Dear Internet: Grow Up

[Tornado]

See, this kind of thinking really confuses me. How is she a hack, firstly.

Because her criticism, ignoring the times where she does deliberately take things out of context or applies criticism that simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, is generally superficial at best and just kinda dumb at worst. And it ties into how, particularly notable when she comments on topics other than gaming, she also seems to have an extremely narrow (meaning white and middle classed living in a first world nation) point of view of what feminism means.

 

So yeah, what is she gaining from having a mass dislike campaign against her on Youtube exactly?

It suits her much more to be viewed as an extremely controversial and outspoken critic of the games industry and its practices as it pertains to storytelling than it does to be viewed as someone who is making a vblog about something; even if the controversy is largely fabricated. There are hundreds of thousands of people who do that every day on YouTube and no one gives a shit; but mass controversy spreads her viewpoint far more than casual indifference would, and I find it very hard to believe that Sarkeesian is as smart as she clearly is but just sort of stumbled into it. Just as much as she's been demonized for what she's doing she's also been deified for it; but either one will do to spread her views which is what she wanted in the first place.

There is also a humongous criticism buffer provided to what she says because of how she's been treated, which you've done a fantastic job exemplifying in the OP, that makes what she says extremely hard to actually debate. To debate the merits of the things she says, you already have to put humongous qualifiers on your own statements that have just as much of a chance at blowing up in your face. You already have to argue against people who act as her views are beyond reproach, but now you have the burden of doing so while trying to prove that you are not a misogynist for taking issue with something she said. You already have to argue with the qualifier that she has been treated extremely badly by people on the internet, and that you are not aligned with that group attacking her personally for doing so. There is absolutely a viewpoint, and it seems to be a pretty common one, that because people hate and dismiss her out of hand and go so far out of their way to attack her personally, what she is saying must be true. And that's before we even get into GamerGate and the stupidity it tacked onto the issue.

 

 

 

 

It's an extremely common tactic in modern political discourse, particularly as it pertains to similar social and cultural movements. You even see it on SSMB. Attempt to argue that police actions in a specific black death were justified? Your comments automatically carry an undercurrent of racism. Attempt to argue about issues trangender people face that cisgender people don't? You automatically must not care about the sky high suicide rates faced by the transgendered community. That's the exact behavior that I think the "SJW" epithet actually has its roots in before it was co-opted to mean "people who get offended by things".

[Mercina Melancholy]

See, this kind of thinking really confuses me. How is she a hack, firstly. But most importantly, why was she secretly wanting Youtube to go on a witchunt on her. Is she some James Bond villain? She's just a Youtube critic who already funded her Kickstarter when most people went nuts when the first episode aired on Youtube. She makes no money from Ads on videos because she disabled them, the only way she can get money now is through Donations on her Website. Do you believe in a secret conspiracy for her to get donations, because that's absurd.

So yeah, what is she gaining from having a mass dislike campaign against her on Youtube exactly?

First, FemFreq isn't just Sarekeesian, so the criticism isn't so much targeted towards her as it is to her co-workers too. Now back to why I'm quoting you.

I think that's what the problem lies with those videos. The statements done in their videos are justified. The hype surrounding those statements are unjustified.

That resulted in what could be considered the anti-climax of the decade. The quality of those videos are on par with Tails Channel, complete with vids taken from other let's plays than their own. Heard somewhere that she's like a female "The Amazing Atheist", which I have to look further into.

The GamerGate issue is just filled to the brim with intersectionalities. The trolls partaking in these intimidation tactics have obviously some serious mental health issues. I wouldn't say Autism at first, but the vocabulary used by them to justify their actions are terrifyingly similar to the criterias on Autism found on DSM-V. Words like "Special Interest" and "Full-Time Leisure Activity" are constantly used, which makes me wonder how they are to their mothers.

I'd say have the GamerGaters commited, but that would be just wishful thinking.       

Edited September 19, 2015 by Mercina Melancholy

[Matthew]

Because her criticism, ignoring the times where she does deliberately take things out of context or applies criticism that simply doesn't hold up to scrutiny, is generally superficial at best and just kinda dumb at worst. And it ties into how, particularly notable when she comments on topics other than gaming, she also seems to have an extremely narrow (meaning white and middle classed living in a first world nation) point of view of what feminism means.

I've seen a lot of people say this sentiment but they never point out examples. Hitman Absolution was a rare case and I've pointed out how poor the defence of that is. Most of her criticisms are actually valid, it's just that most the time she's not saying anything new. It's hilarious because despite the fact a lot of people think she's this scary extreme feminist she's actually moderate and almost conservative in her approach to feminism. Most the time she's just bringing discourse that other fields, like books and movies, did decades ago over to gaming. It's like what you've said here, she's not particularly interested in feminism outside her realm. That said, that's not unique to her and that's the case with progressives everywhere. People who campaign for a higher minimum wage don't usually care about the perils in Central Africa because they care more about what happens in their back garden than what happens outside their sphere. It's sad but it's true.

It suits her much more to be viewed as an extremely controversial and outspoken critic of the games industry and its practices as it pertains to storytelling than it does to be viewed as someone who is making a vblog about something; even if the controversy is largely fabricated. There are hundreds of thousands of people who do that every day on YouTube and no one gives a shit; but mass controversy spreads her viewpoint far more than casual indifference would, and I find it very hard to believe that Sarkeesian is as smart as she clearly is but just sort of stumbled into it. Just as much as she's been demonized for what she's doing she's also been deified for it; but either one will do to spread her views which is what she wanted in the first place.

The idea that she got more fame through her harassment is true, but what does that prove exactly? That Anita orchestrates her harassment like a puppet master? The reason she got famous was soley because of twats on the internet, simple as. She had nothing to do with it. Speaking up against harassment is what she sees as her responsibility, it's not something she carefully frames for more publicity.

There is also a humongous criticism buffer provided to what she says because of how she's been treated, which you've done a fantastic job exemplifying in the OP, that makes what she says extremely hard to actually debate. To debate the merits of the things she says, you already have to put humongous qualifiers on your own statements that have just as much of a chance at blowing up in your face. You already have to argue against people who act as her views are beyond reproach, but now you have the burden of doing so while trying to prove that you are not a misogynist for taking issue with something she said.

That isn't actually her fault though. We wouldn't be in this position if so many people weren't acting like fuckwits on the internet. The reason one has to put so many qualifiers is because most people who do have bigotry use the legitimacy of criticism in order to just spew bigotry. Like you said, this is something that isn't unique to her anyway. Regardless, I don't see how this is something she's responsible of. It's just a fact of life that's happened because of the actions of certain individuals. 

Edited September 19, 2015 by Matthew

[Nepenthe]

Nothing Anita says is mind-blowing or new. It is 101 levels of critique aimed at games from a feminist perspective, nothing particularly out of bounds or unique from what I've seen and experienced of film and literature (and indeed she managed to do the same videos for film and TV shows without getting fucking bomb threats). Very little if anything that she says is a critique of the moral character of people partaking in the games she uses as examples as well. It's pretty much just her looking at games through a specific lens and coming to her own conclusions about the subtext of the content. 

The fact that people took such basic-ass critique as a personal attack on them and their gaming life to the point that she was ever in fear of her life is really only indicative of how completely insulated and emotionally fragile gaming culture has become concerning critique of how women and other minorities are treated within that sphere (when the chips are down, gaming culture proves to be shit towards women almost without fail). It is for this reason, the completely insane and embarrassing blow-up that happened because she suggested something as intellectually mundane as "games are made by flawed people and thus are probably flawed themselves from a social perspective" that critique of her has been poisoned and has to come with qualifiers. Gaming overwhelmingly proved it can't fucking handle the responsibility of being off leash.

[Tornado]

I've seen a lot of people say this sentiment but they never point out examples. Hitman Absolution was a rare case and I've pointed out how poor the defence of that is.

No you didn't. Dismissing something as false, essentially out of hand, is not pointing out how poor of a defense something is.

Most of her criticisms are actually valid, it's just that most the time she's not saying anything new. It's hilarious because despite the fact a lot of people think she's this scary extreme feminist she's actually moderate and almost conservative in her approach to feminism. Most the time she's just bringing discourse that other fields live books and movies did decades ago over to gaming

It can't be both things; nor do I think she's actually brought discourse to the subject. I think she tried to, certainly, but it has blown up spectacularly into nothing more than pro and anti Sarkeesian instead of anything about the actual thing she wanted people talking about. In that respect, I believe she made a major miscalculation in how she went about doing her videos; though that miscalculation has shown that there is indeed a problem regardless, if not the one she was angling for.

It's like what you've said here, she's not particularly interested in feminism outside her realm.

I didn't say that. I said that her viewpoint of what she says seems narrow in scope, but she still comments on things that are outside that scope anyway. That's about the opposite of "she's not particularly interested in feminism outside her realm."

People who campaign for a higher minimum wage don't usually care about the perils in Central Africa because they care more about what happens in their back garden than what happens outside their sphere.

That's not even remotely relevant to this thread or anything said in it.

The idea that she got more fame through her harassment is true, but what does that prove exactly?

It doesn't "prove" anything. If you would take pause from proving exactly why any discourse about her so difficult, you would note that my very first post I specifically said "that I think she was banking on."

 

 

I think she saw what happens when people on YouTube (or, really, the internet in general) gain any form of notoriety. I think she realized that YouTube itself shares a lot of the same demographic groups that the videogame industry does. I think she realized in advance that if she talked about how videogames could improve their portrayals of women on YouTube that it would blow up humongously. I think she deliberately used that to her advantage to try and spread her views about a topic that she wanted people to about. I think she took the confrontational style she uses against hugely popular games because she knew it would cause reactions against her that would inherently legitimize her viewpoints while also spreading them. I even think that her disabling comments on her videos was an attempt to cultivate talking points on places with higher levels of discourse than idiots on YouTube. And I think that all of this, coupled with her occasional fast and loose fact checking and horrible release schedule after the Patreon thing, has caused the entire thing to mutate into something completely different than what she intended.

I think all of those things are substantially more likely than she just accidentally stumbled across humongous amounts of hateful personal criticism and threats against her that merely happened to catapult her to celebrity status which as a result coincidentally brought her video series to the (sorta) public eye. The main criticism against her approach that I don't think has any merit is the idea that she's trying to fleece people financially or intentionally draw out her release schedule for maximum effect. I believe she simply underestimated how much of an undertaking she was doing, and it acted to draw the battle lines deeper.

That Anita orchestrates her harassment like a puppet master?

It doesn't require any mastery of anything to see that people who evoke controversy will get more attention than people who don't. It doesn't require any mastery of anything to know that YouTube is an excellent way to generate fabricated controversy when you talk even slightly negatively about something popular in the average YouTube user's demographic. It doesn't require any mastery of anything to know that harassment inspires sympathy to your views irrelevant of what they actually are.

The reason she got famous was soley because of twats on the internet, simple as. She had nothing to do with it.

That's not really a statement that you can so easily put "simple as" on top of.

Speaking up against harassment is what she sees as her responsibility, it's not something she carefully frames for more publicity.

It would help immensely if you didn't resort to strawman arguments so often. That's the second time you've done so over this exact point, nevermind all the ones above, and it's growing tiring. I didn't say she was out for financial gain, and I didn't say she was out for publicity..

That isn't actually her fault though. We wouldn't be in this position if so many people weren't acting like fuckwits on the internet. The reason one has to put so many qualifiers is because most people who do have bigotry use the legitimacy of criticism in order to just spew bigotry.

That's one of the reasons. Failure of intellectual discourse isn't always the fault of a single party. Bigots certainly use legitimate criticism to push bigotry; but people seeking social change also use the existence of bigotry to dismiss any criticism of their views.

 

Regardless, I don't see how this is something she's responsible of.

Versus:

So yeah, what is she gaining from having a mass dislike campaign against her on Youtube exactly?

[Matthew]

I think she saw what happens when people on YouTube (or, really, the internet in general) gain any form of notoriety. I think she realized that YouTube itself shares a lot of the same demographic groups that the videogame industry does. I think she realized in advance that if she talked about how videogames could improve their portrayals of women on YouTube that it would blow up humongously. I think she deliberately used that to her advantage to try and spread her views about a topic that she wanted people to about. I think she took the confrontational style she uses against hugely popular games because she knew it would cause reactions against her that would inherently legitimize her viewpoints while also spreading them. I even think that her disabling comments on her videos was an attempt to cultivate talking points on places with higher levels of discourse than idiots on YouTube. And I think that all of this, coupled with her occasional fast and loose fact checking and horrible release schedule after the Patreon thing, has caused the entire thing to mutate into something completely different than what she intended.

I think this is a nonsense conspiracy theory that doesn't even deserve to be addressed but I'll entertain it anyway. You think the idea that Anita was carefully orchestrating her hypothetical witch-hunt for personal gain is more likely than the fact she was just discovered by a small vocal group of angry gamers and their unique outburst made her a media sensation? Seriously? Do you think that Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn were orchestrating their witch-hunts too for personal gain in a similar fashion? That would be equally absurd.

Let's just think about how stupid this theory actually is.

Anita has orchestrated a large group of people that despise her and continually send her death threats. She has to have FBI guidance in order to find out if any death threats could be genuine and probably will continue to live in fear for a good couple of years. And she did all this to pull in further attention than the established fanbase that she already built before her Kickstarter campaign. And imagine if this failed and she only gained herself a hate-group and didn't get the media attention. She would put herself through all that for some media buzz.

Surely you can understand how batshit crazy this sounds?

No you didn't. Dismissing something as false, essentially out of hand, is not pointing out how poor of a defense something is.

I didn't dismiss it as false without reasoning.

A lot of people just like to claim that she takes footage out of context because they want to discredit her, don't understand her or want to defend their game. A good example was Hitman Absolution, where she claimed that the game was designed for players to get amusement from dragging the corpses of female strippers around. The dragging may exist as a mechanic for all NPCs, sure, but there's no denying that the designers did intend for players to interact with the strippers in some kind of way, it's a sandbox style of game. It's like when people say GTA doesn't encourage killing civilians because you get wanted stars. It's just dishonest, we all know that game elements are deliberately placed into games by designers. I like Hitman, but I'm not going to pretend this element isn't problematic.

When designers don't want you to kill NPC's they will cause a failsafe where you immediately fail the game. Kind of like the No Russian level in censored copies of COD:MW2. They won't just deduct your score for being a bad boy/girl.

Dum de Dum.

It would help immensely if you didn't resort to strawman arguments so often. That's the second time you've done so over this exact point, nevermind all the ones above, and it's growing tiring.

Do you know what a strawman argument actually is?

You are saying that Anita predicted her harassment and used it for personal gain, like some kind of James Bond villain. I'm saying that this is extremely unlikely and based on flawed thinking and zero evidence.

How exactly am I not addressing your point here?

[Tornado]

Let's just think about how stupid this theory actually is.

Let's think about how long you want to stay here as a member if you can't discuss a topic without being an asshole to people about it. Keep thinking about it for any future posts you want to make in this topic. I let it go when you did the same thing in your OP because it wasn't actually targeted at anyone, but if you can't actually counter criticism without resorting to this garbage and proving exactly why discourse on the topic is impossible you might be better off starting a blog instead.

 

 

 

 

 

With that out of the way:

You think the idea that Anita was carefully orchestrating her hypothetical witch-hunt for personal gain is more likely than the fact she was just discovered by a small vocal group of angry gamers and their unique outburst made her a media sensation?

Nope. I think she was intelligent enough to know that something that constantly fucking happens on YouTube and 4Chan and reddit to anyone remotely famous about something remotely popular was going to happen to her when she directly criticized something that YouTube and 4Chan and reddit hold in high regard. And that when she made a video asking for money to do a series of videos criticizing something that YouTube and 4Chan and reddit hold in high regard on YouTube, she was inevitably (not hypothetically) going to get a lot of truly repugnant and undeserved shit for doing so. And it was inevitably going to launch the attention she got into the stratosphere by the time she actually started making the videos, because the fact that she was getting death threats and the like in response to the mere implication of sexism was inevitably going to be picked up by regular media.
It's not right by any stretch to have to deal with that shit simply because she's targeting something people without socialability like, but there's no fucking way that she went into this simply oblivious to the fact that what has been happening to her has happened.

Seriously? Do you think that Brianna Wu and Zoe Quinn were orchestrating their witch-hunts too for personal gain in a similar fashion? That would be equally absurd.

I didn't give a shit about GamerGate when it was happening. I immediately recognized it for the Men's Rights bullshit masquerading as an ethics debate that it was, and I ignored it from then on. I didn't give a shit about GamerGate when it was tenuously linked to Sarkeesian by the people going after Quinn to tear open old wounds and redraw battlelines about Feminist Frequency. I don't give a shit about GamerGate now.

 

She has to have FBI guidance in order to find out if any death threats could be genuine and probably will continue to live in fear for a good couple of years.

I'm sure Jimmy Kimmel does at the moment too, and all he said was that he didn't understand why people watch Let's Plays. I just started the other day getting into watching JonTron. After a couple years of watching Brutalmoose and LGR and PuR, who are all comparatively unknown people in the same sort of field, it was impressive that one person could garner so much obscenely hateful and violent responses just for talking about shitty PSX games and occasionally being slow about it. Once again, it's a pretty shitt state of affairs, but not at all one unique to Sarkeesian in the slightest; and Google themselves even spent a year trying to do something about it before giving up.

 

I refer back to this:

 

It's an extremely common tactic in modern political discourse, particularly as it pertains to similar social and cultural movements. You even see it on SSMB. Attempt to argue that police actions in a specific black death were justified? Your comments automatically carry an undercurrent of racism. Attempt to argue about issues trangender people face that cisgender people don't? You automatically must not care about the sky high suicide rates faced by the transgendered community.

Since it's relevant to what you're doing now.

 

And she did all this to pull in further attention than the established fanbase that she already built before her Kickstarter campaign

You're not going to get new people talking about something you want discussed if the only people you tell are the same people you've always told.

that she already built before her Kickstarter campaign. And imagine if this failed and she only gained herself a hate-group and didn't get the media attention. She would put herself through all that for some media buzz.

She sure would have looked silly if this was the one time someone being systematically abused spread around social media like wildfire and didn't draw massive attention to whatever she was doing that led to it.

 

 

Wait.

I didn't dismiss it as false without reasoning.

Yes you did. Your argument was just a degree of separation from the infamous "kill hookers for points" and "murder simulator" silliness levied by clueless politicians every few years, and wasn't any more logically sound either.

Sarkeesian claimed that a game was designed to take amusement from knocking out/killing strippers and dragging their bodies around, which would be fine of not for the clear implication (either from her or just you paraphrasing her since I don't know her exact wording) that the amusement was intended to be higher than that of just killing dudes and doing the same or whatever. I haven't played that specific Hitman game, but if it is anything like the other games I have played the game actively rewards you far more if you just leave everyone the fuck alone and kill the one person the mission wants dead; so I suspect the base criticism even before woman factor into the equation (that there is an unstated goal to cause any sort of mayhem) is false.

You claimed that such a response to Sarkeesian is intellectually dishonest simply because the game doesn't instantly end if you do so because some other specific part of a specific version of a specific game in a completely different genre does do so; and then doubled down to say that the lack of an instant failure condition for killing someone in a game literally about assassinating people was not only proof that what Sarkeesian said was true but was deliberately designed in a way that made it true. It's an absurd train of logic to follow, and could be applied to even the most innocuous games that happen to share some similarity.

 

 

The game is problematic in the sense that it is a piece of interactive entertainment that tasks you with creatively murdering people for financial gain and rewards you the better you do it. That's a tough thing for some people to swallow, and it really is understandable that people can object to it on a basic level. The game is not really more problematic because it also lets you murder people who aren't related to the people you're supposed to be murdering; and there's no logical way it can be called even more problematic because the random people you might be able to murder happen to be strippers.

 

Do you know what a strawman argument actually is?

Yep:

1. a person compared to a straw image; a sham.

   • a sham argument set up to be defeated.

Looks about right, since:

How exactly am I not addressing your point here?

Here's what I said:

YouTube reacting to her in YouTube's stereotypical way of reacting to things was the exact response that I think she was banking on.

It doesn't require any mastery of anything to know that YouTube is an excellent way to generate fabricated controversy when you talk even slightly negatively about something popular in the average YouTube user's demographic.

 

Here's the kind of things you keep claiming I really meant:

That Anita orchestrates her harassment like a puppet master?

Speaking up against harassment is what she sees as her responsibility, it's not something she carefully frames for more publicity.

You think the idea that Anita was carefully orchestrating her hypothetical witch-hunt for personal gain is more likely than the fact she was just discovered by a small vocal group of angry gamers and their unique outburst made her a media sensation?

 

Anita has orchestrated a large group of people that despise her and continually send her death threats.

It isn't news that YouTube users act like they have been acting towards Sarkeesian. It isn't news that 4Chan users act like they have been acting towards Sarkeesian. It isn't news that video gaming cliques respond and react very badly to any perceived outsider calling negatives against them. It isn't news that these things can form a perfect storm and go after specific people. It also wasn't news that those things happened way back in 2012 when the Kickstarter campaign happened, since just a few months earlier there was a nasty fallout where the same thing occurred during a PR campaign for a Capcom game. There's no "orchestrating" involved to get people to completely flip the fuck out at you when you say bad things about popular videogames on YouTube; and there's no real manipulation involved either since Sarkeesian herself has been extremely low key in her responses to her treatment.

My only point was that she had to have gone into her video series knowing that it would cause blowback against her because of the perfect combination of her where she expressed them, how she expressed them and what they were. Not that it was okay that there was. You were the one who tried to spin that into the absurd conclusion that Sarkeesian somehow had to trick a particularly nasty group of people into getting angry and attacking her when they internalized her criticism of something they held dear.

 

And again, what I said:

mass controversy spreads her viewpoint far more than casual indifference would

Just as much as she's been demonized for what she's doing she's also been deified for it; but either one will do to spread her views which is what she wanted in the first place.

I think she deliberately used that to her advantage to try and spread her views about a topic that she wanted people to talk about.

 

And here's the arguments you were assigning to me:

Do you believe in a secret conspiracy for her to get donations, because that's absurd.

Is she some James Bond villain?

Speaking up against harassment is what she sees as her responsibility, it's not something she carefully frames for more publicity.

You are saying that Anita predicted her harassment and used it for personal gain, like some kind of James Bond villain

Not only were you the one who kept claiming I was taking her actions to spread discussion about the topic in a negative light, but you were the one who kept claiming that I was saying she was doing it for selfish reasons. You immediately assumed that I thought she was in it for money. After that you tried claiming that I thought she was trying to rise her star power. Now you've claimed that I think she's just after some sort of vague "personal gain"; which is pretty strange since I would have thought that outright stating that she was trying to spread her views about the treatment of women in games would show that I thought she was pretty selfless.

My only point was that I believed she was angling for the controversy that was obviously going to occur to get more people talking about a subject she wanted discussed. Not that she was in the wrong for doing so, since it is obviously a thing that needs to be discussed since she did get the reaction she got. You were the one who tried to spin that into the absurd conclusion that I thought Sarkeesian was trying to get people to talk about her or give her money or make her a celebrity or whatever the fuck "personal gain" you were talking about.

[Matthew]

Let's think about how long you want to stay here as a member if you can't discuss a topic without being an asshole to people about it. Keep thinking about it for any future posts you want to make in this topic. I let it go when you did the same thing in your OP because it wasn't actually targeted at anyone, but if you can't actually counter criticism without resorting to this garbage and proving exactly why discourse on the topic is impossible you might be better off starting a blog instead.

I thought that you using biting and sarcastic language was an invitation for me to act in kind. Not that I believe I did, I was only saying the theory was stupid: not you. Nevertheless, fair enough, I won't use any more 'smarts' with you, since you've asked nicely.

It's not right by any stretch to have to deal with that shit simply because she's targeting something people without socialability like, but there's no fucking way that she went into this simply oblivious to the fact that what has been happening to her has happened.

 

 

Why not? How do we know that she was internet savvy? One can be intelligent in particular fields without being tech-smart. My old lecturers were like that.

Not only were you the one who kept claiming I was taking her actions to spread discussion about the topic in a negative light, but you were the one who kept claiming that I was saying she was doing it for selfish reasons. You immediately assumed that I thought she was in it for money. After that you tried claiming that I thought she was trying to rise her star power. Now you've claimed that I think she's just after some sort of vague "personal gain"; which is pretty strange since I would have thought that outright stating that she was trying to spread her views about the treatment of women in games would show that I thought she was pretty selfless.

My only point was that I believed she was angling for the controversy that was obviously going to occur to get more people talking about a subject she wanted discussed. You were the one who tried to spin that into the absurd conclusion that I thought Sarkeesian was trying to get people to talk about her or give her money or make her a celebrity or whatever the fuck "personal gain" you were talking about.

As for this idea that I was strawmanning you, let me get this right, because I (and you too) don't want to keep going round in circles. I thought that you were saying that Anita was purposely acting in a certain way and creating a presentation to drum up a hate mob and some cheap publicity. Now, I didn't know exactly what result you meant by this because it's vague so I assumed you either meant she was doing it for money or for fame. I assumed this because it's an incredibly popular theory on the internet and I couldn't really think of another reason why she would purposefully create a hate group. I see now that you meant she was doing it to spread her message. 

Okay, that's sorted out now, I still think that's highly unlikely. Would you really want to create a hate-mob around yourself and become internet notorious just to spread your message. Seems like a stretch to me. Seems like a pretty massive assumption.

As for this:

Yes you did. Your argument was just a degree of separation from the infamous "kill hookers for points" and "murder simulator" silliness levied by clueless politicians every few years, and wasn't any more logically sound either.

Sarkeesian claimed that a game was designed to take amusement from knocking out/killing strippers and dragging their bodies around, which would be fine of not for the clear implication (either from her or just you paraphrasing her since I don't know her exact wording) that the amusement was intended to be higher than that of just killing dudes and doing the same or whatever. I haven't played that specific Hitman game, but if it is anything like the other games I have played the game actively rewards you far more if you just leave everyone the fuck alone and kill the one person the mission wants dead; so I suspect the base criticism even before woman factor into the equation (that there is an unstated goal to cause any sort of mayhem) is false.

 

Sarkeesian claimed that the game has been purposefully made for the player to get amusement from 'playing' with the strippers. Um, yes. That's true. That's why they are put in there. Hitman is a sandbox game that encourages players to see what they can do with the rules, it's part of the replay value. That's what she, and I, am getting at. I still like Hitman, but I'm not denying that's problematic.

The reason I used COD:MW2 censored version was because that was an example of the game discouraging you from something. A lot of people argue that Hitman deducts points from you for killing prostitutes so therefore it discourages it, which is incorrect (note that you can hide the prostitutes in dumpsters and negate the penalty anyway). If you must have an example from the same genre:

MGS V minor spoilers

Metal Gear Solid 5 fails you for killing child soldiers

. That's an example of discouraging, not deducing points.

Edited September 19, 2015 by Matthew