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[Mael]

That article is some pretty bias garbage, especially leaving out the reason why the joke, exaggerated fucking comedy article was written about Roberta Williams in the first place.

Are people really reading OMM and taking it at face value as something an adult really believes and says? Jesus Christ, what happened?

An unsupervised kid would certainly grow to be an adult with these views...also adult idiots are in no way on short supply either.
I mean seriously just look at all the Charlie Hebdo threads we have here, people generally do not get satire at all (if you think only Americans don't understand them...welp).

 

[Cymbal Head]

The inverse of the problem of people taking obvious irony, exaggeration, and intentionally creative insults seriously, and embracing them, is that a lot of those on the other side have lost the ability to distinguish the same.

Anybody who can read OMM describing Roberta Williams as "the woman who invented human suffering" and think that they're making a sincere personal attack against her needs to spend a little more time offline.

I think this is pretty much the correct response to the article and twitter rant:

 

[Incendiary]

Aw, isn't it cute how men in the gaming community can invent even the thinnest and dumbest pretext for playing the victim.

"someone called my videogamez dumb. DIE IN A FIRE YOU CUNT! btw let me remind you how i only view women as sexual objects"

what? she deserved it

I didn't know anything about Roberta Williams before this thread, but all things considered when somebody says "my smart games are declining because more stupid people are playing games now" they deserve to be called out for their classist rhetoric, regardless of gender. Using gender-based insults may be crossing a line, but I don't think there was any "this opinion is bad because she's a woman" rhetoric going on at all. It is more "her opinion is bad, also she's a woman so I'm going to throw in some female-oriented insults to be more extreme." If she had been a guy, I'm sure OMM would have called him a cockgobbler or a cuckold or some other nonsense.

Not saying it's right, but I think it's an important distinction.

That article is some pretty bias garbage, especially leaving out the reason why the joke, exaggerated fucking comedy article was written about Roberta Williams in the first place.

Are people really reading OMM and taking it at face value as something an adult really believes and says? Jesus Christ, what happened?

Exaggeration is a part of humor. Saying that the person who produces cheap toilet paper is basically Hitler is funnier than just saying politely that you would prefer not to buy cheap tp in the future. It's not literal.

The problem is nowadays there are adults on the internet who say these exact things without the intent of humor.

 

[TetraGenesis]

edgelord trolls think they're hilarious, too.



Do you really not know or are you just being facetious? 'cause if you don't know: GG is basically a bunch of misogynist harassers who decided to start ruining women's lives (those in the tech and gaming business) in the name of "ethics in journalism". They pretty much use that "shock humor" thing without the humor - just insults and hate.

Saying "I don't know what GamerGate is" is an actual GG tactic. They talk about the strategy on 4chan and VOAT, I guess.

Not sure if that's the case here but, honestly, I don't get how you could be into games enough to 1) be a member of NeoGAF 2) for almost 15 years and 3) visit the gaming side, like, ever and not know what GamerGate is. It's really hard to accept.

Unless he's saying more generally that he doesn't know what GamerGate actual is trying to be/trying to accomplish. In which case, it's simple enough: stick it to those damn "females."

 

[NathanS]

The inverse of the problem of people taking obvious irony, exaggeration, and intentionally creative insults seriously, and embracing them, is that a lot of those on the other side have lost the ability to distinguish the same.

Anybody who can read OMM describing Roberta Williams as "the woman who invented human suffering" and think that they're making a sincere personal attack against her needs to spend a little more time offline.

I think this is pretty much the correct response to the article and twitter rant:

I'm not a fan of the "everything was so much better back then!" attitude either, but intent of the insults don't matter so much as the effect, and no tow wrongs don't make a right.

I think this video well not abut video games has some real bearing on this conversation, and abutted the tricky balance satire plays, and how much of the free wiling internet stuff of not just yesteryear but today, honestly is bad satire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE

And maybe we aren't in a period of everyone is just so sensitive, and maybe more people have finally been given a chance to say "stop treating me like shit."

 

[purpleblastoise]

Sounds like very few people are condemning this. Are people just excusing this because others were also shitty to women at the time?. I bet people are going to excuse youtubers like Jontron in the future for just being 'edgy' and 'pushing the boundary'.

 

[Ogodei]

That article is some pretty bias garbage, especially leaving out the reason why the joke, exaggerated fucking comedy article was written about Roberta Williams in the first place.

Are people really reading OMM and taking it at face value as something an adult really believes and says? Jesus Christ, what happened?

Exaggeration is a part of humor. Saying that the person who produces cheap toilet paper is basically Hitler is funnier than just saying politely that you would prefer not to buy cheap tp in the future. It's not literal.

Lots of comedians have been shaken by that problem, it's arguably what helped push Dave Chapelle into his nervous breakdown. The Boondocks probably ran into the same thing, though i never read any articles about it. People who missed the significance of black-on-black parody and just laughing at a show that featured stupid or self-hating black characters.

Some folks are just that dumb to miss underlying themes, other people have pre-existing biases and found comedy that played to them and helped enhance them.

 

[Eusis]

Sounds like very few people are condemning this. Are people just excusing this because others were also shitty to women at the time?. I bet people are going to excuse youtubers like Jontron in the future for just being 'edgy' and 'pushing the boundary'.

There was a lot of this kind of humor in the late 90s/early 00s I think (that was when things like South Park came into existence) and we've since grown more aware of how problematic it can be, especially as GamerGate shows that some of these people either take it seriously or at least really don't give a fuck if they offend others. Edgelord type shit, and it's not uncommon for them to grow out of it.

I'd seriously look up to see what the writers are doing NOW, as while Portal has a dark edge to its humor it also isn't as outright offense, and I don't think the writers were bothered about that if it was forced on them. At an extreme, it might even be why the site is no longer running.

 

[tuxfool]

Sounds like very few people are condemning this. Are people just excusing this because others were also shitty to women at the time?. I bet people are going to excuse youtubers like Jontron in the future for just being 'edgy' and 'pushing the boundary'.

Are you going to do this throughout the thread? Pop in to whine at people, just because the thread didn't turn out the way you wanted it to?

How about you say something meaningful about the article?

 

[purpleblastoise]

There was a lot of this kind of humor in the late 90s/early 00s I think (that was when things like South Park came into existence) and we've since grown more aware of how problematic it can be, especially as GamerGate shows that some of these people either take it seriously or at least really don't give a fuck if they offend others. Edgelord type shit, and it's not uncommon for them to grow out of it.

I'd seriously look up to see what the writers are doing NOW, as while Portal has a dark edge to its humor it also isn't as outright offense, and I don't think the writers were bothered about that if it was forced on them. At an extreme, it might even be why the site is no longer running.

So we should do nothing and let people outgrow their misogyny. We should stop calling it edgy comedy because it's not that. It's just twisted individuals who use it as an excuse to hate on others.

 

[Budi]

I think this video well not abut video games has some real bearing on this conversation, and abutted the tricky balance satire plays, and how much of the free wiling internet stuff of not just yesteryear but today, honestly is bad satire.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cPPSyoQkE

Hey thanks for sharing this, it was really great! I only knew Ellis from Channel Awesome as Nostalgia Chick so I shrugged her off. This stuff is so much better and I had no idea she is producing content like this.

 

[jph139]

Sounds like very few people are condemning this. Are people just excusing this because others were also shitty to women at the time?. I bet people are going to excuse youtubers like Jontron in the future for just being 'edgy' and 'pushing the boundary'.

What do we gain from attacking people who, in a real sense, don't exist any more? Just to score some "I'm a good person!" points? They're people who, at worst, we can pin the crime of "might possibly have contributed to an environment that maybe led to bad things" on.

It's been like 20 years. What happened happened.

 

[purpleblastoise]

What do we gain from attacking people who, in a real sense, don't exist any more? Just to score some "I'm a good person!" points? They're people who, at worst, we can pin the crime of "might possibly have contributed to an environment that maybe led to bad things" on.

It's been like 20 years. What happened happened.

If people are excusing it as just satire and comedy then I have a problem with that. People should just say the obvious that these were terrible things to have been said. Excusing it means we do nothing and be complacent.

 

[tuxfool]

Excusing it means we do nothing and be complacent.

It does? What do you want people to do about a 20 year old site which no longer operates?

 

[Innolis]

Really interesting read.

I didn't get broadband internet until the late 90's so OMM kinda flew by me. It kinda looks like a product of it's age (and the age of the writers). It's as if some people could not outgrow it.

 

[Eusis]

So we should do nothing and let people outgrow their misogyny. We should stop calling it edgy comedy because it's not that. It's just twisted individuals who use it as an excuse to hate on others.

(I know you got hit with a ban, but for the sake of presenting a counter argument...)

There's what you do while it's still contemporary, then there's what you do when it's officially a relic of the past. They're not making this anymore, articles like this exist, and some of us have highlighted the issues that are there even while recommending it otherwise. There's little to gain now from universally dog piling on this now and in this thread.

 

[jph139]

If people are excusing it as just satire and comedy then I have a problem with that. People should just say the obvious that these were terrible things to have been said. Excusing it means we do nothing and be complacent.

It is satire and it is comedy. It's just that, in retrospect, the humor value is fairly low and the potential harm is pretty high. At the time we didn't know that. No harm, no foul.

But I assume you're a moral absolutist, and would argue that something is unacceptable to do/say regardless of time or context. Most wouldn't agree with you.

 

[p2535748]

As a side note, that Twitter rant made me curious about revisiting old issues of CGW. I read them at the time, but don't remember much beyond "boy those magazines had a lot of pages". Rereading them makes you realize that the early 90's were not exactly the heyday of incisive videogame critiques. The reviews tend to focus excessively on technical issues, with little actual insightful criticism of themes or even much analysis of gameplay systems/mechanics.

To be clear, I understand why back then technical issues were more of a emphasis given the state of PCs, but it's off putting to go back to.

If people are excusing it as just satire and comedy then I have a problem with that. People should just say the obvious that these were terrible things to have been said. Excusing it means we do nothing and be complacent.

Some of the stuff OMM said/published is terrible, and it's especially terrible looking back 15 years later. They went over the line a bunch of times and deserve to be called out for that. There's no excuse for some of the language. I'd say I understand it, because it really was the way a lot of sites were in those days, but that's not excusing it and not condoning it. It was wrong, and we were all complicit in writing and/or enjoying that. If Wolpaw or Faliscek tried to come back and write this sort of stuff now, I suspect (and hope) most people in this thread would denounce them for it.

But that's not the thesis or title of the article. The article explicitly tries to draw a line between OMM and GG, and in doing so turns this from a "OMM said some terrible stuff" argument into "OMM directly inspired GG" argument, and that's much more tenuous. It also has the tendency to shift the debate onto the GG connection.

 

[Fury451]

If people are excusing it as just satire and comedy then I have a problem with that. People should just say the obvious that these were terrible things to have been said. Excusing it means we do nothing and be complacent.

I guess I'm late to respond of this, but it was satire and comedy. Whether or not it was good is another matter.

Personally the satire and criticism was often on point (from what I read in the years after the site closed at least), the comedy is all over the place and not my cup of tea. it wouldn't have been at the time either, but the appeal of edginess was a lot more commonplace then.

I am not sure what you expect to serve by attacking a website that no longer exists; how is that being complacent if the authors themselves no longer speak that way or make those jokes?

It's been mentioned here a few times, but some people didn't grow out of that mentality. Thankfully a lot of people do, and if something like that were to come back today I don't think it would have any place in mainstream influence or media.

 

[thechristoph]

Really interesting read.

I didn't get broadband internet until the late 90's so OMM kinda flew by me. It kinda looks like a product of it's age (and the age of the writers). It's as if some people could not outgrow it.

The bolded part there is key. And the other side of that coin is that articles like this kind of assume that the writers also did not outgrow it. You boil down a 20-year-old website in to a few tweetable quotes to get attention, then yeah, they're going to come off like horrible people.

I'm not a fan of trolly "for the lulz" internet humor at all, but man, that anger was the late 90s in a nutshell. If Trey Parker at Matt Stone started a game review site in 1997, it would have been just like OMM.

 

[True Fire]

Someone on Reddit speculated that GamerGate was a Russian propaganda test run, in preparation for the 2016 election. It was a fascinating post, but I've lost it.

 

[tuxfool]

I'm not a fan of trolly "for the lulz" internet humor at all, but man, that anger was the late 90s in a nutshell. If Trey Parker at Matt Stone started a game review site in 1997, it would have been just like OMM.

Curiously enough, the sites creators have long stopped being defined by OMM, while Matt Stone and Trey Parker are still doing Southpark. However, even there the edge has kind of become blunted, though I'd equivocate on whether it is due to audience expectation or a change in the creators themselves.

 

[MC Safety]

Unless he's saying more generally that he doesn't know what GamerGate actual is trying to be/trying to accomplish. In which case, it's simple enough: stick it to those damn "females."

You could have asked for a clarification, but instead chose to make a passive-aggressive jab.

I've opted to focus on video games and not the nonsense detritus that is video game fanaticism. I could speak, broadly, about game fans being asses to one another, but I could not cite you chapter and verse of who did what to whom under the umbrella of gamergate.

 

[DocSeuss]

Sounds about right.


Is this for real? I mean, if he had just said "fuck you, you pompous bitch", maybe you'd have a point, but he then went on to hope she commits suicide and posts... porn for whatever reason? You don't think that it's going a bit far against someone who made a tone-deaf comment towards FPS gamers?

No, it's not, because it's comedy. And not, like... the shitty "I'm a comedian" joke someone says when they're offensive, I mean, it is actually structured as a joke, and one that many people found funny because it is!

Like, first, he lays out his opinion, that this is garbage, with his "how dare you" insult, then he explores her classism in greater detail, and then he turns his eye to her community, which she claims is smarter/above average compared to the lesser shooter fans. He shows how dumb and puerile they really are. And then he goes:

Why can't Quake players ever be this eloquent? I guess perhaps Bride Of Satan, Roberta Williams, has a point. As a community, we need to read more. I've decided to lead by example. Here is a summary of my current reading list

The punchline, of course, is that it's the lowest form of reading material available.

His point, with the punchline, is that he doesn't take her seriously. What we read, or whether we read, doesn't really have any impact on whether or not we want to play bad adventure games.

The reviews tend to focus excessively on technical issues, with little actual insightful criticism of themes or even much analysis of gameplay systems/mechanics.

So... the more things change, the more they stay the same? There aren't many gaming websites or magazines doing either of these things. It's largely freshman English level essaying. The real pros in games writing are almost all reporters doing reporting. The games analysis side of things is woefully lacking. It's basically all I want to read, and it's almost nonexistent.

 

[VibratingDonkey]

Aside from the "time to crate" thing, I never knew what Old Man Murray was. Just occasionally heard people reverently refer to it like some sort of cult classic site.
Apparently people only remember the good parts. Which probably speaks favorably of it in regards to what it influenced?
I don't know how influential OMM has been in growing this shitty attitude. Feels more like an early example of it.

 

[jtb]

No, Roberta Williams explained the decline of adventure games by lowly educated (too dumb for her higher art) console gamers with poor jobs. Is this when PC master race began? I mean, you have to see why her comment can be seen as offensive. The response was offensive too though. It's fair to say that the gaming demographic has changed, but to pin it on low education and income seems pretty bad to me. It wasn't games she called dumb.

No, I totally get why her comments are dumb and inflammatory. On an objective level, there's probably some truth to it (most products, particularly technology, start out catering to a small niche of people who can afford it - see: VR, consoles, etc.). On a prescriptive level, it's a particularly odious strand of thinking that leads to things like eugenics - which is frankly what I thought of more than "KILL THE RICH AND EAT THEM"

So criticize her comments on those grounds. Because there's a lot of awful to unpack and criticize. Jumping to misogyny 101? That says a lot to me about looking for an excuse to be awful.

 

[brianmcdoogle]

I never read the site back in the day, but I always heard how "smart" and influential it was. I had no idea it was a shock humor site as well. After reading that article, I'm kind of baffled on its reverence. As for the article, I wonder if people would approach it better if it ended before the Roberta Williams stuff. Because of how polarizing she is, and because of the boneheaded stuff she's said in the past, I can easily see that section being what people cling to in order to discredit the entire piece.

The thing that is most important to me is to remember that this didn't just happen overnight a few years ago. It's been a long march, from this to South Park to internet comics and so on. And you have a generation raised on this stuff, and now you wonder if they actually grew up or perpetually stuck in their arrested development. It's sad and frightening.

And then you wonder how you contributed to it, either in things you've said or written, or just in passivity or silence. There's dirt on most of our hands.

 

[jediyoshi]

I never read the site back in the day, but I always heard how "smart" and influential it was. I had no idea it was a shock humor site as well. After reading that article, I'm kind of baffled on its reverence.

The approach of the article is literally coming in with the viewpoint of drawing a connection to gamergate, I don't think you were going to find a neutral overview within it.

 

[sharc]

probably the most egregious oversight here is trying to make it out like women never faced any kind of gross behavior back in the old days. after scorpia dunked on might and magic II in her CGW review, guess what new enemy showed up in III?

dona bailey doesn't exactly have the rosiest memories of being a designer in those days either.

Did things change once you’d done Centipede?

Yes, but I’m not sure it was for the better! There was a lot of surly attention after that. It’s not always popular to do something [like] that -- the first thing that happened, I was not ready for at all, and I still haven’t figured out how to deal with this part -- people just started, y’know... the typical kind of thing that people would say was, either it was a fluke or I didn’t really do it, somebody else did it. I’m a very peaceful person, and I felt sick of fighting, so I really just disappeared, and I haven’t had contact with the industry for at least twenty years.

this bullshit was always there. things definitely got worse, but trying to make the pre-2000 industry out as some kidnd of egalitarian lost age is some hardcore romanticizing and fabrication.

 

[ElNarez]

There's a cynicism to pinning the hurt and violence of Gamergate on Old Man Murray just to re-litigate the debate on whether or not later Sierra games were good that must be addressed at some point.

 

[hidys]

In my experience GamerGators don't adhere to the Crate Review System so I have trouble seeing the connection.

This article is ridiculous. Because a video game website occasionally used egdelord humour at a time when there was no shortage racist and misogynistic garbage on the internet.

His twitter analysis says a lot about where he is coming from. There is a lot of historical revisionism going on there too.

 

[KneehighPark]

I probably hopped too late into the boom of indie game blogs that kind of rolled out from Old Man Murray - but it's hard to believe that it's as influential as it is, especially today, considering how awful some of their writing is.

I mean I'd like to think they've made amends afterwards - even with all the weirdly shitty sexist fat humour crap in Portal 2.

The fact that one of the McElroys thinks its the greatest website he knows, despite them being pretty progressive, says a lot.

Shame this shitty edgelord stuff just got worse as time went on.

Glad to see I'm not the only one who found some of Portal 2's writing to be a little subpar at times. I mean, it never offended me personally, but I always felt fat/weight jokes were kind of old and rather unfunny at this point. For some reason, Western humor is still fine with maligning those who are overweight. It's the last punching bag that is socially acceptable.

 

[Team Filler]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who found some of Portal 2's writing to be a little subpar at times. I mean, it never offended me personally, but I always felt fat/weight jokes were kind of old and rather unfunny at this point. For some reason, Western humor is still fine with maligning those who are overweight. It's the last punching bag that is socially acceptable.

Those jokes were completely in character for gladOS, who isn't exactly a kind and considerate entity.

 

[RumbleHumble]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who found some of Portal 2's writing to be a little subpar at times. I mean, it never offended me personally, but I always felt fat/weight jokes were kind of old and rather unfunny at this point. For some reason, Western humor is still fine with maligning those who are overweight. It's the last punching bag that is socially acceptable.

The joke wasn't that the person was fat or even that fat humor was acceptable. The joke was that GladOS was such a petty, passive-aggressive computer that it thought a good way to take down your self-esteem was fat jokes.

 

[TransTrender]

Two things:

It's like taking that Maddox website seriously and getting upset over every article or every time he made fun of a kids drawing.

I've been involved in gaming interwebs for 24 years and I don't recall Old Man Murray.

 

[jono51]

Someone on Reddit speculated that GamerGate was a Russian propaganda test run, in preparation for the 2016 election. It was a fascinating post, but I've lost it.

And who would have directed Russian funding/backing for Gamergate or gamergate influencing sleeper cells? Vladislav Surkov.

And when did Mr Surkov become Putin's chief agent of chaos? The late 1990's.

And when did all misogynistic gaming communities/sites start gaining prominence? The late 1990's/early 00's, as highlighted in the OP.

Somebody is going to win a nobel prize for connecting the dots in a few decades time. That is if there is anyone still alive.

 

[Marcel]

And who would have directed Russian funding/backing for Gamergate or gamergate influencing sleeper cells? Vladislav Surkov.

And when did Mr Surkov become Putin's chief agent of chaos? The late 1990's.

And when did all misogynistic gaming communities/sites start gaining prominence? The late 1990's/early 00's, as highlighted in the OP.

Somebody is going to win a nobel prize for connecting the dots in a few decades time. That is if there is anyone still alive.

Don't forget your tinfoil hat before you head outside, the Russians might make you into a Gamergater with radio waves.

 

[David H Wong]

The joke wasn't that the person was fat or even that fat humor was acceptable. The joke was that GladOS was such a petty, passive-aggressive computer that it thought a good way to take down your self-esteem was fat jokes.

And OMM was two fictional, insane characters who got WAY too upset about video games. The site was written in the voice of two fictional brothers who worked at a computer shop, including whole plotlines like Erik writing his updates from prison. They were playing the role of the gaming obsessed manchildren who have no grasp of propriety, proportionality or social mores. That was the joke.

If you wrote an email to OMM, you expected some elaborate insult in return - that's why people wrote in to them, that was the whole bit. They couldn't just hate a game a little bit, they had to fly into this incredibly detailed string of unbelievably filthy insults that no sane person could think the game really deserved.

In the case of GladOS you will have fat-hating people siding with her and chuckling because the insults are really putting the fatties in their place (ignoring the entire context of who is saying the insults and why) and in the case of OMM you will have actual teenagers and maladjusted adults thinking that this is in fact an appropriate reaction to a video game you don't like. It is INCREDIBLY hard to walk that line considering a huge portion of comedy involves crossing boundaries.

Example: We cited feminist youtuber Lindsay Ellis above. She does a running bit where she gets increasingly drunk as a video goes on, like she just can't deal with how bad the thing is, and empty bottles pile up around her. Is she enabling some alcoholic out there by normalizing drinking on the job, or by treating it as a humorous thing to do? Is she punching down at people who have an alcohol addiction, knowing that alcohol kills about 90,000 people a year?

Of course not - she's playing a character, faking an out-of-control vice because that's a comedy staple. So how do you make that type of comedy jerk-proof? There's no easy answer.

 

[capitalCORN]

And OMM was two fictional, insane characters who got WAY too upset about video games. The site was written in the voice of two fictional brothers who worked at a computer shop, including whole plotlines like Erik writing his updates from prison. They were playing the role of the gaming obsessed manchildren who have no grasp of propriety, proportionality or social mores. That was the joke.

If you wrote an email to OMM, you expected some elaborate insult in return - that's why people wrote in to them, that was the whole bit. They couldn't just hate a game a little bit, they had to fly into this incredibly detailed string of unbelievably filthy insults that no sane person could think the game really deserved.

In the case of GladOS you will have fat-hating people siding with her and chuckling because the insults are really putting the fatties in their place (ignoring the entire context of who is saying the insults and why) and in the case of OMM you will have actual teenagers and maladjusted adults thinking that this is in fact an appropriate reaction to a video game you don't like. It is INCREDIBLY hard to walk that line considering a huge portion of comedy involves crossing boundaries.

Example: We cited feminist youtuber Lindsay Ellis above. She does a running bit where she gets increasingly drunk as a video goes on, like she just can't deal with how bad the thing is, and empty bottles pile up around her. Is she enabling some alcoholic out there by normalizing drinking on the job, or by treating it as a humorous thing to do? Is she punching down at people who have an alcohol addiction, knowing that alcohol kills about 90,000 people a year?

Of course not - she's playing a character, faking an out-of-control vice because that's a comedy staple. So how do you make that type of comedy jerk-proof? There's no easy answer.

Agreed. Holy shit at the people taking OMM seriously. Caustic internet predates them since the beginning of time anyways. The idea of OMM is a bunch of grognards who get too carried away with a flimsy hobby. Don't take games seriously is the message. Geez.

 

[Mael]

Agreed. Holy shit at the people taking OMM seriously. Caustic internet predates them since the beginning of time anyways. The idea of OMM is a bunch of grognards who get too carried away with a flimsy hobby. Don't take games seriously is the message. Geez.

I think the argument is about how people actually missed the point of OMM by taking it seriously. And seeing the current context of internet 'civility', it's not a particularly hard argument to make.

 

[Weltall Zero]

I didn't know about this site, and frankly don't see much of a point debating the merits or sins of some random person's obviously satiric rant from 1999 in the year of our lord 2017. Roberta's comments are more worrying simply because she's a much more influential figure, but then again, 1999. Not just is that ancient history, it was also a very different time where people weren't so sensitive to the implications of their words. Not that they're not some pretty shitty words indeed.

Agreed. Holy shit at the people taking OMM seriously. Caustic internet predates them since the beginning of time anyways.

And caustic commentary predates internet. I particularly remember some 90's UK mags having an absolutely vitriolic readers' comments sections.

 

[Dmax3901]

Am I the only one who remembers the whole "wild west" period of the internet? When all kinds of heinously offensive stuff was commonplace and truthfully seemed as common to me as cat pictures?

Not that stuff isn't still out there, but in the days before the net became as commercialized as it is today, extremity was pretty close to being "mainstream".

Internet culture was very different back in the late 90's,

Well yeah cause most people who were 'savvy' internet users back then were hardcore nerds with all kinds of neuroses (or teenagers). Nowadays everyone's online so it makes sense that the conversation is now "hey stop that shit you weirdos".

 

[jtb]

And OMM was two fictional, insane characters who got WAY too upset about video games. The site was written in the voice of two fictional brothers who worked at a computer shop, including whole plotlines like Erik writing his updates from prison. They were playing the role of the gaming obsessed manchildren who have no grasp of propriety, proportionality or social mores. That was the joke.

If you wrote an email to OMM, you expected some elaborate insult in return - that's why people wrote in to them, that was the whole bit. They couldn't just hate a game a little bit, they had to fly into this incredibly detailed string of unbelievably filthy insults that no sane person could think the game really deserved.

In the case of GladOS you will have fat-hating people siding with her and chuckling because the insults are really putting the fatties in their place (ignoring the entire context of who is saying the insults and why) and in the case of OMM you will have actual teenagers and maladjusted adults thinking that this is in fact an appropriate reaction to a video game you don't like. It is INCREDIBLY hard to walk that line considering a huge portion of comedy involves crossing boundaries.

Example: We cited feminist youtuber Lindsay Ellis above. She does a running bit where she gets increasingly drunk as a video goes on, like she just can't deal with how bad the thing is, and empty bottles pile up around her. Is she enabling some alcoholic out there by normalizing drinking on the job, or by treating it as a humorous thing to do? Is she punching down at people who have an alcohol addiction, knowing that alcohol kills about 90,000 people a year?

Of course not - she's playing a character, faking an out-of-control vice because that's a comedy staple. So how do you make that type of comedy jerk-proof? There's no easy answer.

You make it sound like it's dumbfoundingly obvious, when the risk of 'perpetuating the very thing you're satirizing' has been the fundamental tension at the heart of satire since time immemorial.

It's a flimsy excuse. (Satire can be, you know, bad at satirizing!)

 

[Kneecap]

Indeed. OMM was a comedy/satire/gaming site with C+ to A- quality content. Much like how much of Lenny Bruce's humor would not be understood or appreciated now, OMM brought that same kind of irreverence to us gamers. Polarization, politicization, and political correctness have for many of us compromised the ability to appreciate humor in its historical context.

 

[Rickenslacker]

Saying "I don't know what GamerGate is" is an actual GG tactic. They talk about the strategy on 4chan and VOAT, I guess.

Not sure if that's the case here but, honestly, I don't get how you could be into games enough to 1) be a member of NeoGAF 2) for almost 15 years and 3) visit the gaming side, like, ever and not know what GamerGate is. It's really hard to accept.

Unless he's saying more generally that he doesn't know what GamerGate actual is trying to be/trying to accomplish. In which case, it's simple enough: stick it to those damn "females."

It's not as hard as you'd think, I've never actively participated in the topics but having glanced over them whenever something like this comes up the response is usually along the lines of how could you not know, and sometimes implications that the person is some GG agent in disguise or something. I'm aware of how it all started with the harassment of Zoe Quinn, but it's all kind of spiraled into some farcical madness. Is it organized? Is there a leader? Is there any direction to it? All I know of it is misogyny in the form of ethics in journalism specifically from the Zoe Quinn situation, but since then I've completely lost the plot and have no idea how it's still ongoing or if it's just become a blanket statement for assholes in the gaming enthusiast corner of the internet.

 

[BocoDragon]

Well yeah cause most people who were 'savvy' internet users back then were hardcore nerds with all kinds of neuroses (or teenagers). Nowadays everyone's online so it makes sense that the conversation is now "hey stop that shit you weirdos".

There's also the fact that for a long time, people didn't treat the internet as "real society". It was a fantasy space... who cares if there were weirdos and mysogynists on there?

It wasn't until social media and smartphones that I think we started to perceive the internet as having impact on real lives. Even a decade ago I don't think we treated it as seriously as we do now after social media, arab spring, gamergate, 2016 election, etc.

 

[Aselith]

You make it sound like it's dumbfoundingly obvious, when the risk of 'perpetuating the very thing you're satirizing' has been the fundamental tension at the heart of satire since time immemorial.

It's a flimsy excuse. (Satire can be, you know, bad at satirizing!)

Of course but a lot of people commenting haven't read the site,they are responding tho anecdotes

 

[David H Wong]

You make it sound like it's dumbfoundingly obvious, when the risk of 'perpetuating the very thing you're satirizing' has been the fundamental tension at the heart of satire since time immemorial.

You might have stopped part way through, but that's exactly what I said! In Lindsay's video she even points out how Brooks is great at satirizing Nazis and race relations, but then he himself is very regressive when it comes to sexuality and gender. Even somebody who strikes the balance perfectly in one situation botches it in the next.

At the time it was impossible for me to imagine anyone NOT getting what OMM was doing. Like the possibility never entered my mind. To me that'd be like someone thinking the Angry Nintendo Nerd was a real person with anger management problems who needed to seek therapy. But of course what's obvious inside the bubble isn't so obvious outside of it. Lots of people probably did think they were serious.

 

[jstripes]

There's also the fact that for a long time, people didn't treat the internet as "real society". It was a fantasy space... who cares if there were weirdos and mysogynists on there?

Also, the internet was a whole lot more compartmentalized back then.

You'd have bands of maybe a dozen edgelords and trolls, and they'd stay confined to their own channels and forums, occasionally venturing outside for brief raids on their rivals.

Then Something Awful, 4chan, and Reddit gradually unified all these disparate bands into giant conglomerates of thousands of edgelords and trolls, and with social media the whole of online bled together and suddenly everyone was at everyone's throats.

 

[Brakke]

I didn't read OMM back in the day but boy am I glad we're moving beyond that phase of humor.

This doesn't seem like a great comparison to me even if the OMM tone and targets may resemble GG's tone and targets. Where a lot of these OMM jokes are flip or topical, GG abuse is deep and sustained and delivered directly to its targets by sometimes hundreds of people every day, for years. I don't have a dog in the "was OMM good or bad" fight but I just want to recognize that GG isn't simply "saying ugly things on the Internet".