treat them badly a lot and do it publicly, it suffers seriously. GW2 was hemorrhaging players already and Ms. Price's writing was likely playing a part. I uninstalled it about 6 months ago myself after playing for years.
Why can't we go back to using jumpers to configure slot adapter cards? Why? I say!
Takes quite a mentally ill disturbed person to feel happy about the death of a cancer victim who on top of it was a law abiding citizen with no history of crime and public disturbance unlike many feminists.
If she was happy about the death of some murderer or terrorist or pedophile or whatever in those lines, it'd be understandable; but an average guy who did nothing wrong against anyone in his life except not buckling to flawed opinions of feminists? That's already staining the whole collective with her as a medium.
Seeing how many of them were springing up to defend price, and seeing how easy it is for anybody, male, female, whichever , to set up a fake email campaign and make it look like a badly organized MRA thing, and we know that both side at some point not only boasted they were doxing the other side, but some troll also boasted he made both side fight harder... I am watching such pretend campaign with a wary eye. It could be male incel idiot trully wanting to fire female, it could be troll seeing the great way to shit everywhere and make people reacts, or it could be feminist seeing a great occasion to muck things up by pretending being MRA sending letter. Who knows ? Nobody unless you really catch the one doing it and check what was their reason for it.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
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visit randi.org
Women's privilege, which lets women do and say things men cannot, must end in a time of equality. And trying to pin the problem on men is just more of what I call cherchez l'home, or search for the man behind the woman's bad behavior, speech, or attitude. If you cannot turn the genders around and find the speech and behavior acceptable, it isn't acceptable, period. And what man can make up words and phrases to attack women? We can't without the same kind of consequences she is having. It is time for equality to mean equality, not equality and special privileges.
E Proelio Veritas.
She couldâ(TM)ve agreed to disagree professionally and left it at that. Ignored further inquiries or insults. But no, sheâ(TM)s a triggered child and had to lash out as a representative of her company.
I work for one of the largest healthcare industry companies in the world and while we are encouraged to be participate on social media, we are not allowed to argue with others or defend the company other than offering to report complaints. I comment on my companyâ(TM)s posts, but I donâ(TM)t respond to other people even if itâ(TM)s positive as shit can get so twisted.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
It's great that you've managed to reduce massive numbers of humanity into broad caricatures which you can hate unreservedly. Such attitudes never turn out badly.
'Jessica Price was fired last week after she accused a Twitter user of "mansplaining"' No she wasn't forced for "mansplaining": ref:
'After a long AMA on the Guild Wars 2 Reddit, Jessica Price; a writer for ArenaNet, went on to Twitter to post a 25-part essay on how she comes up with stories, and what is relevant as far as stories in todays MMO's. (Very rough synopsis, quite a good read.)
After posting the essay, many community members chimed in to thank Price on sharing her views, and how insightful the read was, with one very popular community member; who has his own NPC inside of Guild Wars 2, commenting on the essay hoping to be able to start a civil and polite conversation with, one of his favorite writers. (He denotes this in his Twitch stream before the Twitter debacle)
The attempt however at starting a polite and civil conversation with the ArenaNet Writer, ended in Price slandering and defaming the community member as a sexist who is trying to mans-plain the job to her, even after the community member apologized for trying to start a civil conversation. (Community member posted a total of 2 Replys to Price, the first being the initial polite conversation starter, the second the apology for attempting communication.)
The next day on July 5th (This all occurred on July 4th), ArenaNet's CEO Mike O' Brian released a statement on a Guild Wars 2 Reddit post stating that Jessica Price and another ArenaNet member have been fired for harassment of an community member, when no such harassment was necessary.'
It's not universal.
If you follow the teachings of Christ alone and ignore all the other optional bullshitters in the Bible, you will suddenly follow the words of a pacifist whose worst crime was flipping a few merchant tables and you will still be Christian (with emphasis on Christ).
If you follow the teachings of Buddhism and Buddha you will still be peaceful towards all life unless you meet with a force trying to exterminate you and life around you as a self-defense measure. That's the Buddhists in Myanmar who tolerated every religion in the world including Christian idiocy, meeting with something so far worse than ever experienced that they had to make an exception for it - Islam.
If you follow the teaching of Islam, you follow the teachings of a guy named Muhammad whose head was once filled by shit by a bunch of Christian monks when he was little, who then went to invent Islam from that experience, who then went to wage over 60 war campaigns, sacked cities, perpetrated atrocities, married and had sex with an underage girl, enslaved people of all races including blacks, and was generally a god damn demon. You can't ignore Muhammad to focus on the teachings of the less violent people in the Quran and be Muslim, but you can ignore the retards in the Bible while only listening to the Pacifist Christ and still be Christian. The difference is pretty fucking big.
So no, it's not universal. It's dependent on how big of a loophole we are dealing with and how rooted that loophole is in the core definition of a religion. Because Christ himself never said anything about stoning and killing gays, Spain and Netherlands were the first countries to legalize gay marriage without any violence or gay-bashing and killing every happening at a time when both countries had majority Christian populations (even more so for Spain to who Christianity is deeply related to their Independence and politics since they were slaves to Muslims).
The same will never happen with Islam because Muhammad can't be ignored, if you ignore Muhammad then you are no longer following Islam but rather the unaltered Christianity or Judaism which he modified into what is known as Islam.
Cite examples, or stfu.
stop spouting utter bullshit..
remember both her and a guy got fired for the same shit...
What community? "The internet community" was maybe (BIG maybe) a thing 25 years ago when it took more than half a brain cell to connect and maybe another one to get the various tools to work to actually get a two-way communication going. Back then webpages and being able to start Netscape meant that you can read someone's opinion, not that you yourself could voice yours.
Today, there is no "internet community". The internet is filled with the same shitty no-brain bastards that littered the meatspace with their idiocy, thanks to plenty of ways to spew your unfounded, uneducated and utterly ridiculous opinions onto a world wide audience. Have you been on YouTube lately? The only "private" content you'll find (opposite to corporate content like music videos) is harebrained conspiracy and answer videos debunking them. This has exactly zero to do with what the 'net community has been about back when it was mostly composed of people whose first association of Spam wasn't canned meat.
We let the masses in. Yes, that was a mistake and I'm honestly sorry for it. So in a way you can blame us for these idiots being here. I agree. But don't pretend as if these double-digit IQ imbeciles form some sort of "community".
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The problem isn't feminism. The problem is that some people use the label "feminist" to con people out of money, much like others use religion for the same purpose. If their con job is called out, they call prosecution and play the misogynist card as a thought-terminating cliché, hoping (often successfully) that their narrative will work.
This is the main problem feminism currently has, especially with its own supporters.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
And that goes for both genders. For some reason, many female sexists were not seen as sexist and that is stopping now. Good.
Maybe we can stop listening to these people altogether, regardless of form, size of shape. Same for racists. It is always only about elevating themselves and putting down others.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
BTW, editor, I'm pretty sure that title makes more sense as:
Game Company Receives Complaints About Bad Example Sent By '%FEMALENAME'
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.
That's a very long post about Price, but she lost her job and bares no responsibly for the mob that used her firing to instigate an attack on other random women.
"Bears", and while she's not responsible for the mob's actions, certainly her actions (and not her being) turn out to have been the trigger for a mob of idiots to go on harassing other women. While I don't condone any of this, it's fairly clear why it happened: Someone threw oil on what turns out to have been a smoldering fire. And now it burns. Whoops.
It's a bit like dropping a smoldering cigarette butt in a dry forest. Many times it'll just go out. Sometimes, even if you stamp it out then walk away, might still cause the entire forest to burn down. If you know the forest is dry, even lighting up a ciggie there is criminally irresponsible. (Hard to grasp concept for some. How about you?)
The real problem here is not one person who was punished for some rude tweets,
For some identity politics-flavoured toxic tweets. It was well beyond mere rudeness. Which explains (but doesn't justify, thanks) the counter-trolling. But I see you mostly post to make your spin stick. Again, "oh, it's AmiMoJo again. Oh well."
it's we have a mob attacking people because of their gender.
That's actually not quite correct. The mob is trolling to see if they can get people fired, which happens to be aimed at females because the trigger happens to be female. If she'd been male then the barrage of bot-complaints would've been against male game designers. I know it's not on your agenda to admit this, but I'll point it out to you anyway.
It's important to publicize it and develop countermeasures so that there are not more victims.
Knowing what's going on ought to be enough. If your employer would fire you without first talking through the complaints then you're better off not working for that employer. In an internet age employers cannot afford to let their valuable human capital up and vanish because some random troll sent a truckload of automated complaints over, well, nothing. If they succumb, the company eventually succumbs.
It would also be great if we could understand the people behind this and their motivations. Some people want to write it off as general trolling, like it's some innate property of the internet that just happens spontaneously, but there is a years old pattern of attacks on women specifically with deeply misogynistic motivations.
Go hang out on 4chan and report your findings, there's a good little researcher.
To be clear: 4chan has "a years old pattern of attacks" against just about anyone, everyone, regardless of any single thing. They'll hate you just so they have an excuse to hate you, until their attention span runs out and then they'll hate something else for a while.
Again, not on your agenda to admit it, but 4chan's history is pretty clear to just about everyone else here.
The most trustworthy name on the internet...
Yep. It is about money and power and those believing in the cause are used as just useful idiots. And yes, same with religion and other similar things.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
to address inequality? Racism and Sexism really are things. It's not like we've eliminated them completely from human thought and we can just go on our way. Just having laws against racial and sexual discrimination is technically 'identity politics'. Sure, you can take it too far (there's lots of whack jobs on the left and the right wing media spends an unhealthy amount of time reminding us of them) but when somebody's a racist or sexist you don't stop pointing out they're racist or sexist just because a few whack jobs want to cut everybody's dicks off.
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Probably because the guy then doesn't go on to complain about how much he hates the entire demographic the company he works for is targeting.
I'm assuming you're in your 40s. Maybe 50s or 60s. The reason why there was no gender was it was 99% white guys. The reason for that is, well, there weren't a lot of minorities in technology because especially 20-30 years ago (especially if you're old enough to remember BBS) minorities were in even worse shape than they were today and they didn't have a lot of access to tech, especially the expensive tech from the 90s (anyone remember building a 486 DX100 in 1995 for $400+ and being amazed at how "cheap" it was?). As for women, well, the places I hung out weren't exactly friendly to them. Lots of "Locker room" talk; which to be blunt was mostly thinly veiled misogyny from nerds (which I'm embarrassed to say my younger self took part in).
/.) are full of bitter old coots like me and, well, we're just not as much fun to be around.
Tech got cheap. Really cheap. Like, I can get a laptop online for about $100. $250 if I want a nice new one. $50 if I'll settle for a desktop. Also, the internet became a global communication tool and software was written to get non-nerds online. Finally, the old nerd caves (like
On the plus side you've got a _lot_ more folks online. A lot of those folks are helpful and good folks. I've been able to do tons of projects thanks to them.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
they're typically well known people at game studios. What's more, the ones in this story are being targeted for their gender. They're not just a collection of bytes. They're not anonymous /. posters. They're employees at a company expected to function in a customer service role. They can't "shut the fuck up". It's literally their job to engage with and talk with the community. The only way they can "shut the fuck up" is if they leave the industry, which, well, seems to be the goal here....
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Jessica Price is a tool. The people trolling her and others are also tools. Tools beget tools.
There's really nothing else to the story. Yes, there's the facade of sexism/racism that's become endemic to practically every conversation we have today (for the worse), but that just seems to be a way for tools like Jessica Price to justify being a tool.
Jessica (and her ilk) are clearly just toxic people. There's always been toxic people in the world, but we haven't until recently had a socially acceptable way of being toxic. Today it seems that whenever you can identify an "ism" (sexism, racism, etc), you have some sort of god given right to become a toxic ass-hat to whomever is being accused of the ism. They invented a whole new set of slurs to identify the ism offenders, or defend whatever the anti-ism people believe. Mansplaining, microagressions, trigger warnings, violating "safe spaces", etc. Other toxic people all chime in, creating an anti-ism circle jerk of hate. Then the other "anti-anti-ism" people chime in to try to "correct" the anti-ism people. Rinse, repeat.
All this seems to do is create MORE toxicity, not less. The identity politicians of the left, and now increasingly of the right now only seem to destroy the very thing they think they're saving, themselves and everyone around them. Everyone just starts to hate everyone else just a little bit more as they dig deeper and deeper into themselves and their own little tiny self.
Is it really a surprise? The more you start to think about your own little group, the less you think about everyone who isn't you. Some people seem to want to so narrowly define themselves they seem to forget that anyone else outside their own group even matters. Hate breed hate. We seem to have forgotten that.
It's terribly upsetting to me. It's even more terribly upsetting that this is largely coming from "the left". This attitude is ANYTHING but liberal. It's fascist. Liberal is _supposed_ to mean an acceptance of people. not this toxic rejection of anyone and anything that doesn't fit into your world view that's taken hold. The extreme left and the extreme right have itself around in the political spectrum, and become nearly one in the same. Call it libro-con neo-facism.
Can't we just build a bunch of rockets and send these people off into deep space? Then they can fight each other to their hearts content in and endless battle for Justice. Just tell them we're doomed, and send them off to Mars. On second thought, Mars isn't far away enough. How about the Andromeda galaxy?
This article actually leaves in sufficient facts to contradict the narrative.
The reason that the reddit user "speaking satirically" comes up is that Polygon was pretending they had found someone who actually believed that, but Polygon accidentally linked to the post where he admits his post was fake. This demonstrates that Polygon knew that the post they linked to was a fake post from their own side, but they deliberately used it anyway as clickbait.
Furthermore, the claim that "nobody disagreed with him" is a voted into the negatives and deleted. Voting things down is often used to express disagreement.
The slashdot post is written poorly because it's trying to avoid admitting these things, because "the supposed misogyny among gamers is a false flag operation" contradicts the narrative.
These people are "the left" as much as the kkk is "the right".
Nobody likes these people and all her friends who also get harassment are fellow internet warriors.
Since when does Slashdot report on and even wade into internet troll drama? Please. I dunno about other /. users, but I for one do NOT care about this. This isn't even news, it's just tabloid gossip talk. Get this off of here.
No one knew or cared WHAT you were, just WHO you were.
Actually, I always got the sense that nobody cared who you were, just that your ideas were good ones. In the early days of Slashdot, there were a lot of really smart people commenting on the stories with a lot of interesting insight to add. Now, every third post seems to be by an AC with a IQ of 80 who feels a need to share their opinion with the world. Articles about quantum computing end up degenerating into Hillary and Trump mud slinging fights. Oh, Intranets.....
The Internet really went downhill in the 90s when companies like AoL were trying to get everyone in the world online for $14.95 a month. Now the Internet is a pretty good reflection of humanity in general, and it shows.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
This is a lie.
The neighbors in Düsseldorf / Germany told my father, who was a child back then, that sticky tape was made of dead Jews and dead Russians.
They knew.
Absolutely not. Over my career, I have separated 2 SW engineers and a salesman after they posted a bunch of crap online. Free speech is not consequence free, and it applies equally to men and women
was a complete lack of tact.
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and the same level, but without the bit about "mansplaining" would she have lost her job? It's a bit hard to say because she's been a bit of an ass in the past. But I'm not entirely convinced that without the backlash from the opposition to the #metoo movement that she couldn't have just held out until everything blew over.
Also I can't help but wonder if this had been a bit of sexism from a man (so long as it didn't stray into sexual harassment) if we wouldn't see a lot of defenders arguing that so long as he did his job well it's fine; maybe suggesting he take a class or two in anger management...
I guess my point is, rudeness isn't what got her fired, angry men were. Now, feel free to continue arguing whether they have a right to be angry. Maybe they do, but OTOH there are probably better things to get angry about.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
You don't get to pick the parts of equality that you want. You get them all.
I look at this like Aladdin and wishing to be the genie. You wanted everything someone else had, well, you get the shackles that come with it.
Going to get a bit of a wake up call, the grass isn't as green as you thought it was on the other side, except for the 1%.
Well, not many talked about the IRA as fundamental Christian terrorists, yet they killed 1,823 people over three decades, and nobody should talk about them in this way. There are always exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking people become terrorists for political reasons, not because of their religion. There are about 1.8 billion Muslims and 2.2 billion Christians on the world. Compare those numbers to the hundreds of terrorists - or maybe thousands, if you're very pessimistic - that are active in the world and it's easy to see that religion can hardly play a major role. Terrorists are basically local politicians without much of a conscience.
Well, not many talked about the IRA as fundamental Christian terrorists, yet they killed 1,823 people over three decades, and nobody should talk about them in this way.
If IRA members had regularly strapped on suicide vests, walked into British cafes, yelled out "Praise Jesus!" and then blown themselves up, I would gladly have referred to them as fundamentalist Christian terrorists. They didn't, so I don't.
There are always exceptions to the rule, but generally speaking people become terrorists for political reasons, not because of their religion.
That's a distinction without a difference. The big Abrahamic religions, at the very least, are inherently political. Many others are also.
There are about 1.8 billion Muslims and 2.2 billion Christians on the world. Compare those numbers to the hundreds of terrorists - or maybe thousands, if you're very pessimistic - that are active in the world and it's easy to see that religion can hardly play a major role.
Makes sense. There were tens of millions of Nazis, but only a few thousand worked in concentration camps. Clearly Nazism didn't play a major role.
It's great that you've managed to reduce massive numbers of humanity into broad caricatures which you can hate unreservedly. Such attitudes never turn out badly.
"Social Justice Warriors"
"Social Junkie Whales"
"Social Junkpile Wanker"
---c6gunner
Most republicans polled think women should get the death penalty for having an abortion. Over 80% believe the world is younger than 6000 years old. When people are asked doctrinal questions, they give doctrinal answers. All that demonstrates is that you don't understand polls.
Yeah, you got me. Lightly poking fun at a small subset of the population who engage in one specific type of behaviour is totally the same as lumping multiple disparate groups together for no other reason than that they all disagree with you on something.
I work as a teacher... As such, I have some restrictions on what I can do outside my work... and I never had to sign any document about that...
1) no racist attacks (even if the people in front of me act racist, I CAN'T answer in the same terms) ...)
2) no talks against my school... Even if I see problems with some coworkers, I can't make random posts about it.
3) no talks about coworkers in front of students (the big taboo)
4) no "unrespectable behaviour"... this includes being seen drunk in the public space, unfit clothing (no SM-wear in the street or nazi costume or
and so on...
I guess that requirements imposed on teachers are bigger than those on gaming company... but clearly, what she posted is unacceptable... She was not on the internet as "Jane Doe" but as "Jessica Price, writer at Arena.Net"... As such, she had only two choices : politely avoiding the conflict or blocking the guy and ignoring him...
And now, we see people getting pissed off because she got fired... she deserved it... If she can't control her temper online, she should avoid posting !!!
Please don't just make up numbers as you type.
Kinda. My great-aunt was a German Red Cross nurse during WW2, and had occasion to help one or two Jews who were being transported in trains to concentration camps. She knew they were being rounded and were being taken to a prison somewhere, but she didn't know of what was being done to them. From her perspective they were all POWs, and very hungry and sick, but that was it.
I should point out her family was anti-Nazi. Her father, my great-great-father, had ordered her to enter the Red Cross so that she wouldn't be forced to attend Nazi Youth, and insisted she kept her knowledge of Portuguese. They were late 1920's German immigrants to Brazil who really liked it here, and they were visiting Germany when the war broke out, being forced to stay there. That was so effective that, once the Americans took over, she began working for the US military base set up closest to their home.
So, yeah. Some might have know, probably those who lived closest to concentration camps, but for the majority, including the most antisemitic among them, it was all a huge question mark.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
If you give the anonymous mob what it wants - attention - expect more of them. The social, near primal need to 'group up' in response to threats from women does them no favors online. If the mob targets a man, he will whine and complain and give them only so much attention. But he will never paint a target across all men and say 'look what we have to deal with[as men]'.
You might want to stop dragging every other woman into bullshit you caused yourself as an individual, because you'll never outnumber the anonymous mob.
Please don't.
Slashdot is one of the few sites that doesn't delete unwanted posts. That means we get spam, but it also means we don't have posts that are deemed 'unwanted' simply because they are confronting.
None of these posts appear at +1. Most are modded to -1. Set your viewing threshhold to 0 or +1 and they will disappear. So will a lot of other A/C posts, like yours, but then, perhaps you should take advantage of the systems already in place, rather than calling for a campaign to modify an existing system so that it's more to your liking.
I'd prefer to put up with some spam than to see yet another site have to have editors making choices about what is and isn't wanted.
Part of the original griping was that 'hissy fit' only ever seems to apply to women. When a guy tears down a user like that they usually end up getting neutral to positive feedback.
If the guy uses gender neutral terminology it is very different to what happened here. "You're an idiot" is a very different statement to "you're a typical dumb woman". First gets a stern talking to from your manager, second and you better be ready to find another job. It's not OK for a man to discriminate against a woman just as it's not OK for a woman to discriminate against a man. Both are wrong. Both should get you fired. The fact the SJW crowd think one way is OK but the other deserves a lynch mob is the problem - and let's be real here, the lynch mob "let's get person X fired" approach was started by the SJW crowd it's just the other side has learned and adapted. Reap what you sow.
I share in many sentiments on what I've read here in response. But, the company should not have fired her. It's backing down to mob mentality at the end of the day- And that sort of behaviour needs to be stood up to no matter what side you support. Besides, Hasn't Arena Net heard? On a macro-level, outrage is so commonplace it's starting to become ineffective.
You can also adjust modifiers to remove the anonymous penalty/logged in bonus, so you can still set your threshold to +1 and see comments posted anonymously that haven't been otherwise downmodded.
And here you are, writing in defence of the sacking of any and every female developer!
Strawman. Nobody has suggested sacking any and every female developer except you. You put these extreme words in other peoples mouths then attack them even though they have never suggested anything of the sort. "You don't agree with everything I say? You must want every female developer sacked!". Obvious SJW tactic is obvious. It's what started this whole mess to begin with. SJW didn't like what someone said so fabricated and responded to a sexist attack that just plain didn't exist.
Looked up your links.
lolcow.wiki looks like a wiki dedicated to articles of the nature you describe: "the main stream media is all wrong about this." I love how the Brianna Wu page has, as citations, links to comments on sites such as knowyourmeme and twitter. At least one of the links to FBI FOIA results (a more creditable citation) is cited misleadingly, claiming it shows something that it doesn't actually show.
Some highlights from that page:
- Nonetheless, Wu retweeted it as if it were credible.
- Brianna Wu nonetheless tweeted it as a legitimate threat.
- but Brianna Wu claimed they were legitimate all the same
Yeah, I don't think your links show anything more than "someone said it on the internet". Sorry. But feel free to provide creditable citations! I'm always willing to listen.
You'd probably make better arguments if you actually knew what you're talking about.
The Nazi party never got more than just shy of 44% of the votes, many of which gave them their vote for about the same reason that people voted for Trump; "democracy is a failure, the elite is robbing us", yadda, yadda.
"But I've seen the documentaries" I hear you say. Sure buddy, but filming or taking photos in Germany under Nazi rule without authorisation would land you in hot water in record time. Verboten, indeed. So, those "documentaries" you've seen, who took the pictures you've seen in the documentaries? The Nazis. You've been watching Nazi propaganda, with a modern day narrator.
Especially interesting is that, even despite it over time getting increasingly obvious that membership of the party would be highly socially and professionally beneficial, sometimes even necessary, the Nazi party never had more than 8 million members. Only two of those joining before 1933.
Germany being full of hardcore Nazis is a myth and your "argument" does nothing but illustrate your own ignorance and willingness to accept propaganda as truth.
A German comedian once said "If you know who the enemy is, it gives your day some structure". I guess he's right, when people know what to hate, they feel better about themselves because it allows them to externalize hatred they might otherwise have to internalize.
In other words, as long as you have someone to blame that isn't you, you can get by without antidepressants.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The premise is if a women explains something that is AWESOME.
If a man explains something, that is INSENSITIVE.
People should keep using the word "mansplain" so I can tell who the sexists and SJWs (but I repeat myself) are.
Wrong.
She is not a teacher and she didn't say a single thing that warrants firing. Not even the slightest.
She publicly rolled her eyes at someone. There's a huge difference. I don't blame her one bit for not wanting to hear another "well, actually" go into a long tirade about how she's wrong.
Sorry, forcing school classes and workplaces to reflect the population instead of the applicant pool, and total compensation to be equal despite time taken off/hours worked/raises asked for is 100% trying to enforce equality of outcome. I also have no idea what RWNJ is. Progressives and SJWs self-describe with those labels and under those labels promulgate the ideology described, so that's not inaccurate.
It's also always fun being told by insane progressives like you I'm a right winger, while the right-wingers insist I'm a batshit leftist. You've supported my argument pretty well though, despite not knowing what most self-described progressives support.
Clap, clap, clap.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
I'm aware that Slashdot's 'no deletion' policy was clearer and cleaner in the pasty. I was here for the furore over the Scientology takedown.
Blocking a post (via filters for content or proxy) and moderating are very different from deletion. So is playing with how moderation points are assigned.
I realise that these are restrictions on what can be 'said', and are part of a broader definition of censorship, but, for me, the deletion of something that has been 'said' is far more problematic and for more dangerous. If I think that I've communicated, only to find my post edited or deleted without my knowledge or consent, then my words have been changed. If I know that I cannot post, I can make other arrangements (as the GNAA posts demonstrate, you can't stop the message).
Deleting has a much greater chilling effect than up-front restrictions, IMHO.
If you're bothered by censorship, the filtering of the n-word should be far more problematic.
Why? It's trivial to bypass as has been demonstrated time and again, here and everywhere else. And I cannot believe that Slashdot editors are so ignorant as to believe otherwise. What they can do, however, when they receive a complaint is to be able to say 'look, we tried'. I/we know it's pointless, but that may not stop an injunction or court order. If they can demonstrate that it's pointless, that's another matter.
perhaps having the side effect of preventing some discussion of racism
That's a weak argument. 'Perhaps'? If a discussion is prevented because someone can't work out how to use a synonym, alternate spelling or character substitution, then this isn't a tech site.
The lameness filter is part of a larger 'post quality' process that includes excluding certain characters, line length etc. It's passive and doesn't stop someone who is determined. GNAA hasn't stopped and the reason it's decreased is that it's stopped getting a reaction. APK will never stop because he's mentally ill. The anti-Creimer posts will fade, just like the Kristopeit (sp?) posts (remember those - very similar MO to the Creimer spam inc. creating accounts to pretend to be the target). Grit teeth. Endure. If the poster is sane, they'll get bored when they stop getting a reaction.
Filtering doesn't work (see both APK and GNAA) and deletion is the part of censorship that I find most worrisome. I've presumed you were advocating one, the other or both and I apologise if that's a mistaken assumption.
And thanks for the civil discussion.
I understand where you're coming from, but I'd wager that far more knew than didn't.
I think people knew Jews and other people were being imprisoned by the government, and many were most certainly in favor of this given how prevalent antisemitism was. What I don't think they knew, though, was that some of the concentration camps those prisoners were being sent to were actually extermination camps. Given most concentration camps were "just" that, not having a focus on extermination, that also meant that, while those living near them knew of them, and of how badly prisoners were treated, they didn't know of the few mass extermination ones.
Take your US example: while most Americans were certainly aware people of Japanese ancestry were being rounded up and sent to concentration camps, few, if any, thought the US government was exterminating those prisoners, and they were correct in that assumption. In the case of the Nazi government, most Germans were certainly taken by surprise when they came to know, from the Allies, what had been happening.
Had the Nazis been victorious, or at the very minimum had they signed a peace treaty instead of having had to surrender unconditionally, and kept governing Germany and Nazi-occupied areas, and the extermination camps would have continued to operate until all the people the Nazis wanted exterminated had been exterminated, then destroyed so as to erase any evidence, and news about that would have been uncovered only several decades later.
"I was shocked... all of these Germans everywhere and not a single nazi! Everyone of them claimed they'd never known what was going on and never agreed with what the nazis did. They insisted they were never part of the party. Hell, you could smell the camps from town. There was no way they couldn't know they were there".
Ah! But that's easy to understand. My great-aunt told me that when it became clear to the population the Allies would win, everyone began rushing to destroy any evidence they themselves had had anything to do with Nazi activities. Some due to fear. Some because they had genuinely had been forced to. My great-aunt, for example, despite her family having been anti-Nazi, had had to collect an album of articles about Hitler as an ongoing school project. She, others like her, and even her actually-Nazi colleagues, all hastily burned theirs down even before news of US troops arriving had been divulged.
And the fear was fear of any military occupation. Men and boys were afraid the occupation forces would kill them for any reason whatsoever, so they hoped that by erasing any trace of Nazi-support they'd slightly increase their chance of survival. Women and girls were afraid the men in their lives would be killed and that afterwards they would be raped and then killed, so they did it with even more intensity than men. When the US occupation forces actually arrived and then acted with honor and nobility, abuse incidents being minimal, that was perceived in shock and then in gratitude, which coupled with all the monetary help explains why Germany got so pro-US in the following years. (By the way, that this was a legitimate fear can be seen in the fact Germans who had had the bad luck of being URSS-occupied suffered exactly those things, including the expected mass rapes.)
And that explains why everyone had "never" been a Nazi.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
I didn't. That's based on actual polls of voting Americans. You hear unexpected numbers and you assume I didn't look up actual polling data. Polls aren't the source of truth you think they are.
Lol once again both parties have embraced their fringe. Why? I have no fucking clue "energize the base" maybe?
If that's the case it means all these lunatics, the SJWs, the trumpers, for all their noise don't normally get off their asses and vote. Oh plus she burned her bridges with half of the far left by fucking over bernie. Who was my first choice but even so he was fringe enough that I hoped the rest of the government would moderate his more out there moments.
In hillary's case she embraced small activist groups who collectively manage to piss at least everyone off. They made great soundbites for fox too.
In the case of the republicans they're completely ran by lunatics to the point that they have taken over the party and won't settle with patronizing pats on the head anymore, play ball or gtfo.
I don't understand her at all, as an establishment candidate you'd think she'd be doing everything she could to keep radicals from taking taking over the DNC the way it's taken over the GOP.
you're missing the point : when you work for some employer, you've restriction put on what you may do outside work, what you may say on social networks, what you may say to other people (talking),... As I'm a teacher, I know the restriction imposed upon teachers (in my country, YMMV). She was developper at Arena.net and as such, she also had some restrictions... even if she never signed some document about it...
As soon as she acted using her name and identity, linked to her work (and with a pseudo-autority given by that), she HAD to restrain herself.
She could have used another account (anonymous and not linked to her) to post comments but she didn't. so she was responsible for the word she used and the tone of her answer...
You'd be surprised: your employer typically can fire you for any reason or for no reason at all, so long as they pay you severance and follow all the procedures. Remember, the First Amendment guarantees that "Congress shall make no law (...) abridging the freedom of speech..." Brendan Eich was sacked from Mozilla for donating $1,000.00 for Proposition 8 in California, and the same media circus over Jessica Price happened over him. Were they wrong in firing him?
Except if what you are saying can hurt reputation or image of the company...
And this is even more true if you're doing some "official statement" because you're doing it while saying that you work for that company.
Having a signed agreement only makes things more easy...