If I don’t look at the part of my kitchen that is on fire, it doesn’t stop being on fire. And perhaps other people are noticing.

Right, but if everyone leaves the kitchen nobody gets burned.

And I’ll definitely agree there are other issues, but in my experience those are either relatively minor or still derived from the same root cause.

I take umbridge with the suggestion that focusing in on the most prevalent root cause counts as attempting to [artificially] maximize its significance.

I'm sorry you take umbrage--I guess to say that anyone is maximizing or minimizing anything is to suggest that they're artificially making something a bigger or smaller factor than it actually is. I don't think it's an indisputable conclusion that what you say is the most prevalent root cause is that.

But that competing voice still has to be loud enough for those outside that community to be heard or it doesn’t matter as the greater scope impact will be negative. I don’t necessarily think we are in disagreement, but I come from a place where I cannot coddle folks who shouldn’t be coddled.

You have to own what you're supporting and be aware of its context. Your voice is not in a vacuum, and you should be mindful of who and what will be emboldened by it.

I absolutely own what I am supporting. I’m not going to own what you claim I’m supporting, because it’s BS. I’ve already said that bad online behaviour is BAD, and inexcusable, and needs to stop. You’re drawing false borders around groups that aren’t actually connected to each other, and you’re not a knowledging it.

Movements like Gamergate and Comicsgate take advantage of patsies who aren't aware of what they're actually supporting and end up as fuel for radical hatred.

Both sides do that. Lucasfilm keeps trying to dismiss all criticism of The Last Jedi by saying it’s nothing but the rantings of sexist man-children, and suddenly anyone who criticizes the movie is accused of being sexist. What I’m proposing is that none of the drama is as big a deal or as big a part of the general population as some would have us believe. I say that because if you just stop paying attention to Twitter, it all goes away. You can still go to forums, YouTube, review and media platforms, and find plenty of disagreement, but it’s largely in good faith and semi-respectful (often not to the degree that I’d prefer).

The harassment campaigns are terrible, and I wish Twitter would be smarter about addressing them. But again, if you just don’t look at Twitter...

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

I know you're not talking to me, but let's agree that bad behavior is bad. I have a problem with lumping in all unhappy fans with the subset who behaves badly. That's another form of behaving badly, and that's a problem, too. I'm not fond of harassment campaigns, regardless of the target. It's why I'm essentially a non-presence on twitter, which seems to me built to enable such things. It encourages the most impulsive and least thoughtful sides of ourselves.

In defense of Cruel, I read this as his mile-high view--his effort to dispassionately (and with generosity to all involved) assess what is really going on. Not a popular tact these days, I realize.

Yeah, I just have an issue with taking mile-high views because they often engage in some level of generalization. I'm not saying that anyone bothered by Marvel's direction is awful. What I AM saying is that there is a movement driven by particularly ugly beliefs that revels in this type of fan discontent. Just because somebody (and this is shaky at best) may naively feel upset that their favorite comic book character has transformed (don't comic book characters change ALL the time?) doesn't make all the damage those movements have caused go away.

"Naively upset"? That sort of preloads the narrative, doesn't it? It seems to me that Cruel is arguing against generalization, too, but I guess we all tend to pick the generalization that best conforms to our worldview. Some generalization is inevitable and necessary, and we have to choose wisely, and allow for exceptions. I prefer generalizations that give people credit.

Coming out and trying to say "overall, the majority of the tension is due to frustration with change" without acknowledging the hateful campaigns minimizes them and validates the efforts of those campaigns to paint their discontent as mere frustration with change. We KNOW that groups on 4Chan and the uglier parts of reddit organize around these things, to not reckon with that is a form of complicity or ignorance at best.

I don't agree, but I'm probably giving people credit again. You don't mention some bad behavior I'd like for you to acknowledge, but I'm not assuming you're complicit with it. Remember, Cruel is minimizing in a particular context, which was Harmonious maximizing aspects of the issue HE wanted to maximize. Everybody's working to get at what's true here.

Movements like Gamergate and Comicsgate take advantage of patsies who aren't aware of what they're actually supporting and end up as fuel for radical hatred.

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

That is definitely a portion of the situation. It’s terrible. I’m not minimizing any of that. But the numbers of people participating in that behaviour are only a small minority of the fan base who has been generally unhappy with the direction that Marvel has taken. It’s not accurate to paint the entire fan base with the same brush as a minority of people who are behaving terribly.

The volume of people not engaging in that behavior doesn't make the behavior go away. It provides people like you cover to say "it's a small minority". When someone sends a death threat or joins a call to fire Chuck Wendig they take all those voices not engaging in the ugly behavior and feel emboldened because they're on the same side whether those voices like it or not.

The people who have been under represented by mainstream entertainment for years have just as much reason to be upset, if not more so. But I don't see a hashtag co-opted by a hate campaign from them...

Utterly wrong. Somebody sending death threats over a comic book is not on the same “side” as somebody who doesn’t like a comic book, and voices their critiques over it. It’s rediculous to suggest so.

They're both upset about the same thing, no?

Like unless that person clarifies that they're not a part of whatever hate campaign, how is an observer supposed to separate them from said campaign that claims ownership over the complaints?

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

That is definitely a portion of the situation. It’s terrible. I’m not minimizing any of that. But the numbers of people participating in that behaviour are only a small minority of the fan base who has been generally unhappy with the direction that Marvel has taken. It’s not accurate to paint the entire fan base with the same brush as a minority of people who are behaving terribly.

The volume of people not engaging in that behavior doesn't make the behavior go away. It provides people like you cover to say "it's a small minority". When someone sends a death threat or joins a call to fire Chuck Wendig they take all those voices not engaging in the ugly behavior and feel emboldened because they're on the same side whether those voices like it or not.

The people who have been under represented by mainstream entertainment for years have just as much reason to be upset, if not more so. But I don't see a hashtag co-opted by a hate campaign from them...

Utterly wrong. Somebody sending death threats over a comic book is not on the same “side” as somebody who doesn’t like a comic book, and voices their critiques over it. It’s rediculous to suggest so.

If the only voice that is heard is vitriol that is the only voice of the fan base.

I have yet to encounter a case of nerd-culture drama where the only voice is vitriolic. What usually happens is a whole bunch of people complain for a bunch of reasons that range from reasonable critiques all the way to pure insanity, the people who go way to far get all the attention, and then those making reasonable critiques get lumped in with the whackos until they’re too sick of the whole thing to care anymore and they move on to something else.

There’s another issue here, which comes down to how people choose to interpret the outbursts of rage that come from online communities. I’ve worked closely with several community managers for large IPs (Xbox, Xbox Canada, Halo, just to make a few). One of the most important lessons I’ve learned is that just because someone is behaving horribly online, it doesn’t mean they don’t have a point. Sometimes, there really is nothing of substance behind them. But more often than not, if you look beyond the keyboard-rage and dig into the reasons why that person is acting out, you’ll find that they actually have some sort of valid point. That doesn’t excuse or justify their horrible behaviour. Sometimes people just need to be ignored. But I’ve found that the most of the times when I’ve had to deal with people who are lashing out online, I’ve been able to reach past all the faux-outrage and connect with the real human being. And when that happens, both sides learn and come out better for it.

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

That is definitely a portion of the situation. It’s terrible. I’m not minimizing any of that. But the numbers of people participating in that behaviour are only a small minority of the fan base who has been generally unhappy with the direction that Marvel has taken. It’s not accurate to paint the entire fan base with the same brush as a minority of people who are behaving terribly.

The volume of people not engaging in that behavior doesn't make the behavior go away. It provides people like you cover to say "it's a small minority". When someone sends a death threat or joins a call to fire Chuck Wendig they take all those voices not engaging in the ugly behavior and feel emboldened because they're on the same side whether those voices like it or not.

The people who have been under represented by mainstream entertainment for years have just as much reason to be upset, if not more so. But I don't see a hashtag co-opted by a hate campaign from them...

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

I know you're not talking to me, but let's agree that bad behavior is bad. I have a problem with lumping in all unhappy fans with the subset who behaves badly. That's another form of behaving badly, and that's a problem, too. I'm not fond of harassment campaigns, regardless of the target. It's why I'm essentially a non-presence on twitter, which seems to me built to enable such things. It encourages the most impulsive and least thoughtful sides of ourselves.

In defense of Cruel, I read this as his mile-high view--his effort to dispassionately (and with generosity to all involved) assess what is really going on. Not a popular tact these days, I realize.

Yeah, I just have an issue with taking mile-high views because they often engage in some level of generalization. I'm not saying that anyone bothered by Marvel's direction is awful. What I AM saying is that there is a movement driven by particularly ugly beliefs that revels in this type of fan discontent. Just because somebody (and this is shaky at best) may naively feel upset that their favorite comic book character has transformed (don't comic book characters change ALL the time?) doesn't make all the damage those movements have caused go away.

Coming out and trying to say "overall, the majority of the tension is due to frustration with change" without acknowledging the hateful campaigns minimizes them and validates the efforts of those campaigns to paint their discontent as mere frustration with change. We KNOW that groups on 4Chan and the uglier parts of reddit organize around these things, to not reckon with that is a form of complicity or ignorance at best.

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

I know you're not talking to me, but let's agree that bad behavior is bad. I have a problem with lumping in all unhappy fans with the subset who behaves badly. That's another form of behaving badly, and that's a problem, too. I'm not fond of harassment campaigns, regardless of the target. It's why I'm essentially a non-presence on twitter, which seems to me built to enable such things. It encourages the most impulsive and least thoughtful sides of ourselves.

In defense of Cruel, I read this as his mile-high view--his effort to dispassionately (and with generosity to all involved) assess what is really going on. Not a popular tact these days, I realize.

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

That is definitely a portion of the situation. It’s terrible. I’m not minimizing any of that. But the numbers of people participating in that behaviour are only a small minority of the fan base who has been generally unhappy with the direction that Marvel has taken. It’s not accurate to paint the entire fan base with the same brush as a minority of people who are behaving terribly.

Time to move on to the next cat related item...whatever it may be.

Ultimately, I think the issue of "change" is where the majority of the tension comes from in these situations. The majority of fans of any game/book/movie love to have new fans join them in celebrating the thing that they love together. What they don't want is to have the thing that they love changed in order to attract new fans. And this trend is often misdiagnosed, then made worse by the fact that a significant portion of the people expressing their concerns do so poorly, or rudely, or aggressively, because they're being jerks on the internet. And that is precisely where the "gatekeeping" phenomenon comes in. Marvel comics over the past several years is a great example. Marvel looked at their readership and thought "it sure would be great if more women bought our comics... let's do something about that." Totally valid observation, and a great goal. But rather than creating new content to achieve that goal, they took a bunch of their existing franchises and characters and changed them (swapping sex or race or both). Fans complained because their favorite characters and books were suddenly being transformed, and then the whole argument between the self-described "real fans" and everyone else takes off. This is utterly predictable and understandable, and not due to widespread discrimination among comic-book fans. That's just what happens when you take something that people love and change it.

Whoa man, #ComicsGate is not just "Fans complained", it's been targeted harassment and campaigns to get people fired when they defend themselves against said bigoted harassment.

You're really minimizing some insidious behavior here.

Remember.... I was born long after Bungie was founded... hell even Marathon is older than me (that gives you perspective)

I feel like those of us who would understand the horror of the phrase "Please insert the final segment of the archive" when trying to install Marathon, are dying out.