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[cormack12]

Disclaimer: This is long form so a lot of people won't make it through, but those who do I hope it prompts a good open exchange of idea's

ad populum (Latin for "argument to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition must be true because many or most people believe it, often concisely encapsulated as: "If many believe so, it is so." This is a fallacy which is very difficult to spot because our “common sense” tells us that if something is popular, it must be good/true/valid, but this is not so, especially in a society where clever marketing, social and political weight, and money can buy popularity.

I'll be honest, someone said start a topic on this and see where it goes. So the OP might get meandering and a bit tangential which I apologise for. I'm not sure where to take it at the moment. I figure I'll write and see where it takes me then try to put it into some sort of order. This OP isn't meant to shed light on what my personal thoughts are just open the topic up to everyone. I'll post my own personal opinion and 'hot takes' later in the thread.

We start with looking at the ever growing number of social media incidents where a person in a position of professional authority has let some personal opinions/professional opinions bleed through into interpersonal exchanges. On the back of this (unforseen - or unanticipated in most cases), it has led to radical fallouts, with 'followers' of both parties picking sides. This then spreads as a current affair topic and outlier factions rally to the banners as well. This has led to certain people contesting these points, to be 'smeared' with incorrect labels (Hentai lover, transphobe, racist, sexist, misogynist, incel). In some cases - maybe by misreading the situation, if we're being generous - there has been a deliberate drive to attribute a bone of contention to a prejudice. On the flip side, some have used the vehicle of social media to whip up a frenzy against quite innocuous and innocent remarks, which has resulted in people being terminated from employment :/ Often these remarks are taken entirely out of context and manipulated to fit the narrative or shut down the legitimacy of a honest and frank discussion. The problem here is that the biggest online 'rabble' usually wins, common sense or critical thinking does not prevail. It seems social media can live by the mantra of Rousseau:

Man is born free and everywhere he is in chains..

If anything, I think the social media age has made it readily apparent how many creative types are not able to embrace critical support. On the flip side, having a public presence does open you to any random Joe getting in touch and saying 'Hur Hur, your game sucks' which must get exhausting. Having said that, there is no rule that says your profile must be public - you can set it to private on any major platform. Unfortunately social media is a double edged sword, you can't have all the positives and none of the negatives. However, when faced with valid criticism, the answer is to not shout down the voice with your hoards of followers and accuse them of being 'phobes and having awful agenda's or being part of hate groups. I think the problem of giving these influencers legitimacy even when their positions are at best 50-50 creates a real problem going forward and an expectation of response which in turn fuels the whole online culture.

Some notable incidents to familiarise yourself with are:

• Jessica Price;
• CDPR // Gamergate and Transphobic tweets;
• Layna Lazar / Xavier CK;
• Patrick Soderlund - BFV;
• Tim Soret;
• Eveline Wiznerowicz;
• Subnautica Simon Chylinski;
• Phil Fish // Fez II;
• Patrick Klepek;
• Riot games and PAX West;
• Fallout 76 player banned for life after homophobic in-game action

I guess really all these topics straddle very diverse and different points but are front and centre of the social media wars. I guess in terms of conduct we need to discuss

When do you impugn on people's faculty to hold a personal opinion in a public arena?
Is the public arena is suitable for certain opinions when posting as a 'known entity'?
Should you desist from pop culture commentary?
Is social media the best outlet for professional musing and exchange of idea's?
Loving the public facing moniker of game development but also gatekeeping those discussions hosted publicly;
Is there a level of responsibility to uphold where personal crusades of these influencer's are not to be given gravitas by platform holders?


Maybe some good talking points are around:

Censorship
Should a person in a professional capacity give input on the quality of work alone? Should they also be allowed to give an opinion on whether it should be deplatformed or censored? Should they make frivolous, demeaning comments to platform holders and suggest they don't host it, or use the threat of their followers boycotting the service as an instrument for change

Professional opinion
When you are talking about challenges with specificity as faced by you in your industry, you are opening yourself up to public commentary to those with little or large knowledge on the topic as well (from layman to hobbyist to peer). If you don't want to deal with genuine passionate followers of the industry with limited understanding perhaps shouting about it in a public place is not the best idea. Maybe take it to linkedIn, specific dev events or expo's but then you miss out on the adulation and wonderment and sycophantic vindication that you were right all along.

Political leanings
When political subtlety is lost as a creative insertion into your work, it loses its credibility and becomes propaganda. Given the partisan nature of the relationships between followers and followed it very quickly becomes polarising.

Seperate real profiles from anonymous ones
Given the ease of internet sleuthing these days, using your real name and even using similar usernames for different services means you are more than likely able to be tracked down. It also removes the vanity aspect of it. People can agree with @AI-Dev#003 for Bethesda without the personal attachment.

Aging out
Is there a point of indemnity where we accept that comments made in the past are not to be regurgitated, especially those made tongue in cheek or riding high on the breath of youthful ignorance/rebellion?

 

[Solo Act]

In a lot of ways, this is the conversation of our times and is much bigger than gaming. My own two cents is that people equate being offended as having a crime committed against them. And once that occurs, they seek retribution (often with a mob mentality via social media). Why do people think that it is so bad/strange to have been offended?

I think the phenomena has led to mature people becoming more boring (for lack of a better word). People tend to not say anything which could be seen as potentially offensive if they're knowledgeable of the fallout. This leads to silence on myriad topics, which leads to assumed agreement. After all, if one doesn't speak out against something they disagree with, compliance is assumed. I can say with certainty that I operate like that on GAF. The bans come quick it seems. Best to not say anything contradictory to anyone else, lest offense be taken and your name gets a line drawn through it.

This is an interesting topic with a lot of meat on the bones. I'll be curious to read the responses.

 

[Thiagosc777]

Jessica Price;

When do you impugn on people's faculty to hold a personal opinion in a public arena?
Is the public arena is suitable for certain opinions when posting as a 'known entity'?
Should you desist from pop culture commentary?
Is social media the best outlet for professional musing and exchange of idea's?
Loving the public facing moniker of game development but also gatekeeping those discussions hosted publicly;
Is there a level of responsibility to uphold where personal crusades of these influencer's are not to be given gravitas by platform holders?

Excuse me, your post is extremely biased and you already give the conclusion in the first post. So Jessica Price had "personal opinions" and wanted to "exchange ideas" when she attacked that fan?

When you accuse someone of anything, it is no longer an opinion. She attacked a fan of the series accusing him of very serious things while ridiculing him online. This is not about censorship or having a "personal opinion" or "exchanging ideas". The moment you attack someone, it is far past that point.

She was correctly fired for behaving unprofessionally while representing the company. Something that is the norm in the real world, i.e., not the gaming industry.

None of those controversies started only because people had opinions. They started because someone attacked gamers or someone else and got a response in kind.

 

[cormack12]

Excuse me....

Yes, I will excuse your brainfart. Read this:

This OP isn't meant to shed light on what my personal thoughts are just open the topic up to everyone.

It was about making the OP as neutral as possible. No judgement or prejudice is attributed to any of those incidents. It is up to the people who read the entire thread to research each one and draw their own conclusions. If anything, the entire incident this was framed round was actually XavierCK trying to censor artStation not Jessica Price at all. So bring it down a notch you hysterical potato.

 

[Thiagosc777]

The video game industry modus operandi:

• Go around insulting and attacking people online;
• When someone attacks you in return, play victim;
• Cry about "censorship" or "my personal opinion" on forums;

 

[Thiagosc777]

It was about making the OP as neutral as possible. No judgement or prejudice is attributed to any of those incidents. It is up to the people who read the entire thread to research each one and draw their own conclusions. If anything, the entire incident this was framed round was actually XavierCK trying to censor artStation not Jessica Price at all. So bring it down a notch you hysterical potato

That's interesting, because you said this:

Some notable incidents to familiarise yourself with are:

Implying they are comparable.

On the flip side, some have used the vehicle of social media to whip up a frenzy against quite innocuous and innocent remarks, which has resulted in people being terminated from employment

Or this.

I'd suggest you to rewrite the OP because it seems you are characterizing things as being the blame of social media or some third party who are interested in ruining people's lives, instead of those who actually started those problems.

 

[DunDunDunpachi]

Thank you for the write-up! (we need more longform content here on GAF)

I agree with Solo Act when they say this conversation is "bigger than gaming". Here are some of the changes I've lived through that have led us to the current state:

- lawsuits and public outcry in the 80s and 90s forces game companies to become litigious and corporate, to avoid collapsing
- game companies were once much smaller, with cheekier forms of public communication (Blizzard's help line where you could call and talk to an orc)
- communities and shrines were scattered and disconnected, preventing too much bleedover (i.e. invasion) from one fandom into theirs.
- internet communication required a higher level of know-how than is currently required

Gamers getting passionate and angry and insulting is hardly a surprise given the rise of social media and "public" discourse. We saw "fanboy" brand-loyalty from the very beginning. This generation, I would've expected even more noise and racket about "console wars" and "list wars" and so forth.

What happened instead is the journalists all began arguing about social/ideological issues. Most "serious" people weren't stanning hard for a brand by mocking the others. No, something more important had entered the scene: the plight of the First-World Customers who couldn't look into the videogame mirror quite as narcissistically as they had grown to expect in their social media apps.

This is where the conversation took a strange turn. I would expect there to be obnoxious, loud, passionate, incoherent screeching about how HALO IS STILL THE BEST SHOOTER EVER or how PS4 CONTROLLERS ARE INFERIOR TO X1 DUE TO STICK PLACEMENT. We've suffered through this sort of faboyism from the start and it would be no strange thing to see it magnified in step with the growth of technology.

Articles like that are not plastered over the front pages of a lot of websites. Rather, it is the "special interest" tabloid stories that often have nothing to do with gaming at all.

I see this subversion and I cannot help but be suspicious. Why is something totally native to gaming -- picking camps based on favorite games and brands -- getting drowned out by something totally foreign to gaming? We are all just faceless avatars playing our game. Gaming itself is "equalizing" because as long as you can play the game, all the other traits fade away. You can be a Night Elf Mohawk and no one will be the wiser that you're a 350lb woman with bright blonde hair. The issue of equality and representation is only being brought up from without, not from within. I can understand why some call it "poison" because that's how it is seeping into communities.

I think all the "suggested guidelines" you wrote are sensible, especially the part about letting past comments remain in the past. Goodness, we are chopping away the very concept of forgiveness in our society over a stupid videogame toy.

Social media itself is a useful tool , but we gave it to hormonal prima donnas who have more self-importance than actual thought.

 

[cormack12]

That's interesting, because you said this:

Implying they are comparable.

No. That would be exemplifying. You've picked out the wrong part. This is not about siding with anyone. This is about highlighting incidents (regardless of the incitement) where social media masses have been involved in supporting/changing stances taken by those in professional capacities.

But to dispell the notion compketely, you also need to pick out the points that prove you wrong. Namely Jessica Price starting a conversation about the difficulties in her profession about game writing pertaining to different narratives. She then became a gatekeeper of that conversation by belittling and personally attacking the non industry follower. Which again was mentioned as seperate bullet points.

*Shrug*

 

[Thiagosc777]

No. That would be exemplifying. You've picked out the wrong part. This is not about siding with anyone. This is about highlighting incidents (regardless of the incitement) where social media masses have been involved in supporting/changing stances taken by those in professional capacities.

But to dispell the notion compketely, you also need to pick out the points that prove you wrong. Namely Jessica Price starting a conversation about the difficulties in her profession about game writing pertaining to different narratives. She then became a gatekeeper of that conversation by belittling and personally attacking the non industry follower. Which again was mentioned as seperate bullet points.

*Shrug*

Your OP is not clear at all. It gives the impression that "third parties" are using people's opinions as a way of hurting people in the industry and how social media is a double edged sword.

At no point you consider the possibility that the "people in the industry" are in the wrong, and all could be avoided if they behaved professionally.

 

[cormack12]

At no point you consider the possibility that the "people in the industry" are in the wrong, and all could be avoided if they behaved professionally.

Intentionally so. Because like I said it's trying to frame a discussion. I even say I will put my personal thoughts later. Look, long story short whatever you've misinterpreted the OP. I've cleared it up. If you wanna imagine some sort of subliminal good/evil thing it's up to you but there's a bigger and more enlightening discussion to be had here about the whole thing.

All the examples are very different and that was also purposeful. If you want to try and reframe the OP with all that context and not appear biased please do so and I'll add it....

 

[Petrae]

If you’re choosing to share an opinion on a public forum— one that reaches millions of people daily— then you assume the risks and perils that come with doing so. Social media isn’t LiveJournal, though an alarming number of people treat it similarly.

Let’s face it: The people who have lost their jobs because of what they’ve posted on social media got what was coming to them. Forget any stance about how you arguably shouldn’t get fired for what you post for a minute— the fact is that it’s been going on for years, with few (if any) successful appeals or efforts for reinstatement. It’s common and accepted practice... and yet, people continue to make the same errors in judgment and thus, people keep getting fired. That kind of IDGAF behavior is deserving of such consequence. It’s like drinking gasoline anyway despite being warned that it’s hazardous and might kill you.

I’m sorry, but I have zero sympathy for the people listed in the OP, or for anyone else who has been fired because they used social media incorrectly. You can say whatever you want, but that doesn’t mean that you should— or that you’re ever free from the consequences that stem from what you say.

I’d like to think that people will eventually come to understand the responsibilities that come with social media use, but it’s become clear to me over the years of seeing numerous reports of people getting fired over it that most people will never get it.