Rowling, Blow & Co. - Does Buying Someone's Game Mean You Endorse Their Bullshit?
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So, erm, this is likely going to prove to be an incredibly ill conceived thread, destined to get locked down by one of the Mods in the next 48 hours. So I'll apologise in advance if that's the case. But...
Looking at the Hogwarts thread it felt like maybe we needed a separate place to have the discussion about whether buying the game is an endorsement of Rowling's stance on Trans people. (I think anyone in the thread is now aware of the issue, and considered their position, so maybe we need to now let it be a thread to discuss the game for those that have opted to, and have the argument about whether that's The Right Thing To Do over here.).
I thought it would be interesting to make the thread a little wider than just Rowling though - and maybe explore how we feel about games from "questionable" creators. For instance, I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Blow's games - Braid and The Witness are both superb - and yet I find myself questioning whether I want to pick up his next offering because of his increasingly bizarre anti-vax statements.
In some ways it's an easier question - there's a more direct link between him and his work than there arguably is between Rowling and the Hogwarts game. In others it's not - after all he has significantly less reach than Rowling, and his ranting comes across as ill informed rather than hateful - it's quite likely that my irritation is as much down to me as anything else.
So -yeah - what's your approach to this sort of stuff? Do you just shrug your shoulder's and say "if it's good, it's good" or do you, like me, find yourself worrying about what you may be endorsing, even if on an individual level it's arguably irrelevant? Should we just ignore it and accept that sometimes people are dicks, or hold them accountable for their shit by not giving them (or those associated with them) our cash?
(On Rowling, the decision was made easily for me by my kids - previously massive Potter fans - expressly asking me not to buy it because of how they feel about Rowling, and the effect of her discourse on people they care about.) -
Answer to the title: no
Cheers for starting the thread though, the Potter one was no really about the game from the get go.
I've encountered this by virtue of being a Newcastle United fan. Like, overnight I became a LGBTQ and woman hating terrorist because a fat lad sold my club. Weird -
I'd prefer authors in all mediums to not be total shits and am unlikely to endorse them while they can still benefit materially from my consumption, but every so often one just has to admit that some of them just do have chops I appreciate despite. Ariel Pink's a good one for me - preening dumbass IRL, but man can write a pop phrase for days.
Led Zep were nonces. -
I’ll cross quite my last post in the game thread.
b0r1s wrote:I’d be careful with terms like “the trans community spoiling it for everyone” and labelling everyone who is trans as “arseholes” clearly is reductive. It’s kind of like saying why don’t all Muslims sort outr the terrorism problem. It’s clear, like with any social movement, that there are those that will be more militant than the majority and will have the loudest voices. I’d guarantee most trans people, like everyone else, just wants to have a nice quiet life. -
Only becomes a chore when I'm obliged to actually declare what I'm into and then have to spend energy qualifying it all to a given audience, which is ultimately very rare anyway.
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b0r1s wrote:I’ll cross quite my last post in the game thread.
b0r1s wrote:I’d be careful with terms like “the trans community spoiling it for everyone” and labelling everyone who is trans as “arseholes” clearly is reductive. It’s kind of like saying why don’t all Muslims sort outr the terrorism problem. It’s clear, like with any social movement, that there are those that will be more militant than the majority and will have the loudest voices. I’d guarantee most trans people, like everyone else, just wants to have a nice quiet life.
Might as well delete it in here too, since you've grasped the shitty end of the stick -
DrewMerson wrote:Paul the sparky wrote:Might as well delete it in here too, since you've grasped the shitty end of the stick
Given your response to JonB in that thread, you’re not really in a strong position for throwing stones or pointing fingers.
Explain -
I moved it over here before your post and I haven’t grabbed the shitty end of the stick.
The comment about community still stands. As does using language like them and they. It has always been the same with any minority that the term community, they or them is used when minorities of all kinds are as different as everyone else.
You’ve made it clear you didn’t mean all, and I’ve apologised for misunderstanding your post. My point still stands. -
My 2p...
Buying the thing does not mean you endorse the creator.
But I'm not sure that's the only relevant question.
My view on stuff like this is (ironically) non-binary. There's a whole spectrum of impact that any individual can have on any topic. And a major bell curve where most people can and do have very minor impact (around the middle of the curve), with fewer people to both extremes (contributing in both "negative" and "positive" directions, depending on ones opinion on axes etc - eg JK and her major platform).
And yes while theoretically everyone has the potential to be the next Greta and start a movement etc, that's decidedly rare and unrealistic at an individual level.
But I do think that if enough people make minor changes in behaviour, the overall curve can move bits to the left it the right, and that's all important route to systemic changes happening. Eg opinions towards gay relationships over time was gradually increasing tolerance and acceptance and then okness and then what the fuck was the problem with this before. It's all really fine margins, often over long timescales, but we do have the ability to individually contribute to this, by individual active, persuading others, supporting causes, boycotting products, etc. If enough people make marginal differences, changes happen. If that wasn't true, how do things become different over time? -
b0r1s wrote:I moved it over here before your post and I haven’t grabbed the shitty end of the stick.
The comment about community still stands. As does using language like them and they. It has always been the same with any minority that the term community, they or them is used when minorities of all kinds are as different as everyone else.
You’ve made it clear you didn’t mean all, and I’ve apologised for misunderstanding your post. My point still stands.
It doesn't, because you've taken it that Raiz and myself are attributing this shit show to the entirety of the trans community, which is definitely not the case and is a prime example of someone clutching the shitty end of the stick and shitting poops all over their hands -
Where did I grab the shitty end of the stick? You seem to have left that bit out?
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Well since that's after I asked him to clarify his point I think it's pretty clear I didn't grab the wrong end of the stick. Did you miss that post?
Others in the thread took it that way, and it was a lot more ambiguous than my posts which I've explained several times who I'm aiming at.
Bit of an own goal there Drew -
It is an own goal. You've tried to show me getting the wrong end of the stick by showing me posts of me doing the exact opposite by clarifying an ambiguous point before making comment. I literally checked which end of the stick had shit on it before I picked it up
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It's all there in the thread. Have another read through, you'll get it
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Hold on lads, maybe there's poo at both ends of the stick
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acemuzzy wrote:Hold on lads, maybe there's poo at both ends of the stick
There isn't, because I checked.
Like Boris could have checked with me who I meant to call arseholes, as I did with Jon's comment, or simply read one of the many posts I made outlining who I was talking about.
It's not taking something the wrong way, it's clarifying the meaning of a post before responding to it -
So -yeah - what's your approach to this sort of stuff
It really depends, if there's some clear link that buying a thing will add to a harm being caused even in a tiny way then I would be inclined to pass on it. If it's just that the proceeds and sales numbers go to someone who has shitty opinions then the reasoning for a boycott is less clear to me. And it also depends on how how much of a project is created by and related to those shitty persons, it's easy to get riled up about some head honcho and forget how much of the work was done by the other artists that contributed and poured some of their soul into it.
In your Jonathan Blow example I would just question whether the potential impact of loss of sales and therefore 'clout' or something would affect the whole antivax propaganda situation in a positive way. It doesn't seem obvious to me that it would but it might I guess.
As for the Harry Potter thing; if some of the stuff about it funding Rowling and then funding harmful campaigns etc is true, and I would need to confirm this, then yeah it seems perhaps reasonable to boycott it. But personally I've no interest in the franchise and no skin in the game in the surrounding debate or real connections to any of it, so I'll leave it to those who are invested and have done the research. Going around harrassing folk because they aren't adhering to the same principles as you is generally a poor strategy though, at least try to be polite and reasonable with it if you think it's important enough to bother them about. -
acemuzzy wrote:My 2p...
Buying the thing does not mean you endorse the creator.
But I'm not sure that's the only relevant question.
My view on stuff like this is (ironically) non-binary. There's a whole spectrum of impact that any individual can have on any topic. And a major bell curve where most people can and do have very minor impact (around the middle of the curve), with fewer people to both extremes (contributing in both "negative" and "positive" directions, depending on ones opinion on axes etc - eg JK and her major platform).
And yes while theoretically everyone has the potential to be the next Greta and start a movement etc, that's decidedly rare and unrealistic at an individual level.
But I do think that if enough people make minor changes in behaviour, the overall curve can move bits to the left it the right, and that's all important route to systemic changes happening. Eg opinions towards gay relationships over time was gradually increasing tolerance and acceptance and then okness and then what the fuck was the problem with this before. It's all really fine margins, often over long timescales, but we do have the ability to individually contribute to this, by individual active, persuading others, supporting causes, boycotting products, etc. If enough people make marginal differences, changes happen. If that wasn't true, how do things become different over time?
Hang on that’s what I’ve said about climate change at the personal level of ‘responsibility’ (scare quotes for Paul’s sake) -
More to come later, but I find the idea of 'funding' Rowling a weird one. She is so incredibly rich that she could easily fund whatever she wanted without this game. It makes no difference, surely, given how much she makes already. None whatsoever. It's like saying you fund Putin buying artillery by giving him a fiver every year.
I'm not saying that it isn't a reasonable reason for refusing to purchase the game... But it the difference it makes on a financial level is basically 0. -
Also: I quite dislike this thing that people do where they try and hold popular figures to a higher standard than they would hold to themselves. I remember reading a comment on a forum where someone was saying that a creator was 'problematic' and that they shouldn't be platformed. This concept of 'problematic people' is just cursed, fucking everyone is flawed in some way and has problems, so unless it's something really heinous trying to discard their contributions to the arts is just going to leave you culturally impoverished.
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I am playing less Kanye now.
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tigersgogrrr wrote:More to come later, but I find the idea of 'funding' Rowling a weird one. She is so incredibly rich that she could easily fund whatever she wanted without this game. It makes no difference, surely, given how much she makes already. None whatsoever. It's like saying you fund Putin buying artillery by giving him a fiver every year. I'm not saying that it isn't a reasonable reason for refusing to purchase the game... But it the difference it makes on a financial level is basically 0.
Insofar as buy/not buy is the only crumb of collective agency most humans have in 202X I get the impulse entirely. -
Yeah that makes little sense to me. Who the fuck gives putin a fiver a month, and excuses it on the basis a of “oh well it doesn’t make much difference to the Ukrainian misery so what eh”
There’s not much power to be had amongst the little people other than in large groups. It’s in fact the only power we have: organised, large scale activism, whether that’s boycotts or strikes or protests what have you.
And how does that shit start? Small and local. It then grows if enough people can be persuaded it’s a worthy cause / it overcomes their inertia and lack of resources etc
So no one here is saying it’s reasonable to expect everyone to boycott the game cos Rowling = transphobic and if you buy you = transphobic; they’re saying that some people are pushing that as part of their tactics to gain larger audience receptive to their boycott; ie grow the movement and effect change. You can agree or disagree on the merit of that tactic, and you can agree or disagree with the fundamental position of the boycott movement in the first place
But to say that there’s no point in any activism at all cos what difference does it make to the rich and powerful anyway is just so much nihilistic bullshit -
I hope everyone with such high and mighty values aren’t also out there treating themselves to Nike trainers and whatnot, because otherwise they really are picking such interesting places to make their moral stands.Get schwifty.
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