Quote from: Will;795760Or, to pick a real world example, Jazz encourages license and sex, and encourages animalistic behavior in n****rs. SO we should ban that filth.

Asshole behaviors tend to cluster together yes. So a person who holds opinions about other peoples private lives is also likely to make character judgements about those people.

Someday I'll come up with a unified asshole theory.

EDIT: and just to be clear said hypothetical person would be an asshole even before they mentioned banning anything.

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;795718Very apt comparison to past temperance movements like the Prohibition. This is basically a temperance movement from the illiberal left.

And to be honest, this one really frightens me.



The Temperance movement tried to use women to further it's ideology, but the current illiberal (I like that) tactic is even more refined and effective.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;795778And to be honest, this one really frightens me.

It looks like he's trying to rescue the person stuck in the chimney

Quote from: Piestrio;795748Yeah, also insisting that other people's personal decisions about what they do in their own homes, with their own money, on their own time effects you and that therefore you are entitled to an opinion about also makes you an asshole.

Inserting themselves unwanted into other peoples private lives is one of the hallmarks of the asshole.

OK, I'd mostly agree with this. It's more that people were going on about how protest and/or boycott is against free speech. But sure - plenty of free speech is speech by assholes, because they're louder.

I might disagree about exactly which people are assholes, but I would generally agree that it's being an asshole to complain about people's behavior in private.

Quote from: jhkim;795821OK, I'd mostly agree with this. It's more that people were going on about how protest and/or boycott is against free speech. But sure - plenty of free speech is speech by assholes, because they're louder.

You may have misinterpreted my point earlier. I don't think protest/boycott is against free speech, unless the end goal of that protest or boycott is to silence others. And even then, I believe Free Speech is a two-Way street. I may not like what anyone has to say, but I still think they should have the right to say it. I just in turn have the right to critisize what they're saying. To go back to the thread topic, I dont think Sarkeesian should be prevented from making her videos, but I do think that her speeches and positions on things should be exposed for what they are. This is one of the reasons Yellow Journalism in the mass media really bothers me, and this whole GG thing has really highlighted that for me. Not the so-called "gaming journalists" that GG is concerned with, but the mass media reports on Gamergate, from MSNBC to the BBC.

QuoteI might disagree about exactly which people are assholes, but I would generally agree that it's being an asshole to complain about people's behavior in private.

Thats the distinction as I see it, between a feminist activist and a psuedo-activist or "SJW". A Feminist activist is concerned about sexual harrassment in the workplace, equal pay, legal rights based on gender, domestic violence, disparate standards of education, etc. An SJW is concerned with people's entertainment, creativity and imagination, and their private indulgences that don't directly involve interaction with society. One I get behind full-heartedly, the other I find despicable attempts at thought-policing.

Quote from: jhkim;795821OK, I'd mostly agree with this. It's more that people were going on about how protest and/or boycott is against free speech. But sure - plenty of free speech is speech by assholes, because they're louder.

Protests and boycotts can be anti-free speech but they needn't be, like many tools they are divorced from the goals and neither moral or immoral in and of themselves.

It's about journalistic integrity.

http://anonymousdeveloper.tumblr.com/

Quote from: Piestrio;795758It's not just having an opinion, it's having an opinion about someone else's private decisions that makes you an asshole.

"I don't like Jazz" = opinion

"People who make jazz should stop" = asshole

The thinking make you an asshole, expressing it just lets the rest of us know.

Just to be clear, thinking makes you an asshole? As in thinking, without any expression of said thoughts to anyone, ever, makes you an asshole? Because you've said it twice now.

Quote from: apparition13;795872Just to be clear, thinking makes you an asshole? As in thinking, without any expression of said thoughts to anyone, ever, makes you an asshole? Because you've said it twice now.

Yes.

Quote from: Piestrio;795748Yeah, also insisting that other people's personal decisions about what they do in their own homes, with their own money, on their own time effects you and that therefore you are entitled to an opinion about also makes you an asshole.

By that definition, 98 per cent of the people who have ever walked the planet were assholes. The notion that people should be able to privately pursue whatever they take pleasure from, without regard to social norms or traditions, has only been around for a couple generations, and only in the West. Even today, only a small fraction of people outside the West have rejected communal morality.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But we should recognize that absolute hedonistic liberty is a very recent experiment in human history. We have no idea how sustainable it is a central principle of a civilization.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;795778And to be honest, this one really frightens me.



The Temperance movement tried to use women to further it's ideology, but the current illiberal (I like that) tactic is even more refined and effective.

The Temperance movement was misguided and prohibition was foolish policy. But there were legitimate social concerns alongside the religious moralizing. In the 19th and early 20th century, drunkeness - I mean routine, blacked-out drunkenness - was very common among men. Think modern Russia, but worse.  In a great many working-class families, the only source of real income was falling-down drunk more often than not, and spent most of his earnings on booze. Before the welfare state was in place, this was catastrophic for the families involved. Malnutrition and disease ravaged the families of alcoholics.

This is why I don't subscribe to ideology. The world is very, very complicated. Every value, every decision is a trade-off. We have an innate desire for simplicity. By nature, we think in binary terms. Good/bad. Black/white. Them/us. And ideology fosters that kind of simplistic us versus them thinking. But it's delusional. Easy answers make us feel secure, but they don't reflect the complex reality of our world.

Quote from: Haffrung;795927The Temperance movement was misguided and prohibition was foolish policy. But there were legitimate social concerns alongside the religious moralizing. In the 19th and early 20th century, drunkeness - I mean routine, blacked-out drunkenness - was very common among men. Think modern Russia, but worse.  In a great many working-class families, the only source of real income was falling-down drunk more often than not, and spent most of his earnings on booze. Before the welfare state was in place, this was catastrophic for the families involved. Malnutrition and disease ravaged the families of alcoholics.

I would generally agree, and this certainly isn't limited to the 19th century. I have a family member who is an alcoholic and fell to the point of attempted suicide. Both the drinking and the attempted suicide are per se private behavior, but I don't think that someone who attempted an intervention for my family member would necessarily be an asshole (although they could be).

However, this is getting pretty off-topic from RPGs and computer games.

While I think there are a few valid criticisms, in practice I dislike most negative judgment pieces on games. I'd prefer to (a) praise positive examples, and/or (b) do analysis of games without overt judgment. I'm thinking mainly of, say, story-gamer negative pieces about traditional RPGs, and conversely traditional RPGer negative pieces about story-games. It seems to me that there is the same back-and-forth within video games.

Quote from: Haffrung;795927By that definition, 98 per cent of the people who have ever walked the planet were assholes. The notion that people should be able to privately pursue whatever they take pleasure from, without regard to social norms or traditions, has only been around for a couple generations, and only in the West. Even today, only a small fraction of people outside the West have rejected communal morality.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But we should recognize that absolute hedonistic liberty is a very recent experiment in human history. We have no idea how sustainable it is a central principle of a civilization.

Ah, you have inferred an absolute where I did not intend one.

I began this tangent as a general "rule of thumb" not an absolute principle.

Apologies for the misunderstanding.

Quote from: Haffrung;795927By that definition, 98 per cent of the people who have ever walked the planet were assholes. The notion that people should be able to privately pursue whatever they take pleasure from, without regard to social norms or traditions, has only been around for a couple generations, and only in the West. Even today, only a small fraction of people outside the West have rejected communal morality.

I'm not saying you're wrong. But we should recognize that absolute hedonistic liberty is a very recent experiment in human history. We have no idea how sustainable it is a central principle of a civilization.

I think historically there were many cases where it was much easier for someone to have a private life.

http://www.salon.com/2014/10/30/that_creepy_guy_from_the_internet_how_gamergate_shattered_faith_in_the_geek_community/

Read it.

Quote from: TristramEvans;795969I think historically there were many cases where it was much easier for someone to have a private life.

Examples?

Not taking part in the religious and ceremonial life of the community? Defying social norms around marriage, family, and vocation?

Where and when was this easier than the West today? Most people in history lived in small and tightly-knit farming communities (the isolated homesteader was a peculiarity of the American West, and short-lived). Religion, and its prescription of behaviour, has been the governing influence on almost every person who has walked the planet. Even your wealthy country gentlemen of the English countryside, probably the closest thing in history to your private life in the burbs today, had social commitments to family and neighbours, and was subject to much stronger pressures of judgement and conformity than your modern man or woman. I suppose if you were both rich and willing to be socially ostracized, you could afford to stand outside social norms and pursue your own pleasures privately and independently. But almost anyone has that luxury today. In fact, alienation from wider society is the pathology of our times.