The plight of the bitter nerd: Why so many awkward, shy guys end up hating feminism. I feel your pain, bitter, lonely, nerdy guys.
I really do. It sounds corny to say it like that, but I don’t know how to say it and be believed. I know that because, having experienced this emotion from the inside for most of my life, I sure as hell resisted believing it when I heard people saying it. There’s no one more resistant to being empathized with or more prone to call attempts to do so “patronizing” than the bitter lonely guy, especially when women try to do it but even when other nerdy guys try to reach out. People like Captain Awkward and Dr. I’ve tried to write sympathetically about this stuff in the past: the guilt, the shame, the constant feelings of inadequacy. The viral meme that inaugurated 2015 as the New Year of the Bitter Male Nerd is MIT professor Scott Aaronson leaving an emotionally vulnerable comment on his blog during a heated argument about misogyny and sexual harassment in the STEM community. Video Games, Misogyny, And Terrorism: A Guide To A**holes. As Gaming Editor here, I get to play a lot of video games.
I love the gaming medium; I think it’s got the potential to define the 21st century as much as film defined the 20th. I also get to experience the gaming community and industry, which can be a wonderful place. There are a lot of genuinely positive people out there making groundbreaking interactive art, and similarly positive people playing it. But it’s hard to self-identify as “a gamer” when there’s also a large swathe of that community apparently committed to presenting us all as a bunch of hateful sociopaths. It’s like being a moderate Muslim in the middle of the continuing ISIS takeover and oppression of Iraq. Wil Wheaton: Anonymous trolls are destroying online games. Here’s how to stop them.
By Wil WheatonNovember 11 Wil Wheaton, co-creator and host of the award-winning online series "Tabletop," reoccurs on "The Big Bang Theory," makes his own beer, and thinks his dogs are pretty great.
(iStock) “On the internet,” says the iconic New Yorker cartoon, “nobody knows you’re a dog.” It’s a joke, but it’s also a problem. More venom than ever before is flowing from behind the cloak of anonymity, where people remain entirely unaccountable for their words and deeds. Anonymity, in some cases a key civil liberty, also enables society’s worst actors. But here’s the thing: that random 12-year-old I seem to encounter so often? Gamer Gate: Three Stages to Obit. A lot of things been written about Gamer Gate.
Some of them wrong, some of them stupid, some of them both. A lot of the confusion (both accidental and malicious) is because Gamer Gate is three separate things clustered together under one name. The Three Stages of Gamer Gate. Ten Short Rants About #GamerGate. If you know what #GamerGate is, I don't have to tell you.
If you don't know what #GamerGate is, any description I give you will be attacked by hordes of partisans saying that I have described it unfairly and that the sources I have linked are biased. So I'm going to treat you, dear readers, as if you know what it is. Clark wrote a post about it last week. My take is different. I'm not going to offer you a timeline or an attempt at a definitive "what happened" or "who is right. " 1. 95% Of Label-Based Analysis Is Bullshit. GamerGate is label-heavy, and labels are lazy, obfuscating bullshit. Labels are supposed to be shorthand for collections of ideas. Crossing the Street - Felicia Day. I had a day off this weekend from shooting Supernatural, and I was walking around downtown Vancouver on Saturday, sampling all the artisan coffee I could get my throat around.
At one point I saw a pair of guys walking towards me wearing gamer shirts. Black short-sleeved, one Halo and one Call of Duty. Now in my life up until this point, that kind of outfit has meant one thing: Potential comrades. Intel pulls ads from Gamasutra, and then apologizes for it. Under pressure from an increasingly fractious gamer movement, Intel pulled its advertising from the video game developer news website Gamasutra.
Those gamers were upset that columnist Leigh Alexander took a pro-feminist stance on gender representation in video games. Then, after the world’s largest chip maker was labeled as “anti-feminist,” Intel issued its own apology for the impression that it created. Friday evening, Intel issued a statement, “We take feedback from customers seriously. For the time being, Intel has decided not to continue with our current ad campaign on the gaming site Gamasutra. However, we recognize that our action inadvertently created a perception that we are somehow taking sides in an increasingly bitter debate in the gaming community.
The company added, “When it comes to our support of equality and women, we want to be very clear: Intel believes men and women should be treated the same.