Prompted by a baffling comment from a troll, who said that Anita Sarkeesian has already produced her videos on time (I can find no evidence of the existence of any of the promised Tropes vs. Women videos — if anyone has a link please let me know), I did a bit of looking around to see if I could find anything. Although I couldn’t find her first promised video, the “Damsel in Distress” trope, I came across an article written by a feminist Google engineer named Yonatan Zunger, who is apparently a big fan of Anita Sarkeesian. Zunger is a prime example of the sort of SWPL geek who doesn’t care much for the rest of America, young men in particular.
Zunger is a strange fellow. He says he is Israeli, yet he has a strong interest in quasi-jihadi movements such as the Arab Spring, and puts serious effort into defending Islam. He also boasts of being related to Karl Marx, and defends irrational wars abroad through convoluted reasoning, although I suspect his real motives are somewhat simpler and more personal than he lets on. Perhaps most relevant to us, Zunger has written for the Good Men Project, which is a bit odd, but makes sense given his interest in Sarkeesian.
There’s something a bit ominous in the lessons he draws from Sarkeesian’s Kickstarter campaign and TED talk. Zunger suggests that Sarkeesian is destroying a certain aspect of gamer culture through her deconstruction of games, and then goes on to say that we ought to apply this to society in general:
In network theory, we often study the ways in which networks fail. Sometimes this is in order to keep networks alive more effectively – such as telecommunications networks – and sometimes it is in order to destroy them more efficiently – such as disease transmission networks. But the study of games has been mostly limited to how to make games better, for fairly obvious reasons. But if Sarkeesian’s analysis is correct, and I strongly suspect it is, then perhaps we need to think about various aspects of society which can meaningfully be modelled as games – and then apply what we know about game design to deliberately sabotage them, make them not fun to play, and lead people to abandon them. Think of it as community curation by anti-engineering.
Although he doesn’t come right out and say it, it’s pretty clear that the “various aspects of society” he is referring to are the supposed misogynist gamers — essentially boys and young men who release their aggression through gaming. Given that allowing young men to have a pressure release valve in the form of gaming is a great way to prevent aggression and resistance in the real world, sabotaging that outlet strikes me as a particularly poorly-conceived idea for eliminating sexism. However, for guys like Michael Kimmel and Yonatan Zunger, only unconditional surrender on the part of the enemy (most men) will do, so they will tolerate no resistance, no matter how inconsequential.
Whether or not that’s one of his goals, it’s pretty disturbing to see a guy in charge of social network engineering for Google suggesting we play God with society through “deliberate sabotage.”
Perhaps this provides Zunger’s motivation for supporting Sarkeesian: he sees her as a useful tool for “community curation by anti-engineering.” Although it’s unclear whether Zunger had anything to do with recent career moves on Sarkeesian’s part, he suggests in a comment that she should consult with game producers, slyly adding a smiley face to the end of the comment:
…right now, she seems to have gotten the ears of a lot of the studios, and those studios are thinking seriously about how to attract more female gamers.
Consulting could be a very effective move.
Other commenters on his post also support deliberately sabotaging games; one fellow named Lionel Lauer suggests adding Jar Jar Binks to all of them:
She’s raised the cash legitimately, so as long as she at least fulfills the original goal, she can do what the fuck she likes with the rest of it. Personally, I’d use the extra to really piss off all the haters, like maybe bribe every game company to put Jar Jar Binks in every release this year.
So perhaps we now know why Sarkeesian hasn’t produced a single video for her “Tropes” series yet — she’s too busy consulting for game development companies and deliberately sabotaging society for Google’s Yonatan Zunger, who apparently fancies himself the Machiavellian genius who will bring about a brave new world where Google engineers get all the girls (or boys — I’m not sure what Zunger’s preference is in that way) and the rest of us stop playing because it isn’t fun any more.
Sounds wonderful.
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Maybe somebody should alert google to the potential threat Zunger poses to THEM. He is using his status as an employee of google to promote these ideas. I wonder if they actually want to be associated with that position OR him.
He wants to fuck her and thinks he can slime his way into her panties by behaving as he does.
Fool.
“Zunger suggests that Sarkeesian is destroying a certain aspect of gamer culture through her deconstruction of games…”
As I keep saying, men construct things (society, games) while women “deconstruct” in classrooms. I don’t people realize how symbolically significant that is. Those words are those words for a reason. On some level, men build and women seek to kick out the foundation. Apply this as a metaphor to society at large.
“(or boys — I’m not sure what Zunger’s preference is in that way)”
Don’t forget to include “or both” and/or “or neither.” At least you used “or boys”; maybe Yonatan Zunger is, in fact, a homosexual pedophile.
This is the part of Network Theory where we dance.
It’s good to see how the wheelers and dealers actually think and operate, we’re just part of a giant network that needs to be pushed in the ‘right’ direction, whether through destruction or incentives.
Maybe the tin hatters aren’t as crazy as we thought after all.
It would be easy to put these games on the scrapheap of history.
Make better ones. And make better ones that girls will want to buy and play.
No? Okay, then the games will continue to cater to the people who are their primary market. Maybe when girl gamers are more than one per cent of the purchasers of combat games, this will be revisited. In the mean time, feel free to wet the bed.
Meh…… a mangina and his money are soon parted.
Social engineering doesn’t usually trump profits.
The predicable path of most large corporations. Start with a great idea and product, fast and profitable growth, followed by arrogance, followed by irrelevance, then slow decline and failure. Goggle looks like their following the script. nothing new here. Someone will fill the need without Jar Jar Binks. Mr. Zunger will disappear into consulting obscurity.
Go to any gaming store, and count the women on the line waiting for a new game, men built the gaming industry, women started caring about it when it hit mainstream, now that a male dominated media (video game) make more money that the female dominated media (TV, Hollywood, music) they suddenly are “gamer grrrllll”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGuDoAhte94&feature=youtu.be&a
Well, if his plan is to make games that are deliberately not fun, firstly that seems like he’s not going to have much luck raising VC, and secondly, Yahtzee will probably tear into them with abandon.
I left them a New Years greeting (on the Google thread) on behalf of The Spearhead.
i don’t suppose i have to tell you guys that this whole business of stopping video game misogyny is really an attempt by the ptb to bring pc into the new medias
also an attempt to get young men away from the x-box and onto the plantation……
…..before stuff like this starts catching on
http://www.antifeministtech.info/2012/12/the-first-vr-sex-video-game/
Google grows more and more sinister every day. The attitudes of the people it hires are embedded in its processes, however small and insignificant their specific contributions might be. Don’t be surprised if you wake up one day very soon to find that your personhood is a wholly owned subsidiary of Google F*cking Earth.
Whenever a group tells its people to do no evil, you can be sure that evil is precisely what they will do.
“Zunger suggests that Sarkeesian is destroying a certain aspect of gamer culture through her deconstruction of games, and then goes on to say that we ought to apply this to society in general:”
meh… we already ALL know that women ruin everything they get involved in so TBH, Zunger’s statement is redundant. The upside of course is asking Zunger how he’s feeling after a quota hire gets *his* job. Should be insightful.
from mras video
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGuDoAhte94&feature=youtu.be&a
“Male gamers long ago learned to ignore and overcome the hostility of the gaming culture. They understood that in a survival of the fittest social climate they either had to prove themselves of fall into the crowd of obscurity.
Female gamers can’t seem to grasp this concept and in their sense of self entitlement feel that they are above this cultural element that men have faced for years and demand the complete revision and internal reconstruction to accomodate and supplement them.”
while this is very insightful isn’t it even more insightful to just say that female gamers suck compared to male gamers and they darn well know this and that this is really what has their panties in a bind?
check out 18:12 in that video and see for yourself
“while this is very insightful isn’t it even more insightful to just say that female gamers suck compared to male gamers and they darn well know this and that this is really what has their panties in a bind?”
Yes, but all male gamers suck when they start out too. It takes time and practice to get good at anything – and in MMOs etc. there will be ongoing hostility. That’s kind of the rite of passage that your quote talks about. It’s the kind of thing men thrive on. Wimminz think they shouldn’t have to go through all that and should just be rewarded immediately because equality or something.
The most surprising (or not) absence in here, and I suspect will also be absent of her videos, is exactly the same thing that is happening in all of feminism.
So, “back in the days”, women were oppressed horribly: they were forced to stay home and care for their children, while the men were doing all the fun stuff, which is crawling in the mud for months before dying in a stupidly useless attack, breaking their backbone sixteen hours a day in the coal mines, or in the fields.
And now, in videogames (and films too… in fact, in life), you have male characters, nameless and faceless, whose only purpose is to die horribly by the thousands, possibly in games that make a point that it is a very funny and creative thing to do.
What do women complain about? A female character, who is important by her sole virtue of being female, and is invariably made attractive and loved by the main cast.
These men don’t even have the luxury of having a shallow personality revolving about being loved by everyone. Their only reason to be in the game at all is to die. Seriously, being loved? Who would want that? I prefer being killed, maimed, tortured and mutilated over having a bare belly and a love interest.
Feminists showing once again their lack of insight about the most obvious things, and how they are fine with female cruelty and lack of empathy, nothing new, move along.
Yes, I’m sure game designers will deliberately sabotage their own games to eliminate themselves from a 100 billion dollar market.
This is the sort of circle-jerk fluff that gives Yonatan Zunger and his league of manboobzian manginas such exquisite relief. Amusing to watch but hardly worth raising a sweat. The level of unreality evidenced by Lionel Lauer in his comments (as though 150k would be enough to persuade anyone in the gaming industry to even change their socks) would seem to confirm that.
evilwhitemalempire
This would be the irony of irony. The gamers the most lauhed at and shamed of all may be the only group man enough to say fuck you bitch. Every where we go feminism and pussy worship. Common sense effeciency the law all have taken a back seat to the kipper snack slot. ( i had a gunny I was working with back when I was a cherry boy opened up a can of kipper snacks thought it was going to make my dick hard,funky pussy) Back on subject, The christian church is now the churchian church in the name of pussy, growing the ranks of atheist. The biggest coup was law where the constitution and all of that freedom and rights stuff takes a back seat to the feminine imperative. The military is in the proccess of being rolled over if not already national security has now taken a back seat to the glory hole. Video games are the last place to go and still not be a criminal to be out of the feminine imperative. (maybe professional sports,on the field) If those guys hold the line and keep the community intact based on survival of the fittest they will be the “real men” as strange as that sounds. Because it is not about getting the pussy to them. Google will fail as it stops being efficient and effective and starts to have social engineering in its DNA.
…then perhaps we need to think about various aspects of society which can meaningfully be modelled as games – and then apply what we know about game design to deliberately sabotage them, make them not fun to play, and lead people to abandon them.
He’s obviously never played “The Sims 3″.
All you need to know about Google here:
http://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/women-in-leadership.html
It is one of the most hip, cool, “feelings” oriented, Leftist/Feminist corporate cultures in America. It makes Apple or Hewlett-Packard look like The Heritage Foundation.
Making video games more female friendly and less “misogynist” has been going on for 15 years. Millions of VC dollars have been poured into many failed attempts at something that ignores female nature. They don’t like running around and shooting as competitive sport, anymore than boys like Hollywood gossip. And they’re not very good at it when they try.
“This would be the irony of irony. The gamers the most laughed at and shamed of all may be the only group man enough to say fuck you bitch. ”
Pretty much. Today’s hardcore FPS gamers have become such paranoid supremacist cretins that the only thing keeping them from joining the NRA en masse is that they can’t afford real assault rifles. Yet.
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/6565-Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-2
The problem with many young men when they play online games is that they’re not directing their frustrations (I had no idea I was so full of frustration, but I guess I am?) at virtual characters, they’re direction it at other people who play the game. If you hint, in any way, that you’re a girl playing an online game you will get an endless stream of really disgusting verbal abuse. Boys are especially venomous when a girl is better than them at a game, suddenly this girl is the worst, sluttiest, fattest, ugliest person on the planet, all because she can aim a virtual gun better than you.
More and more sinister every day is an understatement . These attacks on are young boys goes way deep into the framework of of social engineering even more then a hyper cynic like Me can phantom .
There big Money in future government contracts for The control of are Boys .
But the idea of simple is right , Its just a little segment of the whole . The feminist want what they always want , to destroy the Family Make the Boys into little Moneymakers , Run the boys throw HHS and The perpetuation of the Cycle ,The cycle continues,I have seen This of late In the HHS programs Making Little Boys autistic throw Over Medication .
Big Money to be had in those arenas. the plan,; Remove Physical activity , Wait for an explosion , Then Medicate , HHS will be all helpful and increase meds even know they are not needed .
This can even be a double hit if the Boy has been removed from the Father . .
Hence the need for better defined , Human trafficking Laws . Did you think they where doing it for Your well being .
That link to Yonatan Zunger’s page is one of the stupidest places I have been in quite a while. An excerpt from two postings:
Ian RidgwellDec 11, 2012
… you can’t be sexist against men
Lionel LauerDec 11, 2012
+Jürgen Erhard He wasn’t being totally serious. Yes, you can be sexist against men, but it doesn’t do as much damage.
More of the only whites can be racist bovine fecal material, I guess.
As far as Lionel’s stupid comment, I agree. That is why women commit suicide 4 times as often as men. [/sarcasm]
http://www.kongregate.com/games/fexLabs/dillo-hills
The armadillo sees the birds and wishes to fly, despite being completely unsuited for it. Armadillo hacks out a rather silly and labor-intensive method of getting up the speed to glide for a few seconds at a time, and the higher and faster Armadillo goes, the happier Armadillo becomes.
Alright, good for Armadillo!
Then something worrisome happens. Armadillo starts gleefully smacking the birds out of the air. Why? No reason, but it sure is satisfying!
Looks like Armadillo just had a case of wing envy all along.
If you hint, in any way, that you’re a girl playing an online game you will get an endless stream of really disgusting verbal abuse.
That’s because the gun is a virtual extension of the penis and only boys have penises. Can boys have ONE SACRED F*CKING PLACE to call there own? Just one? …without grrls wanting to intervene just to prove they’re as good as boys…? That’s the radical, extremist and sexist idea. BOYS ONLY! No goth chicks, no sisters or mothers, no girlfriends and no Peppermint Patties.
eric
If you hint, in any way, that you’re a girl playing an online game you will get an endless stream of really disgusting verbal abuse. Boys are especially venomous when a girl is better than them at a game, suddenly this girl is the worst, sluttiest, fattest, ugliest person on the planet, all because she can aim a virtual gun better than you.
—————-
i’m sure that’s true but it’s also very clear to me that female gamers find the gaming environment most misogynistic, sexist, degrading, blah, blah, whenever they are LOSING
just check out 18:12 (if you haven’t already) to see what i mean
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGuDoAhte94&feature=youtu.be&a
if the female is winning then it’s all ‘hooray grrrl power!’
but if they’re losing then suddenly all the male players live in their mother’s basement
i’m not a gamer but already it’s become pretty obvious to me the real reason why the game world is sooooo ‘oppresive’ to girls
Glad to see I’m not the only one who thinks the ‘Tropes against women because we’re so oppressed all the time!’ thing Sarkeesian is doing is asinine.
Want to get more women playing games? Make the celebrities do it, but until then, it’s not like the big gaming houses are hurting for money.
Pretty soon Xbox Live will start banning anyone who makes any negative comments towards the girl gamerzzz. Of course shit talking anyone, everyone, and anything has been around since Xbox live and PSN started their online service. But now that the girls are complaining, you can bet there will be a crackdown, and the crackdown won’t have anything to do with guys talking smack on guys, guys bullying one another. The new law of Xbox live pretty soon will be any guy saying anything even a little sexist, rude, or bullying towards a female will get you banned for life.
This will cause quite a bit of money to be lost for these companies, as a large percentage of the money coming in from their online network comes from young men who can be pretty rude, and sometime say mean things that will hurt other guys, but most importantly the girlz feelings.
When they have lost this massive source revenue, they will realize their mistake and probably try to get these mean, awful young men back. But by then it will be to late as they will have moved on to something else. Of course the ladies will follow and ruin that, whatever it may be.
Of course shit talking anyone, everyone, and anything has been around since Xbox live and PSN started their online service.
Shit-talking in games is at least as old as the LAN party scene, back when multiplayer gaming involved lugging a desktop computer to someone else’s house and setting up an impromptu network between eight guys, taking the effort well above the “nerd threshold” and making them special events even for diehard highschoolers with nothing else to do.
E.G.
John Romero was a late-’90s gaming icon, co-creator(1) of the first-person shooter that now dominates the industry. He was your average creative nerd who managed to turn that into his living. He co-founded id Software with John Carmack, and in 1996, left the company over creative differences (This was deemed by the gaming press to be a personality conflict) and founded Ion Storm, which was intended to be a designer-programmer-gamer’s paradise and was actually well-lit and accommodating to humans and their needs (this was deemed by the gaming press to be extravagance). And then this happened, which was an outgrowth of the, “foul and funny, witty and mysogynist, homophobic and democratic, and unremittingly non-personal(2)” trash talk common to LAN culture. Out of these three events we had spun a myth that John Romero was an honest-to-God, hookers-and-blow rockstar. Daikatana came out three years late, way over budget, and was painfully mediocre. John Romero went on to make cell phone games and his name is poison to this day all because of some misunderstandings and bad game.
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This is just one example of the way an all-male environment runs. Men fling insults and foul, inflammatory language as part of bonding rituals, while women carefully construct their insults to tear each other apart. That’s really was the Cross Assault debacle of 2011 was about. The only girl in the tournament was being coached by a man who didn’t understand what insults do to the female psyche. He thought he was giving her the push he needed when he was just kicking her legs out, and now, because of a misunderstanding and a really poor apology, the name Aris Bakhtanians is also poison.
(1) there are at least two examples of the first-person shooter prior to Wolfenstein 3D, but they were near-impossible to play. For instance, Midi Maze required two to eight Atari 800 computers hooked up through the MIDI ports and as many players, as the mazes themselves were empty.
(2) http://www.salon.com/2002/01/02/ion_storm/
Yeah Theo, you’re right. Guy’s giving each other crap in the gaming community has been around a lot longer than Xbox live. I would say Xbox live and PSN just made it more widespread and easier to access for casual gamers who were new to it. Some enjoyed it, some hated it, most just dealt with it. But now that girls are starting to play quite a bit online I would wager it won’t be tolerated for much longer on Xbox live or PSN.
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