how journalists, game devs and woke Twitter created a truth-adjacent narrative about Six Days In Fallujah and why we should be concerned about this crap
John Mcwhorter's "Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion" over at Daily Beast should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand this "culture" or mentality. My question is, are a lot of these folks actual true believers or are they scared of each other and therefore "sound the part" to go along and get along? I heard an interview with Alanah Pierce on YouTube about ratings for game reviews and she basically said, "reviewers aren't scared of the audience, they're scared of each other" and I wonder if there's an element of that going on here.
The apocalyptic language of doom is always to be expected. I suppose everything has to be couched in "if this happens, people will die!!!!!" or it won't be taken seriously. As a guy who's spent a fair amount of time in the world of American Evangelicalism, it is imperative for persecution to be a very real thing to scare the faithful. As a kid, I heard that the liberals would soon come to lock up Christians and put us in prison camps...it was right around the corner. Same here. As stated in the article, if this game comes out, people will DIEEEEEEEEE.....
Thanks for the reading recommendation. I'll get on that. Love the headline.
Some are true believers. Some are just bullies / attention whores. Many are absolutely either A) afraid or B) just wanting to belong. This woke shit is being jammed down kids' throats from a young age now, on social media and at school and then at college big time. It's nuts. It's such an illiberal world view and all these supposed liberals, open-minded and tolerant, are jumping onboard.
I can't imagine how exhausting it must be to exist in such a space. To constantly be afraid that you must "perform" at such a volume or be ostracized, to wonder if the mob will decide to come for you next. Like a faux-online French revolution or something.
Seriously. I've honestly just sort of...kept my mouth shut for a while now because I got sick of the mobs coming down on me, but it's all sort of personal now. It's impacting a lot of peoples' lives and I'm just not going to play nice anymore. Hell, this shit is ruining my profession.
That comment about the Fallujah massacre may be on to something important. If this is about something as simple as mistaking the 2nd Battle of Fallujah with the (rather horrific) massacre from one year before, then perhaps some of these people could be persuaded yet.
...although it probably isn't all that easy. A lot of publications may have outrage-mongering in part because that shit pays the bills. Freddie did an experiment recently where he wrote two posts saying almost the same thing, but one of them was neutral in tone while the second was combative and aggressive. According to Freddie the more aggressive one had (IIRC) triple the traffic of the milder one. Something of the same order probably holds for all the standard online magazines. Of course, Freddie didn't really say anything that's false or misleading. I guess the point where it starts crossing over into unethical territory is when the journalists start either inventing their own controversies, or repeating some abomination of a narrative that has already formed on Twitter.
But I guess the core issue is that these magazines don't want to lay off their employees. Even if a large amount of their clicks are just people who get clickbaited (or is it outrage-baited now?), that still puts food on the table. Not everybody can build a following which allows them to branch out into a career as an independent writer, and those that can't unfortunately need to be in the care of these organizations that (sometimes) engage in unethical business in order to pay their employees. As I remember, you yourself have commented that on Forbes you often need to churn out a certain 'generic' type of content which is certain to generate traffic. Well, I think these sloppy outrage articles may be the same for them. The abysmal quality is probably just because the writers don't actually care; it's possible that they don't even want to write that stuff.
I also see that some Iraqi commenters have been engaging on Twitter. For them, Freddie's post on displacement probably got it right... They truly wish that their country wouldn't have to suffer as it did, but they cannot do anything about that. So by displacement, as a substitute they do something that they actually CAN do: get a video game cancelled. A rather sad story, if this is actually the case.
Side note but I need to comment that Dark Souls 2 is criminally underrated. I've just started replaying, and am going to be spending Six Days In Majula.
Oh my god, Six Days in Majula. Brilliant. I actually really like DS2 especially the updated version, but I think I felt a little burned when it released because it was SO different from the beta which actually made use of torches and whatnot. I still love it. I need to play it again.
And yeah, I saw Freddie's post about that and had read both the previous ones (he's just such a damn good writer, sheesh) and it was pretty interesting, though not all that surprising. I loved his piece on displacement and I've been thinking about that a lot these past few days. Had the same exact thought as you about how they can't change the war, but maybe they can cancel the game as a substitute or proxy.
Sadly, what they'll actually achieve is the Streisand Effect.
What's insanity is the heavy layer of criticism laid upon this game despite never playing it. If folks went to the official website and read through the FAQ's... they'd see they're being fed lies. So here's one important detail they missed... I wonder, will the media go silent when they realize you can play as an Iraqi civilian in certain missions. You know... that oerspective they say is lost here?
"How are Iraqi people portrayed in the game?
We began interviewing Iraqi civilians in 2008. So far, we've interviewed 26 Iraqis, 23 of whom are from Fallujah, and we're anxious for you to experience their stories. Players will encounter Iraqi civilians during gameplay, as well as during documentary interviews. And, players will also assume the role of an unarmed Iraqi father trying to get his family out of the city during certain missions."
John Mcwhorter's "Antiracism, Our Flawed New Religion" over at Daily Beast should be required reading for anyone wanting to understand this "culture" or mentality. My question is, are a lot of these folks actual true believers or are they scared of each other and therefore "sound the part" to go along and get along? I heard an interview with Alanah Pierce on YouTube about ratings for game reviews and she basically said, "reviewers aren't scared of the audience, they're scared of each other" and I wonder if there's an element of that going on here.
The apocalyptic language of doom is always to be expected. I suppose everything has to be couched in "if this happens, people will die!!!!!" or it won't be taken seriously. As a guy who's spent a fair amount of time in the world of American Evangelicalism, it is imperative for persecution to be a very real thing to scare the faithful. As a kid, I heard that the liberals would soon come to lock up Christians and put us in prison camps...it was right around the corner. Same here. As stated in the article, if this game comes out, people will DIEEEEEEEEE.....
Thanks for the reading recommendation. I'll get on that. Love the headline.
Some are true believers. Some are just bullies / attention whores. Many are absolutely either A) afraid or B) just wanting to belong. This woke shit is being jammed down kids' throats from a young age now, on social media and at school and then at college big time. It's nuts. It's such an illiberal world view and all these supposed liberals, open-minded and tolerant, are jumping onboard.
I can't imagine how exhausting it must be to exist in such a space. To constantly be afraid that you must "perform" at such a volume or be ostracized, to wonder if the mob will decide to come for you next. Like a faux-online French revolution or something.
Seriously. I've honestly just sort of...kept my mouth shut for a while now because I got sick of the mobs coming down on me, but it's all sort of personal now. It's impacting a lot of peoples' lives and I'm just not going to play nice anymore. Hell, this shit is ruining my profession.
That comment about the Fallujah massacre may be on to something important. If this is about something as simple as mistaking the 2nd Battle of Fallujah with the (rather horrific) massacre from one year before, then perhaps some of these people could be persuaded yet.
...although it probably isn't all that easy. A lot of publications may have outrage-mongering in part because that shit pays the bills. Freddie did an experiment recently where he wrote two posts saying almost the same thing, but one of them was neutral in tone while the second was combative and aggressive. According to Freddie the more aggressive one had (IIRC) triple the traffic of the milder one. Something of the same order probably holds for all the standard online magazines. Of course, Freddie didn't really say anything that's false or misleading. I guess the point where it starts crossing over into unethical territory is when the journalists start either inventing their own controversies, or repeating some abomination of a narrative that has already formed on Twitter.
But I guess the core issue is that these magazines don't want to lay off their employees. Even if a large amount of their clicks are just people who get clickbaited (or is it outrage-baited now?), that still puts food on the table. Not everybody can build a following which allows them to branch out into a career as an independent writer, and those that can't unfortunately need to be in the care of these organizations that (sometimes) engage in unethical business in order to pay their employees. As I remember, you yourself have commented that on Forbes you often need to churn out a certain 'generic' type of content which is certain to generate traffic. Well, I think these sloppy outrage articles may be the same for them. The abysmal quality is probably just because the writers don't actually care; it's possible that they don't even want to write that stuff.
I also see that some Iraqi commenters have been engaging on Twitter. For them, Freddie's post on displacement probably got it right... They truly wish that their country wouldn't have to suffer as it did, but they cannot do anything about that. So by displacement, as a substitute they do something that they actually CAN do: get a video game cancelled. A rather sad story, if this is actually the case.
Side note but I need to comment that Dark Souls 2 is criminally underrated. I've just started replaying, and am going to be spending Six Days In Majula.
Oh my god, Six Days in Majula. Brilliant. I actually really like DS2 especially the updated version, but I think I felt a little burned when it released because it was SO different from the beta which actually made use of torches and whatnot. I still love it. I need to play it again.
And yeah, I saw Freddie's post about that and had read both the previous ones (he's just such a damn good writer, sheesh) and it was pretty interesting, though not all that surprising. I loved his piece on displacement and I've been thinking about that a lot these past few days. Had the same exact thought as you about how they can't change the war, but maybe they can cancel the game as a substitute or proxy.
Sadly, what they'll actually achieve is the Streisand Effect.
What's insanity is the heavy layer of criticism laid upon this game despite never playing it. If folks went to the official website and read through the FAQ's... they'd see they're being fed lies. So here's one important detail they missed... I wonder, will the media go silent when they realize you can play as an Iraqi civilian in certain missions. You know... that oerspective they say is lost here?
"How are Iraqi people portrayed in the game?
We began interviewing Iraqi civilians in 2008. So far, we've interviewed 26 Iraqis, 23 of whom are from Fallujah, and we're anxious for you to experience their stories. Players will encounter Iraqi civilians during gameplay, as well as during documentary interviews. And, players will also assume the role of an unarmed Iraqi father trying to get his family out of the city during certain missions."
Yep, exactly. This is what I was pointing out in my Forbes piece. Nobody cares because it doesn't fit their narrative.