You remember Skullboy and the Bathtub Philosopher, right? If you don’t, then this video might offer a useful refresher. “If Ayn Rand Shrugs any harder, he’ll fall off his dad’s fucking couch.”
Yes, the white supremacist MRA douchebags who hate Anita so much that they decided to invite Jack Thompson to talk about how Anita is evil and wants to take all your video games away. You might remember me ranting about this tactic before.
#thesarkeesianeffect Jack Thompson compares accepting award from video game industry with accepting award from nazis. Godwin strike one.
— Callum Smith (@betsyinferno) September 14, 2015
Ahh, right. Jack Thompson IS actually a fascist who wants to take away rated M video games, and would probably still be at it if he wasn’t pretty much disbarred everywhere for being a fucking loon. This is the guy that these two idiots decided to hold out as worthy commentators of … well, fucking anything. Really. And he compared the video game industry at large to Nazis. But hey, these guys are pro-creator, right?
And to think, we were almost cost this because of the breakup of the dynamic duo! Fortunately, they managed to patch together their differences after the pleadings of Goobergrape stalwarts. Still, that lovefest apparently didn’t get more than 9 people to show up for the live premiere. Including the director.
I don’t plan on watching this, of course, until it’s free. I watched the various trailers and some of the early cut, and to sit through the whole thing, I may need to be strapped to a table with my eyes pried open a la Clockwork Orange. Fortunately for everyone, stalwart souls like David Futrelle over at WHTM are willing to bite the bullet for me. and what they describe is akin to describing film making more incompetent than that time that monkey stole a GoPro. Dan Olsen (@FoldableHuman) and Callum Smith (@betsyinferno) both have live tweeted it, though, and are worth the yucks.
Despite the film’s obvious attempts to appeal to GamerGate, the final result didn’t seem to impress. The thread over at KiA was only 22 posts long, and mostly mocked it. At this point, it looks very much like more people purchased it to point and laugh at the car wreck than purchased it without irony.
1) I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that Thompson was disbarred for being a “fucking loon”. From the link, there were very specific accusations leveled against him, which made him unscrupulous and unethical (ironic in the context of GamerGate), and an ambitious attention seeker. Not sure if any of that qualifies as lunacy. Lunacy is probably more like hardcore gamers so intent on exposing someone who has negative things to say about their lifestyle that they seek out the opinion of that true friend to gamers, Jack Thompson. I still remember the time when the Gater line of thought was that Sarkeesian was the new Thompson. (I somewhat agreed with this, but since I was not a Gater, I had to apply the reverse process: that because Sarkeesian had some validity, I had to rehabilitate Thompson, which I did by arguing that GamerGate is the very consequence and proof of the validity of what Thompson was warning against in video games.)
I wasn’t aware of the whole “accepting award from Nazis” comparison (talking about Lindbergh specifically if I remember?) until a few days ago. Still, as I told you on Twitter at about the same time, I increasingly see video games as intrinsically fascist because it’s producing an entire generation whose only purpose is to play to crush (as exemplified by GamerGate itself) without any desire to play fair.
When I see drawings of Vivian James, the idealized female Gater (per Katherine Cross’ article at Jacobin), what immediately draws my attention is her eyes. The eyes of a psychopath.
That such a concept as Gamification even exists (i.e. the applicability of games to the real world) makes this state of affairs even more sordid.
2) The only factor which allows us the right to laugh at the amateurishness of The Sarkeesian Effect is that they should have asked so much money to make it to begin with. I’ve seen many bad films online. Most of them were made with nothing, or at least without asking money from people. (As some of these were just derivatives of other people’s IP to begin with, doing so would have been the best way to find yourself in court anyway.)
I’ve always been skeptical of crowdfunding. It still rewards what is popular at the expense of that which might risk unpopularity. (And since there are many people who don’t like Sarkeesian, well…) I’ve even seen cases where people already somewhat famous based on their homemade productions were given so much money that their works turned into an embarrassment, because their budget now far outpaced their talent.
(There’s one specific case I have in mind, that of a French web series — it’s set in an MMORPG, actually — made by a few close friends which had a few seasons under its belt by the time the makers decided to turn to crowdfunding to make a film trilogy. They apparently broke the record for the largest crowdfunding in Europe; they had asked for 35,000 Euros and ended up collecting 600,000. And yeah, Parkinson’s Law and the Peter Principle both kicked in: not only did their ideas expand to cover the money available, but they were provided with the means to pursue a professional approach that only made their own inadequacies glaring.
At some point, they caught some flak because they decided to buy new technical equipment instead of renting, at which point the creator pointed out that it didn’t make sense to rent when they all had day jobs and were only filming on weekends anyway, and that they were still going to make their regular series after the films, meaning that for their long-term fans it wasn’t wasted. But frankly, the fun of watching this series was to see these people with zero budget or nearly close to that still come up with something charmingly amateurish. That pleasure is now gone, smothered by the series’ own fans.)
That the Sarkeesian Effect guys (or at least, independently of one another now) now have the gall to ask people to pay to watch their film just confirms what I’d read somewhere: that the people who have latched on to GamerGate all try to exploit it to get something out of it, whether it’s money or popularity (which nowadays may well mean the same thing). If they made it free to watch — to me, given the not exactly ecstatic word of mouth, such a course of action is necessary — I would probably bother. But not now.
Has anyone gotten around to asking what “Molly from Tattletales” thinks of all of this? I’d read that interview in a hot minute.
“1) I’m not sure it’s accurate to say that Thompson was disbarred for being a “fucking loon”.”
I am.
http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/controversial_fla_lawyer_is_disbarred_jack_thompson_alleges_enemies_list
The referee’s report PDF link is dead, but here’s one that works. This is what the Florida Supreme Court used as the basis for disbarment.
http://www.floridabar.org/DIVADM/ME/MPDisAct.nsf/DISACTVIEW/FB279DDCD6DA1B1D852579E4000565E0/$FILE/231665_2846.PDF
The report is pretty dry, but it’s worth pointing out how most of the pages detailing the procedures have more than half the page devoted to side-notes about what should not be entirely relevant to court procedure, but serve (in my mind) to describe Thompson’s state of mind and character. Example, from page 39-40:
8
What followed the Court’s inquiry regarding clarification as to in which binder the document was located, is twenty-three (23) pages of testimony by Mr. Thompson involving matters such as: why he had not shaved that day for court; referring to the “Twinkie” case about the killing of a Mayor in San Francisco; a lawsuit filed by him in Kentucky in 1999 involving allegations regarding a video game entitled, ‘Doom’; an interview with Matt Lauer from NBC’s Today show; the killings in Columbine; information about a Lt. Colonel David Grossman regarding his book, On Killing; information regarding addressing the American Bar Association and his shared Christian values with David Grossman; former President Bill Clinton’s radio address regarding David Grossman (sometime during the Clinton administration years); an appearance with now deceased CBS reporter Ed Bradley of 60 Minutes; comments by Peggy Noonan-former President Ronald Reagan’s speech writer-and an article she wrote for The Wall Street Journal; comments about the movie starring actors Russell Crowe and Al Pacino, called The Insider; issues regarding products liability and ‘Big Tobacco’; the alleged targeting by Mr. Thompson by Blank Rome; information about Doug Lowenstein described as the president and chief lobbyist for the parent company of the ESRB (Entertainment Software Rating Board)-which Mr. Thompson alleges now “represents gun running cartels.” T 1068, line 7; an article published in Reader’s Digest with actor Tom Hanks on the cover; Mr. Thompson’s meeting with convicted murderer Devin Moore on death row; a contention of a racial component in defendant Moore’s case, “they certainly have it to contend with in Alabama being a slave state,” T 1070, line 15, 1071, line 1; information that allegedly occurred the week of the Final Hearing in this disciplinary matter regarding comments made by a law enforcement officer in Australia and New Zealand equating a spike in teen violence with interactive violent video games; an article which purportedly appeared in Time magazine quoting David Grossman; the connection of violence towards law enforcement officers and interactive video games that simulate the killing of officers; and the numerous civil lawsuits filed across the country in various jurisdictions which lead to the filing of the Strickland case in Fayette, Alabama. T 1055, lines 4-25; 1056-1078, lines 1-10.
The Strickland case, Strickland v. Sony, is the case Thompson tried to bring against Sony on behalf of families of a shooting at a police station, alleging that the shooter, Devin Moore, was persuaded by Grand Theft Auto 3, and blah blah. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strickland_v._Sony