It doesn’t really matter what Yahtzee’s intent was once you look at the effect. It’s the same problem as South Park. Just like Matt and Trey, Yahtzee has no idea what to do about the people in his fanbase who don’t pick up on the joke or don’t care. sarcastic, ironic humor has lost its teeth in the last decade because of how much those it mocks embrace that broad parody as their actual identity out of sheer spite. Just look at chan board culture, which has propagated actual racism due to racists using edgy ironic racism humor to make it into actual racism.
He’s not the only internet personality alone in this, just go take a glance at the RLM fandom for a bit. Even they admit they have no idea what to do about these people. A lot of internet personalities just have no idea how important self-reflection and humility are, resulting in a lot of egotistic grandstanding and shade casting without really understanding the actual issues at all. It’s why PewDiePie has started following alt-right figure heads. It’s why Mike at RLM keeps saying incredibly ignorant things whenever he has to talk about racial and gender politics. It’s why you so often see popular twitter comedians get “milkshake ducked” after having a bad moment and doubling down or trying to pretend the obviously horrible thing they did didn’t happened (including the guy who invented milkshake duck, what with retweeting a known transphobe defending him after he had a transphobic slip).
Their image is built around being the smart one, and that image crumbles fast when they refuse to reflect on themselves or don’t try to seriously understand something they’re unfamiliar with. Yahtzee is only slightly smarter than many of his contemporaries because he chose to mostly stay neutral - but he picked the absolute wrong issue to do that with.
Fair enough on origin, but I feel a debate about context in the many years that follow, including but certainly not limited to merch, facebook pages, review pages, steam curators, subreddits, etc. etc. leading the uninitiated, like myself, or the first person dismissed instantly as having a wrong opinion about a critic being better served by said context, instead of dismissal in the form of simply “This is wrong on so many levels…”
Later followed up by the way of thinking being “insanity.”
I mean… I’m not even particularly a fan of Yahtzee, because his shtick was fairly well trodden ground when it first appeared, but I think its only fair to see the context of his statement before damning him.
As to larger issues of a stance of post-modern ironic detachment being a shield that cushions an author of ever having to, you know, actually express an honest opinion or take a legitimate stand about something that they genuinely care about… well, I can’t disagree, and it probably harms discourse as a result, but satire is a powerful tool of criticism, and even the very best satirists have been championed by those who don’t see the joke.
But it’s also really distant from the intent of my posts, which apparently failed to convey that whether or not someone loves or hates Yahtzee was beside the point, but rather that closing out discussion, simply telling someone that their opinion was wrong is unlikely to fly here.
Someone saying they don’t like Yahtzee, and don’t get why others give Yahtzee a pass simply doesn’t call for a flame war, being told they’re wrong for their opinion, and later that the way they think is insanity. (And again, clearly it’s a discussion with someone rocking’ the avatar, who clearly enjoys Yahtzee’s writing/reading, which, cool, I’m glad they enjoy them.)
I’m mostly just bewildered that Extra Credits used to be on that site. They had so much talent at one point but they sure done screwed that up, huh?
While Yahtzee’s stuff is still pretty good, I don’t enjoy it as much as I used to. I personally hope he’ll find success on his own, though (I mean he most definitely will since he has enough of a fanbase on his own).
Extra Credits is doing better then ever as far as I can see. They have 1 million YouTube sups and their Extra History series is one of my favorite on YouTube. I think they just got better after leaving the escapist.
I still don’t understand how a site that used to have all my favorite gaming personalities (Jim Sterling, Moviebob, Susan Arendt, Extra Creditz, Lisa Foiles, Rob writes pulp) could become SO BAD in just an instant.
Thank god they’re all doing ok after getting out of there.
There’s a former writer for the escapist who I followed on twitter a while back before realizing how much of a hardcore GG supporter they and the Escapist as a whole were (never read their articles and only ever visited the escapist for Yahtzee, who I imagine was uncomfortably still working there after the debacle because we all gotta pay the rent somehow). Honestly surprised that the staff there was still openly embraced as part of the journalism community and invited to conventions and all that. This particular writer I followed had multiple friendly twitter exchanges with other journalists I liked and respected for their work and advocacy against GG trash, and it really threw me off to see. In any case, best of luck to any decent people who lost their jobs due to this.
hey maybe making fun of people who are super smug about pc gaming by comparing them to virulent racists and racist ideology isn’t actually a good thing and minimizes how disgusting the philosophy and language racists use actually is.
Fun fact: The Escapist tried to steal money from they raised to pay the medical expenses of their artist, and also didn’t pay them, or even most video producers they had at the time and throughout the years.
I never really paid much attention to their staff, but I’d be lying if I said that it did seem like in recent years that site was leaning towards the hate group’s side of thinking for some subjects. Hopefully the good staff that decided to leave go on to have successful careers elsewhere.
Can you help me understand this? I see elitism in every hobby. There’s elitists when it comes to literature and movies. Hell, I have a buddy who skydives and he’s pretty elitist when it comes to parachutes.
Elitism serves a purpose of driving pressure to the upper segment of the hobby. For gaming it’s indisputable that PC gaming has benefits for consumers ranging from raw power to modding to a friendlier sale environment to inclusion of indie developers. Yahtzee covers all of these consumer benefits and far more when he’s being PC elitist.
Why is hobby elitism now being seen as a moral equivalent to racism or homophobia?
