> I just don't see how this piece has any of that.
That's because it doesn't. This whole thing stinks of the same type of bad faith as when people try to smear leftist politicians as being sexist, racist, or anti-semitic (they even geared up to try to call Bernie, a Jewish person, anti-semitic, but I guess that was too ridiculous to stick). We're going to see this a lot going forward - the language of anti-oppression being misused to defend an abusive status quo, by people who benefit from it.
The weirdest thing for me here, is that most of the noise against the piece seems to have been made on twitter by people who probably identify as "leftists", solely because it punches down on some demographic. I'm still trying to ascertain which demographic that is, it's really not clear.
> In isolation that’s just meh.
In a context where mobile players got trashed all the bloody time for being fake gamers, casuals, mindless whales, or worst of all, women?
In a context of tech people often being elitist “core” gamers?
Woops, you’re punching down.
Considering that the satirical doc criticized the agressive monetization that predominantly affects mobile gamers I find it hard to see how that is trashing mobile gamers.
Or is it so that if I criticize something that affects some group not specifically me it's actually punching down? It's not possible to criticize something that's being done to a group without it being a criticism of that group?
This is absolutely brilliant. PR departments must love this.
Right, that's why criticizing the companies who shamelessly pushed opioids is actually wrong too, because it's punching down at the people who enjoy using the opioids who often tend to be low-income and yes, women. Woops, you punched down!
The move from "isms" as a character flaw to "isms" as a structural flaw makes this kind of analysis possible.
Character Flaw: X is injured. you intend to injure X as you did Y.
Structural Flaw: X is injured. X was injured by your neglect in considering the interests of X as you did Y.
"Mobile Gamer Egos" were hurt because they werent "properly considered".
The issue with this kind of structural analysis is that you have to show a duty that a person/system has towards X for their "neglect of X" to be their fault. This is routinely missising from the analysis.
> The move from "isms" as a character flaw to "isms" as a structural flaw makes this kind of analysis possible.
I actually think isms as a structural flaw rather than a character flaw is much more pertinent in many cases, certainly most cases that cause the most damage in people's lives. However, the idea that this documentation amounts to some kind of structural discrimination is facially ridiculous, and, in my view, offensive to the real causes whose language it's abusing.
That reads like something I would write if I wanted to troll the Godot project and could not find any actual point to attack. Poe's law is at work once again.
I cannot take this sentence seriously:
> "mobile gamers got trashed all the [...] time for being [...] women"
Plus, Godot's text is about practices preying on mobile gamers (you can find these practices on PC too, but it is more common on mobile platforms), so it is criticizing mobile gaming (and the companies behind the predatory practices) rather than mobile gamers. So the quoted sentence about "mobile gamers" looks like a straw-man, which goes in favour of a trolling attempt.
when people try to smear leftist politicians as being sexist, racist, or anti-semitic
Of course they always, are innocent of such things, always, and never sexually harass their staff either, nor dress up in blackface. All such allegations are lies, I tell you, lies!
Now those dirty right-wingers, you don’t even need proof or a single credible witness, of course they did it... /s
I used the word "smear." That means that people attempt to make attacks that are specious and appear to be in bad faith in order to tarnish their reputation. That this happens is true regardless of whether there is other legitimate evidence or good faith accusations of bad behavior.
Sadly because many of the politicians on the so-called right at present are unlikely to have their power limited by fully justified accusations of sexism, racism etc. Other smears may work there but not those ones, it would seem. [1]
And that's great, stupid smears are ineffective! What is not so good is solid evidence of serious racism and misogyny is also ineffective.
Historically there have been plenty of politicians closer to the so-called right who would have the power diminished by being foul. There may well be still in certain areas.
What would be nice is if A good take a little of the good sense from B and B a little of the good sense from A.
What we have isn't that, whatever labels you put on various "sides".
[1] "Jewish space laser" for example. That may not be a smear.
They also pull out this trick in reverse to defend vile centrists like Neera Tanden where they use her identity and record of having received federal benefits to pose her as someone that would defend them rather than someone dedicated to destroying those programs, who attacked an employee, who outed an employee who was sexually assaulted, and suggested stealing Libya's oil to pay for bombing them.
She might not be getting her nomination, but it's a great example of the tactic in action.
Tanden is notable only for her poor social media discipline. There are a hundred less progressive officials in the new administration, who happen to be circumspect enough to take money from Middle Eastern dictators without rivaling Trump in Twitter foolishness.
What "ThinkProgress" do you mean? This one [0], at which the most recent article is from September 2019? That was indeed a union shop, which was cited by Tanden in an internal email as the reason she closed it down. [1] Maybe we should credit her for not calling in Pinkerton assassins, but closing down a workplace because of its union is precisely "union busting".
That's because it doesn't. This whole thing stinks of the same type of bad faith as when people try to smear leftist politicians as being sexist, racist, or anti-semitic (they even geared up to try to call Bernie, a Jewish person, anti-semitic, but I guess that was too ridiculous to stick). We're going to see this a lot going forward - the language of anti-oppression being misused to defend an abusive status quo, by people who benefit from it.