I feel there may be a decent thread to be had, separately, on the impact of social media and the morality of its use by influencers as there's a hell of a lot to unpick there, and some very bright people in here who may be able to offer useful input from the worlds of philosophy and psychology. In terms of the insomniac dev, I'd say it's possible the intent wasn't there, but I do really feel that anyone who has a position of influence on Twitter ought to be aware that if they have a public spat with someone, some section of their followers will wade in, and a disagreement between two people will escalate into 1000 people spamming the shit out of one and 2000 the other, in accordance with the size of the followings of each. In that regard a private message over some other channel to discuss the matter would have been more sensible than using twitter, where everything is public.
Totally agree. I'd love to see this stuff debated with people who have a much better understanding of human psychology than I do~
I really feel there is a culture issue here that should be talked about in more depth. I've watched being snarky and sarcastic become common in more traditionally professional settings like journalism over the last decade. I get that it feels more natural and makes a connection with a desired audience feel more "real" but it's spiraled beyond snark and into outright bullying in the last couple of years. Debate is often pushed aside in favor of snarky, self righteousness and indignation.
I bet that big Twitter fight could of been avoided if the Insomniac developer wasn't so abrasive and dismissive. He's entitled to an opinion like all of us but I do think he was fishing for a fight by arguing that nude anime style art should be filtered out on Artstation (nude art is filtered, btw) or not be allowed on the site at all (This fight has been going for months so I apologize if I don't have all the facts correct). That's a pretty big fight he's starting since he is, in essence, saying that nude anime art isn't acceptable for portfolio or possibly commercial work, since that's what Artstation is for. He doesn't seem to take issue with nude art that's not anime. That's pretty close to home for me as I work commercially with nude art, though not necessarily anime style.
I'd say it's unprofessional to call the art "trashy" when defending his side, especially since he has all these tweets just before encouraging game dev students to persevere and saying they can make it. Encouraging people to try hard to make it in an industry he's simultaneously trying to gate keep doesn't sit well with me. I really want to see people stop accusing others of being transphobes or something similar to end a debate, too. That's just such a weak and overused argument.
There's something that feels self-destructive about the way our public discourse is going and I miss being able to see level-headed responses to issues like this one. It's a much bigger topic than just the people involved here's opinions. It's not uncommon to see people getting fired from good jobs due to their inability to stop being hostile online. What drives people to risk their careers over small things like this?
Social media is in such a weird place now. It's a lot more hostile that I thought it would be and it seems there's not much being done to address it. It's like a lot of people just want to hide the issues by banning and censoring things they deem toxic instead of figuring out how to bring people together, which is the point of social media. Artists need to be able to showcase their art for work, censoring it and removing it from portfolio sites is frightenng for artists who have put their lives into their work. It's surprising to see a someone that works at Insomniac stand against these artists because he doesn't personally like the art style.
Wow, there really is a lot to unpack here!