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Creating polls with physical violence against an individual or group as an option, or advocating for / supporting physical violence against an individual or group in a post = ban. This is your only warning. |
This is something that has been on my mind for a while now as a long time SC2 follower. I am sure the topic has come up in bits and pieces in the US politics thread, but I wanted to know what people think about this.
I regularly see and hear alt-right terminology and symbols used in the SC2 community. Think of the 'feels bad man', 'Pepe' and other quotes circulating in Twitch chats and Twitter accounts of many pro players and streamers.
I am sure that most of the time this is not because of conscious support of alt-right ideas. I am aware many of these memes have originated in gamer communities and were politicized by other groups.
Yet I do feel there is a lack of resistance or criticism on this. Shouldn't there be some thought around using the 'feels bad man' or 'grug wojak' as a twitter portrait?
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Feels bad man
Honestly, many of these have been around for long in the web and trying to stigmatise them seems to have backfired hard.
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I see nothing wrong with it. Symbols can be appropriated by different cultures to mean different things. In this case, the alt right appropriated pepe the frog as its symbol while gamers appropriated it for memes. In the contexts in which it is used, feelsbadman is not expressing anything to do with the alt-right.
Unless you're afraid that it's all a ploy to legitimize pepe the frog as an alt-right symbol by ingraining it to gamer culture. I don't think people should worry about this because we shouldn't let the alt-right dictate and have monopoly over a symbol (feelsbadman and other pepe memes, not specifically pepe himself) that also belongs to us. Similar deal to the "ok" sign
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Honestly, I've never understood why would people be offended by symbols or memes, or phrases.
And no, there shouldn't be criticism about someone saying 'feels bad man'.
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Russian Federation342 Posts
Get out of here, please. Leave us alone with your useless sjw mentality. Let us play the game and have fun like we always did. If you feel so offended by symbols why won't you sue China and Korea for using swastika on their temples? Ok? People with such mentality are so feelsbadman.
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A symbol that doesn't originate from a bad group doesn't become bad when the group starts using it.
Example: swastikas are banned here, but not the wehrmacht cross which commonly becomes the replacement in ww2 games.
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Symbols can be appropriated by different cultures to mean different things
Yes, that's what I was thinking, although it never goes fully uncontested. I see many people who understand gamer culture and 'the' alt-right movement as things that are very connected. Which is a massive misunderstanding from my point of view.
(I think the 80's punk movements understood this, by appropriating fascist symbolism they were able to steer clear of mainstream media).
I guess what LuckyGnomTV is talking about is the gaming community as a separate space where we can just play the game and have fun. Of course you can do that, I think gaming is actually made for that. To shut other things out, and focus on.. well whatever we do here.
But I wonder whether it is a space truly free from politics. It is not the free for all cyberspace as imagined by the post-hippies of the 90's. (Think of the recent discussions about the tech giants, or the Hearthstone China-HK incident).
That is what I am trying to think through, not as someone who feels offended (I don't feel obliged to read every meme, and I hope I don't offend people with my sjw language), its just curiosity from being engaged with this scene for a while.
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No space is free from politics 
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That's like I can't shave my head because Neonazis do it. Or I can't wear boots. Or whatever
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Memes or symbols aren't issues, neither are harmless phrases like "feels bad man" which can be used in millions of ways.
People killing people are issues.
Unless someone goes on in a gaming setting and says death to all xxx and/or goes filming himself killing said people, then it shouldn't be an issue for a mature adult in my eyes.
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No space is free from politics
Yeah I don't think any space is free from politics. Every space has it's own kind of politics. Gaming politics is an interesting one, in part it can be thought of as a separate political sphere, with it's own micro-politics (i.e. meta-game, politics of cheesing, or prize pools etc.) It's strength is that it offers a temporary context in which alternative kinds of knowledge are valid / necessary.
That's like I can't
What's the issue is that "phrases like "feels bad man" can be used in millions of ways". I am just wondering what it means when multiple people use them in different political spheres.
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The serious answer is, if you're trying to recruit people into the far right, gaming is one of the first places you should look into. A bunch of guys, probably not very social, probably not very open, probably into competition, that's perfect. If they know what they're doing they should be coopting gamer language whenever possible, and they mostly know what they're doing.
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Far right recruitment is definitely happening in the gaming space. I heavily see it in World of Warcraft when "All men friendly christian guilds" start their recruitment in trade chat or when in Overwatch some one decides to be heavily racist. I'm not quiet about it, I speak up and tell them to go fork themselves, and I have been reported multiple times by these far right recruiters to blizzard, and blizzard always ends up siding with me.
I don't get triggered if some one starts typing "feelsbadman", I get annoyed though when far right ideologies start spewing their hate into chats/voice coms.
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I haven't encountered something like that before, but I am not too surprised I guess.
Coming out of the art scene myself I see in gaming culture a super interesting cultural space, which will grow in the coming years. The possibilities with narrative, interaction, (international) connectivity and communication are huge. But if it is just the companies and / or political groups from outside the gaming community that own this space it would be a shame.
So what could gaming-politics be (as something in itself but also as a counter weight against stupid alt-right or christian appropriation)?
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See, your falling into issue No.1.
There is no "gaming culture". There are several gaming cultures depending on platform and even games. I feel 0 affiliation with some fortnight player, not in any way. I also feel 0 affiliation with some mine craft player and so on...
You might also just call it "people that are often online culture", but then you would realize how retarded that is and would rethink.
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Canada10361 Posts
I think running from those sorts of phrases is giving the alt-right too much credit- like it's some sort of contagious disease that one must guard against with paranoid vigilance. It's a fear-based approach and easily abused by the alt-right as we've seen people run for the hills over the 'okay' symbol.
In as much the alt-right is involved in white nationalism, the actual beliefs that are terrible are fairly obvious and not tolerated (white genocide conspiracy theories or racist theories on ethnicities).
But there is far too much overlap with regular old meme/ troll culture to bother one's head about 'feels bad man'.
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On October 22 2019 22:29 Harris1st wrote:
That's like I can't shave my head because Neonazis do it. Or I can't wear boots. Or whatever
I mean real talk: I've had some very unpleasant real life interactions with some Proud Boys and seeing them makes me never want to wear polo shirts ever again.
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Polo shirts are alt-right thing?
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On October 24 2019 22:43 Sbrubbles wrote:
Polo shirts are alt-right thing?
Admittedly it doesn't make as much sense to somebody outside the underground music live scene in the states, but a lot of the douchier guys that show up have that sort of dress code of long jeans and polo shirts and short hair that's sometimes combed over. These guys tend to gravitate towards these fraternal minded groups and the Proud Boys (a strictly white male group that believes white genocide is a real thing) have appropriated it as their uniform, specifically black with gold stripes around the collar.
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Discussing the collective use of symbols as it relates to specific cooption by particular groups is a good thing, but Nebuchad basically already said what I was going to. Particular symbols needn’t be banned or prohibited in order for folks to spread awareness.
Carry on! 
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EPT
