Re-ban political discussion

[Moonlight Knight]

Political discussion has made the Steam boards for a lot of videogames a battleground and subjected a lot of forums to "clown farming" behavior where predatory users will intentionally post inflammatory political takes about whatever game the forum is based on in order to get points from being awarded Jesters. It's done nothing positive for the health of the boards.

[Moonlight Knight]

As was pointed out earlier, people misunderstand what Freedom of Speech even means. And if you're a Free Speech Absolutist? That's fine, but you then have to contend with the fact that certain forms of speech will have a dampening effect by their nature on other forms of speech, and also if you just allow people to literally say whatever they want at any given time, certain places, like forums, would become completely useless.

We have rules for a reason. I'm not exactly a Statist over here, but some form of structure is necessary for some things to even have meaning.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by Crashed:

Originally posted by Wanderer:

1. It's their game

2. Creative decision and/or artistic freedom

3. Nonsense

4. Unrelated to what's asked

It used to be fun to read some comments before, like some troll/baits but the flame wars and upping the conversation nowadays to conspiracy and death threats is not.

You can have the Freedom of Speech as much as you want, I nowadays I enforce the block as soon as I read nonsense such as DEI (used for the wrong reasons), ESG (used for the wrong reasons), SBI and or Woke stances...

I have my freedom to not listen to drivel

They talk freedom of speech yet because the politics rule got trashed they try to censor certain groups they hate.

People are tired of the political spam in general.

Trying to turn this into an 'us vs them' is asinine.

[Kapitein Gnapmans]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

Originally posted by loerepoot:

The reason doesn't even matter. Maybe I am actually a racist and I don't want black people in my game. So I ask: "Does this game have black people?" Perfectly valid question for information about a product. Just say yes, or no, or a few. I'm not asking for a lecture.

It helps to read the room. Asking such a question and expecting an even handed response in the current culture would be akin to expecting a movie about the Crusades to be made treating the Templars with respect. You do not operate in a vacuum after all. Plus such a question would be rather perpendicular to the main cultural political concerns of which OP would prefer to avoid being discussed. Basically it is a useless question that nobody will ever give useful answers to.

The room is the Steam hub and it is appropriate to ask it there. There might be a lot of, let's say "unhelpful" people in the room, but I'm not going to let them dictate my behaviour. Often there will be a few normal responses in between all of the REEEEing.

[Moonlight Knight]

So, on the off chance someone reading takes God of War seriously, I want to clarify two points:

A) Even slightly paying attention should make it clear I never said anything about Fallout New Vegas' boards. My comment about Fallout New Vegas being my favorite game was very clearly in reference to Zio initially misunderstanding me and thinking I wanted politics out of forums and video games. I said as much in my initial comment, that I don't actually care if politics exist in a videogame. The reason it's clear that God of War is lying and not just misreading is that he already had this explained to him and still tried to insist otherwise.

B) Gone Home and Tell Me Why, being very cinematic games with little in the way of what traditional gamers view as gameplay, are bad examples to use to "prove" the point that they're trying to prove. If you could find a more action-heavy game that had "WOKE" influences that 1) was produced recently enough for the Culture War to be a thing, and 2) didn't get hate brigading, you'd have a better point.

[Zio]

Originally posted by Moonlight Knight:

*cut for readability*

Just to clarify something myself, I didn't misunderstand that, BUT I misunderstood your motivation, at first you sounded like a woke fearmonger to me and I was sorely mistaken.

A good example to make your latter point is ZAU. Because these particular people like pretending it's fine if games have always had it, but you see them gloating about the game's supposed failure and be pricks in the discussions en masse. Because the "politics" is just people and things that don't fit their very own regressive agenda. There's another game I can't remember the title, but it has the same theme and the same type of racists filling the discussions. It's just curious that Valve let's them rampage all over the place.

Also, the usual types crowing "keep politics out of games" are perfectly fine if it's theirs. See, Feminazi the Triggering, The Great Rebellion, that Alex Jones game. They *love* those, and they're giving you first grade bullplop well actually explanations of why and how it's different. The guy in the well meme is the hole that was made for them. The A-hole.

[Moonlight Knight]

Originally posted by Zio:

Originally posted by Moonlight Knight:

*cut for readability*

Just to clarify something myself, I didn't misunderstand that, BUT I misunderstood your motivation, at first you sounded like a woke fearmonger to me and I was sorely mistaken.

Ah, fair. That's actually nice to hear, but I'll try not to let it go to my head. xD

Originally posted by Zio:

A good example to make your latter point is ZAU. Because these particular people like pretending it's fine if games have always had it, but you see them gloating about the game's supposed failure and be pricks in the discussions en masse. Because the "politics" is just people and things that don't fit their very own regressive agenda. There's another game I can't remember the title, but it has the same theme and the same type of racists filling the discussions. It's just curious that Valve let's them rampage all over the place.

Got me curious enough to look into that one just out of curiosity. And yeah, that's usually been my experience as well. I can count the number of people who have had cogent criticisms on one hand and the number of people who both had that and threw their lot in with these guys that I've met on one... finger, actually.

Originally posted by Zio:

Also, the usual types crowing "keep politics out of games" are perfectly fine if it's theirs. See, Feminazi the Triggering, The Great Rebellion, that Alex Jones game. They *love* those, and they're giving you first grade bullplop well actually explanations of why and how it's different. The guy in the well meme is the hole that was made for them. The A-hole.

That has also absolutely been my experience. And I mean, I'll criticize games that have themes that I don't agree with if they're brought up to me, but I don't usually go out of my way to find them, and I don't usually stick around to immerse myself in that stuff, either. I prefer to immerse myself in games that I actually enjoy.

The game I'm most into right now is V Rising, and while it's not what I think anyone reasonable would describe as woke, it's not anti-woke either. It's just a really good game with a great aesthetic that feels good to play. (I want to bring that up primarily to point out that, no, "woke" gamers like me don't wilt like a lily flower if we're not immersed in Gender Fluid or whatever at all times. Not that I believe you think that, but other people in this thread might.)

[Zio]

Ah, just went through my wishlist, wanted to pick random games and check for stuff but actually found it, Flintlock.

https://steamcommunity.com/app/1832040/discussions/

Yeah don't worry, those types are the ones who explicity game for escapism, most "wokies" don't. Especially not for the reasons those types think "woke" people do. They really think black people go play games that have no whites in them to escape white reality or in the very least explicitly ones that don't reinforce reality status quo. And other such nonsense. It's wild. My favs are the types who claim art is not supposed to be political. Like, the lol I want to write isn't big enough to fit the screen, and I hate saying lol. My favourite non-political bands are System Of A Down and Rage Against The Machine. My favourite pro war songs from Black Sabbath are War Pigs and Thank God For The Bomb. Also Starship Troopers is apparently a parody of the book, not dire satire. I also recently learned that metalheads are not some f***** pansies which is why Iron Maiden hasn't been cancelled for Run To The Hills yet. Revelations have been had.

[Moonlight Knight]

Flintlock looks and sounds like a good game. I'm somehow unsurprised that its discussion board is a mess though.

And yeah, media literacy is a dying skill.

[Ben Lubar]

Why do you want to ban politics? What specific type of conduct are you trying to prevent? Are those types of conduct already against the forum rules? If not, why not ban the bad conduct rather than something as all encompassing as "politics"?

[Moonlight Knight]

Originally posted by Ben Lubar:

Why do you want to ban politics? What specific type of conduct are you trying to prevent? Are those types of conduct already against the forum rules? If not, why not ban the bad conduct rather than something as all encompassing as "politics"?

The bad conduct is already banned but it's rarely ever enforced. Arguably a part of the reason is that it's difficult to prove bad intent, and also bans seem to be based on people actually using the reporting system, but if a lot of people aren't banning a single post, it rarely seems to get noticed.

Putting a blanket ban on the topic that seems to bring out the bad conduct seems like it would at least take away the excuse to not moderate bad actors.

[76561199676060234]

Originally posted by Zio:

Also, the usual types crowing "keep politics out of games" are perfectly fine if it's theirs. See, Feminazi the Triggering, The Great Rebellion, that Alex Jones game. They *love* those, and they're giving you first grade bullplop well actually explanations of why and how it's different. The guy in the well meme is the hole that was made for them. The A-hole.

You are construing a false argument here by clumping "them" all together and then imagining to see hypocrisy there. Unless they were actually the same persons who you saw doing that, and then it is just those persons.

[Boblin the Goblin]

Originally posted by ghost:

Originally posted by Zio:

Also, the usual types crowing "keep politics out of games" are perfectly fine if it's theirs. See, Feminazi the Triggering, The Great Rebellion, that Alex Jones game. They *love* those, and they're giving you first grade bullplop well actually explanations of why and how it's different. The guy in the well meme is the hole that was made for them. The A-hole.

You are construing a false argument here by clumping "them" all together and then imagining to see hypocrisy there. Unless they were actually the same persons who you saw doing that, and then it is just those persons.

Like construing a false argument by clumping everyone as a 'wokie'?

[Zio]

I know why I say "those types" and not list all of their names respectively, that would be silly and lead to me getting banned for "naming and shaming". Different regressive people still share common themes even if not all of them are literally always everywhere all at once.

[76561199676060234]

Originally posted by Zio:

I know why I say "those types" and not list all of their names respectively, that would be silly and lead to me getting banned for "naming and shaming". Different regressive people still share common themes even if not all of them are literally always everywhere all at once.

You don't have to name them, I am saying your crude generalization makes your claim invalid.

[mldb88]

Originally posted by ghost:

Originally posted by Zio:

I know why I say "those types" and not list all of their names respectively, that would be silly and lead to me getting banned for "naming and shaming". Different regressive people still share common themes even if not all of them are literally always everywhere all at once.

You don't have to name them, I am saying your crude generalization makes your claim invalid.

So if he can’t name them, and generalizing them apparently makes his claim invalid (which, no, it doesn’t, he’s talking about a type of personality that we are all very much familiar with),
Then please enlighten me, what is he supposed to say then because those are basically the two options here. Hell he even gave examples of the type of people he’s talking about for context, unlike you using the whole nothingburger of a term “wokies”…. Funny I feel like I heard that term just recently by someone else….