For Donald Trump, 9/11 is a perfect day to celebrate Donald Trump: Today in Tweets

@Fishy Goat

The best Felix!

*does secret clone club handshake*

Once again feeling like I dodged a bullet by never even hearing about Felix until 2016.

But now feeling like I’m walking through a minefield whenever I watch Jesse Cox, Markiplier, or Max Christensen.

@ dslucia

Yeah, I’ve pretty much cut out JonTron entirely now ’cause wow, I don’t care how funny you might be, there are other things and other people that are far more worth my time.

Sometime in the middle of the 2016 campaign, I relied on Jontron’s content to keep me from developing a reflexive nausea at the sound of a heavy New York accent.

I’m trying to quantify the irony, now, but it’s just not working, so I switched over to Jon Stewart.

@Skiriki:

Is it wrong for me to still be vaguely upset about LGF’s history in 2000s? I mean, yes, I know they did a complete turn-around, but every time I see LGF mentioned, a cold shiver runs up my spine, because their forum used to be like Daily Stormer Lite or so post-9/11 and its users slithered into other internet forums like putrid channers and redditors do today.

I feel sort of similar, since when I first became familiar with LGF it was one of the go to sites when one wanted to showcase the fascistoid tendencies of the right-wing. Then it sort of dropped off my radar, and years later, as I started using Twitter, Charles started showing up giving right-wingers rhetorical wedgies, and I couldn’t make sense of it.
I do feel that the fact that he’s walking the walk makes some difference, though the fact that a lot of us will always be wary of him is well earned. It’s complicated, yanno?

About PewDiePie, he is a Swede. The n-word isn’t part of the vocabulary he grew up with. If it has permeated his vocabulary to the degree that he would grab it instinctually, it’s because he has been using it just that much, fully conscious of how racist it is. And if it was a deliberate word choice? The conclusion really is inescapable. But of course nobody is really surprised by this, it’s just that some people hoped (against hope) that he’d have enough sense not to show his arse.

@Feline

In addition, someone as young as PDP will have lived their entire adult life, and the majority of their non-adult life, with the cultural understanding that the Swedish version of the n-word is not a word that you use in any kind of conversation. If he’d been 37 instead of 27, he could’ve tried the (crappy) defence that “when I was little blah blah”.

@dslucia
Sterling’s great, but his being cool with TB will always add an asterisk with me…

@Axe “Danger” Calibur:

Eh, that’s kind of a difficult subject for me to approach. I’ve never really gotten the impression that they’re that close, more just a professional friendship sort of thing, and it’s pretty easy to associate or even be friendly with people you don’t always agree with, even about some pretty serious things (the first person I’d say I “made friends” with up here at uni was a hardcore libertarian type who seriously unironically used the term “redpilled” to describe something as if it was a positive thing).

Really, I think it more speaks to how shitty the entire metaphorical playground is for gaming commentators that you pretty much can’t scratch a single one of them without finding a sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic jackass either directly or through people they’re associated with (like, for example, the McElroys at Polygon, who are generally also pretty good from what I’ve seen and read but are now forever associated with apparent serial harasser Nick Robinson). I’m not really going to hold Jim’s friendship with TB against him, but I can understand anyone who does because TB is another one of the people that I’ve pretty much cut out of the rotation of content creators I watch.

@dslucia
Yeah, it is concerning to see just how common these toxic attitudes seem to be, directly and through association. I think maybe it’s that, because the the environment became toxic early on, other people with more progressive views were put off from participating and creating content? I thought about it at one point but decided I really didn’t want to deal with the hassle. Even just being a woman is enough to have them go after you. Also there’s the issue of affording equipment to get started, which might be more of an issue for marginalised groups, especially as channels seem expected to look more professional now, even if the commentator’s attitude really isn’t.

@Megpie
That’s a great emu-related curse, haha, love it! My biggest fear with your wildlife would be more of the eight-legged variety, the name of which is almost a curse in itself. *Whimpers*

I wish I wasn’t surprised that anyone is defending Pewdiepie, but… : / They can’t not know that using the N-word is completely unacceptable and that it’s hardly the kind of thing you might say by accident, they just can’t.

I have had the odd ‘heated gaming moment’ myself, I admit it. During my misspent youth my mum even came to see why I was shouting at an orc one time. I have never used racial slurs, or any other type of slur, based on sexuality, etc. Why would anyone even do that and think it was Ok? I’m more likely to be getting overly-involved in telling my AI teammates exactly how useless they are and why can’t they just bleeping heal, damn them?

Ok, there maaaay have been the odd mild threat of genocide, but then that’s Civ for you. And I wasn’t prejudiced about it. Everyone not me got exterminated equally, with no specific racial threats being made. The concept and design of Civ and my gameplay choices were, I now realise, perhaps problematic, tbf. : / Still, if someone can play Civ without yelling any racial slurs or making any xenophobic comments, games can clearly be, and typically are, played without them.

I really hate that this loud minority of completely awful people get to be any part of a public image for gaming. They’re not even really serious about the medium, or analysis, including political, would matter to them, as would wanting games to tell better, more diverse stories.

@Imaginary Petal:

In addition, someone as young as PDP will have lived their entire adult life, and the majority of their non-adult life, with the cultural understanding that the Swedish version of the n-word is not a word that you use in any kind of conversation. If he’d been 37 instead of 27, he could’ve tried the (crappy) defence that “when I was little blah blah”.

Yeah, and as an actual 37 year old Swede I’d tear that one apart as well.
Almost twenty years ago I had a discussion with a couple of friends from Africa about how the “Swedish n-word” wasn’t actually a translation of the big “American n-word”, but rather closer to the small “American n-word”. Difference being that there are groups in the US that are old enough that their names represent an earlier stage of the euphemistic treadmill, like the NAACP, and things like the speeches of MLK likewise represent an earlier position of the treadmill, whereas there’s nothing like that in Sweden. The only people insisting on using that word are racists and cantankerous older people who are… Well, frankly, they’re racists as well.
You know, I always did feel weird about the n-ball. Switching to chocolateball was hard like falling down is hard. And most of the women of my parent’s generation were cool with it too.
Hanging on to inexplicable racist nomenclature seems to be a male thing (since the members of my generation who’ve chosen that as their hill to die upon tend to be male as well). But that’s hardly news to anyone familiar with racism.

@Austin Loomis:

As near as I can figure out, he suddenly realized one day that, holy shit, the liberals were right, the people who surrounded him were not just people who shared his legitimate concerns about RADICAL ISLAMIC TERRORISM(TM), they were total fucking racists who really did want to completely eliminate Islam and Arabs even as abstract concepts.

Sure, I’ve gathered that something like that happened while my back was turned, but going from crypto-fascist screeds and embarrassingly fawning write-ups of Michelle Malkin to not only walking with his former enemies, but aggressively attacking his former allies? Gave me mental whiplash.
And it’s rare that people would switch sides like that, most often people will slink away in embarrassment, never to be heard from again. Which is ok, not being bad is better than being bad. Making an effort to do good when you’ve previously done bad is unusual, and Charles’ fervour has been intense.
Still keeping a side-eye on him, of course, but it’s hard to fault him for what he’s doing right now.

Another gamer (a Swedish one at that) here. I wish people like Pewdie would stop ruining stuff for the rest of us.