all of those maybes are valid - valid in that in a real world, they might have undesired consequences. However, the mistake a lot of people make is they think accepting this precludes fully blaming the perpetrator. If a girl goes to a club and drinks a bunch of drinks that she hasn't seen served, she is being stupid because someone could spike those drinks and date rape her. You can't just ignore the existence of bad people on the principle of exercising your freedoms. If she got raped, that is as much a crime as if she took more precaution with her drinking habits, and the punishment should be no different. You also don't have to resign yourself to a world like this, you can change it. Just don't be so naive and think you can do anything you want just because it's right."Maybe you shouldn't have been wearing such suggestive clothing", "maybe you shouldn't have been walkin around past dark", "maybe you should have gone to the gym more so that you wouldnt look like such an easy target", "maybe you shouldnt hold hands in public", "maybe you shouldnt have owned a nice car", "maybe you should have hid integral and obvious aprts of your identity", "maybe you _____".
Funilly enough, these all sound like excuses for people to do bad things to people who aren't doing bad things. Freedom works in such a way that you are free to do anything lest you impinge on the freedom of others. Hence why you cant exercise your freedom of expression by screaming down a school hallway, because other people have the more important freedom to have a learning environment. Similarly, your freedom to be a dick is invalid sonce it violates other people's freedoms to, you know, live and express themselves.
I don't come here to be apart of a cool crowd. That is, however, a major ambition of 80% of the userbase. This leads to the disproportionate ampunt of bandwagoning.
But you aren't saying that you're statistically more likey to be made fun of. You are indeed saying that you're asking to be attacked.There's a difference between me saying "you're asking to get raped if you wear slutty clothing" and saying "you're statistically more likely to get made fun of for being different if they know you're different"
The implication that us white people are one big team that has to stick together lest the darkies and feminazis overwhelm us is enough to invalidate your whole post.race traitor.
good thing it was sarcasmThe implication that us white people are one big team that has to stick together lest the darkies and feminazis overwhelm us is enough to invalidate your whole post.
Never is a good option. I agree that people can take some preventive measures to not be victims, however, blaming them is quite dumb unless they are literally asking to get insulted / bullied / harassed (eg: "please insult me"), but if that's the case then they shouldn't even be considered victims.just want to ask this mike
if someone is a victim, what is the threshold for blaming them? at what point can we agree they are in some way complicit? never? because i think it's rather short of never, and the actual threshold should really be discussed
No, I'm not. I'm saying don't share this information if you don't want the possibility of being made fun of.But you aren't saying that you're statistically more likey to be made fun of. You are indeed saying that you're asking to be attacked.
i don't know if it is, however.Never is a good option. I agree that people can take some preventive measures to not be victims, however, blaming them is quite dumb unless they are literally asking to get insulted / bullied / harassed (eg: "please insult me"), but if that's the case then they shouldn't even be considered victims.
"Different" people sharing personal info shouldn't be blamed if they get harassed or insulted, that doesn't make any sense. Yeah, they don't need to share anything with anyone and they could simply avoid interacting in a personal level with anyone on Smogon ever, but maybe they just want to socialize, make friends, share personal experiences and other similar stuff, because they are normal people just like everyone else ?_?
I never thought I'd have to do this...frysinger said:If you guys are afraid or have a problem with people making fun of you for being different why give them that personal information. They can't make fun of you for being gay if they don't know you. This isn't real life, it's a pokemon forums. Just keep your shit personal and this would be a lot less of an issue.
lolIt's sad to see senior staff spout the kind of reactionary rhetoric and defensiveness normally attributed to Deck Knight. It's sad, but ultimately not that surprising at this point. It's only surprising that it's so blatant and explicit, and I wonder if it's always been this way or I've just become more aware of it.
Years ago when I was actually active outside of Cong/CAP/CM (not so much CM anymore, I guess), I would always air grievances in public (relatively, anyway, since I guess Inside Scoop isn't "public") despite people insisting to take it to PM. I never fully understood why I would do that; I just couldn't stand the thought of talking to these people in private for more than a short while. Maybe it was due to some fault in my personality; maybe I was just a really socially avoidant person. Perhaps it was a sort of cowardice in that I didn't feel like my complaints were "legitimate" unless I made sure everybody knew about them. Maybe I felt I had so little control over my life outside of the internet, that I wasn't willing to add yet another stressor to that. This was what I believed, despite evidence to the contrary; I've had relatively little issues with talking to auths on PS! from before the Smogon merger, or leaders from other internet communities.
(To be clear, I recognize that airing grievances in public actually does have potentially major negative consequences that should be taken to account.)
I made excuses to myself to justify the Smogon culture and why anyone would condone it. For example, when the issue of paying Smogon staff came up, it seemed pretty damn unfair to me, but I stopped pursuing the issue when Zarel gave an argument against it. I trusted Zarel, it was a strong argument that I had no interest in countering, and, well, it was people like Rising_Dusk, Great Sage and the nuggetbridge people who had made me aware of this issue to begin with. Y'know... crazy people. And, well, when staff turned a blind eye to abuses perpetrated by promising buddies they wanted to promote, well, maybe they just knew something I didn't. They knew better than me. They seemed reasonable enough otherwise, more than a lot of badged users, at least. They were staff for a reason.
Over the years, I've learned more about the limits of human intelligence, especially the pervasive cognitive biases we fall victim to due to how our brains analyze sensory information. I've also, more recently, come to realize the sheer extent of racial, sexual, ableist, etc. discrimination in internet culture, and recognize that it really, really is okay to think that there's something really fucked up about all that. These growths in my perspective have given me a context behind why I felt such an aversion to Smogon's senior staff. It's because they're just so goddamn defensive, I'd even go so far as to say insecure. And it's in full display in this thread.
This isn't to say that all of the beliefs that I described are necessarily wrong. Maybe I really am, to an extent, cowardly / avoidant / unwilling to really engage. I also don't really care much about where Smogon's revenue streams go, and some of the people who left Smogon probably did have issues that couldn't reasonably be dealt with. The issue is more that these explanations are the only permissible ones.
This isn't to say that Smogon senior staff are intentionally cultivating this atmosphere. Intention is NOT the problem. It takes a huge amount of cynicism to suggest that it is. I'm bolding this because it's so important yet so often ignored in these kinds of threads. It's just that the excuses made by senior staff here don't cut it anymore, especially not in the wake of the many controversies regarding race and gender society at large has been forced to confront. Do you people really look at what people talk about in the news (most recently what's been going on with reddit and Twitter) only to come here and be surprised at the kinds of experiences that people are describing here? Are you so surprised as to adopt the same dismissive rhetoric used to downplay and demonize the people adversely affected by those other incidents?
I get that most if not all people involved in this kind of thing want everyone to get along. There are a couple of simple steps that can help achieve that:
1. Holy shit, stop being so defensive. Some of what's being said honestly comes across as borderline blackmail. When people complain, the most immediate response shouldn't be to demand evidence. Evidence is great, of course, but often with this kind of issue, the problems are so ingrained and widespread that it's hard even to recognize any of it as evidence of something that's fucked up, and even if we did, there's so much of it that it would take too long. This thread alone is too daunting to me to start making actual Deck Knight / Fox News comparisons. I'm not saying that you have to accept every accusation as true, but either all these people are in some crazy conspiracy to trash Smogon's reputation for some reason I can't comprehend, or something is really fucked up and even simply acknowledging this without reservation would help a lot.
2. Stop demonizing and blaming people who don't like you / have left Smogon. It's always the same shit whenever someone leaves Smogon, or threatens to leave Smogon, or severely loses interest and activity for community-related reasons. That user is/was unstable/unsociable/crazy. I was called neurotic just because I basically said I'd have no interest in CAP if it built for its own metagame. And I'm certain that people have called me worse for my other opinions.
I know billymills said we should avoid airing grievances specifically about Smogon politics. First of all, there's no way I'm taking this to Inside Scoop. Secondly, it's very relevant to the general topic of discrimination. Lastly, what else is there to talk about? This same general topic comes up regularly in Cong in various forms, and the "discussion" is almost exactly the same every time. When people like tehy just never get it no matter how often it's explained to them, what's the point?
where?It's sad to see senior staff spout the kind of reactionary rhetoric and defensiveness normally attributed to Deck Knight.
again where?It's sad, but ultimately not that surprising at this point. It's only surprising that it's so blatant and explicit, and I wonder if it's always been this way or I've just become more aware of it.
Years ago when I was actually active outside of Cong/CAP/CM (not so much CM anymore, I guess), I would always air grievances in public (relatively, anyway, since I guess Inside Scoop isn't "public") despite people insisting to take it to PM. I never fully understood why I would do that; I just couldn't stand the thought of talking to these people in private for more than a short while. Maybe it was due to some fault in my personality; maybe I was just a really socially avoidant person. Perhaps it was a sort of cowardice in that I didn't feel like my complaints were "legitimate" unless I made sure everybody knew about them. Maybe I felt I had so little control over my life outside of the internet, that I wasn't willing to add yet another stressor to that. This was what I believed, despite evidence to the contrary; I've had relatively little issues with talking to auths on PS! from before the Smogon merger, or leaders from other internet communities.
(To be clear, I recognize that airing grievances in public actually does have potentially major negative consequences that should be taken to account.)
I made excuses to myself to justify the Smogon culture and why anyone would condone it. For example, when the issue of paying Smogon staff came up, it seemed pretty damn unfair to me, but I stopped pursuing the issue when Zarel gave an argument against it. I trusted Zarel, it was a strong argument that I had no interest in countering, and, well, it was people like Rising_Dusk, Great Sage and the nuggetbridge people who had made me aware of this issue to begin with. Y'know... crazy people. And, well, when staff turned a blind eye to abuses perpetrated by promising buddies they wanted to promote, well, maybe they just knew something I didn't. They knew better than me. They seemed reasonable enough otherwise, more than a lot of badged users, at least. They were staff for a reason.
Over the years, I've learned more about the limits of human intelligence, especially the pervasive cognitive biases we fall victim to due to how our brains analyze sensory information. I've also, more recently, come to realize the sheer extent of racial, sexual, ableist, etc. discrimination in internet culture, and recognize that it really, really is okay to think that there's something really fucked up about all that. These growths in my perspective have given me a context behind why I felt such an aversion to Smogon's senior staff. It's because they're just so goddamn defensive, I'd even go so far as to say insecure. And it's in full display in this thread.
This isn't to say that all of the beliefs that I described are necessarily wrong. Maybe I really am, to an extent, cowardly / avoidant / unwilling to really engage. I also don't really care much about where Smogon's revenue streams go, and some of the people who left Smogon probably did have issues that couldn't reasonably be dealt with. The issue is more that these explanations are the only permissible ones.
This isn't to say that Smogon senior staff are intentionally cultivating this atmosphere. Intention is NOT the problem. It takes a huge amount of cynicism to suggest that it is. I'm bolding this because it's so important yet so often ignored in these kinds of threads. It's just that the excuses made by senior staff here don't cut it anymore, especially not in the wake of the many controversies regarding race and gender society at large has been forced to confront. Do you people really look at what people talk about in the news (most recently what's been going on with reddit and Twitter) only to come here and be surprised at the kinds of experiences that people are describing here? Are you so surprised as to adopt the same dismissive rhetoric used to downplay and demonize the people adversely affected by those other incidents?
I get that most if not all people involved in this kind of thing want everyone to get along. There are a couple of simple steps that can help achieve that:
1. Holy shit, stop being so defensive. Some of what's being said honestly comes across as borderline blackmail. When people complain, the most immediate response shouldn't be to demand evidence. Evidence is great, of course, but often with this kind of issue, the problems are so ingrained and widespread that it's hard even to recognize any of it as evidence of something that's fucked up, and even if we did, there's so much of it that it would take too long. This thread alone is too daunting to me to start making actual Deck Knight / Fox News comparisons. I'm not saying that you have to accept every accusation as true, but either all these people are in some crazy conspiracy to trash Smogon's reputation for some reason I can't comprehend, or something is really fucked up and even simply acknowledging this without reservation would help a lot.
rofl where bruh2. Stop demonizing and blaming people who don't like you / have left Smogon. It's always the same shit whenever someone leaves Smogon, or threatens to leave Smogon, or severely loses interest and activity for community-related reasons. That user is/was unstable/unsociable/crazy. I was called neurotic just because I basically said I'd have no interest in CAP if it built for its own metagame. And I'm certain that people have called me worse for my other opinions.
I can assure you that cookie's post is not the kind of content that people are referencing lolI /think/ I have an example of "senior staff condoning racism" ; in quotes because I don't think that's what this really is
It's clear that this is a joke, (if it doesn't seem that way read the thread for context, it's short) but I think the issue is that this sort of post can be interpreted as creating a discriminatory atmosphere through the overuse of comedy at their expense. The controversy boils down to whether this sort of atmosphere is actually discriminatory or simply "offensively humorous" (i.e. humor that can be considered offensive). In the former case there's a problem, in the latter cookie is right he says people just need thick skins. And if I'm right about this, then it's a case-by-case basis for each individual, as it depends on how they interpret the atmosphere. And even then, the atmosphere's "intensity" could easily change for each minority group.
Anyway this is just my attempt at trying to reconcile both sides' perspectives here, I have no real opinion either way because this the first I've seen of anyone actually thinking there's a problem, so I've not really payed attention to this sort of thing before. I'll definitely keep my eyes open in the areas of Smogon/PS I hang around. Also, just to be perfectly clear, I am not attempting to cast cookie as intentionally creating the aforesaid atmosphere.