I've not watched the video (no sound right now), so I'm going off the article. I hope I didn't miss something obvious. But… What of it? And when did "centrism" become bad exactly? I keep seeing...
I've not watched the video (no sound right now), so I'm going off the article. I hope I didn't miss something obvious. But…
This kind of feels a little "enlightened centrist" to me?
What of it? And when did "centrism" become bad exactly? I keep seeing that as if not taking an immediate black&white extreme position is a crime nowadays.
Conflict generally is a (mis)communication problem.
Yes, clearer concerns than "gamers are toxic" are generally received as well as they could be. I don't know if you expect them to be received any better than when you point out problem in any community.
That is not what centrism is or does. Politically speaking for example, i'm a centrist. Most of my policies, with rare fiscal-conservative exceptions, are extremely liberal-progressive on the US...
Centrism has a habit of putting two opposing sides on equal footing.
That is not what centrism is or does.
Politically speaking for example, i'm a centrist. Most of my policies, with rare fiscal-conservative exceptions, are extremely liberal-progressive on the US scale (European centrist, which is somewhere between Warren's and Bernie's policies).
So I dislike that term being appropriated to mean... bothsidesism.
And bothsidesism is not what the OP is doing. Finding equal footing, trying to understand what the others are saying, why they are saying it etc is not saying "both sides are exactly equal", it's just trying empathy. Empathy with the goal of coming to a resolution.
If the American discourse was less competitive and more cooperative everyone would be better off.
It's nuts to me how wired Americans are to try to win the debate, try to prove that their side is better and the other side sucks. No wonder the political climate became what it now is.
Oh and if you point this out, you'll be labeled an "enlightened centrist", because how dare you point out that things like Trump are a symptom, a product of the climate. "You must be saying trump and the GOP are exactly the same as Democrats". (The same people saying this will happily be pro Warren despite her saying the exact same thing as me...)
Sorry. This got a bit off course with politics since this whole thing is an overloaded term for a lot of stuff. I'm on my phone and can't really type something more coherent, but I really wanted to address that bit. I'm fed up of being called out for trying empathy.
I think a lot of people would agree that Trump is a symptom. The problem is that you rub a lot of people the wrong way when you say we should be more cooperative with the other side when the other...
Exemplary
I think a lot of people would agree that Trump is a symptom. The problem is that you rub a lot of people the wrong way when you say we should be more cooperative with the other side when the other side doesn't want a good chunk of us to exist. Yeah, empathy will help some of those people become better, but people don't always want to hear that, and it won't work for everyone.
The capital-g Gamer debate is similar but on a less extreme scale, because a part of one side of the debate is demonstrably causing a problem. You can go into any unmoderated game chat and get greeted with Trump trolls or worse because there are enough of those people in the gaming community that it's a huge problem.
You're right, cooperative is the wrong word. Empathetic, though. And that doesn't mean agreeing with them but rather trying to understand where their position even comes from. Nobody's born and...
you say we should be more cooperative with the other side when the other side doesn't want a good chunk of us to exist.
You're right, cooperative is the wrong word. Empathetic, though. And that doesn't mean agreeing with them but rather trying to understand where their position even comes from.
Nobody's born and then suddenly decides to be a nazi. If people don't even try to understand what mechanics are in place to get a large fucking chunk of the US population to agree with those views, then you're outright lost; because if you don't fix those mechanics, that chunk will keep growing.
This is the same argument I was making back in 2012. It was a lot less bad back then. But it's kept growing and you folks ended up electing Trump. We'll keep trying it the american way though, I'm sure it'll all "fix itself".
24 hour news networks. Basically, it's discussions framed as a "both sides" argument even if one side is just clearly, provably, objectively wrong about an issue. Think a news segment on climate...
What of it? And when did "centrism" become bad exactly?
24 hour news networks. Basically, it's discussions framed as a "both sides" argument even if one side is just clearly, provably, objectively wrong about an issue.
Think a news segment on climate change inviting both a climate scientist and a climate change denier. It represents an issue as balanced when the overwhelming evidence points towards one side being dangerously wrong. What maybe would be honest is a discussion on why you would want to oppose measures against climate change despite the evidence for it, there clearly are arguments there, mostly revolving around maximizing profits. But you'd have to frame it as that and not a question of whether climate change even exists (it clearly does).
So in this case, it's somehow equating massive issues with social conduct in gaming with gamers supposedly facing unbearable character assassination by their critics. And that's just not a balanced issue. I don't think there's a single thing gamers had to "give up" in all of this, except literally harassing people without consequence. That's not a sacrifice gamers can claim outweighs criticism of the environment they create (which is now a mainstream space for billions of people to spend a significant amount of time in).
Because centrism is a valueless position. You're literally picking a midpoint between two points with no actual values, goals, morality, or guiding principles to actually inform the positions...
What of it? And when did "centrism" become bad exactly? I keep seeing that as if not taking an immediate black&white extreme position is a crime nowadays.
Because centrism is a valueless position. You're literally picking a midpoint between two points with no actual values, goals, morality, or guiding principles to actually inform the positions you're picking. Instead you're looking at two people with conflicting values and goals and deciding that the midpoint between them must be good, regardless of how compatible they are. Regardless of the moral or ethical values behind either of the sentiments.
It's intellectually lazy, in other words. It's a way to sound thoughtful without actually thinking things through at all. You can have your position characterized as centrist because you happen to end up in the middle between two people. But calling yourself a centrist implies aiming at centrism or moderation as ends in themselves, which is just the performance of seriousness or thoughtfulness without any of the substance.
For example, I'm a fair bit to the Left of most Americans. But I actually disagree with the political Left on a ton of very foundational things. So even if I end up advocating positions that are broadly in the center of American political discourse, this doesn't make me a centrist because the actual values I bring to the table are largely motivated by Leftist sentiments and anti-authoritarian values.
Conflict generally is a (mis)communication problem.
No. If people have fundamentally divergent goals or values, the conflict between them is a process of determining which way things ought to go. It's not a communication problem, it's a form of communication. You might not like the form of communication for practical reasons like, we're not getting any closer to a solution to let's find a middle point we can meet at. But more often than not, people don't like conflict for aesthetic reasons (e.g. tone policing) which is thoroughly unhelpful for actually addressing the root source of conflict.
It's not valueless and it's not "a midpoint between two points". And honestly, me trying to defend this at this point would be you trying to defend any non-specific progressive policy from "it's...
Because centrism is a valueless position. You're literally picking a midpoint between two points with no actual values, goals, morality, or guiding principles to actually inform the positions you're picking.
It's not valueless and it's not "a midpoint between two points". And honestly, me trying to defend this at this point would be you trying to defend any non-specific progressive policy from "it's valueless you're just picking random stuff that pisses off conservatives".
My current president, Emmanuel Macron (who I proudly voted for) was hailed by all types of US progressives as the second coming of jesus back when our election was happening. Hell, John Oliver did a whole segment about him. He's a centrist, by the way. In fact, he's as centrist as France ever got; if he was any more in the center he'd show up in geometry books.
Calling his policies valueless is woefully misinformed at best if not "intellectually lazy" as you put it, and I hope you can see that. I won't try to defend this any more here…
It seems like you missed a big chunk of my post there because I never said it exists to piss off conservatives. If anything, in the American context it exists mostly to engage in hippie-punching....
It seems like you missed a big chunk of my post there because I never said it exists to piss off conservatives. If anything, in the American context it exists mostly to engage in hippie-punching. The main point is that it is a position that has no underlying system of values to inform it. What is the underlying virtue that centrism seeks to maximize exactly? What's the "centrist" view of a just world? Calling oneself "centrist" is a way of trying to obfuscate what those values are and where your position comes from.
You can have your position characterized as centrist because you happen to end up in the middle between two people. But calling yourself a centrist implies aiming at centrism or moderation as ends in themselves, which is just the performance of seriousness or thoughtfulness without any of the substance.
For example, I'm a fair bit to the Left of most Americans. But I actually disagree with the political Left on a ton of very foundational things. So even if I end up advocating positions that are broadly in the center of American political discourse, this doesn't make me a centrist because the actual values I bring to the table are largely motivated by Leftist sentiments and anti-authoritarian values.
I don't know who "they" are and I didn't watch the video, but the way I see it is that talking in unhelpful binary statements (as Twitter teaches us) pretty much guarantees more conflict. So,...
I don't know who "they" are and I didn't watch the video, but the way I see it is that talking in unhelpful binary statements (as Twitter teaches us) pretty much guarantees more conflict. So, although I don't always remember to do it, I'm usually in favor of avoiding them and at least hinting at more complexity.
But the headline itself is an unhelpful binary! It's a hard habit to break.
I guess my main takeaway from his article/video is: what brought this on? Did some event happen regarding the use of "gamers are toxic" feeding a media feedback loop? His argument seems to hold...
I guess my main takeaway from his article/video is: what brought this on?
Did some event happen regarding the use of "gamers are toxic" feeding a media feedback loop? His argument seems to hold this as the crux of the negative consequences that come from repeating the phrase. But I don't remember this being an issue anytime recently.
So the main issue is the wording of the phrase "gamers are toxic" leads to miscommunicated and misunderstood arguments between sides. The Twitterification of our communication to short, overreduced pointed phrases has ruined discourse in ways we won't truly understand for decades but this phrase is not nearly the worst offender. But that's not really a gaming exclusive problem, that's an overall internet and social media discourse problem. And, again, I don't see what tangible consequences have emerged as a result of this particular phrase being oft-repeated. There are a bunch of them out there in every fan industry.
I don't buy some of the consequences he spells out to suggest driving this thesis. I haven't seen any politicians or talking heads jumping on the phrase to go after gamers. They're more distracted by other things, like the content of video games. EA may suggest that stuffed polls lead to them being so heavily voted for in the Worst Companies list but... they're not wrong. People come out en masse to vote for them because they're so incensed (honestly, EA isn't even the worst company in gaming) but the response to BFV's female characters was ridiculous. I don't think skipping over that to take a snipe at investors is justified.
The comments are really interesting. He's avoided talking about the political bent to all this on purpose but what's left is too superficial for much discussion. I honestly can't figure out why he laboured so much to say so little.
Yes. Vidja games is the appropriate corruption of language when dealing with social impact and discourse around video games and gaming culture, at least since 2014.
Yes. Vidja games is the appropriate corruption of language when dealing with social impact and discourse around video games and gaming culture, at least since 2014.
I've not watched the video (no sound right now), so I'm going off the article. I hope I didn't miss something obvious. But…
That is not what centrism is or does.
Politically speaking for example, i'm a centrist. Most of my policies, with rare fiscal-conservative exceptions, are extremely liberal-progressive on the US scale (European centrist, which is somewhere between Warren's and Bernie's policies).
So I dislike that term being appropriated to mean... bothsidesism.
And bothsidesism is not what the OP is doing. Finding equal footing, trying to understand what the others are saying, why they are saying it etc is not saying "both sides are exactly equal", it's just trying empathy. Empathy with the goal of coming to a resolution.
If the American discourse was less competitive and more cooperative everyone would be better off.
It's nuts to me how wired Americans are to try to win the debate, try to prove that their side is better and the other side sucks. No wonder the political climate became what it now is.
Oh and if you point this out, you'll be labeled an "enlightened centrist", because how dare you point out that things like Trump are a symptom, a product of the climate. "You must be saying trump and the GOP are exactly the same as Democrats". (The same people saying this will happily be pro Warren despite her saying the exact same thing as me...)
Sorry. This got a bit off course with politics since this whole thing is an overloaded term for a lot of stuff. I'm on my phone and can't really type something more coherent, but I really wanted to address that bit. I'm fed up of being called out for trying empathy.
I think a lot of people would agree that Trump is a symptom. The problem is that you rub a lot of people the wrong way when you say we should be more cooperative with the other side when the other side doesn't want a good chunk of us to exist. Yeah, empathy will help some of those people become better, but people don't always want to hear that, and it won't work for everyone.
The capital-g Gamer debate is similar but on a less extreme scale, because a part of one side of the debate is demonstrably causing a problem. You can go into any unmoderated game chat and get greeted with Trump trolls or worse because there are enough of those people in the gaming community that it's a huge problem.
You're right, cooperative is the wrong word. Empathetic, though. And that doesn't mean agreeing with them but rather trying to understand where their position even comes from.
Nobody's born and then suddenly decides to be a nazi. If people don't even try to understand what mechanics are in place to get a large fucking chunk of the US population to agree with those views, then you're outright lost; because if you don't fix those mechanics, that chunk will keep growing.
This is the same argument I was making back in 2012. It was a lot less bad back then. But it's kept growing and you folks ended up electing Trump. We'll keep trying it the american way though, I'm sure it'll all "fix itself".
It is usually known as false equivalence (as a fallacy) or false balance (in reporting).
24 hour news networks. Basically, it's discussions framed as a "both sides" argument even if one side is just clearly, provably, objectively wrong about an issue.
Think a news segment on climate change inviting both a climate scientist and a climate change denier. It represents an issue as balanced when the overwhelming evidence points towards one side being dangerously wrong. What maybe would be honest is a discussion on why you would want to oppose measures against climate change despite the evidence for it, there clearly are arguments there, mostly revolving around maximizing profits. But you'd have to frame it as that and not a question of whether climate change even exists (it clearly does).
So in this case, it's somehow equating massive issues with social conduct in gaming with gamers supposedly facing unbearable character assassination by their critics. And that's just not a balanced issue. I don't think there's a single thing gamers had to "give up" in all of this, except literally harassing people without consequence. That's not a sacrifice gamers can claim outweighs criticism of the environment they create (which is now a mainstream space for billions of people to spend a significant amount of time in).
Because centrism is a valueless position. You're literally picking a midpoint between two points with no actual values, goals, morality, or guiding principles to actually inform the positions you're picking. Instead you're looking at two people with conflicting values and goals and deciding that the midpoint between them must be good, regardless of how compatible they are. Regardless of the moral or ethical values behind either of the sentiments.
It's intellectually lazy, in other words. It's a way to sound thoughtful without actually thinking things through at all. You can have your position characterized as centrist because you happen to end up in the middle between two people. But calling yourself a centrist implies aiming at centrism or moderation as ends in themselves, which is just the performance of seriousness or thoughtfulness without any of the substance.
For example, I'm a fair bit to the Left of most Americans. But I actually disagree with the political Left on a ton of very foundational things. So even if I end up advocating positions that are broadly in the center of American political discourse, this doesn't make me a centrist because the actual values I bring to the table are largely motivated by Leftist sentiments and anti-authoritarian values.
No. If people have fundamentally divergent goals or values, the conflict between them is a process of determining which way things ought to go. It's not a communication problem, it's a form of communication. You might not like the form of communication for practical reasons like, we're not getting any closer to a solution to let's find a middle point we can meet at. But more often than not, people don't like conflict for aesthetic reasons (e.g. tone policing) which is thoroughly unhelpful for actually addressing the root source of conflict.
It's not valueless and it's not "a midpoint between two points". And honestly, me trying to defend this at this point would be you trying to defend any non-specific progressive policy from "it's valueless you're just picking random stuff that pisses off conservatives".
My current president, Emmanuel Macron (who I proudly voted for) was hailed by all types of US progressives as the second coming of jesus back when our election was happening. Hell, John Oliver did a whole segment about him. He's a centrist, by the way. In fact, he's as centrist as France ever got; if he was any more in the center he'd show up in geometry books.
Calling his policies valueless is woefully misinformed at best if not "intellectually lazy" as you put it, and I hope you can see that. I won't try to defend this any more here…
It seems like you missed a big chunk of my post there because I never said it exists to piss off conservatives. If anything, in the American context it exists mostly to engage in hippie-punching. The main point is that it is a position that has no underlying system of values to inform it. What is the underlying virtue that centrism seeks to maximize exactly? What's the "centrist" view of a just world? Calling oneself "centrist" is a way of trying to obfuscate what those values are and where your position comes from.
It seems that in the US centrism is sometimes an excuse to defend false balances:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_balance
I don't know who "they" are and I didn't watch the video, but the way I see it is that talking in unhelpful binary statements (as Twitter teaches us) pretty much guarantees more conflict. So, although I don't always remember to do it, I'm usually in favor of avoiding them and at least hinting at more complexity.
But the headline itself is an unhelpful binary! It's a hard habit to break.
And I was unclear myself. I meant that I don't know the people in this dispute who are allegedly communicating unclearly.
I guess my main takeaway from his article/video is: what brought this on?
Did some event happen regarding the use of "gamers are toxic" feeding a media feedback loop? His argument seems to hold this as the crux of the negative consequences that come from repeating the phrase. But I don't remember this being an issue anytime recently.
So the main issue is the wording of the phrase "gamers are toxic" leads to miscommunicated and misunderstood arguments between sides. The Twitterification of our communication to short, overreduced pointed phrases has ruined discourse in ways we won't truly understand for decades but this phrase is not nearly the worst offender. But that's not really a gaming exclusive problem, that's an overall internet and social media discourse problem. And, again, I don't see what tangible consequences have emerged as a result of this particular phrase being oft-repeated. There are a bunch of them out there in every fan industry.
I don't buy some of the consequences he spells out to suggest driving this thesis. I haven't seen any politicians or talking heads jumping on the phrase to go after gamers. They're more distracted by other things, like the content of video games. EA may suggest that stuffed polls lead to them being so heavily voted for in the Worst Companies list but... they're not wrong. People come out en masse to vote for them because they're so incensed (honestly, EA isn't even the worst company in gaming) but the response to BFV's female characters was ridiculous. I don't think skipping over that to take a snipe at investors is justified.
The comments are really interesting. He's avoided talking about the political bent to all this on purpose but what's left is too superficial for much discussion. I honestly can't figure out why he laboured so much to say so little.
I really don't want to rehash the No True Scotsman fallacy when vija games involved, but oh boy, does that comment section have a lot to say.
Err. By "vija games" do you mean video games?
Yes. Vidja games is the appropriate corruption of language when dealing with social impact and discourse around video games and gaming culture, at least since 2014.