Gwazi Magnum

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Gamer Girl Syndrome
Gamer Guy Syndrome

Ran into these two videos, both entertainingly bring up some points on this whole topic.
I'm wondering what you people here think about the points they make?

For me, I see what they're saying. Also if we as a community just calmed down and just let gamer's be gamer's, without judgement by sex/gender a lot of the issues would go away. But the issue is still going to be present as long:

1) It remains male dominant
As long as it stays with way you will get girls faking it trying to get boys to like them in the same sense you see guys sometimes like about interest in women things to get girl attention. Now, the majority of guys go into 'girl' things purely because they enjoy it (same as Girls who go into 'guy' things like gaming), but the minority who exploit it for attention will still be there as long as a it remains a sex dominated culture.

2) There are still female representation issues in games
This plays hand in hand with point 1. Without fair/equal representation the field will naturally appeal to more men than women, and reject more women then men. We need to make it equally open, fair and un-judging to both sexes.

Turtlicious said
Did you do that when I was banned? Because I was only banned for a couple f months and I don't remember you (Magnum) ever posting in spam. Except for that one time I was banned and you came into gloat and everyone laughed you out of it.

I never gloated about you being banned or anything.

I think a decent amount of me testing it was when you were gone, but I didn't announce it was a test each time I was testing it. There were times I simply tried to start a conversation without saying what I was doing and spam would still shit all of it probably never realizing they were being given the chance to walk the talk.

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

I stuck it out for several years. :P
I had some people who liked me, but with the exception of a few of them like Grif they were all either people I also know through OT or in RP's (and most of them aren't even on the new Guild :(). But community as a whole? It never changed, actually that's a lie. It got worse, I first came in at the lower end of popularity but could still float around and survive (even if there were some who hated me, Sole, Hank etc.). But whenever anything outside of random shit happened it would turn around the majority would get annoyed. Now I'm never one to simply listen to the crowd and change myself to be accepted, I've been picked on so much as a kid I've learned to take pride in the fact you won't get along with everyone. So essentially, because I kept staying as myself the originally below average view of me became a hated view of me. I never actually did anything wrong so Admins never got involved (To this day the admins on this site are some of the only admins I've seen that I actually like), but the community outright hated me.

As for intelligent debate claim. It could be true, but it definitely is not a defining point of spam. And is not something nearly commonly (or unbias) enough for them to use as a legit argument when trying to compare spam to off topic.

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Dervish said
Off topic, but Spam has been often a place where reasonable and intelligent discussions can and often did occur. I always saw it as a place to socialize without having to worry about being crude or playing nice with people; you can actually call them out on stupid shit. Plus, no stigma about going off topic in the off topic section.Although, looking at it now, I can defintely see where people are coming from by comparing it to high school and other such immature places. I mainly stick around, hoping it gets better and some of the old mainstays return, but I'm starting to think they have the right idea by bowing out of going there.I suppose I need to accept that like people, communities change, and not always for the better.Anyways, back on topic. Didn't think that needed its own thread.

It'd basically be a thread going "I don't like this! Let's complain!" any how. :P

As for Intelligent conversations. I've seen that claimed many times, each time I said "Ok, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Let's test it and have one" and without fail the reaction was "Gosh! Why are you trying to be smart! Go to off topic for that! Get out of here, you're boring!" so I've stopped giving those claims credit. Though maybe this is just a case of the fact it was me, and spam had already put me in the Nerd/Geek cliche of their community, so seeing me as someone lower they were pre-disposed to be immature towards me, while with some who has a more popular status they might actually be a bit more mature/respectful with.

But if the community only treat's specific people with maturity and respect, and the requirement isn't based on Intelligence or good argument but rather how fun or cool they see you to be then it just simply is not a good environment to be having intelligent conversations in, cause you are using an unintelligent method to discriminate on viewpoints and opinions. Also, I've seen people call people out for being stupid, I've done it before, I've seen Jorick do it many times. Brovo's done it also. Dark Wind basically does the same thing, but care's too much about being respectful and civil all the time to actually truly/bluntly to do it, bless his soul. :P I've also seen it from others before whose names I either can't think of at the time or don't know cause I'd memorize them by their profile pic.

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Turtlicious said I've never seen someone "change their mind" or "change their position" in OT, I've only seen them move the goal posts, concede, or just write paragraph upon paragraph changing the issue as much as possible so that they won't be seen as wrong.

We constantly hit complex topics, sometimes that means moving to smaller/different topics to get the bigger picture.
I've done it with people here many times, hell we've had many topics made here that were originally sub-topics of another one.

Also, to address at least one case where people have changed their mind or position. I'd highlight one of the previous feminist topic's here where me and Jorick went on a rather long and lengthy debate about men's rights, women's rights and some of the smaller/specific issues that plays into it. For the most part we've found ourselves agreeing largely, simply changing somewhat on some of the issues. But then there was the Abortion topic... I took the stance of pro-life, Jorick was pro-choice and Jorick proceeded with argument after argument that utterly destroyed my case for Pro-Life. I admitted that it did and although I am not currently calling myself Pro-Choice that was the event that caused me to halt and re-look at my position on the issue.

Now granted, what Jorick did was in a sense softened/set-up from previous (and also good) pro-choice arguments I heard from an atheist group I'm in. But it was that specific debate, the one that happened right here in OT that was the trigger point for me to outright stop and re-look at my stance.

Turtlicious said If I had to guess, you're not fond of spam because no-one "has" to engage you on the same level, and higher effort tends to be mocked.

I'm not fond of it because it reminds me of High School. Exactly in the way Brovo highlighted it, by mocking intelligence and thought and praising mindless vouches for attention and popularity.
But no one "has" to engage me on the same level here either. Hell I more than admit I'm probably on the lower end of the scale of Intelligence, and ability to argue and debate compared to others on here.
And a society that mocks effort is probably a society that isn't going to get far in anything.

Brovo said I still don't understand how you got unbanned.

Everyone was when the new Guild started. I had even seen Mammoth, someone who was banned around the time I was first getting started on the Guild post on the site at least one or twice.
Not sure if he's around now though. But basically the Admins treated the new site as a clean start for everyone.

Jorick said Turt's nonsense and those responding to him are getting off topic though, so everyone should probably do the smart thing and not bother responding to any more of his shit stirring here in the thread.

Good call, I'll probably stop after this post if it continues to be a "OT sucks! You all suck!" sort of deal.

Turtlicious said
Anyways, on-topic.A friend of mine was in a Con game where the DM refused to actually acknowledge anything she said, or really that she was even at the table. My male friends who were with her were dumbstruck that they had to relay anything she said about in-game actions or speech to them first before the DM would do anything about it. She couldn't get her head around how someone could actually act like that, but he literally did not seem to accept she was part of the game except that her character seemed to be doing things. Everyone stuck around for the game to see how bad it could get, except one who texted everyone under the table that he was running for it before leaving "to take an important phone call."There were other shitty things in the game as well as the guy was (rather famously) self-important on top of his misogyny. At one point the DM mentions that there's a crack in the wall, and a friendly eighteen year old guy who'd joined my friends in the game said, "I smoke it!" and got a chuckle. The DM flips his fucking lid and begins yelling at the poor kid that it's an official RPGA event and how dare he bring that sort of disgusting thing to the table. My friends tried to defuse it by mocking the DM saying, "Yes, I won't have that fucking language around me," but it was clear that something weird was going on.The game eventually ended when two of the players had enough of the DM's bizarre goblin pet character, a guide helping the players who was obviously meant to be screamingly funny with painful homophobic humour. After the latest attempt at lisping juvenile bum gags, they nodded to each other and declared surprise attacks on it. The DM couldn't really do anything about it and was at a loss for why anyone would do this, and the game fell apart as everyone took a turn taking out their frustrations on the goblin.

If this story is true... God damn I keep getting baffled by how sexist people today still are. -.-

Maybe it's because it was a girl who basically introduced me and taught me D&D, but I can never understand the mentality of those who get intimidated by girls at the D&D table.

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Turtlicious said
Well that and trying to get each other banned lol. To roughly quote myself, "Bullshit."

That was a small amount, and none of them came to the new Guild anyways.

With the vast majority people are treated and respected according how good an argument they can make so it leads to a pretty civil and mature group. While in spam may someone be liked, disliked etc is totally dependent on the mood of the people when first impressions are made and if the person is "cool" or "fun" enough to not burst their bubbles.

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Turtlicious said
I... said that.Like that's what I said, do you think everyone came into this without an opinion? Do you think ShonHarris wrote that whole beast of a post and it summed up to, "But I don't know, maybe you guys are right." Everyone in this sub-forum is spinning their wheels even though neither can convince the other side of anything, they just want to stroke their dicks and see how much BS they can throw into the ether lol.

No. That's spam :P

Yes people here come in with opinions and views. But we have these discussions to keep exposing ourselves to other views, gain new information and expand our horizon.

To roughly quote Neil deGrasse Tyson from Cosmos "There is no shame in admitting to not knowing something. The only shame is in claiming to know everything".

"You're a Fake Geek!" and Sexism among Geeks/Nerds/Etc (us)

Blondie said
I think it's pretty much all about self-image, jealousy and sexual frustration.It's pretty much agreed upon that this nerd hate comes primarily (if not entirely) from men. I'll just be blunt. I assume a guy who sees a "fake geek girl" and lashes out over it is only because he finds the whole situation unfair. I figure he's thinking "you like comics and games? I'm OBSESSED with comics and games. You should be impressed. Why is it that you like the THINGS I like but not ME specifically?"

Obviously its majority from men when its a field thats male dominated where females is something new. But as others said culture in general has a ton of things men get discriminated in.

Also when it comes to sexism is geek culture I don't think its anger for not being liked. But rather a natural defense mechanism having probably been bullied, teased and mocked by girls before. Or used to be hurt/ignored in favor of the guy who was probably dropped on the head as a baby and is ab obvious total and abusive asshole but happens to be good at throwing a football.

Turtlicious said
I don't?If you want to play DnD with me make a sheet, who cares why you want to do it.e: I'm not reading all of those paragraphs, because I have a job and a girlfriend Jesus people, it's like no-one taught you about brevity.

We get it. You have a Girlfriend, congrats. But that doesn't mean you can't be passionate about a topic, like to talk a lot about it or be willing to read on it.

Even when I had GF I commonly got in talks like this. So being both is possible.

♘Evolution vs. Creationism☼

xAsunaWolfx said Because it can be offensive.

And is Gravity now offensive too? What about vaccines? Cancer Treatment? Your car? The very device you're using to read this post?
Are any of those offensive?

Evolution is the same thing, a result of science in our search for the truth.
It's a fact of history, there's nothing to be offended about. To put in another example though just to get my point across.

If I pointed to your mother and said "That's your Mom, she gave birth to you" would you find it offensive that your Mom gave birth to you?
It's where you came from, it's a known and proven scientific fact just like Evolution is.