Political Correctness

[Atarifever]

Over the years however I was forced to water-down my reviews to make sure they were inoffensive.
Your thoughts?

Although I agree with your general thesis, I take issue with this statement. You most certainly were never forced to do anything like this by anyone as far as I have seen (feel free to correct me). You chose to tone down in response to what people said to you. No laws were applied to you, or threats made. In fact, multiple times you have received an email or post and then come here to the forums asking if you should tone it down. In fact, I remember pointing out a number of years ago that one such post was impossible to answer as worded without voting on the side of PC. You received a complaint that something in a review offended someone and then asked if it was possible the comment could offend anyone. Well, obviously it could because it had. By definition, the answer had to be "yes." The real question you should have asked was if it was likely to offend most people, or even any more people.

You should feel free to say characters look "gay." I'll roll my eyes at a statement I will think is pretty 8th grade to be coming from an adult, but I'm sure I sound that way sometimes on other points. I probably sound that way about a lot of things. Whatever the case, I don't believe you were ever forced to be PC by anyone.

[scotland]

One of the benefits of running a not-for-profit site is that you don't depend on how many people you have subscribed. Write however you want! If that drives some people away, so be it.

I think you are correct that people are very sensitive about how things are presented nowadays.

I agree with Ptdebate and Rev. What began as a reasonable movement advocating respect and being aware of what you say and do has become so full of righteous fury that we have to filter ourselves at work and in anything public. Instead of helping people grow with open conversations, the PC movement stifles conversation and sows the fear of being labeled as a horrible person. You never win someone over by calling them a horrible person, but you can silence them, or shame them, or belittle them or isolate them quite effectively.

[Vexer6]

I agree that some sites like Polygon go too far, claiming to be "progressive" even though they're really not, they do stupid things like claiming Watch Dogs is "racist" just cause it has black gang members in it(Chicago has a lot of black gang members in real life, so that's just the game being realistic, in fact the gang in the game was based on a real life gang), Arthur Gies is especially bad about this(his Bayonetta 2 review was particularly cringeworthy).

However, I do want to make one thing clear. Freedom of speech goes both ways, it does NOT mean freedom from consequences, so in other words, if someone says something racist, homophobic, misogynist, etc then people who are offended by it have the freedom to call those people out, and some video games like Ride to Hell and Raven's Cry are legitimately offensive(at least to some people) and as such it's appropriate for reviewers to say so in those instances.

So no, I don't believe the internet is censoring free speech, you can say whatever stupid crap you want on Twitter or Facebook(as long as you're not threatening someone's life or anything like that), but your employer has every right to fire you if it reflects badly on the company, so you really should watch what you say, that's just common sense, political correctness has nothing to do with it.

I do love comedians that aren't afraid to tell it like it is, Carlos Mencia is one of my personal favorites, yet IMDB is fulled with negative reviews whining about how "offensive" his show is, he doesn't give a damn about being politically correct and says whatever's on his mind.

Personally i'm glad you changed your reviewing style, as it's more detailed and professional looking then some of your older reviews. I only cringed at a few of your reviews(mainly the ones that made Lindsay Lohan jokes, and that's mainly because they felt very out of place and not funny, that sort of thing belongs on a gossip site like TMZ, not on a video game review site)

P.S., I personally do not find Seinfeld remotely funny, always found his TV show overrated.

Mod Edit: Personal Attack

[scotland]

Since we are talking about this, here is a story from today

Famous Nobel Prize winning scientist gives a talk to a group interested in science. Says something like "women in the lab leads to love and crying'. Woman in group spreads the tale, scientist labeled as horrible person and resigns honorary position. The difference now is that others are saying 'Hold on, someone is being too sensitive and too willing to shame others to censor what they say in fear of dire consequences'.

The background seems to be 'Can people say uncomfortable things, possibly with some level of truth' if its to the detriment of some moral cause?' Remember the big hubbub when the Harvard president at the time, Larry Summers, say that while the average math abilities of men and women were the same, the distributions were not - and what matters in who leads a field is who is the very very best. People, the press, most everyone was outraged at him saying women are less good at math then men, because women are underrepresented in mathematical fields. Yet that isn't what he said - he was talking about a distribution, and it may be true. Uncomfortable yes, fodder to be misused yes, not good for the cause of bringing women into mathematical fields, yes, but maybe still true.

This scientist was talking about his personal experiences with women in the lab, and maybe with humor and hyperbole but probably also a little bit of truth, and the result of being candid or personal or unfiltered was to be shamed for it. What we need instead is "Maybe you have a point, but a larger point is ... ' conversation. Yes, women in labs may lead to love and tears, but a larger point is women in labs may lead to higher functioning teams, or more innovative approaches, or more dogged determination, or creative viewpoints of the data, or whatever. Yet that conversation is shut down by the shaming.

You chose to tone down in response to what people said to you. No laws were applied to you, or threats made.

So this is where I slightly disagree with my friend Atarifever. He says there were no threats made, but do they have to be direct explicit threats? If Dave opens up and says he censors himself in fear of being shamed or labeled, then an explicit threat is not needed. The same way we teach our kids to look both ways before crossing a street, any street, not just ones where cars are zipping by and honking their horns. We want that look both ways to become part of their psyche. Same thing here.

[Rev]

Hey guys, heads up- please avoid personal attacks. A lot of really great things have been mentioned thus far in the thread. It's fine to disagree with someone but directly attacking someone isn't allowed.

[Vexer6]

Edit: Personal Attack / Highly Combustible

Please avoid personal attacks. It's fine to disagree with someone but directly attacking someone and name calling is not fine. Find a way to disagree with reasonable arguments and diplomacy, not invectives.

[Vexer6]

Can we please not use terms like "hard-left whores" and "entitled she-devils"? I really don't see that kind of talk has any place on here.

[ESauce]

I'm going to take a controversial stance here and say that I think it's good, and a normal sign of society becoming more accepting of differences.

50-60 years ago people were probably complaining about how all the PC liberals complained about the n word and racist jokes. Does anyone really want to go back to before the civil rights movement? I doubt it.

Right now homosexuals are having their civil rights movement. 50 years from now our children will be as appalled by all the gay jokes on TV as we are by blackface vaudevillian comedy. I still laugh at gay jokes because that's the culture I grew up in, but times change. You either have to accept that or accept being the grouchy, ignorant old grandpa when you get older.

[Vexer6]

Agreed, I think most changes have been for the better. I'll laugh at gay jokes too if they're actually funny.

I certainly don't believe people should be calling women "entitled" for daring to complain about things in the gaming industry that may be offensive to some, and I definitely think we should not be using asinine terms like "reverse racism"(which is total BS BTW).

Also I don't see how not developing a game automatically means you have no right at all to complain about certain things you find offensive in games, and there are legitimately offensive games out there like Raven's Cry and Ride to Hell(mainly for how they treat women).

[Hardcore Sadism]

You either have to accept that or accept being the grouchy, ignorant old grandpa when you get older.

It's not that no one is accepting it, it's just we're tired of hearing people try and be the Internet/Media Ingenuity Superhero over menial fiction. There's accepting differences, then there's being patronizing, and then you have people justifying wrong actions because they belong to 'X' Group. Pulling a card doesn't change the world for the better. In fact that's always our problem when moving forward with human interaction.