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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 13th, 2023

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  • The original 20 minute video in the article makes it clear he’s talking about job roles, and mentions writers a few times (admittedly not close enough to draw an 100% certain link). I don’t think it’s enough to discredit this just based on the assumption that he’s talking about actors or that there isn’t enough context. Obviously it’s vague enough that we can’t draw any solid conclusions, so I agree with you there.

    The main reason I think this is bullshit is that the guy’s testimony isn’t credible for two main reasons:

    • The guy was recently passed up for promotion, and blames it on being white and male
    • The interviewer is posing as a romantically interested date and asking plenty of leading questions, the guy is at least partially telling her what she wants to hear

    These two points, regardless of how true his story is, give him an ulterior motive for embellishing the story and exaggerating facts, which ultimately means we can’t trust this.

    I’d like to see a full investigation, as with any accusation of discrimination. But we all know that when nothing turns up, it wouldn’t shut the right wingers up




  • Lemmy in particular seems to have a high percentage of reasonable people. As in people who can be reasoned with, but might just be stuck in a ideological rabbit hole. I’ve found that by dropping hostility and acknowledging common ground I can quickly turn an argument into a productive discussion, where both sides learn something. This happens with people who are on the left or right of myself. So it’d be shame to overly ban one side and lose that.

    It equally must suck for the mods, because I’ve seen some very very vitriolic comments here, again, on both sides. Removing these comments helps cool people’s heads, but unequal enforcement may be an issue. I’m also generally against censorship, I just absolutely hate the platform when some stupid toxic divisive topic/meme gets posted everywhere for like a month. I really don’t know where I stand on removing comments or banning people, seems like a fine line to walk


  • Thank you for the calmer reply, I’ve upvoted you, and appreciate your response. I’m 100% with you on improving access to education, and the issues women and minorities face in university courses. My end goal is the same as yours, I want to see equality in the workplace and elsewhere, I’m just trying to address what I think are legitimate concerns that the previous commentator raised.

    I get that senior hiring is a thing, the problem is that as you’ve mentioned, historical discrimination has made it very difficult for women and minorities to get the appropriate credentials and skills required to adequately perform in senior roles. Not saying they’re incapable, of course not, just that this is an issue we’re still suffering from.

    My worry is that this historical discrimination will force companies to over hire women and minorities in starting roles, and be unable to hire women in senior roles, if we pursue short term demographic equality. This leaves young men, particularly poor young men, at a disadvantage, and does nothing to fix the historical oppression women have suffered from.

    I chose law in particular, because it’s fairly even in graduates today, even in women’s favour, and there’s way more graduates than jobs, which means that if we wanted immediate demographic equality the industry as a whole could experience the same issue as the hypothetical company above, but obviously not as dramatic. Which is why I take issue with the short term goal being equal demographics. The short term goal should be equal hiring, with the long term goal being equal demographics as the older generations filter out.

    In many metro areas young women already earn more than young men.

    It’s not fair that women and minorities have been held back, but I’m worried that going too hard too fast is going to cause more long term problems


  • Firstly, I’m a different person. I’m just interested on what your solution is. No need to be so hostile. I’ve likely just misunderstood you.

    My critique is specifically on the bit I quoted. You need to divide it by generation. The hiring, especially for starting roles, is heavily biased towards the young. These people are just coming out of college.

    Giving your example of 50% women in the population, and a law firm is 100 people, 90 of which are men. That firm now needs to hire 90 women and 10 men to reach that 50% goal. But now you’ve also influxed a tonne of women into that workforce, meaning now you’ll need to hire disproportionately more men next generation after the original 90 men have retired. It creates a cycle of discrimination. Obviously that’s oversimplified, and there’s additional factors you could add to the example e.g. staff turnover.

    I don’t disagree with setting hiring goals 50/50 men/women if that’s what your advocating for? It doesn’t immediately change workplace demographics, but it should even out over time. And there are still issues stemming from the amount of male vs female degree holders in certain subjects that are heavily gender biased, like engineering, vetinary practice, and IT.

    I’m also totally for raising funding for public services and education to ensure everyone gets the best start on life they can. No disagreement there. It’d be ideal if we could encourage young men/women to more evenly participate in different subjects.

    Again I’m sorry if I misunderstood your point, it wasn’t clear to me


  • when the imbalance is so bad, there is a point where, on a large sale, you need to hire a higher number of women / Black people / handicapped people to catch up, because you’ve shut them down the whole time; and that basically makes it your own fault if you think they’re less competent than educated competent men, because they didn’t get the opportunity, because they didn’t get the training, because… they didn’t get the opportunity.

    Aren’t you also talking about diversity hires? I’m assuming you think there’s an imbalance that needs fixing, and your way of fixing it seems to be to hire minorities at a much greater proportion than how they’re represented in the population? Shouldn’t your solution be more class based?




  • I’m just saying that accepting your definition of anxiety being tied to apprehension, anxiety about the climate is still valid.

    I would say your definition is correct, but your application is extremely limited. The anxiety is about things getting worse, it’s a vague nebulous feeling that can apply 1ms in the future or several decades. Or even about finding out past information in the future (the unknown). Or just not knowing what the future holds.

    So yes, being super pedantic, you can’t really be anxious about the literal state of the literal climate literally right now, but it’s instead about the possible future outcomes and events. But it’s very commonly understood that when someone says they’re anxious about climate change, they don’t mean it in the super pedantic literal way




  • Please could you provide some examples? I’ve legitimately never seen someone upset at the devs for not literally being fascists.

    If I have to go out of my way to find this, I’m assuming it falls under the “loud” minority group. I’m sure these people exist, but it’d surprise me if they made up a significant amount of the over 12 million players.

    Edit: Had a further look, there seems to be more people complaining about people taking it literally than people actually taking it literally. I did find like 3 Reddit posts, but all had 0 upvotes and like 30 comments telling them they’re wrong and stupid


  • It’s more that when the writing is bad something is perceived as “political”, as the insert of whatever political messaging is being used comes out of nowhere and smacks the player like a cudgel. That’s what most gamers have a problem with, obviously there’s a loud minority that rage about stupid shit like Jesse Faden being too masculine. But that’s not what most people are talking about.

    Games need to tackle these issues head on and fully integrate them into the world, not just tack on preachy dialog that doesn’t make sense within the wider game world.

    FF16 is blatantly about slavery and no one really complained, it’s not exactly peak fiction, but they at least had everything contained within the world. FF7 is the same but with fossil fuels and much better writing.

    New Vegas is the best example, it’s simply written well and gives the player agency.

    Death Stranding did a great job of both integrating it’s themes directly into the world, and also tackling them head on without any remorse.

    Helldivers is so ludicrously full on and absolutely dripping with it’s pro fascist ideology that everyone knows what they’re getting into from the intro video, and then the game starts adding texture and “are we the baddies” energy straight away.

    Fucking Disco Elysium is near universally praised by the wider gaming audience, and I don’t even think I need to explain how that one is political.

    It’s the same reason why most ideologically driven media is cringe as fuck. Christian media being a prime example, it’s contrived slop that doesn’t make sense within its own story. Like God’s Not Dead and it’s illogical legal system built on feels and Shapiro logic.

    Who remembers the weird pro-life Doctor Who episode? That was bizarre and out of place. The characters stopped acting like themselves for the sake of whatever message it wanted to get across. It just felt really out of place.

    The Last of Us Part 2, to label the most controversial example, had periods of good and bad writing, but focusing in on the “violence bad” part of it’s messaging, it completely missed the mark. Giving the characters names that they shout was just hilarious, and having Ellie repeatedly kill dogs whilst Abbie pets them was just so hamfisted. Then making the gameplay violent and fun which just divorced it further.

    TLDR: Gamers People love politics in video games media, they hate hamfisted preaching in video games media. Especially when it doesn’t make sense in the crafted world



  • This is however, a practice that results from the government being effectively corporate controlled. Which is the end result of allowing your free markets to run wild and allowing corporations to acquire that much power, money, and influence.

    A pure capitalist system actively selects for this kind of bullshit. The most ruthless and unethical companies end up winning in the end. And those same companies are buying our politicians.

    People blame capitalism when the system clearly favours the rich over the poor to such a dystopian extent that a man is allowed to be held hostage by a corporation





  • I don’t think classifying cisgender as a slur is defendable, especially on its own.

    Not saying it is a slur, but I’ve seen it used like a slur before, mostly coupled with “white” and “men”/“women”. But I’m fairly sure Elon himself is against censoring language for that reason when it comes to things that don’t personally offend him. It just seems dumb and hypocritical to me