No, she should let people who want to comment, comment, and ignore the shitposting. Like, you know, everyone on Youtube with a spine does.

If everyone disabled comments to prevent shitposting, insulting them to the nth degree, then Youtube would be just as well removing the comment function.

I also love how certain residents of PoeTV are white knighting this bitch. Whenever anyone else disables comments on a video posted here, it's immediately pointed out and mocked, but this bitch does it, and we get post like yours defending it. It's quite something.

Also, this woman is a fucking idiot. If you disagree, you either know nothing of her and her views, or you're just as big an idiot as she.

Fuck you, DramaQueenLatifah.

Only misogynists talk about WHITE KNIGHTS, for the same reason that only racists talk about nigger-llovers.

She didn't post a stream of hatespeech and disable comments. She posted a reasonable, rational, well-researched piece that's become a lighting rod for hatespeech.

99% of the comments would have been "She's ugly! She's a lesbian! She needs cock!" etc. It would have been pointless to let them up in the first place.

Wow, nice two for one ad hominem and strawman Mr. Holmes.

I didn't call you a misogynist. You called yourself a misogynist. You can decide for yourself whether you spoke the truth.

So far all you've said is that she's a cunt. So what's wrong with her views?

Oh, hey, while you're at it, why don't you quote her. A lot of people are really angry at her over things that other people made up about them. That seems to happen a lot with Feminists.

There's a fucking reason that Youtube is a place where there are more female MRAs than Feminists.

Also, the reason Creationists close comments on their videos is to avoid the very debate they claim they want to have. Anita Sarkeesian isn't spending the whole video making an appeal for people to tell her what she looks like and also to make a rape threat or two.

"So what's wrong with her views?"

That's what the comment section is for, right?

Feminists do not want their views challenged because they believe them to be self-evident. Everyone gets trolled, you can't use that as an excuse to shut down detractors.

My thoughts on the above stuff - if you solicit 0,000 on kickstarter for doing these Windows Movie Maker anime youtube vids, you HAVE to leave the comments open. I'm with Latifah on this'n.

Also, I am seriously going to sign up for kickstarter shit, because I'm pretty sure as hell she has quite a bit of cash left over after this.

Having just spent a number of years studying critical theory and doing rhetorical analysis, I think this critique falls on deaf ears if its intended audience is not someone educated in the humanities (English, Comparative Lit, etc) educated. This is not say women--and anyone else for that matter--should not be concerned with how women are portrayed in video games. They should. However, this critique, by pivoting on highly technical language such as "trope" and structuring the argument inductively with a broad swath of textual evidence, presumes an audience already familiar with similar styles of argument that regularly appear in the humanities. In short, what I'm suggesting is that this critique is akin to "preaching to the choir," and if the goal is to persuade game players or game developers to either change their games or at the very least approach games more critically, this critique will not likely achieve this goal. In strict rhetorical terms, this critique relies too much upon logos and not enough on pathos. A more effective argument would appeal to an intuitive sense of right and wrong about how women are portrayed. No doubt the term "trope" is a useful way for organizing discourse about recurring themes and motifs in a text, for a nontechnical audience this kind of vocabulary becomes a barrier. The author might it her next videos compose them with technical language as a way of organizing her analyses for herself, but then remove such language for the common viewer. Failing to do this potentially positions this series as simply another exercising in textual analysis for a limited audience.

I remade the entire Myth 2 game and replaced all sprites with higher resolution images of better quality. I learned a program that had an antiquated legacy support for the 3d model files Bungie used to make Myth.

I basically remade the game, gutted the graphical resources and painstakingly reworked everything back together. Ive processed hundreds of thousands of images, worked my fucking ass off for months, and put together a kickstarter.

The thing I made was 100% functional and amazing and only needed a programmer or two to lift some antiquated restrictions based on the computer architecture/capabilities of the time.

Jeeesus christ. Anime music FMVs. I think i'm going to buy some whiskey and a gun.

not meant as a reply

I think the term "trope" is much more familiar to people these days because of the TV Tropes wiki. It's like "meme": it used to be a specialist term but has become more used by the public recently. Maybe she thinks that the term "tropes" is more widely known than it is because she interacts with people who go to TV Tropes more than the average internet user. I don't know if that's actually true about her, mind you.

Here's a graph from Google Trends for "trope", "tv tropes" and "tvtropes":
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?#q=trope%2C%20tv%20tropes %2C%20tvtropes&cmpt=q

As you can see, there are more people searching for the terms "tv tropes" or "tvtropes" now than ever searched for "trope", which was basically flat, then rose within the last two years. There's a big spike for "tvtropes" in July 2009, for some reason, but that's the highest it ever got in search volume.

Here's that same Google Trends graph, but including "meme":
http://www.google.com/trends/explore?#q=trope%2C%20tv%20tropes %2C%20tvtropes%2C%20meme&cmpt=q

"Meme" has always had a larger search volume than "trope", and now it's a great deal larger. That said, people may be unfamiliar with the technical definition, but even before it became a pop-culture thing, "meme" was more widely-known than "trope". "Trope" may be more familiar to people now, but it is not as familiar to the broader internet userbase.

TheQuakeSoldier -
No, the comment section isn't for dissenting views when it's packed with rape threats.

Feminists are more than happy to hear dissenting views. They get them from other Feminists all the time. The only thing they get from Youtube comments is attacks about their physical appearance, their tone, dumb strawman arguments(if they're lucky) and shit like this that criticizes stuff that has nothing to do with their arguments.

You seem to think that your objections to Feminism are self evident. What are your objections to her video?

You want her to open her comments to criticism, do you have a critical point to make, or is your counterpoint a rape threat penned presumably by someone else?

" if you solicit 0,000 on kickstarter " .. didn't happen. Her original funding goal was 00. It just went massively over that after the 4chan idiots invaded.

I think it's a mistake to say that viewers won't understand without a background in the humanities. Her language is totally accessible to high school kids. That's why I'm a little turned off by the writing, but it's also why her video is effective.

I like Anita but I agree that her comments shouldn't be turned off. As many PoeTV users have pointed out, they only serve to prove her point or make us aware of just how relevant the issue is.

Male gamers are shitty people, damned near universally (the one or two hardcore gamers on poe being a blessed exception of course), and if her disabling comments cuts five years off the lives of those people with stress, GOD FUCK BLESS AMERICA.

>>My thoughts on the above stuff - if you solicit 0,000 on kickstarter for doing these Windows Movie Maker anime youtube vids, you HAVE to leave the comments open.

She didn't. ERGO, she doesn't have to.

Do you think that the people who sent her money are the same people who were clogging her comments with abuse?

memedumpster you confound me by being a shitty person yourself and trying to comment on the shittiness of others

then i remembered the term "hypocrite"

And I was just reminded of the term "irony".

>>TheQuakeSoldier
>>"So what's wrong with her views?"

>>That's what the comment section is for, right?

>>Feminists do not want their views challenged because they believe them to be self-evident. Everyone gets trolled, you can't use that as an excuse to shut down detractors.

http://poetv.com/video.php?vid=117445

So typical! Invited to give your opinion here and now, in a place where it's more likely to be read, you decline because it isn't in the place that you want. What's the point in having an opinion if you can't shove it in your opponent's face? Then you complain about being "shut down".

Even for a manbaby, that's being fussy.

For the first time in history, virtually anyone who wants it has access to mass media, but if they are denied one little corner of the web, they have a tantrum. That's usually because they think they Freedom of Speech means a right to troll. It's not enough for the Westboro Baptist Church to express their horrible opinions. If they can't ruin the funeral of a 20 year old soldier, they think they're being "silenced". They are fussy babies.

I liked her video and yet think she shouldn't have closed the comments. I can disagree with that without calling the woman making a video about sexist tropes in videogames a bitch and a cunt and that obviously makes me WHITE KNIGHT!

Seriously dairyqueenlatifah, go fuck yourself, then look at the shit you are typing and CHANGE, there is still hope for you to be transformed into a real boy, Pinocchio.

>>I think it's fair to say that accusing someone of being complicit in a "hate"-anything is the modern equivalent of branding someone as a heretic or witch.

On the Internet? You've seen the Internet, right?

Fuck you.

Translation:

"WAAAAAH!!!"

Tears of an assclown.

Try using jDownloader or some other download manager to download the video and watch it without visiting the page.

This.

It's not wrong to disable comments. That's why the feature exists. Clearly that is her channel and her videos, it is her private space and she can do with it what she wants.

However, it's wrong to pretend you are a legitimate voice in an ongoing debate when you shield yourself from opposition.

Your assertion that disabling comments is "standing up to bullying" is utterly laughable. Why don't we shut down the internet completely to make sure no one's feeling are hurt?

She wasn't receiving opposition, she was receiving a coordinated campaign of abuse meant to silence her. There wasn't discourse going on in her comments when nearly everything was rape threats and insults.

Whether her comments are disabled or not, if you want to say something about her video, you're going to have to make it in some other space.

If you want to pretend that you are a legitimate voice in an ongoing debate, don't send her rape threats, and don't send her well reasoned criticism buried inside a pile of rape threats.

Also, what is that well reasoned criticism?

How is she shieleding herself from opposition when the REAL WORLD opposes everything she... oh... I answered my own question there didn't I, hahahaha.

Fucking gay ass internet.

Discourse does happen within shitposting.

I find this somewhat elitist to say that among shitty posting, discourse doesn't happen. I see debates happening on YouTube comments all the time and I suspect I read YouTube comments less than nearly everyone. The ideas being shared may be simplistic, or introductory, or just wrong, but it nevertheless happens, and still happens among sheer outrage. People that haven't had the cultural refinement of yourselves or aren't as introspective aren't less entitled to talk about their ideas.

I'm pretty close to not caring about this issue at all, and I'm one-starring the video itself. I certainly think calling this girl a cunt for turning off comments is going way off the deep end. But turning off comments under any circumstances, but especially when the video was publicly funded, is a shitty thing to do.

Shitposting is probably the closest thing to honest, lively discourse that our current society can muster. It's certainly preferable to circlejerking.

Hooker I would like to give you 0. If you don't want to have the 0, you have the obligation to accept it anyway and give it to charity. It's somewhere in this dumpster. I had a bunch of people that hate you fill it with feces and dead animal carcasses. If you really get in there, the orifices of those animal carcasses are packed with religious pamphlets that are made to look like 0 bills. I can assure you that probably some of those are real 0 bills.

I don't support or condone all the feces and dead animals and whatnot. But I do support the people that saw that spectacle and shoved a 0 deep into the anal cavity of a dead pig just to give you money. So do it. If not for yourself, do it for whatever charity you desire to give to.

PS sorry about last year I really thought someone would have put money in there.

Thanks for the 0, Blue!

Amen.

Yeah she got money to carry out research and provide commentary and opinion about sexist tropes in videogames. In my opinion, she should have left the comments open. Her video would have been spammed with horrible misogynistic comments for a while, and that would have just further proved her point gloriously and I would have enjoyed that shit immensely.

A missed opportunity to show the world how truly horrible a shitload of male gamers are.

>>Discourse does happen within shitposting.

>>I find this somewhat elitist to say that among shitty posting, discourse doesn't happen. I see debates happening on YouTube comments all the time and I suspect I read YouTube comments less than nearly everyone. The ideas being shared may be simplistic, or introductory, or just wrong, but it nevertheless happens, and still happens among sheer outrage. People that haven't had the cultural refinement of yourselves or aren't as introspective aren't less entitled to talk about their ideas.

"Cultural refinement?" We're not talking bad grammar. We're talking about threats and abuse. Go around threatening and abusing people. See how many doors it opens for you.

And denying people access to someone's youtube comments is not denying them the right to talk about their ideas.

>>I'm pretty close to not caring about this issue at all, and Iltural 'm one-starring the video itself. I certainly think calling this girl a cunt for turning off comments is going way off the deep end. But turning off comments under any circumstances, but especially when the video was publicly funded, is a shitty thing to do.

Private donations aren't "public funding", a term that usually applies to taxpayer funding. I'm not getting the impression that any of the people who are making an issue of this are the ones who sent her money. Did you?

I've just gone through all of your comments. You have to be one of the most cringe-worthy people I have ever seen. You aren't smart, you don't make sense, you only seem to know how to speak in fallacies, and you aren't even on the level of pseudo-intellectual. It's far worse. You're just embarrassing yourself. I really want to collect your comments just so I could educate others or have them there for cringe fuel.

There are so many things I could reply to but I just can't bring myself to even bother to take you seriously, this surely must be some sort in-joke I'm not aware of. Even your account history..... All of it just makes me shudder. On the off chance you are serious... The only people that throw around labels such as misogynist or sexist are either the true sexists, or they just like to use labels dismiss a rebuttal because they don't actually have a rebuttal themselves. Also kickstarter is "public funding". You release an idea for anyone to see (ie the public) and anyone to give to. It wasn't privately funded.

The only emotion I can seem to have towards you is pity. I'm so sorry.....

John Holmes is dead. :(

>>There are so many things I could reply to but I just can't bring myself to even bother to take you seriously, this surely must be some sort in-joke I'm not aware of. Even your account history..... All of it just makes me shudder. On the off chance you are serious... The only people that throw around labels such as misogynist or sexist are either the true sexists, or they just like to use labels dismiss a rebuttal because they don't actually have a rebuttal themselves. Also kickstarter is "public funding". You release an idea for anyone to see (ie the public) and anyone to give to. It wasn't privately funded.


>>The only emotion I can seem to have towards you is pity. I'm so sorry.....

Your withering rant would have been a lot more effective if it hadn't climaxed on a point of staggering ignorance. Why don't you google "Public funding", you ignorant piece of shit.

If the fruit of her labors are anime FMVs, I don't blame anyone trying to get her to stop. The 4chan-esque nonsense is completely unnecessary however.

Nothing "has to" be respected or tolerated on the internet. That's the beauty of it!

In a way, you're *all* right. She's a bitch, and a wimp, and yet she's perfectly within her rights to censor comments in her own corner of the digital sandbox. It's not nice to tell someone you're going to rape them. And yet freedom of speech is just an empty phrase without respecting the freedom to cause offense. Trolls are mean. White Knights are faggots. Anita is a condescending nerd with some truly horrible opinions. TheAmazingAtheist is a condescending nerd with some truly horrible opinions. They both bleed red.

And us Poesters? We all bleed red, too.

Now, MOVING ON, I think the REAL issue here is all the sexual tension between Gaytheist and Anita. How long until it blossoms into a full blown 'tubemance? And if I start writing some 'ship fics, can I get a kickstarter to publish them in paperback novel form? I don't want to post them on FanFiction.Net because some of those reviewers can be pretty darn mean! :(

WHOOPS meant that as a reply to Mr Motherfucker's block o' text below ashtar.

can you name one truly awful opinion she has, you ostensibly human shit golem?

Dammit, I already said I didn't want to get into this crap, but "shit golem" is a cool insult so I guess I owe you a Reward Fagdance. Only a brief one, though.

Her contention that gamers are a bunch of misogynists is pretty awful. Gamers hate women in the same way that feminists hate men. That is to say, there's a kernel of truth there (as is the case with nearly all stereotypes), and a few of them really do own the label, without qualification, but the reality is complex and nuanced and not at all as clear cut as that. Painting gamers as "misogynist" (or feminists as "misandronist") is crude stereotyping, bordering on outright bigotry, that serves no purpose other than to reduce complex social systems with a massive body of discourse, to easily dismissable emotional reactions.

Can you point out where she says "gamers are a bunch of misogynists"?

That exact phrase? No, not offhand. But she has, loudly and repeatedly, accused her gamer detractors of being misogynists, sexists, and even members of a "hate campaign", which is extremely loaded, and is a very dangerous accusation to throw out there. I think it's fair to say that accusing someone of being complicit in a "hate"-anything is the modern equivalent of branding someone as a heretic or witch. Furthermore, her video series was (is? assuming she drops her current anti-cyberbully crusade and gets back to it?) predicated on the idea that gaming is full of backwards, sexist attitudes, which need to be addressed by a Sociology major and which gamers are evidently too stupid and un-self aware to pick up on.

And now I've spent like a solid goddamn hour discussing TV Tropes vs Women on the goddamn internet on a goddamn Saturday night, and this despite my best efforts over the last few days to just ignore it. And all cuz you two clever fuckers threw me a sentence a piece.

Well played.

1. She's a gamer herself, dumbass. And no, she's never said that or anything like that.

2. It is a hate campaign. They aren't even remotely shy about admitting that they are hateful, and would probably take offense at the very suggestion that they don't hate her. What part of "rape threats" do you think doesn't qualify as hate? You literally sound like my racist neighbor that's always telling me how he's not a racist, he's a White Nationalist.

You're literally denying a well documented thing that happened, and claiming she said things that frankly, you'd have to be a pretty dumb bigot to think that she said.

EvilHomer
Her contention that gamers are a bunch of misogynists is pretty awful.

Udderdude
Can you point out where she says "gamers are a bunch of misogynists"?

EvilHomer
That exact phrase? No, not offhand. But she has, loudly and repeatedly, accused her gamer detractors of being misogynists, sexists, and even members of a "hate campaign", which is extremely loaded, and is a very dangerous accusation to throw out there. I think it's fair to say that accusing someone of being complicit in a "hate"-anything is the modern equivalent of branding someone as a heretic or witch.
rator
.....

But that's all true... and SAYING SO is dirty pool? What a shit golem!

"Her detractors" =/= "gamers"

EvilHomer is about as articulate and intelligent and shitty as you'd expect an Evil Homer Simpson to be.

150 is a ridiculous amount of money for making youtube videos. I didnt want to comment on this video because I have mixed feelings about this issue but you seem pretty pissed.

So what if it's ridiculous?

She only got that much money because of all the manchild hate. Thanks, manbabies.

I think it's great she got all that money. What annoys me are the people who don't like her or disagree with her and they can't come up with a single argument involving the content of her videos they just attack her.

Whut?

It's a guessing game. Is he talking about The Amazing Atheist or John Holmes Motherfucker? Survey says...

fart

Because she spoke up & is a girl & is right

"Don't you think that it's profoundly disrespectful of the freedom to cause offense when you use it tell someone you're going to rape them?"


No, I don't. It's profoundly "disrespectful", as a matter of common courtesy, but it's not "disrespectful of the freedom", at least if I'm interpreting you correctly, and you're saying that this freedom is being abused or taken advantage of when people say mean things to one another. Freedom of speech/ freedom to cause offense is one of those freedoms that can not "be abused" simply by exercising it, no matter how ugly the results. It's the Elder God of liberal values, a dread mass of primordial chaos that lies just beyond our nightmares at the heart of creation. It's not always nice, it's not always human, and when it works as intended, you're probably not going to enjoy the results. And yet we're better off with it than without it; any attempt to sanitize it and force our discourse into "approved" channels renders it useless, and opens us up to far worse dangers than some hurt feelings.

" the point of freedom of speech is that someone is going to call you on your bullshit, no matter who you are."

Of course! You can call people on their bullshit all you like. Who says you can't?

Disabling comments is, in a sense, "calling people on their bullshit." I could give you that, if that's what you're getting at. But it's calling people on their bullshit in such a way that those people's voices are silenced, temporarily and regionally, at least. THAT is being disrespectful of the freedom of speech, and that's where I'd have a problem with Ms Anita's behavior.

Consider racists. There's a lot of racists on Youtube, right? They say things that some groups don't like, and these groups, almost always, turn nasty. Real nasty. I've seen so many people threaten to rape and/or murder racists that I've lost count. Heck, I've seen people threaten to rape and/or murder that blonde chick from Fox and Friends just for spouting PG rated conservative talking points. I'm getting off track.

Anyway, a lot of these racists decide to Disable Comments. They disable comments for the exact same reason this lady did; because they know they're going to get shitposted, and they don't want the drama.

Are THEY "standing up to bullies"? Or hell, what about corporate marketing accounts, who disable comments on their shitty ad videos, because they know people are just going to tell them they suck and deserve to be raped/shot etc? Again, same problem, same motivation, same solution. Are corporate marketing accounts your own personal White Knight?

Like I said before, she's not entirely in the wrong here, and I don't want to bash her if that means siding with TAA. But I think you should take a step back and try and look at this matter objectively, Mr Holmes. She's not a damsel, and you don't need to save her from a peril she brought on herself.

Evil Homer, maybe you could get someone to read what I posted to you? Like, really slowly?

>>She's not a damsel, and you don't need to save her from a peril she brought on herself.

I think she's kicking ass, actually. My whole point in posting, and in submitting this, is that the Amazing atheist has it wrong. She's not acting like a victim; she's taking charge. I said that more than once

When racists disable comments, no one says boo, and that's because they're not standing up tp bullies, shrieking manbabies who think they have a sacred right to troll. But if anyone made a video questioning their right to disable comments, I'd defend them. Probably not as passionately.

People sometimes ask me if it wasn't a woman who was being bullied by disgusting trolls, would I be as passionate ion my defense. If it ever happens, I'll let them know.

But I didn't say that she was standing up to bullies, I said that she was standing up to our right to not be bullied. Those who can read know, because I said this, that I am passionate in my defense of the right to edit or disable comments, because there is no freedom of expression without the right to edit. Anita is doing fine for herself, and I don't like video games, but I believe you post on someone else's webpage at their pleasure. Because we're going to need little bubbles of culture that is not horrible. This is the future of our culture and our communities we're talking about.

I guess you're not embarrassed to use a term like "White Knight", which is a propaganda tool used by disgusting manbabies to stigmatize those who would stand up to disgusting manbabies. I'm embarrassed for you.

I have to go do somethinng, so I'm not going to proofread this.

>>No, I don't. It's profoundly "disrespectful", as a matter of common courtesy, but it's not "disrespectful of the freedom", at least if I'm interpreting you correctly, and you're saying that this freedom is being abused or taken advantage of when people say mean things to one another.

Not exactly. I think you're making a leap from disrespect to abuse. I'm not one of those awful "...but there are limits" people.

I 'm reminded of something I read from Molly Ivins. She said that satire needs to be applied to the powerful. To satirize the powerless is "profoundly vulgar". (She was talking about Rush Limbaugh.) The best way to respect a freedom is to use it in a way that is respectable, that is classy and courageous. But even when someone uses it in a way that is stupid and cowardly, I'll respect the freedom-- but not the faggot.

I don't think you really understand the realities of this kind of bullying. A corporation isn't going to shut down it's business from the stress of having comments open. This has happened so often to Feminists on Youtube or in other online spaces that it's pretty typical for these women to burn out and leave. I've had some of my favorite writing disappear because the author got burned out and took down their entire web presence.

If you think what she's getting is even remotely comparable to what racists get, then you really don't know much about this issue. There's a huge, organized hate machine out there that intentionally spams her with negative comments at every place they can reach her on the web. They also repeatedly reported every account she had as fraud, spam and terrorism.

The comments you're defending are there specifically to harass her into silence. Unlike disabling comments, spamming women with harassing comments is actually capable of silencing dissenting voices. It has done so time and time again. So, no, disabling comments isn't offensive to free speech. Suggesting she has a duty to open them is.

>>Of course! You can call people on their bullshit all you like. Who says you can't?

Well, not YOU, homer, but there are definitely people who see Freedom of Speech as some kind of license, a reason why you shouldn't criticize them.

http://www.youtube.com/user/MEEZYMURDERFACE

Here's an example, off the top of my head.

You're in fine company, Evil Homer. No less a personage than TFL Bill called me a white knight, when I posted in the comments of his video endorsing Torturing Women as a punishment for certain crimes. Maybe you guys should hang out.

Bullying on the internet is about isolation. The idea is to make the person feel alone. Supporting someone, taking their side, is a pretty simple thing to do, so it becomes necessary to stigmatize defenders. This is bullying 101.

Empires may rise and fall, but evil is forever...?

God really hates him

Or God is a cruel comedian.

Jesus, John. It's been a year. What gives?