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Denver, 4:25 AM
Sat Nov 28
39 posts in the last 24 hours
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11/27/09
It comes down to this: Are intolerant gamers just the loudest minority in a sea of respectable people? Or do we have more respect than we should for the gaming audience- is everyone more immature than we actually realize?
Whether its one or the other, I don't think its a reason for homosexual people to get upset. When you come out you have understand that some people aren't going to like it- but its their problem, not yours.
Last point: When you run over a 13 year old high school kid in Halo and he says 'Thats so gay!', I don't think he means to hurt you, oh homosexual gamer, I think he means that getting run over is pretty gay. Theres a difference now, the word is being transformed, its still evolving in societies lexicon. Once it meant happy, then it meant homosexual, and now its evolving to mean something unsavoury and negative. Is it a bad thing? Well, it doesnt really matter, becuase thats the way the word is used and thats the way its going to continued to be used. Society has spoken, and its word is law...
11/27/09
Claiming that the word has two definitions, one that means "homosexual" and one that means "something negative" doesn't fly, especially when people shout things like "that's so homosexual" in a negative manner. It's very clear that it's not the word "gay" that has the negative connotation, it's homosexuality as a whole.
We as a society don't stand for people casually throwing about racial slurs (The unspoken rules about casually throwing around terms like "nigger" or "spic" are very well known, and these terms tend to stay out of people's vocabularies.) but we're fine with sexual identity slurs? That's a double-standard to me.
Furthermore, I identify as a member of the Jewish faith and ethnicity. (As it is both, and I am both.) When something throws the word "Jew" around as a negative slur, I get annoyed. Because it IS using part of my identity as a negative, and the implication is that I should be ashamed to identify as such.
I have had at least one experience where when I revealed that I was a Jew, people actually gasped. (The response was "How could you say that about yourself?") And last I checked, Judaism is at least more or less accepted by society. It's far harder for homosexuals who are not widely accepted as a whole by society and this flippant use of homosexuality as a negative only reinforces that difficulty.
(And let's not bring up the terms "faggot" or "fag", which are quite the slur themselves.)
To address your third point, for someone who doesn't identify as heterosexual, it becomes their problem as soon as a number of people don't like it. You can claim it's the problem of those who don't like it, but in a mob, they're quite capable of making it the non-heterosexual's problem. (Examples of this as a matter of race or religion/ethnicity are things like lynchings and pogroms. It IS your problem if you're a member of the minority, no matter how much anyone says it isn't.)
I wouldn't say the problem is being overblown so much as it's not an easily solved problem. Society as a whole will continue to push for slurs, and unless members of society are educated to think differently, this will always be the case. The only real solution is education and tolerance. Two things that we as a species seem to have in varying amounts and a limited supply.
(As a follow up point: For many, the only way to make slurs not matter is to treat them as though they don't mean anything. This works reasonably well over the internet, as there's a lot of anonymity, but if this sort of culture of phobia pervades and shows up further in the physical world, more and more problems will spring up. People ARE being mistreated and harassed in public areas because of their sexual orientation, and this will only get worse over time.)
11/27/09
Maybe I'm wrong, I'm willing to accept that. I'm not an expert, but me being right or wrong won't change a thing. The fact of the matter is I don't know how to feel about this subject. One part of me says that gays should just grow a thicker skin, but that argument has been defeated time and again. The other part feels that people shouldn't make fun of others for any reason- which is unrealistic and will never happen, especially over Xbox LIVE.
And to say that it should be moderated by the service providers (PSN, Xbox LIVE, etc.) is unfair and unrealistic. Its no where near cost effective and if anything attempts to moderate it would make slurring worse. Not to mention it could potentially bring in violations to right to free speech. Modern day nazis have that right too, even if its not socially acceptable.
Its as close to an unsolvable problem as one can get. Which means gay people NEED to grow a thicker skin, from the pure fact they wont be able to play online at all if they dont. It may not be right, but its the way it is, and most likely the way it will continue to be. There will always be angry, sexually confused people who want to take their angst and lack of skill out on others. So deal with it.
10/02/09
10/02/09
Will Ron Jeremy get a role in said movie...?
10/02/09
And that one is really awful.
I wonder why I bother to read movie deal stories, sometimes.
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
10/01/09
1. Create game based on evolution - CHECK
2. Create movie based on that game - CHECK
3. Piss off radical creationists - IN PROGRESS
10/01/09
10/02/09
I'm still trying to figure out exactly what a "militant" atheist is. Writing books and debating in universities is militant?
08/29/09
GEE I WONDER WHY HE GOT LAID OFF GUYZ.
08/29/09
No go back and look. He says it is less ski-jumping away from explosions and more about classy espionage spies.
08/28/09
08/28/09
08/28/09
Hey people want to know who dumbed down spore and got rid of all the cool stuff Will was talking about in earlier videos shown off?
It was Chris Hecker.
[forum.spore.com]
"Chris Hecker was having strong misgivings about how appealing all this hard science would be to the wider world. "I was the founding member of the 'cute' team," he says with pride. "Ocean [Quigley, Spore's art director] and Will were really the founding members of the 'science' team. Ocean would make the cell game look exactly like a petri dish with all these to-scale animals and Will would say, 'That's the greatest thing I've ever seen!' and some of us were thinking, 'I'm not sure about that.'"
08/28/09