Journal of Other Forum Analysis (Volume II, Issue 1)

[benji]

Here's some of Echos ongoing issues with gaming in chronological order:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/do-you-feel-like-you%E2%80%99re-nearly-done-with-the-gaming-community.100553/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/how-to-better-clarify-what-we-say-in-gaming-forums.118984/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/is-an-online-multiplayer-game-that-doesnt-focus-on-competitive-angle-possible.126815/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/are-tier-lists-taken-too-seriously-and-misunderstood.127552/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/it-feels-like-its-getting-harder-to-discuss-thing-calmly-in-the-gaming-community.135450/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/is-the-gaming-community-becoming-out-of-touch-overall-conoravirus-related.204726/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/does-the-gaming-fandom-have-a-scapegoat-creator-problem.495102/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/i-just-cant-play-online-games-anymore.484552/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/i-think-ive-lost-my-passion-for-gaming.607308/
https://www.resetera.com/threads/has-anyone-else-felt-as-theyve-gotten-older-that-they-have-less-tolerance-for-repetition-and-busy-work-in-video-games.1086597/

Unrelated:
https://www.resetera.com/threads/is-jezebel-still-considered-a-feminist-website.121390/

[benji]

Never fully but I did feel embarrassed liking Pokémon, fantasy, cartoons like SpongeBob and Transformers and anime like Evangelion and being shunned for liking stuff like palaeontology, old movies, history etc and not "Only caring about tits and football!" like I was told multiple times was expected of me (it made so much sense when I realized I wasn't a man;

[benji]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-typical-night-at-the-private-nintendo-restaurant.754987/

[Hap Shaughnessy]

One can reject toxic masculinity and not care about gender stereotypes without having to be trans.

[garamonde]

Benji, please do not uncover more from that freak, I can't handle it.

[Propagandhim]

Guys, this democracy shit isn't working cuz I'm not getting exactly what I want at all times.  And this free speech thing also sucks cuz other people are saying things I don't want them to.  And innocent until proven guilty is getting out of hand because I know they're guilty.  We gotta do something about this fascism shit.

[Propagandhim]

I did not spend 7 years in art school to end up in a fascist country where people pick and choose what dictator they want to be freely elected by majority vote

[Propagandhim]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-typical-night-at-the-private-nintendo-restaurant.754987/

This is actually fucking crazy

[Hap Shaughnessy]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/us-politics-ot-4-5-intermission-keys-more-like-uhhmmm-i-got-nothing-today.962805/page-1665#post-134937846

Remember all those fucking people saying they won't vote for Biden (or Harris) because they give arms to Israel - idiotically assuming trump would somehow be better?
Well...

Trump makes 2,000-pound bombs available to Israel, undoing Biden pause


I swear, why are people so fucking stupid when it comes to trump - however bad you think someone on the Left might be, trump will always, ALWAYS be worse.
But these fuckers just refuse to see this.

It was never about Gaza, it's about smug self-righteousness and they will move onto whatever subject makes them feel smugly self-righteous next instead of reflecting on their previous smug self-righteousness.

[killamajig]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/a-typical-night-at-the-private-nintendo-restaurant.754987/

This is actually fucking crazy

When I first saw that thread I thought this guy's got some turbo autism. 

What is it with the way some of these guys talk? When they type shit out, it's almost like they're talking in stage direction.

[benita]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/trump-expected-to-sign-executive-orders-to-reshape-the-military-including-banning-transgender-troops.1093335/#post-134957751

If only everybody voted like Black women, imagine how much better off we'd all be.

Imagine if all black women voted.

[benji]

Benji, please do not uncover more from that freak, I can't handle it.

They have a DeviantArt but I can't find a way to the username from the images they've posted.

I tried to see if they exist elsewhere on the internet from a really specific personal desire for a Pokemon game that they've posted like thirty times on ResetERA.com. They want a Pokemon game set on the moons of Jupiter. But that didn't turn up anything but their posting this over and over in any thread on there about Pokemon games people want to see.

Check out the 101 Pokemon they want in this game: https://www.resetera.com/threads/do-you-need-the-pokemon-franchise-to-make-the-dream-open-world-exploration-heavy-living-world-pokemon-dream-game.145683/page-2#post-25249240

[Propagandhim]

If only everybody voted like Black women, imagine how much better off we'd all be.

I'd have a lot of money scamming furries to pay for snacks for my all-day Lord of the Rings Trilogy marathon session on election day.

[EaldNarche]

At this point I'd feel more comfortable around buffalo bill than echoes. At least bill is to the point about his perversions. :v

[benji]

When I first saw that thread I thought this guy's got some turbo autism. 

What is it with the way some of these guys talk? When they type shit out, it's almost like they're talking in stage direction.

Aside from the weird syntax, I noticed that both Lady Dimitrescu/T002 Tyrant and TheEchosOfTheCyborg have posted a lot of threads asking weird questions like "what will happen if AI creates dinosaurs?" and "which fighting game characters do you want to be your roommates in a sitcom?"

Then they often never respond to the thread or anyone else's answers unless people call the thread or question stupid. They especially don't take part in any discussion that happens like in that gaming romance thread I linked from 2020. They're far from the only poster I've noticed doing this across GAF/ERA over the years. Those two COMPLETELY SEPARATE POSTERS from Baltimore do a similar thing with news stories, so does that one Panda guy I'm not remembering the entire username of at the moment, etc.

It's like they're trying to study human interaction by throwing out topics and observing the results then moving onto the next one. But usually the topics are a narrow range of their own personal interests.

For some reason it reminds me of this:


"WLW Pokemon that should be in Smash Bros... talk among yourselves"

[Potato]

https://www.resetera.com/threads/the-guardian-i-was-jailed-for-four-years-for-a-non-violent-climate-protest-%E2%80%93-this-is-my-prison-diary-just-stop-oil-activist.1092411/#post-134912565

User Banned (1 Week): Concern Trolling over a Series of Posts

People might have missed doctor appointments, urgent surgeries, job interviews, etc. It is violence. If I go to your place and block your doors so you can't exit your house for hours, am I being non-violent?

I saw lots of people angry at that guy in that thread so not surprised they mass reported him.

What do they think about these recent Trump pardons?

President Donald Trump announced Thursday he would pardon anti-abortion activists convicted of blockading abortion clinic entrances.

Trump called it “a great honor to sign this.”

“They should not have been prosecuted,” he said as he signed pardons for “peaceful pro-life protesters.”

The people pardoned were involved in the October 2020 invasion and blockade of a Washington clinic.

Lauren Handy was sentenced to nearly five years in prison for leading the blockade by directing blockaders to link themselves together with locks and chains to block the clinic’s doors. A nurse sprained her ankle when one person pushed her while entering the clinic, and a woman was accosted by another blockader while having labor pains, prosecutors said. Police found five fetuses in Handy’s home after she was indicted.

Trump pardoned Handy and her nine co-defendants: Jonathan Darnel of Virginia; Jay Smith, John Hinshaw and William Goodman, all of New York; Joan Bell of New Jersey; Paulette Harlow and Jean Marshall, both of Massachusetts; Heather Idoni of Michigan; and Herb Geraghty of Pennsylvania.
...
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley, among Trump’s most loyal supporters, called the prosecution of anti-abortion protesters “a grotesque assault on the principles of this country” and urged Trump to pardon them while reading the stories of such anti-abortion protesters on the Senate floor Thursday. He highlighted Eva Edl, who was involved in a 2021 Tennessee clinic blockade and whose story has garnered attention from the largest national anti-abortion groups.

Hawley said he “had a great conversation” Thursday morning with Trump about the protesters.

Congress enacted the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act in response to an increase in violence against abortion providers and their patients, with the aim of allowing people to safely access such services. It also protects First Amendment religious rights. Property damage can be prosecuted under the statute.

Several of the people prosecuted under the law were involved in a 2021 blockade of a Washington, D.C., reproductive health care clinic.

Advocates for clemency argue that the Biden administration used the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act to prosecute anti-abortion-rights protesters unjustly. Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, re-introduced legislation this week to repeal the measure.
...
By Trump’s second day in office, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., had issued a public appeal for clemency for the defendants, who he claimed were “unjustly targeted & jailed by the Biden Administration” for their anti-abortion-rights beliefs, telling Trump on social media that “they deserve to be free.”

Hold up. You can't just mention that in your article and not expand on it as if it is something completely normal for an anti-abortion activist to have 5 FUCKING FETUSES in their home!!!!

[Potato]

STRIKE ONE DOWN AND ANOTHER WILL APPEAR

https://www.resetera.com/threads/feeling-more-comfortable-about-considering-myself-a-lesbian.1093260/

ATTENTION!!!! GIVE SOME TO ME!!!!!!

[Potato]

Now to end this OP; Capcom? Please reveal Cammy as a Lesbian, make me and so many fans happy! It's been something we've been wanting since the 90s and lets be honest you've been hinting at!

In the 90s you were a guy. That was boy's locker room talk. Now it's wholesome wlw talk.

Get fucked you weirdo creeps.

[Potato]

And there it is

As per usual for a Lady Dimitrescu thread's lifecycle;

Start OP with unbelievable smug nonsense -> feed into it further here-and-there with selective replying to certain posters -> gets too big-headed and slips up -> feels persecuted and begins to attacks posters - > posters start pushing back


By my calculations, we're about 4-6 hours away from a thread lock, at most.

To note, the thread was locked exactly 6 hours after me posting this message 

[benji]

Hold up. You can't just mention that in your article and not expand on it as if it is something completely normal for an anti-abortion activist to have 5 FUCKING FETUSES in their home!!!!

Most likely taken from medical waste after abortions. A lot of anti-abortion groups use images of them, or in this case I guess the actual things, to show the cruelty of it.

They buried 110 and kept 5 supposedly: https://www.wusa9.com/article/news/local/dc/anti-abortion-activists-claim-they-took-115-fetuses-from-outside-a-dc-clinic-lauren-handy-progressive-anti-abortion-uprsing-surgi-clinic/65-bd49467d-939c-476b-b3c1-bf6120ec453e

Amusingly, this is a left-wing anti-abortion group:

Lauren is a queer Catholic, anarcho-mutualist, prison abolitionist, and is the Director of Activism for the Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising. In 2017, she founded Mercy Missions, a mutual aid organization dedicated to helping families and moms in crisis pregnancies and providing survival aid for houseless people. She has a long history of working with various activist organizations across the country and has served as a leader in the Red Rose Rescue movement since its inception. Her anti-abortion work has taken her to over 100 abortion businesses across 32 states and she has helped over 800 families choose life through her LGBTQ+ inclusive sidewalk advocacy efforts. Through her nonviolent direct action efforts across multiple human rights movements, Lauren has been arrested more than 30 times and served time in jail, living out her convictions for serving pregnant people behind bars. Her passions also include housing justice, harm reduction outreach, and studying Reproductive Justice scholars. Her work has been covered in every major media outlet including the New York Times, Washington Post,  The Cut, ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, Fox News, Epoch Times, VICE News, Rolling Stone and World Magazine. She lives in Washington D.C. where she is on a mission to pet every cat in the city.

PAAU takes a position against capitalism. While structural economic solutions outside of capitalism vary among members, we believe that dismantling capitalism, alongside the anti-abortion view, will lead to far greater outcomes. Anti-Abortion Progressives approach abortion this way because we acknowledge that it is a systemic issue largely caused by existing inequality.

Capitalism creates an imbalance of power between classes and resource distribution. This imbalance creates communities who are vulnerable to exploitation by the Abortion Industrial Complex.

For that reason, we look to solutions outside of the capitalist system to generate a better life for all people, especially those who are economically underprivileged.

While gender-based discrimination is the central concern of feminist movements, the introduction of intersectional feminism into the mainstream movement necessarily focuses on the interconnected struggles of all oppressed peoples. Historically, feminist movements refused to center those who face forms of oppression outside of the standard struggles of white, cis-het, middle class, American women.

Today’s Intersectional Feminism explores how people experience gender-based oppression based on their intersecting identities like race, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, etc.. PAAU adopts an intersectional feminist framework, because of its focus on the collective liberation of girls, women, and gender non-conforming people  as well as its  consciousness of euro-colonial structures including capitalism, ableism and white supremacy to name a few, that particularly contribute and further the demand for abortion.

Critical feminist frameworks, also known as critical feminist theories, encapsulate the idea that mainstream feminist movements and ideas have intrinsically excluded historically-marginalized groups. These frameworks accommodate for and advance the work of mainstream feminism, the conventional, Western-centered variant.

At PAAU, our organizers have come to their feminist principles both through their individual lived experiences and through the study of a range of different critical feminist frameworks. Below we have provided an introduction to several frameworks that have informed and inspired some of us including transnational, Black, Marxist, abolitionist, Indigenous, anarchist, and queer feminism.

[Besticus Maximus]

Come for the historical materialism, stay for the foetuses 

[Mask]

Always a hallmark with these people when they introduce themselves with all the titles "I am a blah blah leaning wah wah type asexual gomftrotter". You couldn't post bigger desperation for validation if you tried.

[Potato]

2020 thread: https://www.resetera.com/threads/it-feels-sometimes-like-the-gaming-community-is-too-juvenile-to-discuss-sex-romance-content-warning.351637/

NOTE: DO NOT POST EXPLICIT SEXUAL VIDEOS OR IMAGES, while this thread discusses sex, it's not done in a way to raunchy or explicit.

I don't really know how to start this thread other then over the years, I've kind of given up discussing these topics. I'm fully aware this isn't a gaming exclusive issue, Star Wars and Star Trek fandoms in my experience have a long history of handling these issues well either. But I find it infuriating with gaming given that more and more games are having serious discussions about sex and romance, especially when it involves non-cis and straight people yet we as a community still seem like were incapable of handling and discussing those topic in a mature and adult fashion.

Let's get the obvious out of the way, a lot of people in the gaming community, when sex and romance is discussed that doesn't appeal to straight men getting angry and nasty. These gamers not only like the idea of sex or loving couples or swings other then ones that appeal to them is bad, but ANY discussion riles them up to know end at best, we sadly know to well how they react many times... Screw those people and doubly screw those who harass and threat fans, devs, women and LGBTQ+ people.

But besides the obvious, it just feels to me a lot of the time that when trying to discuss the topic of sex or romance or anything sexual is rather difficult, especially if you're trying to be deep, serious and discuss in a mature fashion. Most of the time it degrades into juvenile and shallow jokes and puns about sex or how it arouses them or angry demands about having to appeal to their fantasies and petty fighting.

One aspect that's always bothered me when it comes to fandom is the discussion of romantic/sex partners in games like Bioware games, Bethesda games etc. As the avatar probably gives away, I'm a bi woman, but I am not a fan of the "All Bi" thing some games do nor do I like it when non-bi people push for that or declare it's the only "correct" way of doing sex and romance in games. For me, so many games and people who argue for this treat bisexuality as nothing more as an easy game mechanic, a convenience for their fantasies to be allowed to have a sex with anyone regardless of those characters feelings, preferences, history etc. That doesn't feel like good representation to me, but fetishization of us. We Bi people are more then that. We won't bang you just because you ask or want us to and games really should treat bisexuality more seriously, it ignores that just because many bi people are attracted to men and women, doesn't mean we want to date men or women or NB people or even attracted to men at all but are to women and NB people. Or you know, a bi people may simply not be interested in you.

That's not even getting to the fact that these discussion also imply gay and lesbian people are "bad" or an "Inconvenience" that shouldn't be in games. I've seen this against games like Mass Effect 3 and DA Inquisition for including gay and lesbian companions, I remember their was this Marvel app game years back that promised to add a dating sim aspect to it but had included gay characters in the game like Northstar and saw fans say they shouldn't be in the game because they'd "ruin" the dating or should be made bi.

Stuff like the above and other stuff like shipping wars, discussion of sexualization in gaming (which before I go any further, I want to say that those who run Resetera's 'Why women criticise sexualised character designs' thread a great and made one of the few places in gaming where it feels discussion of sex and sexualization has been done in a mature and constructive manner) etc, gaming is simply so much of the time is simply incample of discussing sex and romance in any meaningful without it getting nasty, juvenile or toxic.

Game Journalism feels like on the whole incapable discussing romance or sex in a meaningful way as well. Most of what I mentioned before applies to many journalists and overall, whenever I've seen mainstream gaming sights tackle these topic, they often end up feeling shallow or just juvenile. Around the height Witcher 3's popularity was a big example of this where sites like Kotaku just kept posting rather shallow articles about the sex in that game, like they were a 14 year old giggling because of the pictures they saw in the secondary school biology class. I can't help but eye roll when I see game sites peddling stuff like that because it feels like it's just perpetuates the shallowness and in someway perpetuates some more sexists aspects of gaming, intentionally or not.

And quite bluntly, after what we've heard over the years about certain game companies behind the scenes, companies like Oblivion, Riot, Rockstar and ESPECIALLY Ubisoft for protecting sexual predators and abusers, I really do not feel comfortable seeing these companies do sex scenes or doing stuff explicit knowing some of the messed up shit that nearly got into Ubisoft games or that creeps were behind that content to begin with.

I'm not mentally ill enough to read that shit.

[StandingOvation]

Benji, please do not uncover more from that freak, I can't handle it.

They have a DeviantArt but I can't find a way to the username from the images they've posted.

I tried to see if they exist elsewhere on the internet from a really specific personal desire for a Pokemon game that they've posted like thirty times on ResetERA.com. They want a Pokemon game set on the moons of Jupiter. But that didn't turn up anything but their posting this over and over in any thread on there about Pokemon games people want to see.

Check out the 101 Pokemon they want in this game: https://www.resetera.com/threads/do-you-need-the-pokemon-franchise-to-make-the-dream-open-world-exploration-heavy-living-world-pokemon-dream-game.145683/page-2#post-25249240

You're slacking mate.

https://www.deviantart.com/gretnablue/art/Pokemon-Fan-Roster-Jupiter-816036184
https://www.reddit.com/user/Gretnablue/
https://www.youtube.com/@Gretnablue
https://web.archive.org/web/20191106103229/https://observationdeck.kinja.com/the-top-11-femme-fatales-in-fiction-1785862098
https://web.archive.org/web/20191106144018/https://observationdeck.kinja.com/can-we-stop-using-autism-as-an-insult-please-1659275594

[Potato]

Never fully but I did feel embarrassed liking Pokémon, fantasy, cartoons like SpongeBob and Transformers and anime like Evangelion and being shunned for liking stuff like palaeontology, old movies, history etc and not "Only caring about tits and football!" like I was told multiple times was expected of me (it made so much sense when I realized I wasn't a man;

I like all those things in bold. None of them are mutually exclusive. 

Being a well-adjusted adult means understanding that anyone who gives a shit about what you like spending your spare time on is neither well-adjusted nor an adult.

[benji]

[Hap Shaughnessy]

Considering the number of boys that go through a phase of loving dinosaurs, I have a hard time believing Echos caught too much shit for liking paleontology.

[benji]

https://web.archive.org/web/20141101091652/http://observationdeck.io9.com/would-you-watch-a-disney-movie-with-a-princess-with-a-m-1652037800

[DavidCroquet]

Never fully but I did feel embarrassed liking Pokémon, fantasy, cartoons like SpongeBob and Transformers and anime like Evangelion and being shunned for liking stuff like palaeontology, old movies, history etc and not "Only caring about tits and football!" like I was told multiple times was expected of me (it made so much sense when I realized I wasn't a man;

more famously feminine domains here: transformers, paleontology, and evangelion.

[benji]

Dude used to write about autism in the same way he now writes about lesbians.