Tag Archives: Gamergate

The Geek/Nerd War

Recently, I’ve seen a few condemnations of nerds, such as from Esoteric Trad here, and some stuff from Twitter:

I’m a bit of a nerd myself, so, I’m going to talk about the nerd/geek culture war. I’ve written on Gamergate a few times before, and if you read my Lightning Rounds, you’ve seen my support for Rabid/Sad Puppies. The standard line is that these is SJW’s vs. anti-SJW’s, which is true, but not the entire story.

The roots of these conflicts go back a bit farther. You may have noticed a link I posted to a comment on SSC where a commenter links the culture wars to the Something Awful/4chan split. That may be part of it, but a larger part of it is the nerd/geek conflict within what we’ll call fandom for lack of a better word.

The terms are often used interchangeably by most, but the terms refer to different groups within fandom and each has there own distinct, if overlapping, culture. Or, perhaps more to the point, nerds have systems around which geeks build a culture.

One man did a statistical analysis of the usage of the words and how they correlate with other words. He defined them as such:

geek – An enthusiast of a particular topic or field. Geeks are “collection” oriented, gathering facts and mementos related to their subject of interest. They are obsessed with the newest, coolest, trendiest things that their subject has to offer.
nerd – A studious intellectual, although again of a particular topic or field. Nerds are “achievement” oriented, and focus their efforts on acquiring knowledge and skill over trivia and memorabilia.

Others looking at this topic make a similar distinctions:

Nerd – intelligent, industrious, understands things
…

Geek – Interested in things that others are not interested in, know a lot about their interests, but usually do not understand underlying principles

The statistical analysis comes to this conclusion:

In broad strokes, it seems to me that geeky words are more about stuff (e.g., “#stuff”), while nerdy words are more about ideas (e.g., “hypothesis”). Geeks are fans, and fans collect stuff; nerds are practitioners, and practitioners play with ideas. Of course, geeks can collect ideas and nerds play with stuff, too. Plus, they aren’t two distinct personalities as much as different aspects of personality. Generally, the data seem to affirm my thinking.

Look at his chart:

Note what words are strongly geeky: culture, #shiny (a firefly reference), #stuff, #trendy, #technology, #etsy. Compare that to the strongly nerdy words, which are mostly science and studying. (Cellist was due to outside factors and the goths reference seems to be from making a distinction between high school cliques goths and nerds).

Nerd things are ideas and academics. They like understanding and mastering systems, accomplishing things, and playing with new ideas. On the other hand, geeky things are stuff and culture. Geeks like learning trivia, keeping up with a culture, collecting, and spending time with others doing these things.

On the other hand, there is a geek culture and a geek community. For geeks, the community, it’s culture, it’s status (#trendy), and its accoutrements (#shiny #Etsy #stuff) takes precedence over the thing, and are the focus. They are more into people, and less into systems.

Put simply, nerds are into things and ideas, geeks are into community. Now, these two aren’t mutually exclusive, there’s overlap, but they are still distinct ways of being part of fandom.

I use the word fandom because I can’t think of a better one, but it is misleading, fandom is itself an aspect of the geeks. There is not really nerd culture, there are simply gatherings of nerds. Nerds will enjoy something alone, when they gather, the focus is on enjoying the thing and mastering the system of the thing, not each other. They aren’t people persons, they’re thing and system persons. Nerds are semi-autistic spergs.

This recent Cracked article illustrates nicely. The authors are geeks:

And people need a sense of community to truly and meaningfully coexist with a thing that they love.

A geek needs a sense of community, because the community is what he’s there for. The nerd doesn’t. I’ve played video games my entier life, and have never had a ‘sense of community’. Other than some rare session of SSB with friends, 99% of my game-playing time has been alone. A nerd plays games because he enjoys games, a geek dose it because he wants community.

(Wolinsky then proceeds to punch down at the nerds and say why games need to be ruined because, like a lot of geeks, he enjoys using his meager social skill set to beat on nerds and try to destroy things they enjoy).

I’ve been a nerd my whole life, and was recently introduced to geek culture, in my late-20s. The idea confused me somewhat: why would you need a culture? Nerd stuff was stuff you did on your own or with a few friends and kept quiet about around normal people. Why would you need a culture to play video games or read SF?

Read this article on geek consumer culture and the first few comments. To them the hobby is all about consumption and status. As a nerd growing up poor, that wouldn’t have even occurred to me. I got SF book from the library because I enjoyed them and games with holiday and birthday money.Their being status or merch behind it, or that people would want the status of nerd or geek didn’t cross my mind.

The fake geek girls controversy illustrates this as well. Girl geeks get legitimately upset when people try to take their geek cred away from them and it seems to some men defending their geek cred is important to them. Both seem alien to me. Why would you care? Growing up, I just wanted to do the thing. I tried my hardest to convince my sisters (and the rest of my family) to play board games (sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t, sorry Axis & Allies) because that meant I got to play more. I tried (and failed) to convince my sisters and brother not to play video games because that meant they would hog the system, at least until we got a N64, at which point I needed more Smash Bros partners. There were no thoughts of status. If others did the thing would I get to do more of it or would I get to do less of it?

Anyhow, back from personal digression, the tension between the nerds and geeks has been everpresent in fandom since it began in the way back when. It was a tense, but symbiotic relationship. The geeks needed the nerds in fandom because the nerds made and understood things. The nerds needed the geeks in fandom, at least if they cared at all about fandom, because they’re the ones who created fandom.

This mutual dependence and tension has always been around, but lately there’s been a shift. First, fandom activities have become increasingly accessible: the effort needed for creation or system mastery have lowered, so the geeks don’t need the nerds as much as they used to, if they need them at all. Power slowly shifted towards the geeks.

As well, when the Big Bang Theory came out and was followed by a slew of high-profile superhero and fantasy movies, fandom suddenly became hip. Normal people started wanting to do fandom things and the geeks started inviting them in. That’s not necessarily bad in itself (although, I don’t really see the point). The problem is when this occurred normies don’t have a nerd personality: geeks may be different but they’re still people-focused so normies can understand them. Nerds, though, are still those introverted, systems-focused weirdos. They joined the geeks in the internal culture war, and now they geek/normie alliance is trying to push the nerds out.

Wil Wheaton, is the ur-geek who exemplifies this trend. He’s a geek who outreaches to normies through stuff like Tabletop (not to mention he was in BBT) and is heavily involved in the geek community. He’s set up this dichotomy of what he calls “power gamers” (ie. nerds) who (evilly) like mastering systems and hurt the geek community with their focus on things and ideas over people, while the noble Wil Wheaton builds the geek community (even if he occasionally has to sacrifice rules accuracy or dumb things down a little, both of which nerds generally detest).

In, tabletop RPG’s there have been a number of different play styles. The oldest and, until recently, most common was the power gamer (nerd) playstyle: min/max a character to best master the game system, build a world, explore the world, destroy the baddies, loot the room, save the princess, and level up. It was focused on system mastery, world-building, and problem-solving. These gamers tend to use crunchy systems with lots of numbers (like Shadowrun or the Hero system).

A smaller strain was the Roleplayers (geeks). To this strain story-telling and character interaction was more important. RPG’s were more about collaborative story-telling/improv acting. Combat and dice rolls were minimized because they interrupted the story. NPC’s became fleshed out characters rather than amusing plot devices. And so on. They tend to focus on RPG systems with fewer numbers but (like Fate or Fiasco).

Neither is inherently better (I’ve enjoyed both Fate and Fiasco) and both can be accommodated by a decent GM, so neither is wrong, but recently, the geeks, using their increased influence have been pushing their role-playing style as the correct way to do things. It’s gotten to where the point where the “correct” opinion, the on pushed by Wheaton, is that the story is what matters, while “power gamers” and min/maxers are doing things wrong.

This geek/nerd conflict is what is playing in the Sad Puppies campaigns and GamerGate.

Science fiction has always had a divide (more a continuum, really) between hard and soft. Hard SF stories are geared towards nerds; the world and the ideas would the focus of the story, they were the main characters. The science was central to the story and the story existed to carry the ideas. Characters and their interactions were made to carry the ideas.  Asimov is a good example of his, his characters were almost always little more than plot devices to carry whatever idea he was exploring.

Soft SF, on the other hand was more about the characters than the ideas. They were space operas, where the science was meant to carry the story. Star Wars is the best example of this. The science was simply a plot device. You could easily change the setting to medieval Europe, replace X-wings with pegasi, photon torpedoes with arrows, and lightsabers with magic swords, and the story would not change in the least. Dr. Who is similar, the sonic screwdriver might as well be a magic wand.

Fantasy had a similar, less prounounced continuum. Was the focus on the characters, or the world and the ideas the world-conveyed? The divide was less pronounced because Tolkien, who created high fantasy, Lweis, and Howard who created swords & sorcery, focused on both and did both well. That and fantasy only has to be internally consistent, while SF has to be internally consistent and consistent with known science.

The puppies are nerds. They’re looking for old-school/hard SF/F based on systems-level thinking: world building, ideas-focus, and science. While the anti-puppies are geeks have been pushing for the softer stuff. Even beyond that they’re pushing romances in space, where the SF/F is barely a gloss. Normies who join, generally go towards the soft SF like Doctor Who and Star Wars.

Gamergate is similar. The GG folks are generally nerds, who just want to play games and master complex game systems. Meanwhile, the anti-gg force are all about creating an “inclusive” community (which is somehow needed to play games buy yourself on a screen) by kicking out all the icky gamers (ie. nerds) who are too focused on playing games rather than telling stories with games.

You can see this in anti-gg’s criticisms of games, such as in the Cracked article quoted above or in this piece I wrote on earlier. They want games to become art (ie. have status among the “right” people) and to become a form of interactive story-telling. Gamergate want games to be games so they can focus on mastering systems.

Neither side is particularly “right” in which way is the best to read, write, or play. The main problem, is the geeks are trying to drive the nerds out because those nerds are to focused on enjoying stuff, rather than making an “inclusive” community so that everyone can buy toys and get geek status.

It also the geeks that are forcing this stuff onto you normies. Blame them for perpetuating the culture you detest.  We nerds are fine without you and just want to be left alone.

Ruining Games

I didn’t really have anything to write about today, but it’s post day, so I’ll say just a bit more on gamersgate, inspired once again by Cracked and Mark Hill. Two articles were up today.

One was yet another anti-gamergate piece, (sadly, Cracked has now reached my Unvisit list) this one so stupid. For someone who is as supposedly pro-reason as Luke McKinney this is based very strongly in unreason. Despite this I’m going to engage it from points 7 to 1: genetic fallacy, irrelevant ad hominem, fallacy of composition/anecdotal, irrelevant to anything (his argument in #4 boils down to ‘people shouldn’t be allowed to discuss’), ambiguity fallacy, straw man, and, finally, genetic fallacy again. I should also note that the asinine immaturity of Luke McKinney in this piece is rather ironically humourous given that point #1 in last week’s article on gamersgate was “We’re Incapable of Mature Conversations About Gender”.

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At this point, I’m going to make a small aside on the term Social Justice Warrior (SJW), as Luke McKinney is not the only one I’ve seen commenting on how SJW sounds awesome.

SJW is a term of pointed mockery. The mockery comes exactly from the fact that SJW’s are the farthest things possible from warriors. Fatties who revel in their obesity, feminists that go into conniptions when its pointed out that sluttery and tattoos go hand in hand, women that become physically ill from words, people who try to ban trashtalk from games because it hurts their feewings, and psychologically ill perverts who can not tell fantasy from reality are as unlike warriors as is humanely possible.

Using the term social justice warrior simply points out, in an ironic fashion, the pathetic weakness of the SJW’s (on an individual level; as a screaming, anonymous lynch mob they do have some social power).

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Cracked and the rest of the SJW’s seem so very confused by gamers’ motivations against SJW’s that they can posit no explanation but ‘those evil mysoginists hate women’. Which bring us to the second article, where Mark Hill goes on about why video game narratives need to change. At first glance, this article seems relatively benign, what’s wrong with making suggestions to improve video games, but if we look at it closely, his arguments essentially boil down to:

6: Stories should have fewer sociopaths. He specifically points people who do things that make games fun as sociopaths, but, in context of other anti-gamersgate Cracked articles, it is clear that anyone deviating from SJW orthodoxy is a sociopath.

5: Villains should be made more morally grey, so the difference between heroes and villains are less stark (ie. break down traditional morality and replace with prog morality).

4: Games should decide your character’s emotions and reactions for you, the game should think for you, rather than you reacting to the game yourself.

3: The reason we’re shooting at people can not be ‘fun’, there must be a justifiable reason that is very easy to understand without reading.

2: Suggestions having to do with pacing and structure, which are not relevant, one way or the other, to my point.

1: Games should dictate morality, particularly SJW morality, rather than let gamers figure out moral quandaries for themselves.

Why, oh why, would gamers be against this? Why would gamers be against people trying to remove the fun parts of games and turn games into morality lectures?

Mark Hill is a perfect demonstration of why gamers are against the SJW’s entering gaming, and it has nothing to do with misogyny. They want to turn games away from the objective of fun and towards the objective of forcing their SJW moral system on people who just want to relax for a few hours.

Mark Hill, #Gamergate, and Punching Down

I’m going to add to the crapheap by wading into the #gamergate controversy. I’m mostly going to focus on a particular article at Cracked* by one Mark Hill, because I think it brings up a lot of the hypocrisies of the issue.

First thing, ‘Quinngate’? I don’t know what Mark Hill is smoking, but he’s the first one I’ve read who’s even used the term Quinngate; everybody has been using gamergate. He then uses this nearly non-existent term throughout the article, each time referencing how icky the term is. He is obviously purposely using this rarely-used term to smear gamers.

Now, his first point: “#4. We’re Incapable of Mature Conversations About Gender”.

He cherry-picks some immature comments, because of course in the millions of words spilled on this he’s going to find a few jerks.

Of course, he ignores that these discussions always start with his side, with the SJW’s lobbing accusations misogyny and racism at those basement-dwelling virgins (remember, Zoe Quinn controversy started when she started attacking Wizardchan). Why do the SJW’s expect a ‘mature’ conversation when every time the ‘conversation’ starts with ‘you are all a bunch of misogynist, racist, homophobes’? (who are virgins with small dicks). But, of course, he doesn’t point out the immaturity of the SJW’s, punching down is too much fun.

His second point: “#3. Male Gamers Think They Know What the Real Problem Is”.

Here he, of course, argues that white male gamers never have any problems and their opinions don’t matter.

The problem is that guys who have never faced discrimination because of their hobby or profession really do believe that this obscure ethical non-breach is the bigger issue.

I don’t know where Mark grew up as a gamer, but it must have been a nice place. So, how about I try to teach some empathy for all the SJW’s?

Many a young nerd (those evil, evil gamers) spent (spend) most of their lives bullied and socially rejected, partially because of their hobbies. They turn to places where they can escape: gaming, science fiction, comics, etc. Of course, these hobbies were ‘nerdy’ so they were only bullied and rejected more.

Now, when these hobbies are finally gaining some small social cachet, a whole new breed of bullies, your Sarkeesians, your Quinns, etc. are entering these nerds formerly safe spaces and are bullying them again. They barge in unwanted and start hurling insults and accusations. They use their much greater social power to demand the hobbies change and for those old icky nerds to be ostracized from their own hobbies.

Then somehow these social justice bullies are surprised that the nerds don’t take too kindly to this bullying. Somehow the bullied are the bullies for fighting back?

A minority of loud, male, and probably young gamers want to dictate what the rest of the gaming community talks about, because in their minds they know what’s important and best for everyone.

That’s because this is our community, our hobby, it always has been. Males make up 80% of the core gaming community with an average age in the mid-20s. Women are a small minority trying to break into our hobby and, in the case of SJW’s, destroy it. The ‘rest of the gaming community’ is a small minority out to silence the majority and force their minority viewpoints on the rest of us who only want to enjoy gaming.

So they recognize that gamers have a problem with gender — they just can’t understand how they’re contributing to it or why anyone wants to talk about it instead of their problems.

I’d turn this around on Mark: why doesn’t he, and all the other SJW’s, realize that the majority doesn’t want to talk about their problems and just want to have some fun gaming. Why does the minority get to dominate the conversation with their moral crusades? Why aren’t the majority allowed to talk about the things that effect the majority without a bunch of whiners whining?

Luckily, there’s this thing called “empathy” that can overcome that.

Funny Mark talks of empathy while supporting the people who attack depressed, near-suicidal, male virgins and take joy in destroying careers and bullying others. How about it Mark, where’s the Empathy from the SJW’s? From you for that matter?

Point 3: “#2. Gamers Don’t Really Care About the Industry (Until Women Are Involved)”

Here Mark is both lying and mistaking cause and effect. (I’ll note I don’t pay attention to the gaming press and haven’t since my PC Gamer subscription ran out a decade ago). He’s lying in that corruption in gaming journalism has been a long standing topic, not just something that appeared because of Zoe Quinn. This article from 2013 points out that these kind of scandals have been going on since 2007 (at least).

It’s not outrage over the gaming scandal that’s unique here, what’s unique is the press’ reaction. We’ll ignore the press cover-up for now, and instead focus on how the press only takes these scandals seriously when “harassment” occurs.

It’s not that gamers only complain when it’s women, it’s that the press only cares to listen when they can use accusations of corruption to start beating the accusers with accusations of misogyny.

Also, I’d like to turn this around on Mark. How come harassment only matters when it happens to women? I remember Matt Forney and the RoK gang undergoing all kinds of harassment: death threats, doxxing, castration threats, etc., and absolutely nobody outside the manosphere even noticed or cared. Yet every time someone makes a single negative comment on a woman in a forum somewhere, it becomes a major issue.

Or a bunch of sexually frustrated…

Here we see the hypocrisy of Mark and leftists in general. He spends his whole piece prattling about empathy and maturity. then he starts insulting his opponents for being sexually frustrated. Perhaps Mark could show some of his much-vaunted empathy and maturity?

Point 4: “#1. We Will Never Learn From Past Mistakes”

It’s not a fringe issue, though, at least according to this study that claims 63 percent of female gamers have been sexually harassed at some point.

Threats, etc. are a fringe issue. Those people making death threats and the like are a tiny minority.

Everybody gets ‘harassed’ online, that’s how online gaming goes. I usually only play single-player games, but for a while I was playing Starcraft online. I was regularly ‘harassed’ with a variety of epithets. If Mark was more of a man, he’d realize it’s because that’s how men act. Men are a competitive lot, when engaging in competition we trash-talk. If women want to join our spaces and play men’s games with men, they should grow thicker skins and take trash-talk for what it is. They should stop being thin-skinned whiners and start trash-talking back.

For ideological purposes though, Mark and his SJW ilk love to lump trash-talk, rational criticism, and death threats all under the label of ‘harassment’, so they can better smear critics and further their ideological agenda.

Remember the old saws, don’t play the game if you can’t take the pain and stay out of the kitchen if you can’t take the heat.

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What Mark Hill and the other SJW’s miss in their victimization narrative is that they are the bullies, they are the harassers. Gamers and other assorted nerds escaped the trauma of public schooling, bullying, and social ostracism by retreating to nerdy hobbies and now just want to be left alone to enjoy their hobbies in peace.

But instead of leaving them in peace, the SJW’s are invading their hobbies and attacking them. It the SJW’s who have invaded gaming, not gamers who have invaded SJW space.

They should also realize it’s not the gamers who are punching down, it’s the SJW’s. The SJW’s have most of the gaming press writing insulting articles about ‘gamers’, they have Reddit and gaming sites banning #gamergaters posts and comments, and they even have the mainstream press jumping on gamers. Meanwhile, the #gamergate have no platform beyond their personal blogs and the occasional forum and are threatened with firings and never being able to work in gaming again if they dare express their opinions. Even Cracked itself has written two anti-gamer pieces on #gamersate and not a single piece from the other side (not to mention all the SJW in games stuff they’ve written previously).

The SJW’s should realize they are the ones with the power who are punching down. They’re the ones doing the harassing. They are the bullies.

The gamers are a mostly powerless group using what little they have to keep their hobby safe for them.

So, Mark and other SJW’s, please have some basic empathy for the nerds. Leave them in peace, stop punching down, and let them enjoy their hobbies without constant harassment.

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Here’s my final point, gamers do not have a ‘woman problem’, women, or rather a particular type of woman, are the problem. We do not need women in gaming. If they want to game, fine.  My sisters regularly gamed with me (and on their own), and they still do, that’s great. Having women game is fine, what’s not fine is (a particular type of) women trying to change (ie. destroy) the hobby for their own ideological ends.

While we can take or leave women in gaming, we do not want SJW’s in gaming. I’ve been board-gaming (and winning at Monopoly) since I was 3 and video-gaming since I was 5, and we do not need lying Janey-come-latelies and fake geek girls intruding into our hobbies and whining about how Mario games are sexist. We do not need them whining about sexism because one game featured killing hookers, when almost every game features the mass-slaughter of men. We do not need them whining about racism when one game has people shooting Africans, when every second game is about shooting Germans.

This is our hobby and the SJW’s should leave well-enough alone. We want to game to have fun, to enjoy ourselves. We neither need nor want their idiotic moral crusades.

If women/SJW’s want to make their own SJW games, fine they can enjoy their Depression Quests, but they need to stay out of our games. Why do the SJW’s refuse to live and let live?

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* If you want to know why I focus disproportionately on Cracked on this blog, it’s because it used to be my favourite site. I’ve been reading it daily since 2007, the majority of my adult life. I hate that its been declining over the last couple of years with increasingly mediocre columnists and humourless SJW nonsense, almost to the point where I’ve considered removing it from regular reading. I want it to go back to the good ol’ days of hilarious no-holds barred humour.