Updates on Stop Killing Games campaign December 2024

[Ross Scott]

Some updates on various aspects of the Stop Killing Games campaign.  There is nothing too critical, most of what's happening involves waiting on various governments right now.

This is a blog post. To read the original post, please click here »

[BenMcLean]

About the "Stop Killing Games" Discord:

People "with lots of Discord experience" is not a valid type of credential. If anything, it should be a disqualification.

Unfortunately, like so many "pro discord mods" they've copy and pasted stuff that basically amounts to, "You must be a left winger in order to participate" with unbelievably vague and elastic rules designed to promote Leftist ideology and attack everyone else.

[Deep Dive Devin]

Quote

Unfortunately, like so many "pro discord mods" they've copy and pasted stuff that basically amounts to, "You must be a left winger in order to participate" with unbelievably vague and elastic rules designed to promote Leftist ideology and attack everyone else.

This is an extremely hilarious thing to say. I just went onto the discord and their policy is the most bog-standard "do not attack people for no reason" stuff any normal person would want and expect.

If you feel excluded by this, you probably SHOULD be excluded! Anyone who can't take these extremely basic and sensible guidelines is a person to avoid.

 

I'm not sure how exactly going against so-called "leftist ideology" is much help here if this is your breaking point. This is a movement to have governments regulate corporate industry practices, because basically no other options seem to exist. The economic conservative's answer to the problem of Games Being Killed is "let it keep happening until people get sick and stop buying"...and that's not happening! It would massively destroy decades' worth of art to let it continue even if it did! You want a discord full of channers that don't actually care about the movement? Because it sure SOUNDS like you do.

 

In conclusion,

[BenMcLean]

I understand and agree with the desire to keep explicit, intentional racial hatemongering and overly divisive off-topic rhetoric out.

 

However, in practice, terms such as "hatespeech" are incredibly elastic. There are no real limits on what can count as "hatespeech" as the concept is entirely subjective -- and straight out of Orwell's Newspeak dictionary. It doesn't have to be anything genuinely offensive to a reasonable / normal person to count as "hatespeech" -- it can be anything Leftists hate. For any or no reason. What they hate doesn't stay still either: it changes faster than anyone can ever keep up with.

 

There's also the problem of scope, because mods go banning people for off-platform behavior they don't like or just to assert their power over anyone who doesn't worship the exact same sociopolitical orthodoxy they do.

A specific rule like "no doxxing" makes sense, but concepts like "harassment" are similarly elastic. Public disagreement or dissent becomes framed as "harassment" even when it doesn't involve contacting the person or pursuing them at all. "Harassment" needs a tight definition so it is clear what is allowed (disagreeing about issues and saying so should be allowed) and what's not. (creeping on someone's family or job, following them, phone calls, doxxing, that kind of crap genuinely is harassment and should be banned)

 

By the way, I'm not complaining about any specific mod on this Discord or even saying that this Discord is abnormal: I'm saying they're all crap and this one isn't better.

 

Idiots who can't tell the difference between an average Trump supporter and a Nazi have no business moderating anything and I think that describes the typical person "with lots of Discord moderation experience"

Edited January 11 by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

Quote

I understand and agree with the desire to keep explicit, intentional racial hatemongering and overly divisive off-topic rhetoric out.

The rest of your post suggests otherwise.

 

We're all familiar with exactly what you want, which is to not be punished for hate speech and harassment. Your chosen path to this is to pretend they're "ill defined". The old "you just call anyone you don't like a nazi" defense. And it's just as bad as it's always been, because big shocker, only a very small and very specific subset of toxic personalities ever seem to struggle with this. It's never a problem for the overwhelming majority of people. That's part of the reason discord servers are chaotic, because clearing that bar is no problem for anyone except the exact people who are supposed to be filtered. If the standards were high enough that only lefties were allowed, servers would be a lot better! You're just mad because the kind of bigotry and harassment you or one of your friends or idols keeps getting banned for is something you think the targets deserve, that shouldn't be disincentivized. And uh, you're wrong.

 

That being said, we should take from Orwell's playbook, particularly from how he dealt with this ideology in Spain.

Edited January 11 by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[BenMcLean]

Quote

We're all familiar with exactly what you want, which is to not be punished for hate speech and harassment.

We've all familiar with what you want, which is pure malicious evil for the sake of evil. Go to hell. You should have a lot in common with the demons there since you're the villain even in your own story and you know it.

 

But for anyone else who might read this and might be willing to listen to reason, if you want to move the industry to stop killing games then you need a broad bipartisan coalition of support. Putting exclusively extreme Leftist social ideologues in charge (by letting them unilaterally write and interpret the rules) locks you in to only one side and it isn't the side that has been winning in elections recently.

 

You need tight, clearly defined rules that don't let Leftist mods just ban anyone for not being a Leftist like this is doing with its elastic weasel words. And I understand you also will need to ban the most extreme stuff on the Right as well, like explicit anti-black or anti-Jew stuff, because that kind of hatemongering & chaos doesn't lead to a constructive discussion either.

 

But you need it clearly defined so it isn't just feels and personal vendettas & power-trips like Discord, Reddit and other "community moderated" crap is rife with and has been for a decade where they simply ban all dissent and then anyone who questions banning all dissent and then anyone vaguely associated with anyone associated with them and quickly become a purity-spiraling echo chamber where no actual thought is allowed. These people act exactly like Stalin & Mao as soon as they get any smallest degree of power.

Edited January 11 by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

Quote

We've all familiar with what you want, which is pure malicious evil for the sake of evil. Go to hell. You should have a lot in common with the demons there since you're the villain even in your own story and you know it.

Really beating the "extremely niche toxic personality" allegations with this one.

Quote

But for anyone else who might read this and might be willing to listen to reason

"Listening to reason", here meaning "Calling everyone 'evil demons' when they don't accept your conspiracy theories that anyone who bans you for being racist is a secret communist".

 

Bud, all I said was that your perspective was skewed on account of you not knowing what you're talking about. Is that really less reasonable than telling me to burn in the fires of hell?

Quote

if you want to move the industry to stop killing games then you need a broad bipartisan coalition of support. Putting exclusively extreme Leftist social ideologues in charge (by letting them unilaterally write and interpret the rules) locks you in to only one side and it isn't the side that has been winning in elections recently.

So-called "Extreme leftist social ideologues" have not been participating in elections recently. Conservative democrats keep blaming their losses on the left for not voting enough, so clearly the left is a big enough voting block that you should appeal to them, right?

Quote

You need tight, clearly defined rules that don't let Leftist mods just ban anyone for not being a Leftist like this is doing with its elastic weasel words. And I understand you also will need to ban the most extreme stuff on the Right as well, like explicit anti-black or anti-Jew stuff, because that kind of hatemongering & chaos doesn't lead to a constructive discussion either.

I love the false equivalence here. "Yeah, the right will attack blacks and jews, but the left isn't ACCEPTING of our anti-black and anti-jew behavior, so that makes them worse!"

Quote

But you need it clearly defined so it isn't just feels and personal vendettas & power-trips like Discord, Reddit and other "community moderated" crap is rife with and has been for a decade where they simply ban all dissent and then anyone who questions banning all dissent and then anyone vaguely associated with anyone associated with them and quickly become a purity-spiraling echo chamber where no actual thought is allowed. These people act exactly like Stalin & Mao as soon as they get any smallest degree of power.

"You just compare anyone you don't like to Hitler!"

|
|
V

"Moderating my internet toxicity is just like Stalin and Mao!"

 

lol. lmao, even. Also the hilarity of calling Reddit of all things dominated by leftists. I cannot stress how much I wish the world you are afraid of was real.

Edited January 12 by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[Im_CIA]

Is this you?

[Deep Dive Devin]

Oh my god I remember this, I didn't even notice it was the exact same guy. He was pushing this "everything is controlled by secret commies" conspiracy theory almost four years ago now.

 

Is this why he thinks discord mods are all secret commies??? Because he got banned from the unofficial AF discord for the exact thing I'm talking about? That is hilarious

[BenMcLean]

I was proved correct in my claim that Leftists control social media to engage in mass censorship by subsequent events, as Zuckerberg told Congress and more recently the public that the Biden administration in fact did this directly at the time, both in direct communications with Facebook and with an actual web portal created for them to directly control this and Musk's revelations of what was happening at Twitter tell a similar story. The age of conspiracy theory is over. This is the age of conspiracy fact. Whatever you say isn't happening is happening and whatever you say isn't happening is happening.

Edited January 13 by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

That wouldn't be accurate even if we all clubbed ourselves over the head until we were dumb enough to pretend Biden is "leftist". You are fighting brain ghosts

Edited January 13 by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[BenMcLean]

You're right that Biden isn't much of a Leftist, because he wasn't doing much of anything at all during his Presidency due to his declining mental state. But that's why I said the Biden administration and not Biden himself.

 

The point is that I can't say these are "liberals" since what I'm claiming they have been doing is obviously very anti-liberal. Genuine liberals I wouldn't have as much of a problem with. I use the term "Leftist" to refer to their stance on social issues due to the lack of a better commonly accepted term, while obviously they are definitely not committed to hard Left positions on economic issues as you seem to intend to point out.

 

I myself might be further to the left on economic issues than many Democrats since I have come to the realization over the past decade that woke capitalism is capitalism. All that ESG and DEI crap is the free market at work and therefore, I've come to realize that I don't like the free market after all. Some of the left-leaning types I remember arguing with twenty years ago turned out to have had some valid insights on economics where I was wrong. Now if they could just recognize the fact that men can't get pregnant, they'd be well on their way to a sane governing policy.

Edited Tuesday at 08:58 PM by BenMcLean
funny YouTube link (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

They're also not really left on social issues, but I assure you that neither I nor almost anyone on that discord server is interested in discussing social issues with this guy:

But y'know good luck with the brain ghost demons

Edited Tuesday at 09:03 PM by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[BenMcLean]

Those are all entirely legitimate opinions I absolutely, publicly stand by. I absolutely do think abortion, prostitution, feminism and DEI are bad.

 

These opinions you've gone and looked up would obviously be off topic for the Stop Killing Games campaign.

 

But is it required to be pro-abortion, pro-prostitution, pro-feminism and pro-DEI to want governments to require corporations stop killing games?

 

How specific & narrow is the range of acceptable thought going to get? Do people have to agree with your take on every political issue or only some?

 

What about GamerGate people, for example, who tend to be a lot more liberal on social issues than I am? They have a pretty large following who really, really care about video games. They aren't likely to agree with you on much else besides stop killing games. But they don't want corporations killing games. If they're excluded, Stop Killing Games will have dug itself into a tiny, rigidly orthodox corner of the political spectrum. Heresy hunting isn't the way to build a coalition.

Edited Tuesday at 09:20 PM by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

Quote

How specific & narrow is the range of acceptable thought going to get?

Not very specific at all, as long as the rules do their job. That's kind of the point, toxic people like you drive support away.

Quote

What about GamerGate people, for example, who tend to be a lot more liberal on social issues than I am?

Extremely fucked up sentence to write

Quote

They have a pretty large following who really, really care about video games. They aren't likely to agree with you on much else besides stop killing games. But they don't want corporations killing games. If they're excluded, Stop Killing Games will have dug itself into a tiny, rigidly orthodox corner of the political spectrum. Heresy hunting isn't the way to build a coalition.

Buddy. The one in a tiny corner is you. If Stop Killing Games is that important, the compromise should come from the tiny sect of toxic weirdos, not the rest of the human race who just wants to keep their games. All you're showing here is that you care more about performing this predatory politics than any video game.

Edited Tuesday at 09:26 PM by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[BenMcLean]

That's obviously pretty damn specific if it entails dictating everyone's stances on abortion, prostitution, feminism, DEI and God only knows how many other issues. Is there any limit at all on how many issues you're going to demand an orthodox stance on? I mean at least the early Christians had creeds that were relatively short but yours, if it was written down, seems that it would go on and on for pages.

Edited Tuesday at 09:31 PM by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

No it's not. It's actually very normal, average and general to be less insane than you. Extremely low bar to clear. That's what the rules are for! You get a lot more people in the movement without the predatory assholes feeling like they belong and making things worse for everyone else.

Edited Tuesday at 09:37 PM by Deep Dive Devin (see edit history)

[BenMcLean]

The braindead Leftist zombie scum regard and treat all heretics the same, even if they only disagree on one issue instead of being as consistently radical as I am. (radical, meaning tearing out this entire cancerous ideology by the roots) Many such cases.

 

I want companies to stop killing games and I think that requiring that is a legitimate function of government. But if I could get all of this kind of scumbag removed from all power and influence in society then I'd gladly trade permanently killing every single video game that has ever existed all the way back to Tennis for 2 in 1958 just to accomplish that because there are things in life that are more important than video games and putting a stop to their evil is far more important.

Edited Tuesday at 09:47 PM by BenMcLean (see edit history)

[Deep Dive Devin]

Okay. Well the rest of the world would rather that you just be filtered by the extremely basic standards of participating in the movement's discord server. Hence why we have the standards.

[BenMcLean]

A great example of someone who was perfectly orthodox except on one issue was J. K. Rowling. Just a few years ago, the braindead wokist zombie hoard absolutely lauded her for making Dumbledore gay in order to groom children and doing every other perverted ritual of dedication to the cult she possibly could. She was regarded as absolutely one of them until she started to disagree on just one issue: transgenderism. She said that the fight for women's rights she had always believed in needed to stay being about actual women. Despite her being completely orthodox on every single other dogma of the woke church, she immediately became regarded as a blasphemer who must be utterly cast out.

 

Now honestly, I think she absolutely deserved all of it because when you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas. But the trans issue won't be the last issue people don't completely go along with. There will be more and one day, it will be some other new issue you can't stomach just like her. The revolution will not stop at whatever completely arbitrary set of fetishes you personally feel comfortable with. You think you're Stalin but you might actually be Trotsky and find yourself on the outside at any moment.

Edited Tuesday at 10:03 PM by BenMcLean (see edit history)