Kickstarter "Tropes vs Women in Videogames"

[pepharytheworm]

Can we stop saying mentally-ill/sick to describe the behaviors of these trolls? Mental illness has nothing to do with their negative behaviors. Nor are people with mental disorders prone to such behaviors.

Then you need to come up with a proper descriptor for them that isn't just "troll". You can't just take away every good word for describing assholes just because it so happens that some non-asshole people can medically be described with it.

No, I don't have to because there are plenty of descriptor words out there. I doubt mental illness is all you can come up with nor is it "every good word" either.

[MrPopo]

You can't PC away all the good sounding pejoratives.

[marurun]

I kinda agree that calling them mentally ill really isn't appropriate. I'm pretty sure most of those harassers are mostly functional in their real world lives until given The Internet into which to spew bile with little or no consequence to themselves.

[ZeroAX]

You know what, if you are having problems with even the words other people use, maybe you should only debate with walls.

If you are having such difficulty to distinct between my use of the word talking about specific violent mental sicknesses, and the entire spectrum of mental sicknesses, which don't involve violence, then it's your problem. I'm not going to add a disclaimer to every word I say, learn to read the context.

[pepharytheworm]

You know what, if you are having problems with even the words other people use, maybe you should only debate with walls.

If you are having such difficulty to distinct between my use of the word talking about specific violent mental sicknesses, and the entire spectrum of mental sicknesses, which don't involve violence, then it's your problem. I'm not going to add a disclaimer to every word I say, learn to read the context.

Claiming those who act like these mysogynist are a sign of a mental illness and not a sign of learned behaviors is sweeping a problem under the rug. Most of these people would be considered normal in their personal lifes. Do you truly believe all the people who tweeted her those disgusting remarks are "clearly mentally sick"? I often hear similiar remarks said casually in real conversations not on the internet. As long as it's considered acceptable behavior to say remarks like "you throw like a girl" it's hard to claim mental sickness is to blame. But I wasn't speaking to just you, plenty others have said similar remarks.

[dsheinem]

Then you need to come up with a proper descriptor for them that isn't just "troll".

asshats

asshats

[ZeroAX]

Claiming those who act like these mysogynist are a sign of a mental illness and not a sign of learned behaviors is sweeping a problem under the rug. Most of these people would be considered normal in their personal lifes. Do you truly believe all the people who tweeted her those disgusting remarks are "clearly mentally sick"? I often hear similiar remarks said casually in real conversations not on the internet. As long as it's considered acceptable behavior to say remarks like "you throw like a girl" it's hard to claim mental sickness is to blame. But I wasn't speaking to just you, plenty others have said similar remarks.

I'm sorry but did you read those tweets? I don't accept for a moment that someone who makes death threats, even as a joke, is in anyway normal. He's fucked up. Of course it's a different type of "sickness" compared to the one that other people have, but I still think they are just fucked up in their head.

Do you seriously think the people who make those tweets really hate her? I believe they just hate society. They just hate people. As I said if they weren't targeting her, they'd be targeting others, or following violence based idiologies, or scratch that, their misogyny IS a violence based idiology.

Or in a netshell: they are fucked up, they are sick. I just believe that unfortunately there is no cure. If a 1st world education, and a lawful system with repercussions for such behavior couldn't "cure them", nothing will.


again I hate stating the obvious, and I hate you a bit for forcing me to do this: but obviously THIS form of "mental sickness" doesn't have anything to do with the people you consider to have true mental sickness, I just repeat that someone normal can NOT be behaving this way. And no I won't say asshat, cause we can all be asshats at some point in our lives, and yet even at my worst days I never would say such horrible things to someone, and I would NEVER make death threats. To reach that point there must be something wrong with you, even if you don't show it to society offline.

[dsheinem]

And no I won't say asshat

you just did!

[ZeroAX]

And no I won't say asshat

you just did!

[nullPointer]

If we're trying to paint a specific picture of someone who might spew hate filled vitriol towards Anita Sarkeesian, I'm surprised no one has brought up the article on Mateus Prado Sousa. Among other things I think it helps to show why American law enforcement (like the FBI) and the social media networks on which the abuse occurs are powerless to stop abuse and death threats like this. 1) This dude lives in Brazil and 2) he can create accounts a lot faster than they can be deleted. I don't know if this particular person is mentally ill or not but ... yeesh ... he certainly seems to have some unhealthy fixations. I think some folks like Sousa have made a hobby out of this form of directed abuse. I mean, consider your forum post count for a single day. Now pretend instead of writing thoughtfully worded responses, all of those posts were something to the effect of:

@femfreq I WAANT TO FUCKING STAB YOUR STUPID FUCKING UGLY SHAPED FACE YOU FEMINIST CUNT, KILL YOURSELF, NO ONE WILL CARE BITCH.

Uh ... yeah something's not right about that. This isn't about forming a response to her message regardless of what that might be. It's about being despicable and mean.

Anyone who's ever been bullied knows that, "just ignore it and it will go away" isn't an effective strategy. So what would I do if I received hundreds of posts like the one above every week, and the systems put in place to prevent such things were powerless to stop it? You're darned right I would shine the spotlight on these offenders, and I wouldn't be nearly as gracious about it as Sarkeesian.