I recognize that you are debating in good faith. But I just want to point out that your primary worry seems to be about whether a single artist has to find a new job, not the inclusion of white supremacy in a massive game with world-wide reach. You are deeply and passionately concerned for the temporary unemployment of this artist. I hope that you will also direct those concerns to the larger issues at play.
Had you realized the orientation of the sleeve icon in the game is veritcal, so it matches up exactly with the flag? Meaning the original orientations match.
The way you're trying to turn this into "well these arbitrary images that have no visual connection could mean anything" is indistinguishable from a deliberate tactic from someone not acting in good faith.
It's as this poster says
It's possible to be staunchly against white supremacy and alt-right fuckery while also allowing the possibility that this wasn't absolutely, 100% intentional inclusion of white supremacist iconography. I think a lot of people in this thread are so immediately convinced that has to be intentional that they conflate anyone questioning the possibility of it being unintentional with an intent to play down the effects of (or even support) white supremacy in general, which is nonsense.
I have no reason to think that Audiboxer is a person who doesn't take bigotry seriously, for example, just because he is looking at this from a slightly different perspective.
I don't think I can sum it up any better, I'll try one last time. But I really don't want to start getting stressed out with implied "you aren't a good faith poster because your line of thinking isn't 100% the same as mine
in this topic" as when we reach that level of debate it leads to defensive situations and bickering. Not good. I'd rather leave "bad faith posters" to the trolls who come in like the chap we had earlier. I'm not trolling, I just don't have exactly the same opinion as yourselves down to a tee. I'm like 80~90% on board. I read the first few pages of replies in the topic, Bungie's response and then tried my best to articulate why I thought there was even a 1% chance this could be a messed up situation, rather than a situation with hostile intent. I still don't think it's out of the question, others do, fair enough, even with all the debating most of us are still set in our ways and there is nothing wrong with that given this whole situation does involve
some fill in the blanks. Speculation and projection will be part of that. There has been a few people saying somewhat similar things to me, I'm not a lone wolf here which is usually a good sign something is seriously wrong with your opinion if genuinely no one else thinks it.
Everyone in the topic seems to agree Bungie was right to apologise and act (change the design), good, that's an important baseline. It is a bit suspect if someone can't even agree Bungie have ample reason to apologise and act here. Not everyone agrees it
has to be 100% intentional PRIOR to an investigation/evidence though. You can still apologise and act on unintended consequences. Every company needs to and should.
Although leaving an accidental cock and balls in your game is fine. At this moment in time, Bungie has just stated not intentional. Not everyone agrees someone should also be fired without evidence either. Personally, I'm simply not swayed by "people get fired for being late" or "companies can fire someone for anything" so deal with it. Nor am I going to be boxed into a corner where unless I agree Bungie should just fire someone to make a point, I'm somehow playing down white supremacy and will get labelled as such if I don't tweak my opinion. I can't rationalise in my head why anyone would want someone to be out of a job without it being fully justified? Why would you feel that way? Would you like to be out of your job and going home without knowing how you'll be paying your bills because of a genuine mistake, just to have a point made? A point was made, fuck the individuals, regardless of their complicity/intention in the act! Collateral. If someone creates a GAF topic about getting fired by their boss for being 1 minute late or fired for some other accident/mistake that wasn't the end of the world, most GAFers are sympathetic? You can literally see hundreds of posts saying "fire this piece of shit/cunt" prior to even knowing who the person (or team) is and their level of guilt/intent. We literally know nothing about any of the Bungie employees. Even if people were a bit clearer with a caveat of question who is responsible and if ill-intent, THEN fire. As I said earlier this isn't a public piece of drama/wrong-doing for the internet to comb through and see a face, person, name, background, social media accounts, videos and so on. Usually, that IS how it goes on the internet because it's about a public person(s) or social media, and the internet as a collective therefore has carte blanche to go gung-ho and attack the individual(s) who've done something. But it's not like that here. I don't think it's unfair to make that distinction.
I know the internet seems to see people being unemployed for doing wrong as the first and instant port of call, fair enough, I agree, actions have consequences. Many people do get fired or disciplined for doing things that are nasty/ill intended/abusive/etc. To make it doubly clear I do AGREE people should get fired for serious wrong-doing! Nobody twist my words, please. But usually, I think it's fair for actions to be confirmed as having intent/malice/causing purposeful harm
before someone/some people are genuinely kicked to the curb with no livelihood. The
internet does get it wrong sometimes, I shouldn't need to state that. The
internet always wants a point to be made, but if the
internet gets it wrong said point has whatever consequences that come along with the
internets demands/actions. People in this topic picture in their heads who they are fighting against here, but you genuinely don't actually know in
this singular instance. We know who the Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are, yes, but this topic is about a current unnamed and unidentified source. Bungie has apologised, patched the armour and said it wasn't intended, and from there we need to debate fill-in the blanks because there isn't any other info as of yet. As I said, no one even knows who we're talking about here, not unless you've gone through the Destiny 2 credits list or Bungie linkedin accounts and tracked people down. I wouldn't go and do that though, as if anyone starts doxing the Bungie designers/developers that would just be another level of nonsense. I'm not saying anyone here
will do that, but people have been asking for named and shamed. Bungie isn't going to "dox" their own employees either.
Maybe Bungie will release some sort of further PR statement on the requests for someone to be fired, as if they're as vocal across social media as they are in here, I don't know if they can weather that PR storm without saying
something eventually. They're not going to name names, but possibly say "we've investigated and conclusion x". I seriously doubt it though, so I think we're going to have to be left with whatever Bungie have said and that they've handled the situation appropriately. All of us can keep debating till the end of time but I think what Bungie have said, and their action of patching it out, might be all we get out of them.
The ๖ۜBronx;248862044 said:
I guarantee you that their use of �� is in no way widespread relative to its standard use worldwide. If you hand it over to them on a silver platter, perhaps that's likely to change.
Again, I'm not from the US. The absurdity of telling me I'm aiding white power by using said emoji in standard use in the UK is ridiculous.
Apparently drinking milk goes along with the OK hand sign. I really don't know how anyone can state we should re-think drinking milk though, so I really hope no one actually thinks that. There are some things in life that are just so universal to the 7 billion worldwide population you cannot really co-opt them. Milk is at least one of those, and I'd argue some basic hand gestures are too. If you're not a white supremacist drinking milk and using the OK hand emoji to say "Pizza is my favourite food 👌" I don't think anyone can really tell you that's questionable. What is fucked up is being a white supremacist, not drinking milk or saying OK with emojis. I think the masses of kids who overuse emojis in everything these days have our backs covered to keep emojis non-co-opted.