The word “rape.”

http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline

Is not funny. When I hear it or see it used in something other than its generally established correct usage or being spoken of as something even remotely connected to something positive, I tune out or ignore the person speaking. People like that are not the kind I want to be even remotely, indirectly associated with. I don’t even want to read or hear what they have to say. Which is why you won’t see me on Xbox Live or random internet chat rooms anytime soon.

“omg lol noob I just raped that idiot”

/ignore

/move on

The other option being to speak up and try to educate first, then ignore and move on. With the result that now you’re a target for the trolls and morons, and there’s a lot of them. Too many for me to want to deal with. One-liner of “adult-speak” admonition and then that’s it. I have no problems right-clicking someone’s name and selecting “Ignore” or better yet “Report for harassment” but that’s about as much energy I’m willing to spend on cleaning up the 4chan that Wow has become.

Why has Wow become 4chan?

1. LFD.

2. Cross-realm battlegrounds.

3. Arena leetkids. Or maybe not. Just seems that this type of attitude is very prevalent among arena diehards. Many exceptions, no doubt. You might be that exception.

Back to the whole Penny Arcade and “rape culture” thing. I had no idea about the “rape culture” concept til I read that tumblr thing linked above. Yay. I just got educated, so thanks much to the person who put it together. Here’s some worthwhile stuff I found:

http://www.mencanstoprape.org/

http://www.facebook.com/mcsrape – I’m a slacktivist.

I’ve enjoyed Penny Arcade for years. Love their comics. Some of them are offensive. I wasn’t offended by the whole “rape” comic and thought it was funny for the exact reason it was intended to be funny. Then again, I’ve never been raped. None of my friends have ever told me they’ve been raped. Stands to statistical likelihood that someone I know has been raped but I just don’t know about it. I have never raped anyone.

Their Greater Internet ****wad Theory is some of the best stuff on the internet as far as I’m concerned. [I need an acronym for that - guess "afaic" will do, kinda like "afaik" for as far as I know.] I’d suggest they just link to one of the “Men Can Stop Rape” things on their page and call it a day. Good people would get some traffic and the people crying about “trigger mechanism” might stop crying. Anything can be a trigger mechanism. If you have such things I suggest you walk very carefully or try to work through your issues. The rest of society won’t be stopping what they’re doing to put “PTSD trigger warning” on ANYTHING that could be even remotely offensive. Like an action movie on TV for people who just got back from Iraq. Or the sight of a crayon advertisement for someone who almost died from choking on crayons when they were little.

I empathize with your problems and hope you get through them, like I got through mine (mostly). Not that my old personal problems were of the PTSD or rape-induced type. But they sucked all the same.

There won’t be a “trigger mechanism” warning on top of this blog, for the simple reason that if I were to put one up there then where’s that leave the survivors of the 2004 Tsunami? War survivors? Incest victims? Jewish Holocaust victims? Where does it stop? At what point do I say – enough with the multiplying trigger warnings, read at your own risk.

Right now. Right here. Anything you read on the internet is at your own risk. If something smells even remotely fishy or nasty to me I’m simply NOT. GOING. TO. CLICK. THE. LINK. I’ve walked into offices on ships late at night and had some supposed buddy of mine wave me over to the computer when I’m too tired from a 10-hour watch to pay attention and “Hey, look at this” ooooooh god nooooooooo I did not just see that yes I did oh hell I need to go read or listen to or see something that will completely take that image out of my head. You are responsible for the consequences of your own actions, on the internet and irl. If you have a very specific issue with certain content (I do, with regards to extreme pornography, pornography involving males, watching people get killed or hurt – though I seem to be fine with that irl – and similar traditionally obscene or generally-accepted-as-offensive content) then the burden is on YOU to avoid that stuff. Or de-sensitize yourself to it. Or seek professional help.

I understand that you have a problem but we might as well put a “trigger warning” on the entire frickin’ world because somewhere, someone will be offended by something. I’m wracking my brain for a solution and all I can come up with is the stuff that parents (I’m not one, yet) use to protect their kids on the internet. Wouldn’t something like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content-control_software help?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content-control_software
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parental_controls
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_safety

The above is what I came up with in about 2min of searching. The alternatives being ofc that the rest of the world change to meet your needs. Or don’t use the internet. Or something else that I can’t quite think of myself. Maybe someone smarter than I can come up with a better solution. People could stop being violent to each other, I suppose. That would include rape, most of the time, I’m guessing.

G.I.F.T. – Penny Arcade [and myself maybe? - scary thought] has, like Eisenhorn’s syndrome, basically become the very thing that that comic was made as a protest against. Ok, they’re not as anonymous as they once were. They’re mini-celebrities now. But you’re still trolling feminists and bloggers and whatnot. Ok, it’s a bit of a stretch, but there’s something there. You have a huge audience. You say whatever you want, and make comics of whatever using the words that are in common usage in internet gaming (see top of this post) – and you do it WITHOUT CONSEQUENCE. Except now a bunch of people are thinking twice about some convention you organize. PAX East or whatever. I don’t convention much so I couldn’t care less, but I’m guessing you care. All of a sudden there are consequences. I’m guessing the consequences are a bit of a big deal to you. Not that whatsisname and the other guy aren’t good people. They are. A bunch of the arch-feminists are basically professionally and permanently offended by anything. But yay for consequences. Consequences promote good social behaviour. Which is no longer the case in Wow. Part of the reason I don’t play.

One last thing: Wheaton’s Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wil_Wheaton#Wheaton.27s_Law

During his keynote speech at the 2007 PAX (Penny Arcade Expo), Wheaton made a note about sportsmanship when playing games online. It has since become known as Wheaton’s Law, which states: “Don’t Be a Dick!”^[33] This was intended to apply to life in general, not just online gaming.^[34]

I solely play on PVP servers. On pvp servers you can attack anyone at any time unless that person is in an instance, in a Sanctuary area (hate those) or un-flagged in their faction city or starting zones. If you don’t like me attacking you I invite you to instead choose an environment where I am unable to affect you. That’s called PVE servers. Those are for people who don’t want to deal with enemy players attacking them. There’s plenty more of them than there are pvp servers.

If you’re involved in anything whatsoever on a pvp server out in the world, then you’re open to attack. That includes fighting mobs, farming or questing or just tooling around. Additionally, you have the option to roll with friends, stay in cities, queue for BGs and dungeons and raids from the safety of your town or starting area. Or you can just mount up and fly straight up and now I can’t touch you. And I’m almost always heavily outnumbered since I only ever play on the underdog side of any server, because I have to have my challenge. If play is not challenging I leave and find something else to do.

My basic argument is that me attacking you on a PVP server does not fall under the “Don’t Be a Dick” rule. You consented to having me be able to do it. In fact, pvp servers are specifically set apart for this express purpose. If you think me attacking you when you’re fighting something else is a dick move, then please find a better, safer environment where you won’t have to deal with stressors or triggers like myself. Perhaps an environment specifically designed for your particular playstyle, just like the PVP server environment is specifically designed for my playstyle. I don’t tell you how to spend your time or how you should play, and I would appreciate you letting me play the way I want to in the environments that are specifically designed for such player versus player gaming.

Last call: The term “dickwolf” is not something I really understand. Is “vaginabear” offensive? “Teamrape” is an inherently offensive term to me and people trying to push that type of content or trying to get attention with it should be actioned. Somehow.

In the end, this whole history has exposed me to stuff I’d never heard of before, made Penny Arcade appreciate a bit more the consequences of a little word in a comic they found funny, and hopefully educated a bunch of people about the stuff. At least some good has come out of it. I’m guessing they’ll be a bit more careful in the future now that it’s THEIR wives, children and PAX convention that’s being affected, and not just random feminists on the internet who are offended.

Thank you.

Enjoy being offended by what I just wrote. Personally I consider myself a fairly reasonable dude. But I guess some people would disagree. Yay internet arguments.

In other news, “Best Of Wow Pvp 02/10″ should be out at a WCM near you. Today.

EDIT 3:

• Mike draws a comic on UStream.  His music selection during broadcast includes Tori Amos (a rape survivor) and “Tiny Little Mustache” by Stephen Lynch, about a woman who is a Nazi.

The above is just nuts, and the only spot I could find where the person (female, with an axe to grind against PA, though she very admirably and well tries to remain almost neutral). So males are now forbidden from listening to music made by alleged rape survivors (I know nothing about Tori Amos, if someone says she’s a rape survivor I have reason to believe otherwise – I’m talking about what’s general allowed behaviour and not here) while drawing comics that could be construed as offensive or have anything to do with phalluses. It smells of conspiracy theory and demonizing – sort of the same kind of stuff rape survivors have been dealing with for years with regards to “she brought it on herself, the slut” and “well, did she fight him off?” The “debacle” author, who – let me re-emphasize this – does a GREAT job at trying to put together an actually useful and sincere timeline – tries to explain this in a later post in her “about” section or whatever.

Unfortunately it seems like she’s just desperately trying to rationalize her ad hominem attack regarding the music choice. So what if whatsisname is a Tori Amos fan? Not that the comment necessarily needs to come down, but it really does expose the author as a bit whack and with a very vested interest in demonizing the PA guys. They do it well enough themselves, I would think. There’s no real need for conspiracy theories when the accepted and widely available truth is so well known. But I guess she’s getting plenty of heat for that stupid comment in places like this TO WHICH SHE LINKS – so meh. If she feels that she was wrong about that little conspiracy theory she could always leave it up and put a note inside brackets saying [Hey, I might have been wrong about this. Sorry. Feel free to criticize me for having made a mistake.]

EDIT: Moved all the Wow-only related stuff down here since apparently there are some visitors to this blog that I should have counted on but didn’t. My mistake.

Speaking of which, if I do ever come back to play Wow I’ve been thinking about getting into addon coding. With zero prior coding experience, unless you count a class in BASIC about …1988 timeframe, on a Commodore 64 iirc. I did, in said class, fix up a program so well that my bff sitting next to me at the time, did actually tear up his scratch-sheet and physically eat his program.

The addon would be a very very simple thing. Right-click any name in chat. Or right-click any name in the BG standings. Or right-click target portrait. Copy name, guild-name and server name into populating a list. What you want to do with that list is up to you. I would use it for name reporting. I’m on an RP server and I like it that way. If your character name is “Internet The Explorer” and you’re on a non-RP server then I’m happy for you. I have no basis on which to report your name and generally just ignore crap like that in BGs. Unless your name is “Turdburglar” or “Fecaleater” or “Pööpmaggot” or somesuch. And people in /trade and /general acting out, misbehaving, extreme trash-talking along the lines of irl threats and use of extremely offensive language. Not that I haven’t been guilty of such sometimes. I’m no angel.

The heading of the notepad-style list would be something like “No need to contact. I’d like to report the following names for violating the TOS/TOU.”

EDIT 2:

You may or may not care, but one of the biggest nerd websites on the planet is called MMO-Champion. Its main admin feels that “rape” and “raping” is just general gaming vocabulary. http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/826739-Add-quot-raped-quot-and-quot-raping-quot-to-the-word-filter

I personally don’t agree with him, and ofc the people who have been raped or had a friend/sibling be raped probably do not. But otoh I can definitely see where he’s coming from, and depending on what subset of the subculture you’re talking about he’s pretty much spot on. Plug in to Xbox Live or any Playstation thing and you’ll see how this and calling each other “niggas” or whatever is so widespread. It’s the lowest common denominator at work. I myself have used the term “gay” in a non-sexual derogative manner on plenty of occasions, so not like I’m immune either.

 

EDIT 3:

Ask every woman in your life if she has been sexually assaulted. Ask her to tell you her story. This means your mother, your sister, your girlfriend, your grandma.

Once you have heard all their stories, go watch a movie with a rape scene in it. One you didn’t mind before. One you thought people were overly offended by.

Now tell me a joke.

http://fugitivus.wordpress.com/2009/06/24/a-woman-walks-into-a-rape-uh-bar/