I Don't Think We Understand the Word "Victim"

So the whole deal with Microsoft, Killer Instinct, and E3 happened a week ago. A week in Internet time may as well been ten years prior, but I've been collecting my thoughts about this a little and I am a slow, slow person. I think it's worth taking a moment to see the fallout of something like this, not just to look at what Microsoft does in response (spoiler: it was not good), but also what people around me tend to think or how they act.

For those of you not wholly familiar: last week at the E3 conference, Microsoft trotted out some games and peripherals to dazzle convention attendees with. Among them was a new Killer Instinct title - a new edition of a fighting game largely known for crappy model interaction, inconsistent control, and exceptionally dull theme/flavor. It's like the love child of Mortal Kombat and Shaq Fu. People liked it a bit, though, because, well... c-c-c-c-ombo breaker? I really don't know, honestly. I think the first flag on the play here is that someone, somewhere in Microsoft's vast machine thought, "You know what people want? Killer Instinct!" and then someone else said, "Yes. I approve," and no one said as well, "I am so glad it's still the 90s!" Because if that last part was true, I'd understand.

Anyway, I digress. If you want to see the video again (or for the first time) here you go.

So, what's interesting here is really split into two things. You have the comment at about 0:37 that is the heart of the issue in this particular exhibition. But what I think is a little more telling is how the whole thing was framed, casual misogyny aside: the producer comes out well dressed and full of swagger and bravado to come beat up the frumpy Community Manager nerd. So let's break this down a little bit. 

There's been a lot said in the past few years about what being a "real geek" is. It has, predictably, been thrown in the faces of women, primarily - the typical "fake nerd" assertion is leveled against an attractive woman who dares to look attractive in some fashion (and/or is cosplaying in some costume). She's told, repeatedly, that she's only in it for the easy male attention. It's usually not couched in terms as civil as that, though - it's usually "attention whore" and "dressing like a slut" and so on. There seems to be a great, impenetrable mass within the gaming community that simply looks at a woman in the territory and thinks she has to be an outsider by default. E3 reporters who are female shared a great many stories about how they were treated there. 

On top of that, too, we have a general disdain for the "bro gamer". The typical guy we imagine on the other end of the CoD or Battlefield map - some guy in his khakis, a sideways visor, various necklaces or bracelets found in whatever same place Johnny Depp seems to get the damn things, chugging Mountain Dew and talking about how things are "sick, brah. Sick." Driving through a map of GT4, they may inquire: Bro, do you even shift? They're not real gamers either. 

But, hilariously, which one are we far, far less likely to harass in person? At E3 or any similar convention? The women. We immediately assume they don't belong, having to pass any number of tests before we let it go (if we do at all), and the sad reality is that a great many folks would rather be the bro gamer. Especially in the fighting game communities (or generally any competitive community where there are "stars"), the people we see time and again tend to be cut from the same cloth over and over - the bro gamer shadow, effectively. They want to be like our friend the KI producer - sauntering on to stage, flipping out super badass one liners over and over, and totally sticking it to those nerds. This is not to say those groups are populated with 100% people like that - for every popped collar match, you see one fight between two dudes just sitting in a hotel chair just playing the game in a tournament fight, not acting like this. 

So there's part of the problem. We tend to think we're badass when we're scorning other people or acting like the Alpha in the room - this isn't something unique to or inflated by gaming. The gaming community just seems to have an easier time finding outlets where this is accepted. 

Coming back to the KI thing, I was not really surprised by the response people had to the comments, trying to dismiss the problem was there at all. It ranged from the predictably vulgar, like this comment from the video above - "So wait...the fucking Feminazi's overreacted over THIS? Good lord...those goddamn sexist manhaters need to stop complaining about everything."

... to the strangely accepting line of - "That's just playful banter and is how the FGC is, it's not 'sexist' or derogatory, and shouldn't be taken seriously at all."

That's the middle part of the same comment, btw. That guy was just shotgunning whatever reasons he could come up with to dismiss the idea something was wrong. 

Because it was E3, the situation was also a little touchy, because several people noted that the whole thing was probably scripted. The CM got beat down pretty hard to begin with, but won the second match after she noted in the first one it was unfair the Producer had a fighting stick. Product placement to the extreme, plus the somewhat wooden, rhythmic way this dialogue was delivered makes it seem like this is likely. But that's not really a good thing, because (combined with the viewpoints above), there's only two logical scenarios, here: 

1) Microsoft scripted that whole exchange, and is woefully ignorant of the message they sent. Trash talking is one thing, but "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon," is something else entirely. Look, I'll be blunt: I make horrific and tasteless jokes from time to time. But when I do so, it's in a context where I know the people I'm speaking to will understand these are only jokes. I don't do this and shake my fist at the damn oversensitive PC police or whatever. It's because I'm a fucking adult and realize that not everyone finds the same things funny, and in a similar vein to that - not everyone has had the same life experiences and thus might find different things offensive. I can accept that if I had said that in an open group full of people I don't know, someone might have said, "Dude, not cool," and I would have rolled with it. Apologized, even. It's not for me to say if I you do or do not have the right to be offended, because I don't know you. But, of course, that's not what happened. 

2) If not scripted, then the other conclusion is that our friendly Producer felt empowered to make an off the cuff comment like that in front of thousands of people. Not because he is a horrible, rape-loving human being, but because he figured it's fine, comments like this get tossed out all the time. Look, I know we're getting a little fatigued of the phrase "rape culture", but if there's a moment that helps define it, here it is - when someone makes a joke that is unequivocally about rape*, and someone else says, "rape isn't funny," suddenly we have the person who made the joke trying to play the victim. Do we understand what the word "victim" means? You are not the victim if you said something callous - and the whole point of comments like these are to shit-talk your opponent - and someone gets upset. This is what rape culture is: the slow, steady propagation over time that comments like this need to be let go because stating your problem is "whining". Taking voices away from people who have a problem. That's the crux of it. 

Now, of course, the ad absurdum argument here is, "Well, sure. I guess all the feminazis want to convince us that since he said that, everyone will think rape is ok!" Which, of course, once this particular straw man is established, ends rational discussion. The point is not just "rape is ok", it's belittling the feelings and worries of people who don't think like you. While talk like this doesn't lead to good people suddenly becoming an one-man pack of raping Mongols, it does teach women (or those who care about this issue at all) to keep their mouths shut or endure mocking and scorn. Where does that lead? Down a slow, but inevitable decline to the conclusion that it is their fault. That no one wants to hear it. That if they weren't so whiny, things would be fine. Which, of course, leads to people tolerating being the victim more and more by degrees. 

The hilarious part is that you'll have people on one hand yell, "Oh god just stop whining!" and then out of the other, "If you women would stick up for yourselves, you wouldn't be such victims!" And they don't understand what this means to women, they're just trying to stand up for their perceived right to say or do whatever they want without being asked to adjust their behavior for the audience. And that's the critical failure - it's not about what's happening to you. It's about what's happening to them. 

(*ps: This comment was unequivocally a rape joke. It was a joke about being raped, though not literally. You cannot be a reasonable human being and say otherwise, sorry.)

They Want Cash And Credit

So I'm going to bitch a little bit here, from a place of extreme privilege. Before I do that, I'll just say that I am both aware of and agree with Louis CK's rant a little while ago (the Russian is free, you're welcome) about how people like to complain about shit that is, in the end, still a damned miracle. So I get it, what I'm about to talk about crosses into that some, but I think from a rightfully irritated place.

I got a Galaxy S4 yesterday, and it is objectively an amazing piece of technology. It is much lighter and thinner than my previous smartphones (though a bit taller and wider, lacking a keyboard), and I was really sad to give up the physical keyboard. But progress marches ever forward, and at least I can still buy cars with manual transmission, so I will take my victories where I can find them. The S4 is an extremely anticipated phone (I'd say "was", but I'm certain everyone who is anticipating it has not yet gotten it) due to the amount of processing and entertainment power packed into the little sumbitch. It is, effectively, a small tablet at this point. The screen dominates the front in a way few other phones ever have been so dominated - most phones obviously surrender most of their frontal real estate to the screen, but this thing leaves room for very, very little else like borders or physical frontal buttons.

Honestly, I don't even use these things as a phone much anymore. I think I burned something to the tune of 60 talk minutes last month, and that was about average. I have an office phone for most of my work needs, and none of my friends seem willing to vocalize into their little Facebook/Camera/Text machine. I think my experience is not that unique, either - boards and communities are littered with posts about people focusing on the networking and accessory use of these phones. What does the car dock do? How easy is it to connect to Bluetooth machines? How much battery does the 4G radio burn? How crisp is the screen resolution? How quickly can it fire up and play games? And so on. Despite cell phone call audio quality not noticeably improving for the last five years, no one seems to really care.

So when a phone that people were getting all panty-soaked over fails in a few interesting ways along these lines, I wonder wtf is up. Rightly so, I think. I had a Droid 4, and a Droid before that. Before that, a Blackberry (one of the ones older than the Droid, I don't recall the model number). The Blackberry was my first real smartphone. So there's a little history for you to frame these things. What I felt was really neat about the Droid was an experience that most iPhone users took for granted but was very slow to evolve among the Android OS phones - integration. There were very few custom-built cases or holders or docks or whatever for particular Android phones. The Droid itself had these, of course, as they were the flagship phone of Droid and Motorola at the time. The Droid 2 and 3 and 4 all followed a similar pattern.

What these phones had going for them that I would later find was relatively unique was a focus on integration - the SmartActions in the Moto Android overlay allowed you to fire off a bunch of auto-commands based on certain conditions, making things feel seamless. Putting the phone into the car dock made it automatically recognize it was there. Turning on the Bluetooth just had it automatically try to connect to whatever paired device it had saved. All of these things can be reproduced, in some way, by various third party apps that I am having to monkey together, but by this point, it should be effectively standard. Why do I have to tell the S4 to connect to my car's bluetooth when I turn the BT on and it's the only possible connection? Why won't the crappy third-party car dock (the one I had to get because there's not one for the S4 specifically) trigger the car dock mode when it's not getting power through a car charger? What's with all these stupid green/black buttons on my drop down menu and why can't I get rid of the useless pieces of crap? Where is my damned on-off toggle for wifi? OH THERE IT IS, BURIED IN SOME CRAP. 

Why doesn't the home screen have landscape mode, ffs. When a goddamned new phone or app does not have a landscape mode for the home screen, that, to me, is just shorthand for lazy crap.

What do I get in exchange for this poor attention to details that should be standard at this point? Well, there's Air Gestures, which is a neat gimmick but more of a marketing point than an actual useful feature. You wave your hand vaguely over the phone to make stuff stop or go. Answer the phone? Wave this way. Move a page, wave that way. You have to wave over the phone, so it's only barely more convenient than just reaching and hitting the button. Or, if you're reading something, guess what - the S4 is not a TV! You probably have the thing in front of your face anyway, so it's likely better to just move stuff normally, otherwise you look like you're batting at invisible flies. The flies are here! Air Gestures will train people for a year or so (before moving on to their next phone) to constantly make airy, dismissive gestures in front of them to make things go away. Samsung is aiding and abetting douchebag behavior.

There are other uses for Air Gestures, to be sure. But, like most weird, niche movement recognition interfaces, I'd wager 99% of the population using these things has no use for them.

And you do get the Smart Whatever Thing. The thing that reads if your eyes are on the screen. You can train the thing to stop playing a video if you look away. You can make it follow your eyes and scroll text when you read down. I have to hit 20 buttons to make my phone connect to my car now, when it used to be as easy as setting it in the dock, but at least now Chrome knows what part of that Christina Hendricks photo I'm looking at.

But then, I'm sure it always knew.

I guess my irritation is that it feels a little weird when you take it all together. Are you targeting this phone at the superuser? Then it's missing a lot of features that are pretty much standard now. Are you targeting the phone at casual users? Then it's got way too much shit on it. Half of these apps are just "Hey I Don't Know How to Organize Photos and My Social Media Is Super Hard, Samsung, Do It For Me Thanks" variants of whatever shape and size.

It's still a great phone, as they go. The fact I can boot it up in under 15 seconds, hit a few buttons, and stream an exceptionally clear re-run of 30 Rock is amazing. When you think of how complex the process of delivering that is, it is literally amazing. But the phone is not billed as "A fucking miracle pressed into a small case, you better fucking love it," it's the "most anticipated phone of the year" and "a symbol of cutting edge technology and convenience." I mean, if I got a car that didn't come with power locks or windows, I'd be a little confused but I'd understand that shit is not technically standard. But if I was sitting in a $60,000 Porsche and had to ask how to roll the windows down, it's a whole other deal.

What Samsung has done is sold me on a Porsche that has manual windows, but instead of that, I get a customized apple-corer in the dashboard. For all the apples their marketing folks think I probably eat.