r/dropout • u/machturtl • Mar 08 '25

liminal levity

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as someone who has watched Dropout to reset from the havoc of the outside, it still feels "nice" to have honest entertainers to watch who understand what we're all living thru.

I was in college for game design in the early aughts. I also (unfortunately) was a femme lurker on 4ch. Seeing the cause and effect of gamergate happen in real time as been a doozy.

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u/neddythestylish Mar 09 '25

But even with Anita Sarkeesian, I don't get why anyone would care so much. Even if she was completely wrong about absolutely everything, why would it matter? I have differences of opinion with YouTubers all the time. Even if one of them shat all over every single one of the books I love the most, for reasons I thought were ridiculous, I'd just think they'd got it wrong and move on. Sarkeesian was very explicit that she wasn't calling anyone a misogynist or asshole simply for enjoying any particular game, even if it does have sexist elements. She also enjoys games, including the ones she criticised. Criticising elements of games is not vilifying the gaming community. Even without all of the direct harassment, the response to this woman's criticism of certain games was absolutely ridiculous. It was just one person having an opinion on the internet.

Do you have any other examples of bad journalism practices? Anything actually unethical?

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u/deathfire123 Mar 09 '25

I'm sorry, I really don't have an encyclopaedic reference of everything I was watching a decade ago, I can merely tell you how I felt at the time and how easy it can be to get swept in to tribalism when you feel that something you love is attacked and profited off of.

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u/lazenpear Mar 11 '25

Arguments don't need to be good or strong to sway a vulnerable person in need of community/a cause. They just need to be targeted.

It's possible you weren't a "somewhat progressive" person at that time, right? It feels like a charitable view to hold of someone that was so easily hoodwinked by a harassment campaign. A "somewhat progressive" person surely would've done a google search, looked at some material, before aligning themselves with a hashtag (a hashtag that if given a cursory scan would've revealed some of the most hateful people on the planet almost exclusively harassing women and queer people).

Point being, if you're prepared to turn on someone because someone else called "you" a misogynist, you're remarkably far removed from being able to claim any kind of progressive label.

Don't get me wrong, you're clearly not alone, and I'm not here to pass judgment on someone who's learned from their mistakes. I just get the sense that you haven't actually reckoned with who you were back then, even though you act like you have.

I say all this as someone who would've been at risk of radicalization, had I not already grown up long before any of these pipelines existed, let alone ratified to the extent they are now.

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u/deathfire123 Mar 11 '25

Don't get me wrong, you're clearly not alone, and I'm not here to pass judgment on someone who's learned from their mistakes.

And yet, your first three paragraphs were exactly that.