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Forums - Gaming Discussion - SJW: Most Abused Term Ever?

Flilix said:
StarOcean said:
SJW, as I've always defined it for myself was: People defending or preaching something they either don't believe and are doing it for popularity points, despite the fact they really don't give a shit about the cause they're supposedly representing.

I define it as 'People who constantly try to find things that may be seen as discriminating, and try to fight it in an exaggerated and often very hypocritical way'.

I guess that works. I guess what I've used for SJW is better for defining someone who is white knighting



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Yeah some people go a bit overboard, but it's merely a natural reaction to the pendulum swinging to one extreme - now it's starting to go to the other extreme in some ways. But I say good riddance. I'll never forgive the strange synchronized attack against gamers 2-3 years ago by mainstream gaming media and these SJW fundamentalists and Sarkeesean or however the hell you spell her name. The whole thing was an absurd smear campaign with little to no basis by the authoritarian left, which made the attacks by Jack Thompson and the far right 10-12 years back look like small potatoes..



 

"We hold these truths to be self-evident - all men and women created by the, go-you know.. you know the thing!" - Joe Biden

Yes, it is. Now SJW is used as answer for whatever criticism someone receives for their moronic behavior. It used to be about extremes, but oh well, whatever.



Augen said:
It is a simple strategy for winning is to not debate the issue, but poison a brand. Let's say there is a group you disagree with and they have a label. Here's how you poison it.

1. Attach the label to the most extreme members of that ideology, repeat over and over that this individual is indicative of the group
2. Always focus on divisive aspects rather than anything that could gain traction
3. Take ideas or statements out of context, mold the discussion to the narrative rather than one of debate
4. If that fails, just lie, repeat the lie and confuse the discussion
5. It is always an existential threat, one treated combatively using fear and anger

Rather than seeing people as a spectrum within the left now they are all codified as "snowflakes" or "cucks" that need "trigger warnings" and "safe spaces". All about perception and branding, and frankly the right are far better at it than the left.

If applied right your instructions can land you in the White House.



Signature goes here!

I think Nazi, Communist, or Socialist would win the thread title, if only because they've been around longer.



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Nah...... it's not used enough.

White supremacist, Nazi and Racist are used in literally every fooking sentence, and by every guest that MSM scum have on their dainty, snowflake, safe space wanting, SJW shows.

Can't wait for this millenial generation to actually grow a pair...... at least the next generation after then seem to be switched on to the bullshit that the MSM spews.

BBC, CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NYT ect are nothing but unpatriotic, ISIS sympathising traitors.



While it's silly, it's a type of logic jump that functionally everyone engages in. Humans at their core are approximation machines, so the concept of "if [element] then [category]" is highly attractive. It's most commonly visual (in gaming: anime visuals = Japanese trash, colourful = for kids, greys/browns = gritty, realistic = unimaginative, etc), but it can extend to almost anything, including politics. On the extreme end of that, games with female leads get defaulted to being "SJW/feminist rubbish", and stuff that doesn't actively fight against traditional character archetypes is "sexist/problematic". I find it hard to refer to any specific one as the "most abused", because i see them all far more often than i can even bother to keep track of (and that's just in gaming; racist, cuck, nazi, pussy, etc, all get thrown around even more in general political discussions).

There's nothing inherently wrong with those initial approximations, but they usually need to be expanded upon. Even the most loving people will sometimes make really hateful or dumb initial assumptions about stuff, but it's their ability to quickly adapt that thought that makes them loving. If you either skip that second step, or allow personal biases to negatively warp the logic that's used in that expansion, you end up with silliness like needing assurance that a game isn't "[category]" because it contains a thing very vaguely associated with another thing that you sometimes don't like.

I do think it's at least worth noting though that the rise of this specific categorising is in large part reactionary. Gaming has been somewhat relentlessly attacked by some circles over the last few years, and the most extreme (and by extension often loud) portions of those circles haven't been shy in expressing their desire to effectively burn the whole thing down and force the ashes to adhere to their own world view. While much of the criticism levied against gaming is worthy of discussion, having your hobby (and often you as a person who enjoys it) consistently attacked can make you very cynical of anything that even slightly fits into the mould your 'opposition' want to force on you. Many of these people are going to make silly logic jumps no matter what (such as the old "games are for boys"), but the current political climate has funnelled those approximations towards what we frequently see now. It doesn't excuse it, but it's important to understand how we end up at each of these assumption trends.

Anyway, fun side fact: Our ability to rapidly approximate reality is what's making it so difficult to create a human AI. Even a basic smartphone can easily outperform a human in linear computation, but the combined power of every computer in the world couldn't match a 1 child's ability to approximate their environment. Once they're able to do both, i wonder if they'll make threads asking if a game panders to bio-humans :p  



TruckOSaurus said:

The term is thrown around way too much I agree. The case in the OP reminds me of people accusing The Force Awakens of being a SJW movie because of the female and black lead characters. This kind of thinking is so backward it makes my head hurt to try to understand how someone can actually feel this way.

Well Star Wars did indeed pick a female lead for its movies for a reason not story related at all. It also wasn't for SJW reasons, but purely for money reasons.

They know they are guaranteed to get their geek/nerd/sci-fi/ect fans to come to the movie regardless. They will go and watch it due to the Star Wars name. They want NEW viewers ans thus chose a female lead to try and get girls into star wars. Heck they even state that out loud in an interview. 



TruckOSaurus said:

The term is thrown around way too much I agree. The case in the OP reminds me of people accusing The Force Awakens of being a SJW movie because of the female and black lead characters. This kind of thinking is so backward it makes my head hurt to try to understand how someone can actually feel this way.

Well Star Wars did indeed pick a female lead for its movies for a reason not story related at all. It also wasn't for SJW reasons, but purely for money reasons.

They know they are guaranteed to get their geek/nerd/sci-fi/ect fans to come to the movie regardless. They will go and watch it due to the Star Wars name. They want NEW viewers ans thus chose a female lead to try and get girls into star wars. Heck they even state that out loud in an interview. 

Ever notice how "diverse" the new Star Wars movies are. Has nothing to do with SJW, purely trying to reach new markets.

If they wanted to be so diverse they woudl start having aliens be main characters. Don't you love how in a universe with so diverese species that besides like Chewbacca the entire main cast is pure humans. 



CladInShadows said:

If there is any good to come from the overuse of the SJW term, is that it's an indicator to let me know the user is an idiot.

What if a user is pointing out an actual SJW? The term may be over-used but that doesn't mean the term is always misused.

As for the OP, it would seem the user was ok with the female lead so long as it wasn't trying to send a political message about girl power because really, who cares? I wouldn't want to play a game where it's all about girl power and shoving that in my face, but some of my favorite games of all time include females in either major/hero roles or main characters. The Last of Us is a prime example of our political nature not interfering with the videogame. You have the whole community talking about how badass Ellie was, instead of the game developers just telling you she's badass for the sake of 'girl power'.

Having said that the person throwing the SJW word around could have sounded a lot less condescending.