The Ethics of Fanart Consumption and Personal Taste

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Lately I've been grappling with a somewhat philosophical question regarding the relationship between fanart/fanfiction, the works they're based on, the creators of those works and the fans themselves.

Is there a sort of metaphorical line where fan art or fiction is no longer respectful to the original work and its creators? Where it's evident that the intent of the piece is not an homage, extrapolation or alternative view of the work, but merely as an outlet for the titillation of the fan and the people who share that fan's specific predilection (for instance, placing the characters of My Little Pony into the narratives and settings of survival horror games, depicting the two princesses in Frozen as men, or April O'Neill from Ninja Turtles as morbidly obese)?

I know different creators likely have different stances on this issue, but I'm sort of wondering more as a fan than as a creator, if I'm a hypocrite because I don't select the fanart I look at and fanfictions I read by how much I appreciate the works they're based on, but on how they manage to incorporate a particular "fanservice" that appeals to me.

[Coidzor]

The only consumption of fanart with which I am familiar is rule 34 stuff. And that's whatever floats your boat, really.

The only "disrespect" to an author or artist of the work from which the fanworks are derived is when the fanwork sets about actively insulting the originating creator. Which is obviously distasteful and tacky to begin with.

People do what they will and no one else has to like it. Some fanworks people create should probably be kept private, but it's in no one's interest to develop any kind of machinery to make that call for others, as that's just a sword of Damocles hanging over everyone's heads in such a case. Or, y'know, basically an e-lynch-mob.

You may find the Organization for Transformative Works (http://transformativeworks.org/faq#t454n1) to be of interest to you. I encountered some of the founders when I was at Dragon*Con not that long ago.

Edit: And if you're just following fanfiction and fanart in order to scratch the itch of your favored fetish(es), that's perfectly fine too. The important thing is that you're being honest with yourself about it.

[Terraoblivion]

Honestly, I can't think of any circumstances where fanart would be more morally complex than other expressions in public. Which is to say that fanart that endorses murder, ethnic cleansing, female circumcision and similar behavior is horrible and offensive, but not because it's fanart but because of the views it expresses.

On the other hand I find attempts at cracking down on fanart both misguided and largely immoral. It operates on the assumption that the work is not just the original creators creation to profit from, but something that they have the right to determine the meaning, public perception and consumption of. It's like if Lego tried to send out cease and desist orders to people who build different models than what the box show or if academic publications tried to limit the contexts in which their articles could be quoted. It is both an authoritarian attempt at controlling others and a good way to quell enthusiasm by cracking down on expressions of fondness for your creation. In some cases the fanart might exist to mock a work for some perceived failings, but criticism is a part of expressing yourself to others and trying to ban that is really trying to limit public discourse and debate. It also creates a problem in that fanart and fanfiction is a common way for people to start out as artists and writers in a safe space where they don't need to make things up from whole cloth.

So really, as far as I'm concerned the only moral issues surrounding fanart are the same as surrounding all speech and attempts at making it anything else is simply trying to protect corporate interests from criticism.

[Poison_Fish]

I'd also point out that there are Fair Use laws across copyrights in countries that protect fanart and fanfiction. I won't get into the arcane details of copyright law, but it is not an issue from a legal stand point, generally speaking.

As for the ethics, I'm of the opinion that original intention of a piece of media once broadcasted to it's audience doesn't entirely matter, as audiences will take their own interpretations of it and play with it. It can sometimes work out and be on a similar wave-length, or it can go in entirely new directions. But an original creator doesn't really (and should not anyhow) get full total control of their work. From a marketing perspective, this can actually help the work, so as long as the original creator ignores or doesn't bring attention to what they see as problematic elements, as again, they can't really control that.

Now if someone is entirely profiting off of someone else's work, significantly so, that could be another question. To me that's a grey area. I think little bits of fan merch is fine myself, but some corporations think otherwise. See Fox and the fiasco surrounding "Jayne Hats" from Firefly.

[Tengu_temp]

When I stumble upon, for example, Simpsons rule 34, the question I ask myself is "why? Are there people who enjoy this?" - but that doesn't mean I find it morally wrong. It's just something really weird for me. But if that happens to be your thing, more power to you.

Lika all art, fanart is wrong only when it encourages hate and ignorance in real life. The "in real life" part is important - just because an image is guro, for example, doesn't mean that it encourages people to commit murders.

[tensai_oni]

People have fetishes. And as long as those fetishes don't hurt others in some way, that's fine. It's absolutely normal.



I know different creators likely have different stances on this issue, but I'm sort of wondering more as a fan than as a creator, if I'm a hypocrite because I don't select the fanart I look at and fanfictions I read by how much I appreciate the works they're based on, but on how they manage to incorporate a particular "fanservice" that appeals to me.

No, it's not hypocritical. It's hypocritical only if you look down on some fetishes* and go "that's sick, you are immoral bastards" while indulging in your own.

By the way, even something as common and mainstream as "hot guys/girls" or "nice asses" counts as a fetish. If it turns you on and it's not a sexual organ, it's a fetish.

*If like I said earlier, they don't hurt others

[Coidzor]

By the way, even something as common and mainstream as "hot guys/girls" or "nice asses" counts as a fetish. If it turns you on and it's not a sexual organ, it's a fetish.

I dunno about that. There certainly seems to be a lot of fetishization of sex organs that goes on as well.

[Zrak]

or if academic publications tried to limit the contexts in which their articles could be quoted.

Having endured the wearying inanities of everything from Fashionable Nonsense to internet evo-psych experts, I really can't force myself to believe this would necessarily be a bad thing.

[Closet_Skeleton]

this would necessarily be a bad thing.

That's moral relativism.



It operates on the assumption that the work is not just the original creators creation to profit from, but something that they have the right to determine the meaning, public perception and consumption of.

Often it isn't the original creators anyway. Intellectual ownership is just another sort of property that's bought and sold all the time. Disney does prosecute people for making Mickey Mouse fanart sometimes, despite Walt Disney having been dead for decades.

Many copyright laws seem pretty immoral to me. I'm not the only one or people wouldn't support famous Comic Book artists who don't profit off their work.

Legally the person who profits off a song is supposed to be the right holders, but if all those people do is get royalties and they bought those rights off the now dead actual artists I find that right highly suspect. If I form a band and cover that song, morally who has more right to my recording?

Profit is a form of control. It can be used more authoritarian or less authoritarian but its always going to be slightly authoritarian. (its funny how you can't write authority without author :smallbiggrin:)

[Zrak]

Relativism? How dare you imply I'm related to Alan Sokal! Pistols at dawn!

[Archpaladin Zousha]

People have fetishes. And as long as those fetishes don't hurt others in some way, that's fine. It's absolutely normal.



No, it's not hypocritical. It's hypocritical only if you look down on some fetishes* and go "that's sick, you are immoral bastards" while indulging in your own.

By the way, even something as common and mainstream as "hot guys/girls" or "nice asses" counts as a fetish. If it turns you on and it's not a sexual organ, it's a fetish.

*If like I said earlier, they don't hurt others
Well, the hypocrisy I'm worried about is less "Am I discriminating against other peoples' fetishes while indulging my own" and more "How can I can I seriously claim to believe in feminism and take a stand against the misogynistic hate campaigns that the internet's unleashed recently if I have a DeviantArt favorites folder chock-full of fanart depicting obese versions of popular characters?"

[Zrak]

Am I missing some intrinsic link between a fetish for obese pop culture figures and misogynistic hate campaigns?

[Coidzor]

Well, the hypocrisy I'm worried about is less "Am I discriminating against other peoples' fetishes while indulging my own" and more "How can I can I seriously claim to believe in feminism and take a stand against the misogynistic hate campaigns that the internet's unleashed recently if I have a DeviantArt favorites folder chock-full of fanart depicting obese versions of popular characters?"

Well, if you're having difficulty reconciling your adoration and use of objectifying imagery of women with your feminist ideals, there's some clear parallels to how people have reconciled consuming pornography with their feminist ideals, so you could start by researching how people have done just that.

[Tengu_temp]

Well, the hypocrisy I'm worried about is less "Am I discriminating against other peoples' fetishes while indulging my own" and more "How can I can I seriously claim to believe in feminism and take a stand against the misogynistic hate campaigns that the internet's unleashed recently if I have a DeviantArt favorites folder chock-full of fanart depicting obese versions of popular characters?"

The key is separation. Acknowledge that having a fetish for something doesn't necessarily mean you actually want it to happen in reality. Fetishes often don't have much in common with the views you hold.

Also, do note that as long as they don't drive you to do something wrong and illegal in real life, fetishes are generally harmless. At worst you will creep someone out with TMI. Actual bigotry, on the other hand, can be very harmful.

[warty goblin]

It's perfectly reasonable, fair, acceptable and whatever else for you to look at pictures of fictional characters in whatever state you want. It's also perfectly reasonable, fair, acceptable and whatever else for other people to dislike and/or be uncomfortable with those pictures. What's unfair and unreasonable is for the offended party to judge you as morally deficient for the pictures. At best they're mistaking their discomforts with other people's tastes with actual harm and some sort of universal standard to which everybody must cleave. At worst they're self-righteous windbags. Neither is worth worrying about.

[Jayngfet]

Am I missing some intrinsic link between a fetish for obese pop culture figures and misogynistic hate campaigns?

...only several weeks of loud, angry discussion that we're not going to be talking about here. PM me if you really want details.

In any case, I tend to view these things with an air of inevitability. I grew up in the 90's and came of age in the 00's, and saw all the resulting baggage from both sides. If your fanbase wants to do something there isn't much you can do to stop them, and even trying probably won't do much but make you look foolish. Its best to just ignore the bits that make you uncomfortable and celebrate the fans you like.

If a fanbase ever has ethics they're usually unspoken. There are occasionally things unspoken or rareley even implied, almost out of reverance. But mentioning it just breaks the spell, and anything in that position is usually pretty special. Because sometimes, something just simply is not done, and nobody except a blind fool ever needs to ask.

[Terraoblivion]

I'm pretty sure you're referring to me. And I'm sorry to disappoint you, as long as people know how to separate their fetish from their day to day interactions with others and don't commit crimes in pursuit of them.

[warty goblin]

I'm pretty sure you're referring to me. And I'm sorry to disappoint you, as long as people know how to separate their fetish from their day to day interactions with others and don't commit crimes in pursuit of them.

If this was in response to me, I wasn't referring to you, or to anybody else in particular on these boards. I apologize if I gave the impression I was.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

The key is separation. Acknowledge that having a fetish for something doesn't necessarily mean you actually want it to happen in reality. Fetishes often don't have much in common with the views you hold.

Also, do note that as long as they don't drive you to do something wrong and illegal in real life, fetishes are generally harmless. At worst you will creep someone out with TMI. Actual bigotry, on the other hand, can be very harmful.
And I understand that. I'd NEVER attempt to indulge that sort of thing IRL without clear, explicit consent. Mostly because I consider myself too emotionally immature and irresponsible to handle the consequences of romantic and sexual relationships. But isn't it still objectification? I've been told that simply extended exposure to objectifying media causes people to view women in a more negative way and are more likely to believe myths about certain topics feminists try very hard to dispel.

[Coidzor]

And I understand that. I'd NEVER attempt to indulge that sort of thing IRL without clear, explicit consent. Mostly because I consider myself too emotionally immature and irresponsible to handle the consequences of romantic and sexual relationships. But isn't it still objectification? I've been told that simply extended exposure to objectifying media causes people to view women in a more negative way and are more likely to believe myths about certain topics feminists try very hard to dispel.

Depends on the type of material, the use of the material, and the wave of feminist you're dealing with and whether they're a radfem and which kind of radfem they are if so and so on and so forth.

Feminism and Pornography is a tangled rabbit hole indeed.

[Skeppio]

As long as you're not intending to harm anyone, and don't harm anyone, I fail to see any issue. Enjoy what you enjoy. Don't let anyone shame you for enjoying something that harms no-one and gives you joy.

To clarify: I'm of the belief that art and creativity should never be censored (though neither should anyone be immune to critique).

[Poison_Fish]

...only several weeks of loud, angry discussion that we're not going to be talking about here. PM me if you really want details.

That poor horse and chicken.


And I understand that. I'd NEVER attempt to indulge that sort of thing IRL without clear, explicit consent. Mostly because I consider myself too emotionally immature and irresponsible to handle the consequences of romantic and sexual relationships. But isn't it still objectification? I've been told that simply extended exposure to objectifying media causes people to view women in a more negative way and are more likely to believe myths about certain topics feminists try very hard to dispel.

While this is true, the creation of the many "just so myths" are not from purely media alone, though they can help to cement it in many peoples consciousness. In your case though, you are already somewhat aware of this to begin with. You can enjoy media while acknowledging elements that may be problematic. It doesn't hurt to compartmentalize a piece of media.

[Closet_Skeleton]

"How can I can I seriously claim to believe in feminism and take a stand against the misogynistic hate campaigns that the internet's unleashed recently if I have a DeviantArt favorites folder chock-full of fanart depicting obese versions of popular characters?"

I know this isn't your point but:

"How can I seriously claim to believe in feminism when I have a DeviantArt favorites folder chock-full of diverse fanart that goes against cultural norms of female beauty."

Is a re-framing that changes things a little.

If you're against objectification to that extreme you would have to be against representational art in general.


I've been told that simply extended exposure to objectifying media causes people to view women in a more negative way and are more likely to believe myths about certain topics feminists try very hard to dispel.

Sounds like the kind of study that is useless unless you have the methodology in front of you.

Lots of the studies I've had time to look at had the problem of needing to create controlled conditions that didn't resemble anything in real life.

But I'd personally suggest that we don't really know what objectification means, even if we know some of its effects. The stereotyping could be more damaging than the objectification on its own. Similar studies have shown that caricatured mascots have a negative effect on minorities.

I'm personally very aware that fiction (incl. Pornography) can affect how you think, but that doesn't mean we have a moral right to take away people's responsibility. Restructuring society to protect women isn't feminism, its pretty much the definition of the opposite.

[GolemsVoice]

I'd say that the very fact that you're asking the question means you're good. You're not harming anyone, and if it's fan-art, you're not even looking at real people who might take objection. Enjoy the things you enjoy (within certain boundaries, of course) and keep on being a RL feminist at the same time.

Also, as others said, what feminism has to say on the topic of, say, pornography depends heavily on who you ask. It also depends on what that person thinks about the freedom of art and the like.

[Jayngfet]

Also, as others said, what feminism has to say on the topic of, say, pornography depends heavily on who you ask. It also depends on what that person thinks about the freedom of art and the like.

As an artist and a working, let me be the first to make this abundantly clear.

I don't under any circumstances care what random passerby think. I don't actually owe the viewing public anything. If a supervisor or an editor or an individual patron takes issue, then I'll listen. They have my professional respect and an actual say in the things I can do and produce. Everything is just background noise at the least, and at the most I'll just crank out something that offends them pro bono out of sheer spite. Which isn't uncommon, given how the whole Dragons Crown thing turned out. Nothing angers me more than busybodies telling people with actual skill actually producing something what they can and can't do, especially given how damn stupid the most vocal and prominent speakers on the subject behave themselves. They can just screw right the hell off.

When it comes to actual content I'm damn near a moderate when you get down to it. The crap I've seen drawn for a lark or even on commission would probably shock most of you, or at least cause heavy blushing, and that's just the stuff people won't even bother with a pseudonym for.

This is mostly just me venting, but this particular topic is something that gets me really ticked off. Freedom of art is a nice coffee table topic for most people in that it's mostly an abstract thing handled on the internet or by big folks on TV, but for me it literally decides how I wind up putting food on the table and weather or not someone gets censored and needs to waste time redoing a segment because some guy on a podium is hand wringing over the children.

[Poison_Fish]

Nothing angers me more than busybodies telling people with actual skill actually producing something what they can and can't do, especially given how damn stupid the most vocal and prominent speakers on the subject behave themselves. They can just screw right the hell off.

Do not conflate choice of style and subject with skill.


This is mostly just me venting, but this particular topic is something that gets me really ticked off. Freedom of art is a nice coffee table topic for most people in that it's mostly an abstract thing handled on the internet or by big folks on TV, but for me it literally decides how I wind up putting food on the table and weather or not someone gets censored and needs to waste time redoing a segment because some guy on a podium is hand wringing over the children.

It's a different sort of thing if it's all on the artist (commissions, personal work), but having to redo a produced piece because of bad PR is a preproduction error. Ideally, more hours of work or additional income should be provided to the artist who is fixing that mistake. It's fine to get angry about your own personal war against feminism here. But even at the most mercenary level, it would not be the cause of a loss of food at your table. As a professional you should understand this and fight with whoever is covering your budget for making you do more work without compensation.

[Jayngfet]

It's a different sort of thing if it's all on the artist (commissions, personal work), but having to redo a produced piece because of bad PR is a preproduction error. Ideally, more hours of work or additional income should be provided to the artist who is fixing that mistake. It's fine to get angry about your own personal war against feminism here. But even at the most mercenary level, it would not be the cause of a loss of food at your table. As a professional you should understand this and fight with whoever is covering your budget for making you do more work without compensation.

...which is a great idea, right up until it becomes about deadlines. If a team is on a scene they've already had to do over at least once or they've been spending a long ass amount of time on, the last thing they want to hear is that they have to do all that work again.Good luck with the overtime. Unpaid overtime is already the norm rather than the exception and it's assumed that most of us will be running on bare minimum to get the job done. There are already not enough hours in the day to get work where it should be half the time.

These are all very serious and very separate matters, but censorship has never helped matters since it's just adding weight to something often at the breaking point. It's something people can and have run up against and not once has it actually helped matters for the people involved.

[Poison_Fish]

...which is a great idea, right up until it becomes about deadlines. If a team is on a scene they've already had to do over at least once or they've been spending a long ass amount of time on, the last thing they want to hear is that they have to do all that work again.Good luck with the overtime. Unpaid overtime is already the norm rather than the exception and it's assumed that most of us will be running on bare minimum to get the job done. There are already not enough hours in the day to get work where it should be half the time.

Perhaps you missed what I said about ideally. There is also letting a team go to early once a project is finished and another one is not lined up. If it happens that far down the line, you have to end up rehiring people as well. It's still an issue of a poor planning environment. That workers are not getting paid their due is still something that is actually wrong.


These are all very serious and very separate matters, but censorship has never helped matters since it's just adding weight to something often at the breaking point. It's something people can and have run up against and not once has it actually helped matters for the people involved.

A critic pointing out an issue is not censorship. If we are going to stick to norms here in the video game world, when a kerfuffle happens self censorship done by the stakeholders is usually the result. Again, at the most mercenary, this is a PR decision and a form of damage control because it is more of a risk, for any company, to earn the ire of the public. It's a calculated decision. It's fine to be grumpy with something that happens in every creative industry, but if you are actually that concerned about helping the people involved, you should have more of a beef with the working standards of the industry then a bunch of bloggers.

Regardless, this is getting off topic. Zousha, there is a great article out in the world called "How to be a Fan of Problematic Things". Actually, there are several of those but the one I am thinking of might have some language issues for the board. A quick glance through Google however has most of them re-iterating what others have said here.

[Terraoblivion]

If this was in response to me, I wasn't referring to you, or to anybody else in particular on these boards. I apologize if I gave the impression I was.

No worries, it was in reference to Jayngfet.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Do not conflate choice of style and subject with skill.

You're not a believer in refined taste?

[The Glyphstone]

You're not a believer in refined taste?

Indubitably not, good sir. *adjusts monocle*.

[Zrak]

Nothing angers me more than busybodies telling people with actual skill actually producing something what they can and can't do, especially given how damn stupid the most vocal and prominent speakers on the subject behave themselves.
Tell me about it, brother. Most whiners on the internet don't even seem know the difference between adjectives and adverbs.

[The Glyphstone]

Tell me about it, brother. Most whiners on the internet don't even seem know the difference between adjectives and adverbs.

Schoolhouse Rock should be mandatory display for early education. It's impossible to forget things taught to you via catchy songs.
Unpack Your Adjectives (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkuuZEey_bs)
Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXwE1dVDHP0)

[Math_Mage]

That was a pretty thorough derailment.

[Logic]

Lately I've been grappling with a somewhat philosophical question regarding the relationship between fanart/fanfiction, the works they're based on, the creators of those works and the fans themselves.

Is there a sort of metaphorical line where fan art or fiction is no longer respectful to the original work and its creators? Where it's evident that the intent of the piece is not an homage, extrapolation or alternative view of the work, but merely as an outlet for the titillation of the fan and the people who share that fan's specific predilection (for instance, placing the characters of My Little Pony into the narratives and settings of survival horror games, depicting the two princesses in Frozen as men, or April O'Neill from Ninja Turtles as morbidly obese)?

I know different creators likely have different stances on this issue, but I'm sort of wondering more as a fan than as a creator, if I'm a hypocrite because I don't select the fanart I look at and fanfictions I read by how much I appreciate the works they're based on, but on how they manage to incorporate a particular "fanservice" that appeals to me.

In my opinion, Slash fanfiction is nearly always bad (and the authors of such fiction seem unable to understand that close relationships between two unrelated characters do not always mean that there is an underlying sexual tension there.)

I am also against almost all "bandwagon" fanart. I don't really need to see iteration #343 of the Disney princesses, but now re-skinned in the Walking Dead gear! Or with the jobs from the Final Fantasy games! I say if you are going to draw the Disney princesses, your take had better not be just a mashup. (And that goes for nearly every mashup. I'm not really a fan.)

[Terraoblivion]

But an aesthetic judgement based on taste is not a particularly rational basis for moral judgement. You might not like slash and most of it might be terribly written/drawn/whatever, but that does not mean there are any moral issues at stake, so it's not a question of ethics.

[Zrak]

It's a well-known fact all across the internet that people who like bad media are either bad people or tragically mistaken about their own opinions.

[Jayngfet]

No worries, it was in reference to Jayngfet.

Well sorry to disappoint you, but not everything I say is a personal attack in your direction. I was referring to other discussions entirely.


Perhaps you missed what I said about ideally. There is also letting a team go to early once a project is finished and another one is not lined up. If it happens that far down the line, you have to end up rehiring people as well. It's still an issue of a poor planning environment. That workers are not getting paid their due is still something that is actually wrong.

Yeah, but ideal situations happen all of never. Something always screws up somewhere down the line or something always goes wrong. Thats why the norm is for something to get looked over several times even if things are going swimmingly. Because when you're working in a studio of hundreds or thousands with multiple teams going on one scene independently, crap hits the fan basically daily.

But yeah, poor planning and regular issues are the norm rather than the exception, or at the very least as frequent as good work environments. When you answer to that many people, it only takes one or two people doing wrong to sour something, and you can easily have to deal with a dozen of them.

Which is why I'm rather firmly saying that moral guardians, no matter what their creed, have no place among professionals. They plain don't know what kind of work goes into a project, either in specifics or in time, and rarely care.

[Terraoblivion]

So basically, rather than blame the people who force unpaid overtime on people, you blame people who have genuine grievances? That seems pretty shortsighted in terms of protecting your own interests as an employee, because it still means you only have to hope for the goodwill of everyone and that the customer gives realistic estimates of what they require. It doesn't seem to actually leave you much room to try to negotiate a better deal if you're just fatalistic about accepting it as the world is.

[Jayngfet]

So basically, rather than blame the people who force unpaid overtime on people, you blame people who have genuine grievances? That seems pretty shortsighted in terms of protecting your own interests as an employee, because it still means you only have to hope for the goodwill of everyone and that the customer gives realistic estimates of what they require. It doesn't seem to actually leave you much room to try to negotiate a better deal if you're just fatalistic about accepting it as the world is.

...or maybe I'm doing both at the same time. Don't presume to know what I'm doing or planning.

In the short term, it's more efficient to do it this way. The people in actual power were just tried for actual conspiracy and got off with a slap on the wrist despite the judge proving them guilty. Theres no way I can do anything except get myself blacklisted doing something about it right this second and any action is de facto a long term goal. But until that point in the future I'm sure as hell gonna resist the efforts of the ones I can, who're trying to muscle in with much less muscle and play culture judge.

An executive or director who can throw a million dollars and a list of contacts as long as your arm around on a moments notice can squash a bottom rung bug without looking down. That's not being fatalistic, that's just being logical. You pick your battles and plan when you can fight them if you get the chance.

[Terraoblivion]

It's being fatalistic. In most industrialized countries an executive can't force unpaid overtime on you. It's all a matter of local business culture and legislation, not some god given rule that executives have that power. The details of why it differs are so hilariously obviously a banned topic that I'm not going to go into them.

[Scowling Dragon]

Um what is this argument even about? I kinda see two people doing the Demolition man Handshake. Two hands are floating near each other but neither is contacting the other.

Like how is corporate environment politics connected to moral guardian politics?

Sorry for being so stupid. =P

[Jayngfet]

Um what is this argument even about? I kinda see two people doing the Demolition man Handshake. Two hands are floating near each other but neither is contacting the other.

Like how is corporate environment politics connected to moral guardian politics?

Sorry for being so stupid. =P

...when you're busy with one you have no time to deal with the other. Since you're basically always busy with one the other thus shouldn't enter into things.

[Terraoblivion]

Whether to blame the offended people or the people in charge of demanding unpaid overtime when moral outrage causes PR to change finished art and ends up demanding it being remade without providing extra pay.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well reality is kinda a business. If the artist gets paid then thats still money the group as a whole suffers from.

If there IS no big man upstairs and your a small start up having to shift a bunch of stuff (Because some person somewhere believes that their indignation entitles them to change the opinions of everybody in the world) it will still hurt the artist and their company as a whole.

So whilst working with no pay kinda sucks, at least its partially rooted in more logical-ish things rather then a sense of outrage entitlement.

[Poison_Fish]

Yeah, but ideal situations happen all of never. Something always screws up somewhere down the line or something always goes wrong. Thats why the norm is for something to get looked over several times even if things are going swimmingly. Because when you're working in a studio of hundreds or thousands with multiple teams going on one scene independently, crap hits the fan basically daily.

But yeah, poor planning and regular issues are the norm rather than the exception, or at the very least as frequent as good work environments. When you answer to that many people, it only takes one or two people doing wrong to sour something, and you can easily have to deal with a dozen of them.

Ideal scenarios actually do rarely happen. Note, my ideal is not your ideal. Most planning is done with potential failures in mind. Tight budgets included. To borrow from systems theory, it is expected that some failures will occur when your goal is the output of a product. Redundancies (Leads, AD's, a revision bucket of hours, etc) are in place to reduce or minimize the load of errors that could occur with a product. No producer worth their salt is going to go in thinking the project will go entirely swimmingly.

As well, a failure to pay staff is a specific issue. This is not an error on the level of having to redo a turn around or even to switch to low poly models because some engineers didn't think through technical specifications after a prototype phase. In some areas of the game development world, there are regional laws in place to combat such things. Some studios get away with a lot, others tend to have a better work environment backed up by law. This is true of many industries beyond just gaming, though admittedly there is a strong resistance in tech in general (and by extension, video games) for workers rights. Regardless, I'd call not paying staff a systems level error rather then a minor screw up. It's something that can blow up big enough. There is also the risk of being a whistle-blower in other industries as well. Don't get me wrong, being a whistle-blower is not a fun process. Most would rather avoid it. But that doesn't mean a fatalistic acceptance is the way to go either.


Which is why I'm rather firmly saying that moral guardians, no matter what their creed, have no place among professionals. They plain don't know what kind of work goes into a project, either in specifics or in time, and rarely care.

As one of those 'moral guardians' who is a professional, I categorically disagree with you. But as I said early, if you were truly that concerned as operating as a professional, why are you letting it bother you to begin with? For someone who claims to not care what the non-work environment thinks, you sure are focusing on those outside of your work environment as "the problem".


In the short term, it's more efficient to do it this way. The people in actual power were just tried for actual conspiracy and got off with a slap on the wrist despite the judge proving them guilty. Theres no way I can do anything except get myself blacklisted doing something about it right this second and any action is de facto a long term goal. But until that point in the future I'm sure as hell gonna resist the efforts of the ones I can, who're trying to muscle in with much less muscle and play culture judge.

In the short term, it's more efficient to get into an ideological fight that is playing out across multiple industries where you will likely convince nobody then it is to seek a better work environment at bare minimum? I know total political change is daunting, but there is quite a lot you can do.

Also, you are forgetting, there are actually a fair number of us in the industry who disagree with the status quo on several categories. You should really stop trying to paint the industry as monolithic or that those who disagree as strictly 'newcomers'. It's annoying and factually incorrect.


Well reality is kinda a business. If the artist gets paid then thats still money the group as a whole suffers from.

If there IS no big man upstairs and your a small start up having to shift a bunch of stuff (Because some person somewhere believes that their indignation entitles them to change the opinions of everybody in the world) it will still hurt the artist and their company as a whole.

So whilst working with no pay kinda sucks, at least its partially rooted in more logical-ish things rather then a sense of outrage entitlement.

The reason such a change happens is not merely because someone has expressed moral outrage. Often because it's a weighted cost from a public relations perspective on how to engage with the issue. The company that decides to change the product most likely will be saving money as part of the bottom line. It may sacrifice a few of it's staff to do so (be it throwing under the bus, not paying them, etc.) or it may actually pay for the change control and manage a short term crunch for a long term damage control. Regardless, it remains a choice of the company. There is no 'critic' forcing them to do anything. That some ideological causes have more weight then others isn't the issue. Often, it's the issue of what is considered best for the company. Note, I still don't subscribe to the belief that corporate entities are rational actors either. But PR decisions carry some weight of forethought and are made in a manner of picking and choosing battles.

Anyhow, now we are going totally off topic, since we aren't talking about fan art, we are talking about industry art. So I am stopping here unless you want to PM me. Or maybe have a thread that talks about the industry if some people are interested and it won't explode.

So, moving back to fan art. Fan art doesn't have the decision by committee or other such factors affecting it. It's usually just the artist themselves, be it personal pieces or commissions by other fans. A lot of the artists I've ended up working with often do art of various fandoms from time to time, and have even done what they felt was problematic pieces. Their choices vary from individual to individual, but the most common decision among them was to still take a piece and charge a higher rate for it. Some have even cultivated a community out of it, one that they profit from or that they themselves might enjoy that problematic element. You can't really get rid of those pockets of fandom, nor would I even want to. So my perspective is that as long as no one is actually being harmed, it's not an issue you can do much about.

Do note though, fan art is not widely exposed. It gets far less attention. Those who come across it are either seeking out some level of fan art, or instead just entered an unfortunate google image search. Because it's on a much more personal level, and because of the internet a lot of it exists in specific places on the internet, where most standards are decided upon by the site masters, I see it as having less of an effect then primary media. It won't face the same levels of criticism, and as far as censorship is concerned, it's much more in the hands of a single stakeholder (or a few).

As for enjoying things that are problematic (and I certainly do enjoy those), I'll continue to suggest "How to be a fan of problematic things."


You're not a believer in refined taste?

Did you miss my top hat when I came in? How about the wine of text I spilled all over the carpet? But really, I don't count choice of subject as part of pure production skill. That's good foresight, but that's not artistic capability.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Which is why I'm rather firmly saying that moral guardians, no matter what their creed, have no place among professionals.

Moral guardians is just a judgemental phrase intended to dismiss a group as irrelevant. Not everyone who cares about applying ethics to art is a lobbyist or PTA member.



Like how is corporate environment politics connected to moral guardian politics?

People. Everything is connected by people.



Did you miss my top hat when I came in? How about the wine of text I spilled all over the carpet? But really, I don't count choice of subject as part of pure production skill. That's good foresight, but that's not artistic capability.

I'm sure landscape photographers would disagree. Hobbyists in general would also disagree but that's due to their luxury of being able to choose so much more freely. Commissions take things out of your hands but I count producers as artists. If finished films are art works (which you can disagree on, but that's what I'm trained in) then I find it hard to say that any particular person working on it isn't an artist and that any particular process isn't an artistic one.

Selecting reference photographs is generally the most important part of creating quality paintings when I paint as a hobby, but that's partly due to my limited skill being bad at certain skin tones (which is also related to my using watercolours which do some things better than others). I also paint miniatures and no good paint job can save a terrible sculpt.

If I draw fanart for a series that had terrible character designs to start with then its my own fault and I'd consider that an artistic mistake just as much as miss-choosing colours. I only draw incidental fanart though, I don't set out to do it but cosplayers seep into my references when do practice sketches.

Taste becomes a more important element of art than production the moment you actually have to hang the things on a wall.

[Scowling Dragon]

The reason such a change happens is not merely because someone has expressed moral outrage. Often because it's a weighted cost from a public relations perspective on how to engage with the issue. The company that decides to change the product most likely will be saving money as part of the bottom line. It may sacrifice a few of it's staff to do so (be it throwing under the bus, not paying them, etc.) or it may actually pay for the change control and manage a short term crunch for a long term damage control. Regardless, it remains a choice of the company. There is no 'critic' forcing them to do anything. That some ideological causes have more weight then others isn't the issue. Often, it's the issue of what is considered best for the company. Note, I still don't subscribe to the belief that corporate entities are rational actors either. But PR decisions carry some weight of forethought and are made in a manner of picking and choosing battles.

Well thats still all completely 190% irrelevant:

No moral outrage: Nothing happens.

Moral Outrage: Money is lost.

Debating how much is irrelevant at the end. Because money is still lost because people shove their beliefs onto others.


Not everyone who cares about applying ethics to art is a lobbyist or PTA member.

And thats relevant because?....Still getting stuff censored.

[Poison_Fish]

I'm sure landscape photographers would disagree. Hobbyists in general would also disagree but that's due to their luxury of being able to choose so much more freely. Commissions take things out of your hands but I count producers as artists. If finished films are art works (which you can disagree on, but that's what I'm trained in) then I find it hard to say that any particular person working on it isn't an artist and that any particular process isn't an artistic one.

Selecting reference photographs is generally the most important part of creating quality paintings when I paint as a hobby, but that's partly due to my limited skill being bad at certain skin tones (which is also related to my using watercolours which do some things better than others). I also paint miniatures and no good paint job can save a terrible sculpt.

If I draw fanart for a series that had terrible character designs to start with then its my own fault and I'd consider that an artistic mistake just as much as miss-choosing colours. I only draw incidental fanart though, I don't set out to do it but cosplayers seep into my references when do practice sketches.

Taste becomes a more important element of art than production the moment you actually have to hang the things on a wall.

Fair enough. I am interpreting skill as production capability, so I miswrote when I said artistic capability. Choice of subject is related to success, and for variations, like photographers or those doing documentaries, that'll weight greater importance on choosing an ideal location and time for say, a landscape photo. Technically it's both production and choice. So, yes, the categories I am operating under are not as clear cut as I implied them to be. Regardless, it makes little sense to accuse critics as having no skill. From the fan art communities I've been around, there are critics who also produce art, and their criticisms of others pieces is not on the art alone.


Well thats still all completely 190% irrelevant:

No moral outrage: Nothing happens.

Moral Outrage: Money is lost.

Debating how much is irrelevant at the end. Because money is still lost because people shove their beliefs onto others.

I didn't say how much. I said how it functions. Please understand that choosing to respond is a choice on the part of a company/individual/sentient cube and think just why they chose to respond to some critics and ignore others. It's those that are involved in ownership of the piece that decide to spend that money. If you are looking for a root cause blame, you are going to go back and forth quite a bit. Personally, I'll just go straight to blaming the fact that people critically think. How dare they!

[Jayngfet]

Moral guardians is just a judgemental phrase intended to dismiss a group as irrelevant. Not everyone who cares about applying ethics to art is a lobbyist or PTA member.

Just most of them.

I'm a big fan of history and I have a long memory. I'm not gonna just go ahead and forget the Comics and Hays code. Nor am I going to forget the more recent issues of people butting in and trying to say what designs are and aren't acceptable based on their personal tastes.

For the vast majority of human history going up to modern day, being censored or forced to change has been the norm. Note that I said up until the modern day, because it still happens.

As far as I'm concerned, irrelevancy is the preferred default state. If they want change, then they can put in the years of study and get a job and experience, or they can put up the cash to fund a project and then it'll matter again. Because otherwise they have no real investment in seeing the project succeed and no idea of what work and expense goes into it.

[Math_Mage]

Well thats still all completely 190% irrelevant:

No moral outrage: Nothing happens.

Moral Outrage: Money is lost.

Debating how much is irrelevant at the end. Because money is still lost because people shove their beliefs onto others.
That money never existed because it was projected based on a false understanding of the target market. If we're being hard-headed business realists here, let's do it properly.

[Tengu_temp]

I do not think art should be censored. It should, however, be open to criticism. And in some cases, "this work is the ****tiest and most offensive garbage I've seen, nobody should have to see that" is valid criticism.

It also doesn't mean that artists are free to express hate speech. If you create art that encourages hate and ignorance, you should suffer the same consequences as if you expressed such sentiments publically.

[Jayngfet]

That money never existed because it was projected based on a false understanding of the target market. If we're being hard-headed business realists here, let's do it properly.

Hey, if you take money from ads then you very much do lose. Just check out Kotaku or RPS or Gamasutras web traffic and how many people have dropped business with them over the latest moral outrage.

If you're directly selling a product, no harm no foul until you actually get censored. If you're selling it off as part of a service, then you can and will get screwed over.


I do not think art should be censored. It should, however, be open to criticism. And in some cases, "this work is the ****tiest and most offensive garbage I've seen, nobody should have to see that" is valid criticism.

It also doesn't mean that artists are free to express hate speech. If you create art that encourages hate and ignorance, you should suffer the same consequences as if you expressed such sentiments publically.

Which is fair, but a lot of the time that's not really how it winds up working. A rhetorical "why didn't you make a character like X or do Y" doesn't really expect or listen to an answer.

[Math_Mage]

Hey, if you take money from ads then you very much do lose. Just check out Kotaku or RPS or Gamasutras web traffic and how many people have dropped business with them over the latest moral outrage.

If you're directly selling a product, no harm no foul until you actually get censored. If you're selling it off as part of a service, then you can and will get screwed over.
Wow. That...brings in a whole raft of **** to do with that moral outrage in particular. If we're going there, I'm out, as we've been there three times and gotten thread-locked each time. Also because it's crass to throw a raft of unrelated **** at a discussion in order to score a point.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I do not think art should be censored.

I'm against censorship right up to the point someone puts a piece of rubbish in my town square paid for by my taxes.

Since I don't pay taxes and my town doesn't have a square, that hasn't come up yet. I have been to other people's towns that desperately needed a raid by the fashion police, or at least some well meaning vandalism.


For the vast majority of human history going up to modern day, being censored or forced to change has been the norm.

I've read at least one book on the history of censorship and it didn't really start in Europe until the 15th century because there wasn't really a bureaucracy before then. Bookmaking was prohibitively expensive so almost all work had to be commissioned by the elite but those tomes were characterised by ridiculous marginalia. The Gothic and Romanesque architectural styles were similarly characterised by stone masons being able to add what ever doodles embellishments they wanted.

[Jayngfet]

Wow. That...brings in a whole raft of **** to do with that moral outrage in particular. If we're going there, I'm out, as we've been there three times and gotten thread-locked each time. Also because it's crass to throw a raft of unrelated **** at a discussion in order to score a point.

It was the nearest at hand example, not an attempt to go on a specific tangent. It can be any such thing. If a moral panic happens and you're selling a service instead of a physically packaged item, you're always at risk. It can be games, movies, music, anything. Hell, it's been those three things several times over each.


I'm against censorship right up to the point someone puts a piece of rubbish in my town square paid for by my taxes.


Hey, if it's your money you should have a say, or at least be able to complain to your representative handling the issue in the government. That's your right as a financial contributor. If the majority don't like it, it's going to get taken down.

[Scowling Dragon]

I'm against censorship right up to the point someone puts a piece of rubbish in my town square paid for by my taxes.

Well thats something else. Thats somebody raiding your house, stealing your cash and buying you a tacky lawn ornament with that money. Thats not censorship. Thats being peddled something you don't want against your will.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

I do not think art should be censored. It should, however, be open to criticism. And in some cases, "this work is the ****tiest and most offensive garbage I've seen, nobody should have to see that" is valid criticism.

It also doesn't mean that artists are free to express hate speech. If you create art that encourages hate and ignorance, you should suffer the same consequences as if you expressed such sentiments publically.
This is part of the questions I'm grappling with. On the one hand, I want to see the works that I enjoy mature and become better, and criticism is the best way to do that. Criticism and censorship aren't the same thing. But at the same time I feel like a hypocrite if part of the reasons I enjoy the work in question in the first place is solely from the Rule 34 fanart that results from it.

[Jayngfet]

This is part of the questions I'm grappling with. On the one hand, I want to see the works that I enjoy mature and become better, and criticism is the best way to do that. Criticism and censorship aren't the same thing. But at the same time I feel like a hypocrite if part of the reasons I enjoy the work in question in the first place is solely from the Rule 34 fanart that results from it.

I can assure you, a lot of people making things don't care. You won't be pleasing anyone except for unrelated critics by having that kind of pause.

[Math_Mage]

This is part of the questions I'm grappling with. On the one hand, I want to see the works that I enjoy mature and become better, and criticism is the best way to do that. Criticism and censorship aren't the same thing. But at the same time I feel like a hypocrite if part of the reasons I enjoy the work in question in the first place is solely from the Rule 34 fanart that results from it.
It's not hypocrisy, though. There are different types of enjoyment. You can enjoy being titillated by the work (or its fanart) while not enjoying the work as a work of art. (Which is not to say that there is no such thing as artistic titillation; but they are distinct dimensions of the work.) Also, you can enjoy rule 34 fanart as fulfilling its aspiration of being rule 34 fanart, while still thinking that the source work that aspires to be more than a mine for rule 34 fanart did a poor job of it. Acknowledging differing contexts is not hypocritical.

[Tengu_temp]

Well, why you're not a hypocrite I answered before already. Also, in general there's nothing wrong in enjoying stories and art with very problematic elements, as long as you acknowledge those elements exist there instead of getting defensive when someone points them out.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Well thats something else. Thats somebody raiding your house, stealing your cash and buying you a tacky lawn ornament with that money. Thats not censorship. Thats being peddled something you don't want against your will.

Its not my lawn, its a communal space and its not my money, its money I've paid the council/government so I can live here. Its not stealing any more than toll roads are banditry1. I'm sure if I had to pay a toll for path upkeep every time I went to the shops I'd be begging the state to just tax me properly already.

I don't want to stop people buying porn2, but if I saw it advertised on the side of buses then I'd probably side with the moral guardians.

Thankfully fanart is hard to advertise due to being pseudo-clandestine for other reasons.


1 The government is technically just a protection racket, but that is irrelevant. Next time you run a "clear out the bandits" session of D&D for a low level party including a Paladin, have the party find that the bandits infested mountain pass is the best maintained road in the kingdom and that their victims actually prefer to go through this pass for that reason and that the government official that put out the bounty wastes all the money it should spend on utilities in paying adventurers to perform frivolous quests. Now the Paladin falls no matter what he does :smallamused:.

2 I know that supposedly nobody pays for that stuff, but that's probably even more immoral now that I think of it. Even though the involved 'exploited' people have probably already been paid regardless.

[Terraoblivion]

So let me get this straight, Jayngfet...Corporate profits are sacrosanct and as such anything that can cause a loss of revenue is wrong? Whether moral outrage is justified or not depends on what it's outrage over. And beyond that, the customer always has the right not to use your product or service if it doesn't suit their needs, tastes or desires. Being responsive to that is simply a good business practice, though of course you will also need to weigh your own values against it and whether you're willing to produce something that goes against them simply to maintain your customer base.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Well, why you're not a hypocrite I answered before already. Also, in general there's nothing wrong in enjoying stories and art with very problematic elements, as long as you acknowledge those elements exist there instead of getting defensive when someone points them out.

That's just it. I don't get defensive. I get ashamed.

[Terraoblivion]

That's just it. I don't get defensive. I get ashamed.

There's nothing to be ashamed of. You're aware of what you're doing, why it is fantasy and not reality and don't try to apply it to real people. So, really, you're fine, don't worry.

[Jayngfet]

So let me get this straight, Jayngfet...Corporate profits are sacrosanct and as such anything that can cause a loss of revenue is wrong?

No, Corporate revenue is the most important part of the company, because otherwise I don't get paid. I very much like my home and utilities and wouldn't like to live in a cardboard box.

[Terraoblivion]

And rather than take responsibility for that yourself or blaming the superiors making bad decisions driving customers away, you're blaming the consumers for exercising their freedom of choice on the market. Do you not realize how insane that sounds? Following your logic, someone could demand that you start eating natto and hagis because it would put the employees at natto and haggis companies out of work if you didn't.

Also, why are you more deserving of having job security and pay than others? Consumers don't have infinite money and are just withholding it from whoever you're working for out of peevishness, they only have so much money so anything that goes to whoever you work for, doesn't go to someone else who will be out of a job.

[Dragonus45]

Just to toss this out, does anyone remember the Chrono Trigger fanfiction fan sequel that got a cease and desist. Where do people feel that falls along the can works spectrum.





1 The government is technically just a protection racket, but that is irrelevant. Next time you run a "clear out the bandits" session of D&D for a low level party including a Paladin, have the party find that the bandits infested mountain pass is the best maintained road in the kingdom and that their victims actually prefer to go through this pass for that reason and that the government official that put out the bounty wastes all the money it should spend on utilities in paying adventurers to perform frivolous quests. Now the Paladin falls no matter what he does :smallamused:

The Paladin does the right thing and doesn't fall, because paladins don't fall that easily.

[RPGuru1331]

No, Corporate revenue is the most important part of the company, because otherwise I don't get paid. I very much like my home and utilities and wouldn't like to live in a cardboard box.

If revenue is so important, you should probably act to preserve it. For instance, by not angering your customer base by being ridiculously offensive to it. Don't they teach you this stuff in training?

Also doesn't this mean you have a moral obligation to support all fiction you don't agree with, financially? Or for that matter, all of everything? I'm not clear how you plan to pay for rent or utilities when you finish buying every consumer product in history, especially when you consider deals between consumers. Are you like, Richie Rich? Then again, I don't think he pays rent...

[Poison_Fish]

That's just it. I don't get defensive. I get ashamed.

What do you think it would take for you not to be ashamed when it is just yourself who is the only person judging?


No, Corporate revenue is the most important part of the company, because otherwise I don't get paid. I very much like my home and utilities and wouldn't like to live in a cardboard box..

If you think an ideological discussion that's been forming for years is more of a threat to your job security then standard business practices of most companies, you have so much more to learn about the gaming industry. A trip to the trenches (http://trenchescomic.com/) may help you.

[Terraoblivion]

Just to toss this out, does anyone remember the Chrono Trigger fanfiction fan sequel that got a cease and desist. Where do people feel that falls along the can works spectrum.

Did they ask for money for it? Did they try to claim copyright? Did they claim that it was in some way official? These are all pretty important people.

[Dragonus45]

Did they ask for money for it? Did they try to claim copyright? Did they claim that it was in some way official? These are all pretty important people.

No, but they did use romhacking tools to hack the game itself to make them.

[RPGuru1331]

Just to toss this out, does anyone remember the Chrono Trigger fanfiction fan sequel that got a cease and desist. Where do people feel that falls along the can works spectrum.
If they were making money off of it, that's really unfortunate, and potentially weird, but I think doujins basically can't make money and only charge the literal cost of production (without factoring people's time into it). But it's at least nominally fair.

If they weren't making money off of it in any substantive way, it was wrong. It's just Chrono Trigger fanworks. I mean, I'm kind of amused that nerds still need one after Cross, but hey, it's their time.

[Dragonus45]

If they were making money off of it, that's really unfortunate, and potentially weird, but I think doujins basically can't make money and only charge the literal cost of production (without factoring people's time into it). But it's at least nominally fair.

If they weren't making money off of it in any substantive way, it was wrong. It's just Chrono Trigger fanworks. I mean, I'm kind of amused that nerds still need one after Cross, but hey, it's their time.

Cross is the reason we needed one...

Also I should not I don't have an opinion on the issue either way. I can see the arguments for both sides, but I wanted to toss out Crimson Echoes as a discussion point since it has a lot of relevance here.

[Terraoblivion]

Regardless of the merits or lack thereof of Chrono Cross, which I don't have any first hand experience with, I believe the cease and desist to be both immoral and misguided. It's one thing to prevent people from profiting off your work, but preventing them from enjoying it in ways different from you intended or to show devotion to it to the degree of making a sequel? That's a good way to paint yourself as a villain and kill your brand.

[RPGuru1331]

Cross is the reason we needed one...

A kind of unhappy game got an unhappy sequel, where the "wait this is kind of a paradox, on every level" thing got looked at? Be still my heart. Nonetheless, if they weren't making money, that's still really silly, somewhat surprising, and makes me sad.

[Mystic Muse]

As long as you're not intending to harm anyone, and don't harm anyone, I fail to see any issue. Enjoy what you enjoy. Don't let anyone shame you for enjoying something that harms no-one and gives you joy.

To clarify: I'm of the belief that art and creativity should never be censored (though neither should anyone be immune to critique).

I think my stance on this depends. Does not censoring it mean I have to view material I know I'm uncomfortable with?

[Jayngfet]

If revenue is so important, you should probably act to preserve it. For instance, by not angering your customer base by being ridiculously offensive to it. Don't they teach you this stuff in training?

Right, but that's the difference between Moral Guardianship and an actual consumer revolt. Moral Guardians don't actually speak for the majority, even if they claim they do. Fredric Wertham was never voted into office by comic book consumers and neither was Will Hays, and neither are most figures of the type.

There's a difference between claiming to speak for the majority and actually speaking for the majority. Or in this case the target demographic.



If you think an ideological discussion that's been forming for years is more of a threat to your job security then standard business practices of most companies, you have so much more to learn about the gaming industry. A trip to the trenches (http://trenchescomic.com/) may help you.

It's obviously a distant second. But it's an easily rectified second by comparison, since you don't have to call as many lawyers and deal with as many accountants.

[Dragonus45]

I think my stance on this depends. Does not censoring it mean I have to view material I know I'm uncomfortable with?

Do you know how to close a browser window or change a channel.

[RPGuru1331]

Right, but that's the difference between Moral Guardianship and an actual consumer revolt. Moral Guardians don't actually speak for the majority, even if they claim they do. Fredric Wertham was never voted into office by comic book consumers and neither was Will Hays, and neither are most figures of the type.

There's a difference between claiming to speak for the majority and actually speaking for the majority. Or in this case the target demographic.
...Hays? The man Hollywood hired for the explicit purpose of keeping them in check so they didn't face boycotts or loss of funding from backers? That's a weird casting of him. Also, considering that Hays was hired for the explicit purpose of checking movie producers, and until the MPAA was given teeth, boycotts and budget cuts from backers continued to wrack the industry, he may not have been a one man consumer revolt, but he obviously spoke to a sufficient number of the consumers/backers' concerns that he did, in fact, basically do as you requested, whether or not he was voted in (Which, again, he wasn't, because he was hired by hollywood).

Like, I'm not happy with his rules, but at the end of the day, that's exactly what I said - avoid ticking off your consumers if you enjoy revenue.

Besides, people don't have to claim they speak for a majority of your consumers; only enough that you don't want to take the financial hit.

[Mystic Muse]

Do you know how to close a browser window or change a channel.

Yes, I do.

But if I have to deal with material I'm highly uncomfortable with in order to access the material I like, I'm more likely not to access any of the material at all, which seems like it would defeat the purpose.

Basically, so long as I can cut out the things I don't personally care for, parents can still choose what to show their kids, ETC. I'm fine with a lack of censoring. What annoys me is when I'm looking for something specific, and I get gorn, or other things I find highly unpleasant, or actually outright damaging to my mental health.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

There's nothing to be ashamed of. You're aware of what you're doing, why it is fantasy and not reality and don't try to apply it to real people. So, really, you're fine, don't worry.

I just feel like I'm claiming to be an ally when in reality I'm just phoning it in slactivist-style. I get that I have privilege. I get that I shouldn't make assumptions about what people, especially minorities, go through, because that privilege made things easy for me in ways that it blocks to others. I get that the media I consume was not made specifically for me, and should be accepting and inclusive to all. But that just leaves me with one question.

"Okay, now what?"

How do I make good on these realizations? How do I practice what I preach?

[Jayngfet]

...Hays? The man Hollywood hired for the explicit purpose of keeping them in check so they didn't face boycotts or loss of funding from backers? That's a weird casting of him. Also, considering that Hays was hired for the explicit purpose of checking movie producers, and until the MPAA was given teeth, boycotts and budget cuts from backers continued to wrack the industry, he may not have been a one man consumer revolt, but he obviously spoke to a sufficient number of the consumers/backers' concerns that he did, in fact, basically do as you requested, whether or not he was voted in (Which, again, he wasn't, because he was hired by hollywood).

Like, I'm not happy with his rules, but at the end of the day, that's exactly what I said - avoid ticking off your consumers if you enjoy revenue.


I was using him as the face of a much larger context more than anything else. But still, my mistake and I'll own up to it.

The loss of funding and boycotts could be an issue, but they weren't from the main consumer base, at least to my knowledge(if you have any mention of sales numbers or the like, feel free to hit me up and I'll retract the point again). If the actual consumer base didn't like a certain type of story, they'd stop making money and stop being made.

That's not to say that Hollywood didn't have several major problems in the era, but censoring the films wasn't the proper answer and didn't do all that much besides stick a road block between the creators and their audience, which is never a good thing.



Besides, people don't have to claim they speak for a majority of your consumers; only enough that you don't want to take the financial hit.

Right, but bear in mind not everything is for everyone, and in fact most things aren't. You divide the public into demographics and decide which of those groups you want to go for.

If I'm going after teenaged boys, all the other demographics become of secondary concern unless they spend a bigger percentage, or I have to re evaluate. If teenaged girls don't like my product, they were never my audience to begin with. Neither were middle aged men. Or younger boys. I'm working for a specific set of sensibilities.

Obviously I'm free to try after multiple demographics and that'd be preferred, but marketing 101 makes it clear that for commercial works you generally try to make it "for" a specific group.

[Scowling Dragon]

The Hays code was instituted because of Boycotts and such, but it doesn't take away that there WAS a consumer base.

A consumer base that sustained the industry and gave it money to work with and live off of.

Its not like crazy old Hollywood one day wen't crazy and didn't do what people wanted. It did. But then a group of people said that Hollywood should not provide such service to ANYBODY and thus Boycotted it, and like usual tried turning the issue into a public health issue. And once its public health its no longer protected by Free Speech. Then the Government can be involved. So instead they opted to have the change happen from within rather then let the government be involved.

Strong-Arming is Strong-Arming no matter the end result.

And who knows (Somebody who might show up with stats), maybe after enough public yelling and shaming, enough of a stigma was attached to the products that sales declined. I still find "Moral" Guardians Repugnant. Unless it involves obvious harm, then leave it alone. Your not the Parent to the whole worlds population.

[Poison_Fish]

It's obviously a distant second. But it's an easily rectified second by comparison, since you don't have to call as many lawyers and deal with as many accountants.

It's not even a distant second. There are so many more threats to job security then something that doesn't even threaten the industry. It's not even close to the comics code authority. Hell, your attitude towards consumers is more of a threat to your job security then this. The industry is not going to be ended by people asking for better representation. It's not going to lose a significant amount of revenue. Being told "you can do better" is not the equivalent to congressional hearings on "delinquent youth". Yes, there has been some other pushes in the past few years that weren't great (but were extremely unsuccessful). But do please recognize that there is a spectrum of critics out there.

Edit: Just to show how gaming is here to stay, look for any article discussing projected growth. Take note as well, teenage boys are no longer the primary demographic to market to.

Also, you should really knock out trying to continue your personal war here.


I just feel like I'm claiming to be an ally when in reality I'm just phoning it in slactivist-style. I get that I have privilege. I get that I shouldn't make assumptions about what people, especially minorities, go through, because that privilege made things easy for me in ways that it blocks to others. I get that the media I consume was not made specifically for me, and should be accepting and inclusive to all. But that just leaves me with one question.

"Okay, now what?"

How do I make good on these realizations? How do I practice what I preach?

It's still a choice you can make on how much you want to participate. You can also just vote with your money. You can chose if you want to actively support things that interest you or think further a cause you support, or decide that even with compartmentalization, a series is so problematic you can no longer support it. As a consumer, that is pretty much enough.

If you want to do more, discussing specific pieces of fiction with a friend who shares similar interests, even if it's problematic, can work. Just make sure that they are also interested in the discussion.

Because ultimately, the biggest issue that people are fighting for is awareness. You've established to yourself that you at least have some awareness.

[RPGuru1331]

I was using him as the face of a much larger context more than anything else. But still, my mistake and I'll own up to it.

The loss of funding and boycotts could be an issue, but they weren't from the main consumer base, at least to my knowledge(if you have any mention of sales numbers or the like, feel free to hit me up and I'll retract the point again). If the actual consumer base didn't like a certain type of story, they'd stop making money and stop being made.
Dude, I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. The loss of profits lead to the exact thing you said would happen 'if they stopped making money'. I don't know if you're aware of this, but companies nominally seek to maximize profits. If they can keep people from boycotting while maintaining their 'normal consumer base', they will absolutely do both.



That's not to say that Hollywood didn't have several major problems in the era, but censoring the films wasn't the proper answer and didn't do all that much besides stick a road block between the creators and their audience, which is never a good thing.
MPAA. Hired by Hollywood. Given its powers by Hollywood. Maintains its powers at ultimately hollywood's discretion. It's self-censorship to maintain profits.



Right, but bear in mind not everything is for everyone, and in fact most things aren't. You divide the public into demographics and decide which of those groups you want to go for.

If I'm going after teenaged boys, all the other demographics become of secondary concern unless they spend a bigger percentage, or I have to re evaluate. If teenaged girls don't like my product, they were never my audience to begin with. Neither were middle aged men. Or younger boys. I'm working for a specific set of sensibilities.
Yes, I'm aware this is the nominal song sung. But it's as I said with Hays - if people can please their primary fanbase while also maintaining enough potential revenue from off-target demographics, they will. And they probably can. You won't actively antagonize your primary demographic (Probably; there'll be exceptions that are also made for artistic reasons, such as Spec Ops: the Line), but you probably don't have to, while drawing in other consumers at the same time.

[Rodin]

It's not hypocrisy, though. There are different types of enjoyment. You can enjoy being titillated by the work (or its fanart) while not enjoying the work as a work of art. (Which is not to say that there is no such thing as artistic titillation; but they are distinct dimensions of the work.) Also, you can enjoy rule 34 fanart as fulfilling its aspiration of being rule 34 fanart, while still thinking that the source work that aspires to be more than a mine for rule 34 fanart did a poor job of it. Acknowledging differing contexts is not hypocritical.

It's also not an all-or-nothing situation. There are works which I refuse to look up Rule 34 material for, because I feel it would influence my view of the original work. At the same time, the majority of works I will happily seek out Rule 34 material, because I'm not worried about it in those cases. Generally speaking, I tend to avoid Rule 34'ing stories with strong characterization, because I've fallen in love with the characters and don't want to mess with that. It's why I don't read fanfiction - only the works I love most would be worth seeking out fanfiction for, but since the original is so good no fanfiction can compare.

On the whole "Chrono Trigger fan sequel" thing...I'm never going to criticize a company for upholding their copyright when they're being reasonable, and an unauthorized game using the name and lore of one of your major properties fits well within those bounds. Let's say the fan sequel happened, and it was better than Chrono Trigger itself. Now Square-Enix decides to make Chrono Break...there's a superior, and more importantly free game already out there, with a plot that contradicts the direction they want to take the canon. It might be good for sales, but it probably won't be since the demographic of people who play a fan sequel aren't likely to be series newcomers who suddenly decide to buy into the series.

There are times when companies get a little bit ridiculous with their copyright claims (like Blizzard forcing a movie called "El Diablo" to change its name despite Diablo being a legitimate, pre-existing Spanish word), but they do have to draw the line somewhere. Fan works always exist at the pleasure of the original creator, and I think complaining when they defend their income source is churlish. If what you're making is good enough, it should be able to stand on its own without pulling from the work of another accomplished creator.

As a comparison to show why I don't think what Sqeenix did was bad: Consider this.

What if Rich finished up the OOTS, and then retired? Then, some of us from this board decided to do a fan sequel, exploring the adventures of Elan and Haley's kids. Or a prequel, following the Vector Legion.

Do you think that would get off the ground without the Giant kicking up an almighty fuss? Do you think that should be allowed to be created? And if not, why is what Squeenix did different?

[The Glyphstone]

Just to toss this out, does anyone remember the Chrono Trigger fanfiction fan sequel that got a cease and desist. Where do people feel that falls along the can works spectrum.



The Paladin does the right thing and doesn't fall, because paladins don't fall that easily.

No, but I have heard of a - possibly apocryphal - Power Rangers fanfiction that got an entire message board shut down.

[RPGuru1331]

The Hays code was instituted because of Boycotts and such, but it doesn't take away that there WAS a consumer base.

A consumer base that sustained the industry and gave it money to work with and live off of.
Considering the fortunes amassed by the studio heads, I'm pretty sure their goal was not 'to make enough money to work with and live off of.'


Strong-Arming is Strong-Arming no matter the end result.
So... I have to spend money in ways pleasing to you? S'what you're saying by tryin to pretend that a boycott is wrong.


And who knows (Somebody who might show up with stats), maybe after enough public yelling and shaming, enough of a stigma was attached to the products that sales declined. I still find "Moral" Guardians Repugnant. Unless it involves obvious harm, then leave it alone. Your not the Parent to the whole worlds population.
Maybe it didn't actually hurt sales at all. Companies do frequently respond to things based on inaccurate perceptions and human irrationality, after all; this wouldn't be the first or last time. But the boycotts were quite real, and extremely well documented. Numerous financial backers went on the public record to say they were no longer supporting hollywood films because of their alleged indecency (In some cases, because they agreed with the boycotters, in others, for fear of drawing the boycotters' ire). Certainly, the Hays code did not anger the rest of the consumer base enough to end their movie going; Hollywood's existence speaks to that.

But if you want people to stop expressing their opinion that someone is doing something wrong, you should probably stop doing so yourself.


On the whole "Chrono Trigger fan sequel" thing...I'm never going to criticize a company for upholding their copyright when they're being reasonable, and an unauthorized game using the name and lore of one of your major properties fits well within those bounds. Let's say the fan sequel happened, and it was better than Chrono Trigger itself. Now Square-Enix decides to make Chrono Break...there's a superior, and more importantly free game already out there, with a plot that contradicts the direction they want to take the canon. It might be good for sales, but it probably won't be since the demographic of people who play a fan sequel aren't likely to be series newcomers who suddenly decide to buy into the series.

There are times when companies get a little bit ridiculous with their copyright claims (like Blizzard forcing a movie called "El Diablo" to change its name despite Diablo being a legitimate, pre-existing Spanish word), but they do have to draw the line somewhere. Fan works always exist at the pleasure of the original creator, and I think complaining when they defend their income source is churlish. If what you're making is good enough, it should be able to stand on its own without pulling from the work of another accomplished creator.

I think you're ultimately missing one of the key points of fanart; it is a labor of love. That's why I included bits about it not being for profit in what I said. You COULD make something seperate, and choose not to. Sometimes, that's a matter of cutting your teeth,b ut as much, it's because you want to work with the original work. Square has the legal right to do this, yes, but why? If anything, Steam has proved gamers will buy far m ore games than they have time to play, solely on the grounds they have the money to enjoy them. Considering that Square cut it off after CC, it accomplished nothing but limit mind-share, but even if it had a material interest to protect, I would consider it no less dickish, provided no misrepresentation was made by the fans.



As a comparison to show why I don't think what Sqeenix did was bad: Consider this.

What if Rich finished up the OOTS, and then retired? Then, some of us from this board decided to do a fan sequel, exploring the adventures of Elan and Haley's kids. Or a prequel, following the Vector Legion.

Do you think that would get off the ground without the Giant kicking up an almighty fuss? Do you think that should be allowed to be created? And if not, why is what Squeenix did different?
In order:
1: I don't know, dear, I'm not psychic. Didn't the Giant nix a fan translation when he doesn't even speak the language it was translated into? If so, probably not, and that's pretty dickish.
2. A fan work that generates no profit off of other people's work, and doesn't seek to claim it was made by the original creator? Yes, I think it should be created. It creates little actual harm, and is either practice or a labor of love. I respect that the rights holder can legally shut it down, I merely find it petty at best and misguided at worst. I would not be sad if the ability to create fan-works was legally protected, even (Provided no profit was made and no attempt at official-ness was established).

[Jayngfet]

Dude, I don't know why you're having a hard time with this. The loss of profits lead to the exact thing you said would happen 'if they stopped making money'. I don't know if you're aware of this, but companies nominally seek to maximize profits. If they can keep people from boycotting while maintaining their 'normal consumer base', they will absolutely do both.


...right. But I don't recall ever hearing of a major loss of profits that came from the scandal or boycotts industry wide. Heck, they kept right going after the code was installed and basically had to be forced to comply, because the market still wanted what they were selling and the protestors in that case were such a small portion of it.



Yes, I'm aware this is the nominal song sung. But it's as I said with Hays - if people can please their primary fanbase while also maintaining enough potential revenue from off-target demographics, they will. And they probably can. You won't actively antagonize your primary demographic (Probably; there'll be exceptions that are also made for artistic reasons, such as Spec Ops: the Line), but you probably don't have to, while drawing in other consumers at the same time.

...which wasn't what happened. Changes were enforced, not organic.

[RPGuru1331]

...right. But I don't recall ever hearing of a major loss of profits that came from the scandal or boycotts industry wide. Heck, they kept right going after the code was installed and basically had to be forced to comply, because the market still wanted what they were selling and the protestors in that case were such a small portion of it.
No, the boycotts stopped after Hays was given teeth. It was initially a PR stunt where they could say they had Hays checking over them while they continued going on exactly as they were. The boycotts stopped after Hays saying "No, make it again" was meaningful. Unless you want to say the boycotts stopped for totally independent reasons at the same time the MPPDA (A quick check on wikipedia tells me I got my acronym wrong :() could actually enforce the code on the studios, I suppose.




...which wasn't what happened. Changes were enforced, not organic.

By the industry. To keep making money. That's as 'organic' as a situation involving million dollar companies gets.

There's a reason I'm opposing you on the Hays Code, not the CCA; as draconic as it was, I know for a fact and out of hand that the Hays Code was a response to a very real perception amongst the decision-makers in hollywood studios that they were going to lose money if they didn't change at all. Certainly, they lost out on investors for this very reason; whether sales dropped, I frankly never bothered checking, because I don't rightly care. But we do know for a fact they THOUGHT they'd lose sales. I don't rightly know whether the CCA was ultimately pre-emptive against boycotts, in response to same, or pre-emptive against government censorship, but I suppose I can find out.

[Rodin]

In order:
1: I don't know, dear, I'm not psychic. Didn't the Giant nix a fan translation when he doesn't even speak the language it was translated into? If so, probably not, and that's pretty dickish.
2. A fan work that generates no profit off of other people's work, and doesn't seek to claim it was made by the original creator? Yes, I think it should be created. It creates little actual harm, and is either practice or a labor of love. I respect that the rights holder can legally shut it down, I merely find it petty at best and misguided at worst. I would not be sad if the ability to create fan-works was legally protected, even (Provided no profit was made and no attempt at official-ness was established).

We're obviously on complete opposite ends of the spectrum on this, so I won't argue further. All I'll say is that fan works are great, and if the original artist wants to allow it, that's fantastic. BUT, if the original artist/company doesn't want their work used, for whatever reason, then that should be respected. No questions asked.

[Tengu_temp]

I just feel like I'm claiming to be an ally when in reality I'm just phoning it in slactivist-style. I get that I have privilege. I get that I shouldn't make assumptions about what people, especially minorities, go through, because that privilege made things easy for me in ways that it blocks to others. I get that the media I consume was not made specifically for me, and should be accepting and inclusive to all. But that just leaves me with one question.

"Okay, now what?"

How do I make good on these realizations? How do I practice what I preach?

Be open-minded towards other people. Buy products made by people you want to support. Sign petitions and open letters for causes you support. Write encouraging letters to people who you think are being unjustly persecuted. If that's not enough and you want to do something, then you can donate money to organizations you want to support, or sign up for volunteer work.

You have to realize that what a single, ordinary human can do for such matters tends to be really limited. The most you can do most of the time is try to live a good life and show your official support for causes you believe in.
The problem with slacktivism is that it gives people a smug sense of self-satisfaction when in reality they don't do anything. Reposting something on your tumblr doesn't help. Giving a like to something on Facebook doesn't help. Arguing with people on the internet doesn't help (someone who has a strong opinion on a subject is unlikely to change it). Signing a petition, on the other hand, can help. So can donating.

[Poison_Fish]

Arguing with people on the internet doesn't help (someone who has a strong opinion on a subject is unlikely to change it).

Actually, it's been known to change the minds of observers. Just not necessarily the two that are arguing.

[Terraoblivion]

I'll be honest, Jayngfet. I have no idea what you're even arguing anymore beyond people getting angry being bad. Apparently people complaining about offensive art are both utterly insignificant blowhards and threaten your job security. They're both an irrelevant fringe who neither speaks for the public nor industry and people itching to pass a new comic's code if you don't keep them down constantly. Seriously, which is it? Irrelevant or hugely influential?

Also, I'd like to point out that the outrage about comic books predates Seduction of the Innocent by several years. The topic was debated at the level of national politics as early as the 40s and was a direct continuation of previous attempts by the elite to try to enforce its own cultural hegemony going all the way back to the start of the 20th century. It wasn't just some guy getting into a fit and then all of a sudden industry founded an oppressive tool of censorship. Not just that, it came less from moral outrage and more from people seeing their own power and authority threatened and moved to defend it. There's lots of scholarship about this if you actually cared about what happened instead of simply using it as a bogeyman.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Be open-minded towards other people. Buy products made by people you want to support. Sign petitions and open letters for causes you support. Write encouraging letters to people who you think are being unjustly persecuted. If that's not enough and you want to do something, then you can donate money to organizations you want to support, or sign up for volunteer work.

You have to realize that what a single, ordinary human can do for such matters tends to be really limited. The most you can do most of the time is try to live a good life and show your official support for causes you believe in.
The problem with slacktivism is that it gives people a smug sense of self-satisfaction when in reality they don't do anything. Reposting something on your tumblr doesn't help. Giving a like to something on Facebook doesn't help. Arguing with people on the internet doesn't help (someone who has a strong opinion on a subject is unlikely to change it). Signing a petition, on the other hand, can help. So can donating.

Well I am signing petitions, if only to get my brother to stop bothering me about them. He's paranoid about the big bad corporations (rightly so, but he's a jerk about it). And I support Paizo Publishing with my purchases, as they create more and more inclusive characters in their games, as well as BioWare.

There ARE people I'm arguing with l, however, but that's because they're despicable types.

[Surrealistik]

Ah the Poison_fish, Terraoblivion, RPGuru trifecta versus Jayngfet; always a good time. I'll be sure to follow this, lol.

[warty goblin]

That's just it. I don't get defensive. I get ashamed.
So basically you've got a couple of options:

1) Reconcile your beliefs with your tastes, and find a way to justify why it is OK to like what you like under your current belief system.

2) Decide option 1 is not possible, and indulge your tastes anyway. Feelings of hypocrisy, guilt/shame and/or cognitive dissonance will ensue.

3) Decide option 1 is not possible, and therefore forgo indulging your tastes.

4) Decide what you like is more important than your beliefs, and alter your beliefs to match. This is not necessarily 100% distinct from option 1, since one can alter a set of beliefs without entirely abandoning it.

My recommendation is to go for some combination of 1 and 4, since 2 is varying degrees of unpleasant, and 3 is difficult, not a whole lot of fun, and comes with all the downsides of 2 when you 'lapse.' Do note that whatever course you opt for, you'll find somebody on the internet willing to call you either a terrible human being for liking what you like, or decide you are implicitly judging others for their choices and therefore a terrible human being. This really just goes to show that the internet is basically like Moria, dig too deep and a giant flaming demon will try to destroy you.

[Archpaladin Zousha]

Ah the Poison_fish, Terraoblivion, RPGuru trifecta versus Jayngfet; always a good time. I'll be sure to follow this, lol.

I get the impression that I'm missing some vital context here... :smallconfused:

[Coidzor]

So basically you've got a couple of options:

1) Reconcile your beliefs with your tastes, and find a way to justify why it is OK to like what you like under your current belief system.

2) Decide option 1 is not possible, and indulge your tastes anyway. Feelings of hypocrisy, guilt/shame and/or cognitive dissonance will ensue.

3) Decide option 1 is not possible, and therefore forgo indulging your tastes.

4) Decide what you like is more important than your beliefs, and alter your beliefs to match. This is not necessarily 100% distinct from option 1, since one can alter a set of beliefs without entirely abandoning it.

My recommendation is to go for some combination of 1 and 4, since 2 is varying degrees of unpleasant, and 3 is difficult, not a whole lot of fun, and comes with all the downsides of 2 when you 'lapse.' Do note that whatever course you opt for, you'll find somebody on the internet willing to call you either a terrible human being for liking what you like, or decide you are implicitly judging others for their choices and therefore a terrible human being. This really just goes to show that the internet is basically like Moria, dig too deep and a giant flaming demon will try to destroy you.

Yep. As I said earlier, it's ałl in who you choose to listen to, an essential lifeskill, anyway, discerning for oneself whom to give credence.

Only you can decide if porn is right for you. It is noone's place to decide for you.

EDIT

THat saið, there are probably some prominent feminist thinkers/writers we could suggest if you asked for one or both sides. Maybe even few linkable articles.

[Comrade]

I get the impression that I'm missing some vital context here... :smallconfused:

The aforementioned three (Terraoblivion, RPGuru, and Poison_fish) seem to frequently find themselves at odds with Jayngfet when it comes to arguments discussions on this forum.

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: Please keep it civil in here. Don't make it personal and don't involve inappropriate topics like real world politics.

[Anarion]

Sheriff: Please keep it civil in here. Don't make it personal and don't involve inappropriate topics like real world politics.

Oh boy, what a moment to notice this thread and decide I want to wade into it. :smalltongue:

Anyway, I'd like to answer the original question, which asks about the ethics of fanart and whether there's a line where it stops being respectful. I believe there is such a line, and that line is wherever the creator says the line is. Creative works are a reflection of the author's personality, at least in part. The old expression is that people put something of themselves into their artistic endeavors, and I think there's a truth to that. That also means, just as people are going to vary, that some authors won't mind seeing their characters hook up in all sorts of relationships, whereas other authors will be highly distressed if their perfect view of their characters is altered at all. If you want to respect an author, you should respect that each individual has different things that will cause him/her distress and not do those things to that individual.

HOWEVER

I also think the fact that somebody is being disrespectful towards a creator is perfectly okay and you, as a consumer, should not feel bad about disrespecting a creator by patronizing somebody else's works. If you really like a creator, you can choose to follow that person's wishes and ignore works that they don't like. But I don't think there's any ethical opprobrium attached to doing that or not doing it. There is a long historical tradition of people telling and copying different tales, as well as an equally long tradition of other people mocking those tales. OotS itself has a "parody is protected speech" joke. Lots of people dislike authors and artists all the time, and one of the rights they have is to make a parody or other mockery of the work, whether the original creator likes it or not. And if people like the parody and want to patronize it, either in place of or alongside the original work, that's their choice. People who patronize parodies, mockeries, and fan works are not acting in an ethically wrong manner, imo. And, frankly, I'd be sad to live in a world where everyone thought otherwise because we'd all be poorer for the lack of criticism.

[Jayngfet]

Ah the Poison_fish, Terraoblivion, RPGuru trifecta versus Jayngfet; always a good time. I'll be sure to follow this, lol.

Always happy to entertain.:smallwink:

Though we are drifting off topic, and the tangent would get locked instantly in it's own thread. So we should probably find something else to argue about. Especially since my actual points are being ignored in favor of semantics.

As for Zousha himself, I'm getting a distinct and reasonably common pattern here: You like something, but someone told you that you shouldn't, or else it's an implication you picked up somewhere. It feels like half the time you're saying what you feel, and the other time you're trying to quote or copy somebody else instead.

A recurring issue I've noticed you've got over the years is that you spend a bit too much seeking approval and sweating small details more than is healthy(and that's not a political issue, you spent like three days cycling between presets on one slider in a videogame once).

I'm afraid that any answer anyone would try to give you probably wouldn't be satisfactory, since this is the kind of conclusion you ultimately need to draw yourself. Even if we could just hand you the answer, you'd probably run into another issue pretty soon and it'd start all over again.

[Tengu_temp]

As for Zousha himself, I'm getting a distinct and reasonably common pattern here: You like something, but someone told you that you shouldn't, or else it's an implication you picked up somewhere. It feels like half the time you're saying what you feel, and the other time you're trying to quote or copy somebody else instead.

A recurring issue I've noticed you've got over the years is that you spend a bit too much seeking approval and sweating small details more than is healthy(and that's not a political issue, you spent like three days cycling between presets on one slider in a videogame once).

The issue of "I like this thing, but it has content that objectively speaking is objectionable, so maybe I shouldn't like it" is a dilemma many people experienced at some point - not because they were told that they shouldn't like it by someone else, but because they reached it from their own judgement. It's not about seeking approval, it's about seeking internal integrity.

My answer to this dilemma, I already provided in my previous posts in this thread.

[Rodin]

In terms of how I handle it, there's a portion of my brain that's under lock and key. It's an area where reasoning and critical thinking aren't allowed. Whenever I want to go view material that is offensive, I unlock that door, go inside, and lock it behind me. I try not to let anything get out to affect the way I view the world the rest of the time. Porn with plot (or plot with porn) is something to stay away from, since it's basically impossible to maintain that divide. As a result, my views of what is appropriate on TV or movies differs radically from what I'm willing to indulge in the locked room. Excessive fanservice in anime always bugs the hell out of me, because if I wanted to watch porn I'd go and do that.

There's stuff in the locked portion of my brain that would shock and disgust the feminist-supporting rational side. I just don't let those two parts speak to each other.

[Jayngfet]

The issue of "I like this thing, but it has content that objectively speaking is objectionable, so maybe I shouldn't like it" is a dilemma many people experienced at some point - not because they were told that they shouldn't like it by someone else, but because they reached it from their own judgement. It's not about seeking approval, it's about seeking internal integrity.

My answer to this dilemma, I already provided in my previous posts in this thread.

Bolded so I can just express pure wtf at this segment. There isn't anything actually objectionable about what he's into. You may find it distasteful but you have no right to actually object to it.

[Poison_Fish]

Though we are drifting off topic, and the tangent would get locked instantly in it's own thread. So we should probably find something else to argue about. Especially since my actual points are being ignored in favor of semantics.

I wouldn't call inaccurate information about the game industry through absolutist statements "semantics".

Anyhow, Zousha. Warty Goblin had an excellent summary of options you can take when wrestling with content you enjoy but feel uncomfortable with. I'm going to PM you a few of the articles I mentioned as well if you feel like you want more outside input. If anyone else wants them, just ask. I don't exactly feel comfortable linking them here because I am not entirely certain of the entire websites content, so I am just playing safe.

[Teron]

I'd like those links, please.

[warty goblin]

Yep. As I said earlier, it's ałl in who you choose to listen to, an essential lifeskill, anyway, discerning for oneself whom to give credence.

Only you can decide if porn is right for you. It is noone's place to decide for you.

Equally importantly, what porn is right for you. Remember, whatever you're into also gives somebody else the screaming willies. Which, at the end of the day, is what I think a lot of the sturm und drang about porn comes from.



THat saið, there are probably some prominent feminist thinkers/writers we could suggest if you asked for one or both sides. Maybe even few linkable articles.
When it comes to porn or sex work stuff generally, limiting oneself to the purely feminist is perhaps not wise. You'll do very well sampling from the anti-porn side, since annoyingly second wave sex/porn-negative feminism hasn't died yet, but not particularly well when it comes to the pro side. That is, you can get a lot of theory, but most feminists aren't sex workers, and contrarily not all sex workers are feminists. I've read at least one in point of fact who is explicitly against feminism because of all the anti sex worker stuff on one hand, and the ungrounded theory-mongering on the other. Maybe it's my damn quantitative background showing again, but I tend to think the opinions of actual pornographers and sex workers are more interesting and important for understanding porn and sex work than elaborate academic theories.

Unfortunately, I can't really link to those sorts of people...





I'm afraid that any answer anyone would try to give you probably wouldn't be satisfactory, since this is the kind of conclusion you ultimately need to draw yourself. Even if we could just hand you the answer, you'd probably run into another issue pretty soon and it'd start all over again.
And tomorrow somebody would give him a different answer anyway.


The issue of "I like this thing, but it has content that objectively speaking is objectionable, so maybe I shouldn't like it" is a dilemma many people experienced at some point - not because they were told that they shouldn't like it by someone else, but because they reached it from their own judgement. It's not about seeking approval, it's about seeking internal integrity.

My answer to this dilemma, I already provided in my previous posts in this thread.
Personally, I've always thought the whole acknowledge the thing I like is problematic therefore I'm OK schtick to be a bit too much of having one's cake and eating it too. If it's so damn problematic, maybe try not doing that stuff? Alternatively, if saying 'this is problematic' is sufficient absolution, it seems unnecessary to get worked up over it in the first place, since that's not exactly requiring a whole awful lot, and ultimately means about zilch anyway. The racist sexist homophobic redneck whose company I endured for four hours on the bus earlier this month acknowledged he was a racist sexist homophobic redneck; which strangely didn't make him any less a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, or desirous of getting 'Redneck Pride' tattooed across his chest.


Personally, I'm of the view that a person should try to do what's good, not bother about what's irrelevant, and avoid doing what is wrong. Choice of entertainment in my view is nearly always in the morally irrelevant category. Some folks like to make that all complicated, which is fine. I figure if the choices are look at the fanart, look at the fanart after lots of mental gymnastics, and don't look at the fanart , the second choice is merely an inefficient version of the first, and only the third is meaningfully distinct. Which is to say, if you think it's harmful, try not to do it. If you don't think it's harmful, stop caring one way or the other. Personally, I don't think it's harmful and the sort of person who do have their underwear on too tight, or are apparently incapable of distinguishing between something that doesn't suit their taste and a moral failure. Hence why I suggested some method of arriving at not getting worked up, either about looking at the fanart, or the people who get angry and upset about that sort of thing.


In terms of how I handle it, there's a portion of my brain that's under lock and key. It's an area where reasoning and critical thinking aren't allowed. Whenever I want to go view material that is offensive, I unlock that door, go inside, and lock it behind me. I try not to let anything get out to affect the way I view the world the rest of the time. Porn with plot (or plot with porn) is something to stay away from, since it's basically impossible to maintain that divide. As a result, my views of what is appropriate on TV or movies differs radically from what I'm willing to indulge in the locked room. Excessive fanservice in anime always bugs the hell out of me, because if I wanted to watch porn I'd go and do that.

I gave up porn, since I found that life with and without it were of equal quality, and on the chance it was actually harmful to somebody somewhere, why bother with it? Others may conclude differently, for entirely defensible reasons, and I'm cool with that.

[Jayngfet]

I'll take a look at these articles too. Doesn't hurt to read, if nothing else.




When it comes to porn or sex work stuff generally, limiting oneself to the purely feminist is perhaps not wise. You'll do very well sampling from the anti-porn side, since annoyingly second wave sex/porn-negative feminism hasn't died yet, but not particularly well when it comes to the pro side. That is, you can get a lot of theory, but most feminists aren't sex workers, and contrarily not all sex workers are feminists. I've read at least one in point of fact who is explicitly against feminism because of all the anti sex worker stuff on one hand, and the ungrounded theory-mongering on the other. Maybe it's my damn quantitative background showing again, but I tend to think the opinions of actual pornographers and sex workers are more interesting and important for understanding porn and sex work than elaborate academic theories.

Unfortunately, I can't really link to those sorts of people...

We can agree there. It's always better to hear from people who work directly on a subject than academics writing about it in theoreticals. Don't get me wrong some of my very favorite people are academics and they have a lot to teach, but if you tackle a subject then after a while you're better off at least having someone with practical experience to explain the nitty gritty. If nothing else, they can tell you point blank what they actually do or need without resorting to guesswork or your own logic that might break down and actually cause damage.

I love a lot of academics dearly, but a lot of times their lack of practical experience stops them from asking the "right" sort of questions to find the reason why something is the way it is, since they don't quite understand the physical limitations or physical properties of a substance in quite the way a person who handles it with their hands daily does.

[Roland St. Jude]

I'd like those links, please.Sheriff: He's stated the content is not, in his opinion, safe to link here within the Rules. Asking him to give them to you, whether in a post or PM, is asking him to violate the Forum Rules. Which seems rude, at best.

[Jayngfet]

Sheriff: He's stated the content is not, in his opinion, safe to link here within the Rules. Asking him to give them to you, whether in a post or PM, is asking him to violate the Forum Rules. Which seems rude, at best.

After looking over the rules as well as the definitions of all the terms involved and articles in question, I'm reasonably sure no actual roles have been broken. There's no religion or politics, violence or drugs, or crime. There's maybe a very brief passing mention of sexuality in one of them but it doesn't fall under anyone's definition of explicit, unless saying a thing exists before moving on counts as explicit.

Obviously you have the final word on the subject, but I'm pretty sure neither link is guilty of anything except perhaps abusing the word "problematic".

[Tengu_temp]

Bolded so I can just express pure wtf at this segment. There isn't anything actually objectionable about what he's into. You may find it distasteful but you have no right to actually object to it.

Zousha himself said that being into it might be objectionable, because it's art that objectifies women. His judgement, not mine.



Personally, I've always thought the whole acknowledge the thing I like is problematic therefore I'm OK schtick to be a bit too much of having one's cake and eating it too. If it's so damn problematic, maybe try not doing that stuff? Alternatively, if saying 'this is problematic' is sufficient absolution, it seems unnecessary to get worked up over it in the first place, since that's not exactly requiring a whole awful lot, and ultimately means about zilch anyway. The racist sexist homophobic redneck whose company I endured for four hours on the bus earlier this month acknowledged he was a racist sexist homophobic redneck; which strangely didn't make him any less a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, or desirous of getting 'Redneck Pride' tattooed across his chest.

The redneck is proud of his offensive behaviour, though. I do not encourage being proud of the flaws in things you like, or defending those flaws.

[Scowling Dragon]

I must ask you to define what you mean as objectification. Because I find it a rubbish term that falls apart under any form of scrutiny.

[Tengu_temp]

Doesn't matter, because Zousha himself said "isn't this objectification?", and I spent half the thread saying "no, and it's okay if you enjoy it", while people who are now nitpicking what I'm saying were busy arguing about art and freedom of expression.

[warty goblin]

The redneck is proud of his offensive behaviour, though. I do not encourage being proud of the flaws in things you like, or defending those flaws.
Which leaves us with what, exactly? One needs to express proper shame over liking the problematic work in question? Maybe I'm old fashioned, but generally if I need to express shame over something, it's because I shouldn't be doing that thing in the first place. I find that hard to square with it being OK to like the problematic thing in the first place, so whatever we're expressing with the acknowledgement of problematicallness, it probably isn't shame.

So one shouldn't express pride in flaws, a point I quite agree with, and at the same time there's no need for shame over liking a problematic thing. But by your hypothesis we're still left with the need to acknowledge the problem for it to be OK to like the thing. Which, to me anyway, begs the question what exactly does acknowledging the problematic nature of something accomplish?

I suspect it does two things. Firstly it signals that the speaker belongs to the group of people who think problematic things in entertainment are super-important and use the mores of modern internet activism to discuss the such things, and secondly it allows the group to continue to hold to their beliefs about problematic entertainment while still paradoxically enjoying the full range of problematic entertainment. Entertainment obsessed people finding ways to justify their love of entertainment, by using their favorite language to talk about their favorite topics to their favorite groups of people.

Which is just fine with me. Group membership, and the signals for that, are important. I've no desire to belittle, condemn or try to take that away from anybody. If that's the group you like, and the issues you think are really important, than by all means go for it. Speaking entirely for myself however, I don't think it's a group that a person must belong to in order to be a decent human being. And as previously noted, I think the overwhelming majority of entertainment is pretty much a moral irrelevancy, so I see no particular moral imperative to go around acknowledging one's taste is problematic.




I must ask you to define what you mean as objectification. Because I find it a rubbish term that falls apart under any form of scrutiny.
I think that's going a bit far, the word can be useful.

[Terraoblivion]

The basic idea is that if you recognize the ideological forces at play, you can resist them. The mindset with which you watch or read something influences what you take away from it and awareness of how it interacts with your ideals and beliefs helps avoid having it change them. It's the same principle that means that a Democrat watching Fox is more likely to get angry at the station than at the things they're trying to make you angry at. Or why historians can read all kinds of propaganda without letting it affect them.

[Zrak]

Since I don't pay taxes and my town doesn't have a square, that hasn't come up yet. I have been to other people's towns that desperately needed a raid by the fashion police, or at least some well meaning vandalism.

There was some graffiti I used to pass every day on the train to work that said "Think for yourself." I always wanted to sneak into that tunnel at night and spray "If you say so" below it.


It's obviously a distant second. But it's an easily rectified second by comparison, since you don't have to call as many lawyers and deal with as many accountants.

I'm not sure I follow. How is an "ideological discussion that's been forming for years" so "easily rectified"?


I must ask you to define what you mean as objectification. Because I find it a rubbish term that falls apart under any form of scrutiny.

How does the term fall apart?

The primary discontinuity between uses of the term comes from the multiple meanings of the word "object." Some use the term in reference to treating someone as though they were an "inanimate object" — as an object opposed to a person. Others use the term in reference to presenting someone as an object in the grammatical sense — as an object opposed to a subject. There is some overlap, mostly in that both inanimate objects and grammatical objects lack agency, which furthers the confusion. That said, the term itself does not "fall apart" under any level of scrutiny sufficient enough to recognize that the signifier "objectify" can signify more than one idea; indeed, the term itself only falls apart under a lack of scrutiny. The application of the term to a specific situation may fall apart if examined, but the term itself is no more suspect than any other word than can mean different things in different contexts, or any other word which can be misused; seeing as both of these categories include essentially every word, either "objectified" isn't really a rubbish term or the ambiguity inherent in linguistic communication makes every term a rubbish term, in which case there's not really a point in mentioning that one particular term is as subject to it as pretty much every other term.


The basic idea is that if you recognize the ideological forces at play, you can resist them. The mindset with which you watch or read something influences what you take away from it and awareness of how it interacts with your ideals and beliefs helps avoid having it change them . . . Or why historians can read all kinds of propaganda without letting it affect them.

There is a difference between experiencing something without experiencing its intended effect and experiencing its intended effect but finding that objectionable in one way or another; your hypothetical historian is not affected by the proverbial propaganda, while the conjectural connoisseur is affected by the media but feels guilty about it.

[Dragonus45]

Zousha himself said that being into it might be objectionable, because it's art that objectifies women. His judgement, not mine.




How objective if the beliefe that the women are objectified though?

[Math_Mage]

How objective if the beliefe that the women are objectified though?
Pretty damn objective.

Whether/when it's problematic, on the other hand...not so much.

[Dragonus45]

Let me rephrase, objectified any more than anyone else in any form of consumable media is.

The answer by the way is no, its not even objectively true in the first place.

[Zrak]

Opposed to media that can't be consumed?

As for objectification, I won't get into the matter of its objective truth, since all matters of objective truth are contingent almost solely on the lines drawn between objective and subjective; in debating the objective truth of something one really debates merely whether there is such thing as objective truth and, in the process, avoids meaningful debate of the thing itself. That said, I would argue the claim that women are more routinely objectified in mainstream media than most other broad categories of people is at the very least readily defensible and, with a more precise definition of objectification, could even be nearly unassailable. Particularly in the grammatically-derived sense of objectification — where women are presented as those acted upon rather than actors in their own right — the objectification of women is overwhelming; while many other groups are or have been discriminated against in media in one way or another, few if any have been as widely or routinely denied agency as women have been and continue to be.

[Poison_Fish]

Let me rephrase, objectified any more than anyone else in any form of consumable media is.

The answer by the way is no, its not even objectively true in the first place.

Because your opinion (http://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf) is equal to or greater then any valid (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1) measurements done by (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-005-1190-y#page-1) those who actually attempt (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673509#.VBuI-hbp7wM) to investigate the subject (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-006-9176-y#page-1). Thus, your opinion is objectively true, as opposed to all that inconvenient higher in validity then your opinion data. It couldn't possibly be more complex (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289865#page-1) then a simple opinion on a truth or not statement. As we know, anything more complex then that is clearly not objective and therefore not worth discussing.

Now let me get back to eating my chicken wings from Man-Pecs, the brother restaurant to Hooters that exists in the same consumable restaurant experience and has equal parity in its existence and function to its sister restaurant.

[Jayngfet]

Because your opinion (http://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf) is equal to or greater then any valid (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1) measurements done by (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-005-1190-y#page-1) those who actually attempt (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673509#.VBuI-hbp7wM) to investigate the subject (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-006-9176-y#page-1). Thus, your opinion is objectively true, as opposed to all that inconvenient higher in validity then your opinion data. It couldn't possibly be more complex (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289865#page-1) then a simple opinion on a truth or not statement. As we know, anything more complex then that is clearly not objective and therefore not worth discussing.

Now let me get back to eating my chicken wings from Man-Pecs, the brother restaurant to Hooters that exists in the same consumable restaurant experience and has equal parity in its existence and function to its sister restaurant.

Given the quality of your previous links, forgive me if I take these with a grain of salt.

I'll have to hit up the ol' academic databases when I get the time tomorrow to check these, because I'm a bit wary that it'll be another link full of scattered and uneducated writing.

But yeah, have fun eating at whatever Chippendale equivalent you intend to patronize, I won't judge.

[Zrak]

Chippendales is a touring exotic dance troupe, not a restaurant chain. One cannot really eat at a "Chippendale [sic] equivalent" in the manner one eats a Hooters; it is not, as your post seems to imply, equivalent to Hooters in existence or function. In the future, I would recommend taking the time you devoted to critiquing research you haven't even looked at and instead devote that time to briefly glancing at the wikipedia page of the institution to which you intend to make a pointed reference. That's just me, though. What do I know? Besides what Chippendales is, I mean.

[Scowling Dragon]

{{scrubbed}}

[RPGuru1331]

{{scrubbed}}
Yes, the creationists are the ones with the peer-reviewed papers looking at data and consensus* amongst the relevant experts, right?


{{scrubbed}}
It's... really not semantics that there's not a national chain that is the equivalent of hooters. These are just facts. There's probably some individual nominal restaurants, but nothing with that level of penetration.

*Yes, I'm aware the consensus isn't as overwhelming; it's hard to top having at least 2 fields of study that use the theory of evolution as their basic foundation, along with biology in general.

[Scowling Dragon]

{{scrubbed}}

[Zrak]

I didn't realize you were so intimately familiar with the editorial staff and policy of the Journal of Advertising or The Counseling Psychologist, as your post implies you to be. Your academic interests must be quite diverse. For those of us a paywall away from the articles, perhaps you can briefly summarize the methodology of the articles in question and what you believe to be flaws in those methodologies? Personally, I can only access the abstracts of most of the articles and as such can offer no opinion without further information.

That said, I will argue that I don't know if it's tenable to argue that articles in support of objectification cannot be correct because objectification does not exist; should one not keep an open mind, rather than dismissing 99% of studies on the subject because of one's preconceived notions? Again, I haven't read the specific articles in question to know what kind of evidence they contain, but I will say more generally that one should not reject evidence merely because it goes against one's views, as you seem to be arguing. My apologies if I've misunderstood.

[Jayngfet]

Chippendales is a touring exotic dance troupe, not a restaurant chain. One cannot really eat at a "Chippendale [sic] equivalent" in the manner one eats a Hooters; it is not, as your post seems to imply, equivalent to Hooters in existence or function. In the future, I would recommend taking the time you devoted to critiquing research you haven't even looked at and instead devote that time to briefly glancing at the wikipedia page of the institution to which you intend to make a pointed reference. That's just me, though. What do I know? Besides what Chippendales is, I mean.

I was being sarcastic. Mainly because the only way you can really combat a statement that loaded and one sided is with something else equally loaded and one sided. I did check wikipedia and obviously I know there's not a dudes in short shorts resturant chain that's sprung up overnight.

As for the articles, that's an issue for tomorrow. It's 1:30am here and I'm running on fumes.

[RPGuru1331]

{{scrubbed}}

[Zrak]

I was being sarcastic. Mainly because the only way you can really combat a statement that loaded and one sided is with something else equally loaded and one sided. I did check wikipedia and obviously I know there's not a dudes in short shorts resturant chain that's sprung up overnight.

I would disagree; you did not respond to a "one sided" statement with another, you responded to a factually sound example of your interlocutor's contention — that there is not a male equivalent of Hooters — with a non-sequiter that does not refute the contention — that Chippendales is a thing. Your example is not "one-sided," since there are numerous female exotic institutions broadly equivalent to Chippendales. If Chippendales is more notable, individually, that is only because it is the sole prominent male example of longstanding burlesque and striptease traditions featuring female dancers.

[DeadMech]

Interesting read so far. And you know, if I actually had the money to comfortably invest in such a thing, I'd almost want to open a man-pecs just to see if it would catch on. Name needs work probably, fetch myself a thesaurus and an anatomy book. I'm not entirely sure I live in an open-minded enough locale for it, so have to find a relaxed enough market. Or does a certain amount of... pent-up...ness make it more likely to succeed...

Anyway. If you like something but find yourself having moral issues with it, then you really need to determine how to deal with that yourself based upon how important the different things are to you. Very often things aren't black and white. Everyone has their own level of hypocrisy that they can handle.

I like the idea of a pocket knife with a handle made out of carved ivory. I bet that would feel really nice in my hand as I'm opening mail or cutting wrapping and such. And it would look great sitting on my desk. On the other hand obtaining said ivory involves the death of an endangered animal. I be putting the species at risk of extinction.

I do not own an ivory handled pocketknife. Because I weighted the cons being greater than the pros. But it's not impossible to envision a situation where I draw my moral line elsewhere. What if a government set up a domesticated ranch to breed and slaughter animals to try to meet demand for it's products, while protecting the natural habitats of their wild brethren, and providing food and jobs to their people. I'm not advocating for that, I don't know if such a thing would be practical or effective in eliminating poaching and protecting the species. Just a hypothetical situation. And one that would likely alter my likely hood of owning said ivory handled pocketknife.

In an example a bit closer to what the OP is probably going for though. I like video games. It's no secret that the video game industry has issues. Lot's of issues. Lot's of things that I don't need to spell out. Some of them I think would start an argument that I don't particularly want to have because... has that just been a constant for the last little while no matter how hard I try to avoid it or how tired of it I have become. Other things like consumer unfriendly practices that I am willing to talk about right now.

The industry likes money. Pre-orders and kickstarters are good for the companies making the games, at least that's their claim. Helps them figure out supply issues before launch (including projecting server load for online games), it helps them keep the lights on during development, ect. On the other hand pre-orders and kickstarters are a great way for customers to hand over their hard earned money with almost no guarantee of the quality of the finished product, and finding themselves rather disappointed.

I recently became aware that homeworld and homeworld 2 are being remastered and that a pre-order is available for the bundle. A small miracle to me as a fan of the series, seeing as for a long time the rights to make homeworld games has been up in the air with allot of competing interests holding different rights. This along with the re-branding of a game that was originally being made as a "spiritual successor" means that the series may not be as dead as I feared it was. The pre-order includes a pretty wicked looking resin model of the mothership, some art books, two copies of each game, one only updated to run on modern machines and one being the full overhaul.

But all is not sunshine and rainbows. First off I lean towards the camp that suggests pre-orders are generally consumer unfriendly. The pre-order has been announced long before the official release date so no one knows if you will get the goods when they suggest you might or much much later (if at all). And for all the talk about making the games more stable or even at least playable on modern systems, I have seen zero proof of this. I don't think such a thing is impossible but it's also entirely possible that while re-writing the game engines, they end up with a buggy mess that they may or may not spend years releasing patches for. I can't even find proof of the visual upgrades. Again, it's entirely possible to make the game prettier but is it going to be worth it? Add in tactics to rush purchasers, like the limited availability of the pre-order swag. It all comes across very much like I'm dealing with a used car salesman and his high pressure, low information sales tactics.

Do I support a series I love and clear a spot on my shelf for that pretty resin model and artbook, with the hope in my heart that it sparks it's revival. Ushering in a new era of me spending far too much of my personal time in front of a computer monitor blowing up simulated space ships.

If I do I open myself up to becoming a hypocrite and slave to commercialism, allowing a cheap plastic toy and some colorful pictures to trick me into parting with my money like some geeky happy meal. Fueling an industry that pushes crap and empty promises.

So far the thing that seems reasonable to me is to sit and wait, hoping for more information to come forward. I might even decide to try to sum up what I've typed above in as respectful a tone as I can, and post my concerns on the company's forums or write an email to them, hoping that while it certainly won't stop them from doing this now, that it at least makes them aware of such concerns for future endeavors.

Though being respectful about it is key and probably something that you should choose to do regardless of whatever moral quandary you find yourself facing. Might not grab the attention like ALL CAPS EXCLAIMATION POINT!!11!1!! EXPLETIVE EXPLETIVE... but it get's you taken more seriously and doesn't turn the person you are talking to against you by default.

I like video games. I like movies. I like anime. I like women. And I like "stuff". I also believe that in media women should have better representation, more equal input, and that female characters should be more than just eye candy. Sometimes the best I can do is try to exercise my preference" by finding the examples that least conflict with my morals. Sometimes the best I can do is try to have a dialogue about the problems. Sometimes the best I can do is just enjoy what I enjoy, being aware of the problems so that I can try shield myself from allowing it to affect me. Sometimes the best that I can do is to lend support to diversifying the market so that I can enjoy my things, you can enjoy your things, and we can enjoy the things that grow out both.

/ramble

[Zrak]

I'd call it "Trunks," use a cartoony elephant as a mascot the way Hooters uses a cartoony owl, and have the servers uniform consist of really short shorts emblazoned with a suggestively placed elephant face. You're welcome, world.

[DeadMech]

I'd call it "Trunks," use a cartoony elephant as a mascot the way Hooters uses a cartoony owl, and have the servers uniform consist of really short shorts emblazoned with a suggestively placed elephant face. You're welcome, world.

It was so obvious the entire time.

[Coidzor]

It was so obvious the entire time.

It is pretty much reinventing the wheel at this point because so much effort and groundwork has gone into making the hypothetical spear counterpart to Hooters. Meanwhile, knock-offs like the Hooters of hair salons have been explored. :-)

[Mx.Silver]

Just because it looks official, and its reviewed by peers (AKA likeminded peers), does not make it credible.

No, but so far your only apparent argument that organisations like, say, The American Psychological Association (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Psychological_Association) (the first study Fish linked to, one of the two that isn't behind a paywall, was published in one of their journals) are no more credible a source than an anti-scientific interest group seems to be that you hold an opinion derived from 'common sense' which is different to the consensus of that academic field. Which is itself not dissimilar to the arguments put forward by the anti-vaccination lobby, HIV-AIDs deniers and other such groups.





I'd call it "Trunks," use a cartoony elephant as a mascot the way Hooters uses a cartoony owl, and have the servers uniform consist of really short shorts emblazoned with a suggestively placed elephant face. You're welcome, world.

You just might be on to something there :smalltongue:

[Poison_Fish]

Given the quality of your previous links, forgive me if I take these with a grain of salt.

It's not about the specific studies, it's about the fact that objectification is a thing that is studied and comes from greater dehumanization studies. That it varies among different groups in how it takes place. And that like all studies in human interaction, it's more complex then a yes/no statement. I gave frankly a small sampling of some abstracts and some full articles. Denying the existence of objectification is about as ignorant as what Scowling Dragon wants to accuse me and thousands of other researchers over the course of time. As Math Mage said earlier, the questions you should be going for is: How much? When? What are it's effects? Who? and How? Is this actively harmful? Denying the existence of dehumanization is the equivalent of putting your hands over your eyes while screaming about how you aren't listening.

Let's not get onto grains of salt and your ideas on the game industry however.

[Jayngfet]

Because your opinion (http://www.apa.org/education/ce/sexual-objectification.pdf) is equal to or greater then any valid (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-009-9637-1) measurements done by (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-005-1190-y#page-1) those who actually attempt (http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00913367.1996.10673509#.VBuI-hbp7wM) to investigate the subject (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-006-9176-y#page-1). Thus, your opinion is objectively true, as opposed to all that inconvenient higher in validity then your opinion data. It couldn't possibly be more complex (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF00289865#page-1) then a simple opinion on a truth or not statement. As we know, anything more complex then that is clearly not objective and therefore not worth discussing.

Now let me get back to eating my chicken wings from Man-Pecs, the brother restaurant to Hooters that exists in the same consumable restaurant experience and has equal parity in its existence and function to its sister restaurant.

Allright, now that I'm looking through some of the articles here's my take away:

The first essay is completley loaded. For all it's talk of media the only study examining actual camera work and film techniques is two decades old, using videos that have long since left circulation, and the commercial it singles out is more than a decade old at that. Given how fast media changes and evolves, especially in the last decade, that means basically all the relevant objective statistics aren't relevant at all.

Likewise the second article is also waaaaaaaaaay outdated, since it's currently two generations behind and detailing a list of stuff that's long since become outdated from an industry dynamic that doesn't exist. A list from 2003 is going to be full of studios and practices and names that aren't exactly relevant.

As for the third one, I'm not exactly a magazine culture buff but everything I'm reading comes off as patronizing in the extreme. It essentially implies that even when content is made by and for women that it's still an issue based on circumstances that don't apply. It all but explicitly states "Black people making stuff for black people is still racist because I said so. Women making stuff for women is racist because I said so." and is one of the most preachy and judgemental things I've read all year.

Can't get ahold of the next article too easily, so I'm gonna skip that one. It might be brilliant, but I'm not paying for it and it's not on the databases I tend to use.

The one that uses an actual study with an actually wide pool of applicants does have merit, I'll admit that. However, there's still the obvious issue that it's one pool of research coming from a specific set of cultural ideals. It has merit, but by it's own admission 90% of applicants fit into a very narrow demographic. Obviously studies like these are expensive and time consuming, but it's the only one that's even vaguely convinced me.

The next one I also couldn't view, so I'll again refuse to comment.

It's a nice effort, but barring one article I could access, they were all completely loaded and very clearly biased. Even that one had a bit of it's own bias showing through here and there.

The danger of media coverage compared to say, history, is that media moves fast. Something from last year is going to be dead and buried and a decade ago may as well be so far back in the archives the audience doesn't know it exists. This was one of the things that was very clearly impressed upon me in my brief stint in the liberal arts.

If you have something more modern and impartial I'll gladly tackle that though.

[Poison_Fish]

Allright, now that I'm looking through some of the articles here's my take away:

I'll spoiler some specific tangents, but I'd like to put up a couple of things:
1. The articles are to convey the idea that objectification is a researched topic that is generally accepted as something that exists with more complexity then what was being implied by detractors in this thread
2. The question of how it is problematic among other variables are where you would want to focus.
3. Opinions of "because I don't like this thing, therefore it is not true" does not in anyway invalidate the studies. Please, let's not abuse Objectively Objective Steve anymore then has already been done. They are already in plenty of pain from the lack of objective information. They don't want to turn into something like Literal Lassie who no longer fits their identity.



The first essay is completley loaded. For all it's talk of media the only study examining actual camera work and film techniques is two decades old, using videos that have long since left circulation, and the commercial it singles out is more than a decade old at that. Given how fast media changes and evolves, especially in the last decade, that means basically all the relevant objective statistics aren't relevant at all.

Loaded how? Do you mean loaded in the way that it states that Objectification theory is a thing which you implicitly dislike and therefore it must be 'loaded'? Anyhow, Did you actually read this article? Page 10: APA's review of media, from 2007. Unless you are from the year 2017 from a time machine, no, it's not just 20 year old information. We have many connections to studies all the way from the 90's the the late 00's. Media "moves fast" is BS that I'll touch on outside of the spoiler though. Also, Morbo says Statistics don't work that way. You'd have to actually prove that a change in film technique alone somehow invalidates all of media studies. You aren't going to have much luck going that route considering it's concerned with content, not with how your Grip is helping with the lighting.

Also, let's talk about commercials, specifically the alcohol and objectification discussion contained within the article. While this is not specifically data here, I encourage you to go to youtube and go watch at least 15 minutes worth of beer commercials from 2014. The content has not changed much if you then do a search for 90's beer commercials. Just because something is a decade old does not invalidate it completely as a point of data. You'd need to properly explain why something that is old doesn't help provide valid data, and you'd also have to tie it back to whatever the actual question that is being hypothesized is. "Media is Sonic Fast" is not one of these explanations.


Likewise the second article is also waaaaaaaaaay outdated, since it's currently two generations behind and detailing a list of stuff that's long since become outdated from an industry dynamic that doesn't exist. A list from 2003 is going to be full of studios and practices and names that aren't exactly relevant.

The industry dynamic that you are talking of here? Hasn't changed all that much as the industry still has the same major players that have merely gone through generational upgrades and finally started using similar equipment. Again though, this doesn't disprove the existence of objectification and how it has operated. If your complaint basically boils down to "Well that was 10 years ago, things are different", you should show how things are demonstrably different. Considering you aren't denying all this "past" stuff, does the mean you tacitly accept it then? Anyhow, the burden of proof remains on you. My gut instinct is there is marginal improvement across developers, but from a marketing level there hasn't been much of a concentrated effort. As a gentle reminder, the target market from 10 years ago is still a market that has aged 10 years.


As for the third one, I'm not exactly a magazine culture buff but everything I'm reading comes off as patronizing in the extreme. It essentially implies that even when content is made by and for women that it's still an issue based on circumstances that don't apply. It all but explicitly states "Black people making stuff for black people is still racist because I said so. Women making stuff for women is racist because I said so." and is one of the most preachy and judgemental things I've read all year.

Hrm.. Judgmental. Do you remember hoop earrings? I remember hoop earrings. Anyhow, what it's actually saying is how marketing targets people based on it's perception of its audience, and that it's target audiences can buy into it and internalize it, thus strengthening the demographic hold. What a revolutionary thought! That audiences internalize those beliefs is nothing new. Are you actually trying to argue that internalization of status is not a thing? It's a pretty basic feedback loop. Like, let's get out of gender here for a moment. We internalize all sorts of things into our identity. This is one of the major points for brand loyalty, which is openly demonstrated as a thing. Just look at the new iPhone or the console wars. For a stark feedback loop, just look at the history of pizza.


The one that uses an actual study with an actually wide pool of applicants does have merit, I'll admit that. However, there's still the obvious issue that it's one pool of research coming from a specific set of cultural ideals. It has merit, but by it's own admission 90% of applicants fit into a very narrow demographic. Obviously studies like these are expensive and time consuming, but it's the only one that's even vaguely convinced me.

So you missed all the other actual studies? Anyhow, you'll find tons of other similar studies. There is a good level of quantitative data aimed at taking different slices of demographics. Though many studies still use the college age demographic as standard.


It's a nice effort, but barring one article I could access, they were all completely loaded and very clearly biased. Even that one had a bit of it's own bias showing through here and there.

You haven't demonstrated what the bias is. Is it a selection bias? design bias? procedural? 'This disagrees with my personal war' bias? Come on, Jayngfet, show us your methodology chops.


The danger of media coverage compared to say, history, is that media moves fast. Something from last year is going to be dead and buried and a decade ago may as well be so far back in the archives the audience doesn't know it exists. This was one of the things that was very clearly impressed upon me in my brief stint in the liberal arts.

So, why is "media moves fast" an ineffectual counter argument? A couple of reasons.
1. Content: Content of older media can still apply to current times. Frank Sinatra is still an icon. The Beatles are still icons. Their songs still resonate. Mr. Rodgers is still a strong memory that is indeed still marketed too. Beyond that core themes can often be brought up time and time again, as culture tends to reproduce itself. By your logic, Doge should have died long ago. But why is still such thing? Many examples. So present.

2A. Society: We are not talking about media alone in regards to objectification, but greater cultural groups as well. Society can be generally slow to adapt or change. While it was certainly slower in the past, and media and technology can aid in the process of speeding a change, it still takes time for ideas, even ones that are beneficial in all ways, to set in. For a modern working example, see the general resistance to cheaper, more energy efficient, durable light bulbs. Now actual speed varies per subject, the introduction of lightbulbs may have been multiple decades slow, while faxes died relatively quickly with the advent of greater communications technology.

2B. Audience: Looped in with content, the audience isn't born entirely new when a new season of tv airs. They stay around and carry their interests into the following seasons. Them continuing to be around means that the feedback loop of being shaped and shaping the production continues unabated. As Pepperidge farm remembers the taste of an ideal from long ago, so to does the audience who is both shaped and informs back on how they might want to be shaped. They can only pray that the deal isn't altered any further. Of course, it is, as it's not entirely static. But nor is memory of media entirely ever changing. Marketing is a messy imprecise business on the end of a club after all.

Since older content still is ever-present, that the audience lives longer then a season, and that the audience can be slow to change their tastes, media moving 'fast' has so little to do with directed studies of individuals from 10 years ago. It would be better to track events then to put in some arbitrary speed number of say, 88 miles per hour, for media suddenly not mattering after whatever time period. 'Fast' media doesn't entirely make previous studies worthless, especially when that generation is still alive.


If you have something more modern and impartial I'll gladly tackle that though.

Considering you can't seem to define what bias is actually at play, and how this'll just grow to me providing hundreds of more studies for you to nitpick one detail, be wrong on what the detail means, forget everything else, and then attempt to declare yourself master over all of social studies because you went to a gender class for one semester, and like, everyone there was totally wrong for reasons and one person was mean and they were all strawfeminists or something. How about not? I'm frankly just tired of people masking themselves in faux-objectivity cloaks when they can't even pony up on basic data. Never-mind if we want to talk about the burden of proof on something that is fairly universally accepted as existing. You want to take down objectification as a process? Try to do it in a way that doesn't also make the same argument against dehumanization studies. Good luck denying economic stratification.

[Terraoblivion]

Jayngfet, you do know that they still teach Bergman in film school and at least mention Eisenstein, right? Both of whom are considerably older than anything in the articles.

[Jayngfet]

Jayngfet, you do know that they still teach Bergman in film school and at least mention Eisenstein, right? Both of whom are considerably older than anything in the articles.

...yeah, and at the same time nobody pays attention to 20 year old beer commercials. They're irrelevant unless you're researching them specifically. The general audience rarely cares for such things.





Loaded how? Do you mean loaded in the way that it states that Objectification theory is a thing which you implicitly dislike and therefore it must be 'loaded'? Anyhow, Did you actually read this article? Page 10: APA's review of media, from 2007. Unless you are from the year 2017 from a time machine, no, it's not just 20 year old information. We have many connections to studies all the way from the 90's the the late 00's. Media "moves fast" is BS that I'll touch on outside of the spoiler though. Also, Morbo says Statistics don't work that way. You'd have to actually prove that a change in film technique alone somehow invalidates all of media studies. You aren't going to have much luck going that route considering it's concerned with content, not with how your Grip is helping with the lighting.



Loaded in that very little of the article is objectivley true. By which I mean the part where they sit down and watch a large number of commercials and take statistics is from 20 years old. The specific commercial they watch after is a decade old. They aren't in circulation anymore and the current members of that demographic have never actually seen them.



Also, let's talk about commercials, specifically the alcohol and objectification discussion contained within the article. While this is not specifically data here, I encourage you to go to youtube and go watch at least 15 minutes worth of beer commercials from 2014. The content has not changed much if you then do a search for 90's beer commercials. Just because something is a decade old does not invalidate it completely as a point of data. You'd need to properly explain why something that is old doesn't help provide valid data, and you'd also have to tie it back to whatever the actual question that is being hypothesized is. "Media is Sonic Fast" is not one of these explanations.

I just did. I didn't find any of the discussed cleavage shots in the Bud Light superbowl ad, Coors has gone in a different direction entirely with Van Damme, and obviously Dos Equis, which wasn't a thing at the time, doesn't use that tactic in any real capacity despite it's popularity. Which is why it's irrelevant, the media and it's trends it's based on have changed entirely.



The industry dynamic that you are talking of here? Hasn't changed all that much as the industry still has the same major players that have merely gone through generational upgrades and finally started using similar equipment. Again though, this doesn't disprove the existence of objectification and how it has operated. If your complaint basically boils down to "Well that was 10 years ago, things are different", you should show how things are demonstrably different. Considering you aren't denying all this "past" stuff, does the mean you tacitly accept it then? Anyhow, the burden of proof remains on you. My gut instinct is there is marginal improvement across developers, but from a marketing level there hasn't been much of a concentrated effort. As a gentle reminder, the target market from 10 years ago is still a market that has aged 10 years.


See above. The dynamic has totally changed and the image these companies want to sell has changed with it. The image more or less across the board has shifted to be about dudes who drink this beer being awesome and going on cool adventures.



Hrm.. Judgmental. Do you remember hoop earrings? I remember hoop earrings. Anyhow, what it's actually saying is how marketing targets people based on it's perception of its audience, and that it's target audiences can buy into it and internalize it, thus strengthening the demographic hold. What a revolutionary thought! That audiences internalize those beliefs is nothing new. Are you actually trying to argue that internalization of status is not a thing? It's a pretty basic feedback loop. Like, let's get out of gender here for a moment. We internalize all sorts of things into our identity. This is one of the major points for brand loyalty, which is openly demonstrated as a thing. Just look at the new iPhone or the console wars. For a stark feedback loop, just look at the history of pizza.





So you missed all the other actual studies? Anyhow, you'll find tons of other similar studies. There is a good level of quantitative data aimed at taking different slices of demographics. Though many studies still use the college age demographic as standard.

Hey, you're the one linking things. It's not my fault you won't provide the wealth of information you've apparently got and instead stick it behind a paywall 90% of the forum can't or won't go through.




So, why is "media moves fast" an ineffectual counter argument? A couple of reasons.
1. Content: Content of older media can still apply to current times. Frank Sinatra is still an icon. The Beatles are still icons. Their songs still resonate. Mr. Rodgers is still a strong memory that is indeed still marketed too. Beyond that core themes can often be brought up time and time again, as culture tends to reproduce itself. By your logic, Doge should have died long ago. But why is still such thing? Many examples. So present.

Those are exceptions and not rules. I'd recommend you hit up a satilite or online radio station that does only 00's stuff and see how incredibly dissonant it is with 10's sensibilities. A number of those songs are still popular, especially from the tail end of the decade, but musically they may as well not matter. By comparison Frank Sinatra's contemporaries aren't relevant in the slightest.


2A. Society: We are not talking about media alone in regards to objectification, but greater cultural groups as well. Society can be generally slow to adapt or change. While it was certainly slower in the past, and media and technology can aid in the process of speeding a change, it still takes time for ideas, even ones that are beneficial in all ways, to set in. For a modern working example, see the general resistance to cheaper, more energy efficient, durable light bulbs. Now actual speed varies per subject, the introduction of lightbulbs may have been multiple decades slow, while faxes died relatively quickly with the advent of greater communications technology.


Light bulbs aren't media, since light bulbs have actual pros and cons for each model. LED light bulbs work nice in theory but there are plenty of circumstances where they fall short.

You can't just say "this technology is current" and expect people to abandon it. It has to be better. Media though is based almost entirely on what the audience thinks is cool and little else.


2B. Audience: Looped in with content, the audience isn't born entirely new when a new season of tv airs. They stay around and carry their interests into the following seasons. Them continuing to be around means that the feedback loop of being shaped and shaping the production continues unabated. As Pepperidge farm remembers the taste of an ideal from long ago, so to does the audience who is both shaped and informs back on how they might want to be shaped. They can only pray that the deal isn't altered any further. Of course, it is, as it's not entirely static. But nor is memory of media entirely ever changing. Marketing is a messy imprecise business on the end of a club after all.

...unless of course the audience does jump on with a new season, or leaves after a first one. Game of Thrones had a whole bunch of new people pick it up season to season so they're watching new episodes basically in a vaccum in relation to the series itself unless they decide to netflix it and until then previous stuff aired doesn't influence them at all. Brand loyalty isn't absolue and it can be killed off and remade pretty damn easily. I mean to use your console wars bit the dreamcast didn't exactly have a stellar career.


Since older content still is ever-present, that the audience lives longer then a season, and that the audience can be slow to change their tastes, media moving 'fast' has so little to do with directed studies of individuals from 10 years ago. It would be better to track events then to put in some arbitrary speed number of say, 88 miles per hour, for media suddenly not mattering after whatever time period. 'Fast' media doesn't entirely make previous studies worthless, especially when that generation is still alive.

Of course, maybe until recently with netflix equivalents, that's not true. Stuff years old can be ripped off the air and replaced. Commercials can be gone a couple of months or even weeks after they show up. Unless you seek out the discs or files they stop existing as far as you're concerned. If you're gone during that time it may well never have happened.

The current generation of 20somethings buying beer and having these commercials targeted to them have the examples used being at best a distant and hazy memory.

Media isn't some vast omnipresent monolith, it's a series of flashes in the pan with maybe one percent of the stuff that comes out having any staying power. Changes can happen overnight and trends can appear and disappear in an instant.



Considering you can't seem to define what bias is actually at play, and how this'll just grow to me providing hundreds of more studies for you to nitpick one detail, be wrong on what the detail means, forget everything else, and then attempt to declare yourself master over all of social studies because you went to a gender class for one semester, and like, everyone there was totally wrong for reasons and one person was mean and they were all strawfeminists or something. How about not? I'm frankly just tired of people masking themselves in faux-objectivity cloaks when they can't even pony up on basic data. Never-mind if we want to talk about the burden of proof on something that is fairly universally accepted as existing. You want to take down objectification as a process? Try to do it in a way that doesn't also make the same argument against dehumanization studies. Good luck denying economic stratification.

You seem mad.

[Poison_Fish]

...yeah, and at the same time nobody pays attention to 20 year old beer commercials. They're irrelevant unless you're researching them specifically. The general audience rarely cares for such things.

Doesn't invalidate data: That objectification exists and is used. Doesn't change marketing methods on base instincts. Doesn't disrupt my original purpose in posting articles.


Loaded in that very little of the article is objectivley true. By which I mean the part where they sit down and watch a large number of commercials and take statistics is from 20 years old. The specific commercial they watch after is a decade old. They aren't in circulation anymore and the current members of that demographic have never actually seen them.

You keep abusing the word objective.
1. Education is a quickly changing demographic. We use data from 30 years ago in making decisions. It's not 100% effective due to time lag. But it is more effective then throwing up our hands and declaring things not problems because it's only been 10 years now, it must have totally gone away.
2. You somehow only read page 16, disagreed, and then declared the whole overall review "loaded" and entirely useless based on only one of the many different studies contained. That's poor rigor.
3. Rather then to continue to operate on a 0/1 scale, you could make an argument for overall validity of the data. But right now you haven't actually shown it. We still have similar commercials, where fashion and some language has moved with the times, but content has not entirely moved.


I just did. I didn't find any of the discussed cleavage shots in the Bud Light superbowl ad, Coors has gone in a different direction entirely with Van Damme, and obviously Dos Equis, which wasn't a thing at the time, doesn't use that tactic in any real capacity despite it's popularity. Which is why it's irrelevant, the media and it's trends it's based on have changed entirely.

You are not watching the same 'most interesting man' commercials that I am, clearly. You missed keystone lite. I also expaned my search to past 3 years and found a few other adds. A cursory glance: Tight dresses are more in then cleavage. There are slightly more people of color enjoying beverages. Some more butt shots. Advertising on the base instinct level? About the same. Some of the content has shifted, it's not a total shift. I ended up checking out a few other countries commercials as well, which was an interesting trip.


See above. The dynamic has totally changed and the image these companies want to sell has changed with it. The image more or less across the board has shifted to be about dudes who drink this beer being awesome and going on cool adventures.

Some has changed. Doesn't invalidate data that objectification happens, some within current commercials, but a difference in style. See, now we are getting somewhere off a 0/1. Progress!


Hey, you're the one linking things. It's not my fault you won't provide the wealth of information you've apparently got and instead stick it behind a paywall 90% of the forum can't or won't go through.

As I said, more research there if people want access to it, some not behind pay walls. Burden of proof still remains on you to claim that Objectification is not a thing and that it doesn't vary among groups, considering this is commonly accepted among multiple research communities outside of just gender.


Those are exceptions and not rules. I'd recommend you hit up a satilite or online radio station that does only 00's stuff and see how incredibly dissonant it is with 10's sensibilities. A number of those songs are still popular, especially from the tail end of the decade, but musically they may as well not matter. By comparison Frank Sinatra's contemporaries aren't relevant in the slightest.

"I'm going to ignore the openly obvious fact that some movies resonate with a populace beyond one generation because then my narrative of audiences forgetting things in one year is disrupted. I shall conveniently drop those cases."


Light bulbs aren't media, since light bulbs have actual pros and cons for each model. LED light bulbs work nice in theory but there are plenty of circumstances where they fall short.

You can't just say "this technology is current" and expect people to abandon it. It has to be better. Media though is based almost entirely on what the audience thinks is cool and little else.

I'd make a joke about Marshall Mcluhan, but then I'd have to link Annie Hall. Also you wouldn't get it /hipster. Doesn't alter the point, adoption is slow, even in cases when there is a superior product. Oh, but is this a sign you are starting to accept a feedback loop? Progress.


...unless of course the audience does jump on with a new season, or leaves after a first one. Game of Thrones had a whole bunch of new people pick it up season to season so they're watching new episodes basically in a vaccum in relation to the series itself unless they decide to netflix it and until then previous stuff aired doesn't influence them at all. Brand loyalty isn't absolue and it can be killed off and remade pretty damn easily. I mean to use your console wars bit the dreamcast didn't exactly have a stellar career.

I never implied that brand loyalty was absolute. I implied it was effective. Brand loyalty is not going to save a poorly advertised product without compelling additional products to back it up in an environment like the consoles. See what happened with the PS3 in it's first two years of it's launch compared to it's overall life cycle. Exclusives are all part of that full marketing package.

Additionally, some audience members will come in and out of a show without context. Others will have it be a group activity. Doesn't alter that 'media is fast' somehow invalidates study of media.

Minor nitpick, Game of Thrones is not on netflix.


Of course, maybe until recently with netflix equivalents, that's not true. Stuff years old can be ripped off the air and replaced. Commercials can be gone a couple of months or even weeks after they show up. Unless you seek out the discs or files they stop existing as far as you're concerned. If you're gone during that time it may well never have happened.

Memory of those involved, a catchy jingle, nostalgia are also factors you seem to be not considering. The Nostalgia market is going strong.


The current generation of 20somethings buying beer and having these commercials targeted to them have the examples used being at best a distant and hazy memory.

This does not invalidate my original contention and purpose of posting the articles.


Media isn't some vast omnipresent monolith, it's a series of flashes in the pan with maybe one percent of the stuff that comes out having any staying power. Changes can happen overnight and trends can appear and disappear in an instant.

Media varies wildly, overall cultural trends get reproduced in short form in content. I can knock TVtropes plenty, but the basic concept of a trope has existed for quite awhile when looking at media. Which again, supports what I have been saying and doesn't invalidate my purpose in posting a slice of articles


You seem mad.

No, just saying that a mouthpiece of /v/ is the furthest thing from impartiality. Do you want to continue this in PM?

[Jayngfet]

Doesn't invalidate data: That objectification exists and is used. Doesn't change marketing methods on base instincts. Doesn't disrupt my original purpose in posting articles.



You keep abusing the word objective.
1. Education is a quickly changing demographic. We use data from 30 years ago in making decisions. It's not 100% effective due to time lag. But it is more effective then throwing up our hands and declaring things not problems because it's only been 10 years now, it must have totally gone away.
2. You somehow only read page 16, disagreed, and then declared the whole overall review "loaded" and entirely useless based on only one of the many different studies contained. That's poor rigor.
3. Rather then to continue to operate on a 0/1 scale, you could make an argument for overall validity of the data. But right now you haven't actually shown it. We still have similar commercials, where fashion and some language has moved with the times, but content has not entirely moved.



You are not watching the same 'most interesting man' commercials that I am, clearly. You missed keystone lite. I also expaned my search to past 3 years and found a few other adds. A cursory glance: Tight dresses are more in then cleavage. There are slightly more people of color enjoying beverages. Some more butt shots. Advertising on the base instinct level? About the same. Some of the content has shifted, it's not a total shift. I ended up checking out a few other countries commercials as well, which was an interesting trip.



Some has changed. Doesn't invalidate data that objectification happens, some within current commercials, but a difference in style. See, now we are getting somewhere off a 0/1. Progress!



As I said, more research there if people want access to it, some not behind pay walls. Burden of proof still remains on you to claim that Objectification is not a thing and that it doesn't vary among groups, considering this is commonly accepted among multiple research communities outside of just gender.



"I'm going to ignore the openly obvious fact that some movies resonate with a populace beyond one generation because then my narrative of audiences forgetting things in one year is disrupted. I shall conveniently drop those cases."



I'd make a joke about Marshall Mcluhan, but then I'd have to link Annie Hall. Also you wouldn't get it /hipster. Doesn't alter the point, adoption is slow, even in cases when there is a superior product. Oh, but is this a sign you are starting to accept a feedback loop? Progress.



I never implied that brand loyalty was absolute. I implied it was effective. Brand loyalty is not going to save a poorly advertised product without compelling additional products to back it up in an environment like the consoles. See what happened with the PS3 in it's first two years of it's launch compared to it's overall life cycle. Exclusives are all part of that full marketing package.

Additionally, some audience members will come in and out of a show without context. Others will have it be a group activity. Doesn't alter that 'media is fast' somehow invalidates study of media.

Minor nitpick, Game of Thrones is not on netflix.



Memory of those involved, a catchy jingle, nostalgia are also factors you seem to be not considering. The Nostalgia market is going strong.



This does not invalidate my original contention and purpose of posting the articles.



Media varies wildly, overall cultural trends get reproduced in short form in content. I can knock TVtropes plenty, but the basic concept of a trope has existed for quite awhile when looking at media. Which again, supports what I have been saying and doesn't invalidate my purpose in posting a slice of articles



No, just saying that a mouthpiece of /v/ is the furthest thing from impartiality. Do you want to continue this in PM?

Lets just clear something up. I'm not saying your sources are wrong, I'm saying they're not relevant to a conversation on modern media since they aren't modern. Modern beer ads are a very different beast and have had some pretty visible changes in the five years or so since your article was written, and the decade plus since most of the more objective studies actually took place. The actual things being measured and judged would give different statistics if a new study were done. Which is also true of basically every form of media out there.

Saying "Objectification happens!" is kind of a non statement. I never said it didn't happen, but concepts evolve and change over time and you need the most recent possible examples to get where it stands in society right this second, and a wide pool so you can get a decent picture of each time and place. Because an image from the 10's is going to have notable differences from an image from the 00's from the 90's from the 80's back as far as you want to go.

Which is a consistent issue with your arguments: There's not a whole lot of nuance to speak of. You're trying to prove a thing exists but never going into the whys or hows and occasionally you'll link something that proudly doesn't care about the whys or hows.

I have every confidence that more modern studies exist, hell if I find the time I'll help you and look for some myself, but it's important that you use the appropriate materials for the discussion at hand.

[Poison_Fish]

Lets just clear something up. I'm not saying your sources are wrong, I'm saying they're not relevant to a conversation on modern media since they aren't modern. Modern beer ads are a very different beast and have had some pretty visible changes in the five years or so since your article was written, and the decade plus since most of the more objective studies actually took place. The actual things being measured and judged would give different statistics if a new study were done. Which is also true of basically every form of media out there.

Saying "Objectification happens!" is kind of a non statement. I never said it didn't happen, but concepts evolve and change over time and you need the most recent possible examples to get where it stands in society right this second, and a wide pool so you can get a decent picture of each time and place. Because an image from the 10's is going to have notable differences from an image from the 00's from the 90's from the 80's back as far as you want to go.

Which is a consistent issue with your arguments: There's not a whole lot of nuance to speak of. You're trying to prove a thing exists but never going into the whys or hows and occasionally you'll link something that proudly doesn't care about the whys or hows.

I have every confidence that more modern studies exist, hell if I find the time I'll help you and look for some myself, but it's important that you use the appropriate materials for the discussion at hand.

Did you miss a page ago loudly declaring that objectification was not a thing? Did you miss me stating, from the beginning, that it was nuanced and more complex then a yes or no? Because that was what this was about. Of course there is a wide variety of scholarship on the subject, that has varied analysis. There is a lot of recent work on men's images, which is a legitimate response to the lack of overall material from decades ago. However, I'm not interested in engaging in a long review of old studies, especially with someone who doesn't seem to grasp validity. I've been saying that Objectification is a thing, from the start. It's not a non-statement when you have individuals specifically denying it. It's a responsive statement. So, context, you missed it. You've been having the wrong discussion from the beginning.

If were to engage in such a discussion, I don't see a point in going over data points here in this thread.

[Jayngfet]

Did you miss a page ago loudly declaring that objectification was not a thing? Did you miss me stating, from the beginning, that it was nuanced and more complex then a yes or no? Because that was what this was about. Of course there is a wide variety of scholarship on the subject, that has varied analysis. There is a lot of recent work on men's images, which is a legitimate response to the lack of overall material from decades ago. However, I'm not interested in engaging in a long review of old studies, especially with someone who doesn't seem to grasp validity. I've been saying that Objectification is a thing, from the start. It's not a non-statement when you have individuals specifically denying it. It's a responsive statement. So, context, you missed it. You've been having the wrong discussion from the beginning.

If were to engage in such a discussion, I don't see a point in going over data points here in this thread.

To be absolutely fair, if you're referring to ScowlingDragon, he's not saying it doesn't exist, he's asking for a specific definition that works under scrutiny. Which is fair because he isn't an academic and doesn't have as much experience.

He isn't saying that it isn't a thing, he's asking for clarification. He's doing it in a way that's kind of abrasive but his actions are perfectly understandable if you know where he's coming from.

[Poison_Fish]

To be absolutely fair, if you're referring to ScowlingDragon, he's not saying it doesn't exist, he's asking for a specific definition that works under scrutiny. Which is fair because he isn't an academic and doesn't have as much experience.

He isn't saying that it isn't a thing, he's asking for clarification. He's doing it in a way that's kind of abrasive but his actions are perfectly understandable if you know where he's coming from.

By declaring a term rubbish under 'scrutiny', and that scrutiny consisting of thousands of researchers are clearly a hive mind who are also thought police. Just like creationists?

Yeah, you aren't reading the same things I am.

Also
Those studies all depend on the existence of Objectification. None of them prove objectification (Mainly because it just requires common sense to disprove), and so I just easily find myself dumping 99% of this stuff in the garbage.

So, as we were saying.

[Terraoblivion]

To be absolutely fair, if you're referring to ScowlingDragon, he's not saying it doesn't exist, he's asking for a specific definition that works under scrutiny. Which is fair because he isn't an academic and doesn't have as much experience.

Do you actually know how to read? He quite explicitly called the term ridiculous and ludicrous, rather than simply asking for a clarification.

Also, I'd like to hear you explain how old things are obviously relevant when some really old things are used to teach people how to make movies. Your previous answer was pretty much a nonsequitor and failed the address the point that people still pay attention to old things. Something that should be especially obvious with the rampant 80s nostalgia Hollywood has had for the last several years.

[Closet_Skeleton]

Jayngfet, you do know that they still teach Bergman in film school and at least mention Eisenstein, right? Both of whom are considerably older than anything in the articles.

They also teach Jacques Lacan, at least in Laura Mulvey's interpretation of his theory which is basically what is actually being talked about.

We did a lot more on Eisenstein than on Bergman. I'd say in general older stuff is focused on a lot more. But the whole point of teaching film studies isn't to study new films, its to train people who can. So well worn ground is what you examine in class.

[Terraoblivion]

And therefore Lacan is relevant. Even if a lot of his ideas are...weird. Such as the fact that mirrors are a naturally occurring feature all humans have to deal with. Which raises the question of what he thinks people were like in the neolithic.

[Jayngfet]

They also teach Jacques Lacan, at least in Laura Mulvey's interpretation of his theory which is basically what is actually being talked about.

We did a lot more on Eisenstein than on Bergman. I'd say in general older stuff is focused on a lot more. But the whole point of teaching film studies isn't to study new films, its to train people who can. So well worn ground is what you examine in class.

That last paragraph is most relevant.

The general audience doesn't take film studies class. They don't have that background. The number of people who've actually seen say, Citizen Kane, drops with every passing year, unless they're studying film for some reason. As far as most of them are concerned, it's just the name of a film other people have watched and something involving "rosebud".

When you're talking about the general public instead of academics, it's important to know what their actual frame of reference is.

[Terraoblivion]

You do know that people who make films have a history of taking film classes, right? So what's taught in them influences how films are made.

[Dragonus45]

Did you miss a page ago loudly declaring that objectification was not a thing? .

That happened to be, I still stand roughly by that statement. Objectification is not anywhere near what people in this thread are trying to use it as and is not objectively a thing.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The general audience doesn't take film studies class.


Chimpanzees don't take Primatology.

Doesn't mean film studies has no ability to study how the general audience looks at films. I'm of the opinion that a lot of film studies is bunk, but that's because I read convincing works of film studies that critiqued other works of film studies so I can't say that the field is bunk because my ability to discredit large sections of it hinges on my ability to use it.


That happened to be, I still stand roughly by that statement. Objectification is not anywhere near what people in this thread are trying to use it as and is not objectively a thing.

Why should anyone care if any theoretical concept is 'objectively a thing'.

You're just protein and water, when you die you will remain protein and water. Have fun being 'objectively soulless' if you want to think of yourself like that but its not really relevant.

Objectification is a second wave feminist theory based on the psychological theories of Lacan. Its not supposed to be 'a thing', its a tool to help people think about things. Criticism isn't supposed to be objective, its a subjective lens to allow us to see a variety of perspectives.

The objective is not objectively superior to the subjective. Throwing it about as a buzz word is just distracting

[Poison_Fish]

Why should anyone care if any theoretical concept is 'objectively a thing'.

You're just protein and water, when you die you will remain protein and water. Have fun being 'objectively soulless' if you want to think of yourself like that but its not really relevant.

Objectification is a second wave feminist theory based on the psychological theories of Lacan. Its not supposed to be 'a thing', its a tool to help people think about things.

Well that was more effective then my route.

[Jayngfet]

Chimpanzees don't take Primatology.

Doesn't mean film studies has no ability to study how the general audience looks at films. I'm of the opinion that a lot of film studies is bunk, but that's because I read convincing works of film studies that critiqued other works of film studies so I can't say that the field is bunk because my ability to discredit large sections of it hinges on my ability to use it.


Chimpanzees out in the wild also don't tend to benefit from esoteric research about chimpanzee diets if they're fed nothing but a menu of what they'd never experience in the wild. Or the psychological effects of an ape trapped in a zoo. The field of study is irrelevant to a chimpanzee in multiple instances.

We're discussing things from the perspective of the chimp, not the dude in a lab coat stalking him from a bush.

[Terraoblivion]

Chimpanzees out in the wild also don't tend to benefit from esoteric research about chimpanzee diets if they're fed nothing but a menu of what they'd never experience in the wild. Or the psychological effects of an ape trapped in a zoo. The field of study is irrelevant to a chimpanzee in multiple instances.

We're discussing things from the perspective of the chimp, not the dude in a lab coat stalking him from a bush.

Why would you wear a lab coat to do fieldwork in the jungle? :smallconfused:

Also, we're talking about how things influences the behavior of the audience. Studies on what influences the behavior of the audience seems pretty relevant. That the audience doesn't know the studies, on the other hand, doesn't. And a discussion from the perspective of somebody without particularly deep knowledge idly stating their thoughts doesn't seem like it'd lead to anything productive.

[Closet_Skeleton]

We're discussing things from the perspective of the chimp, not the dude in a lab coat stalking him from a bush.

Film studies discusses things from the perspective of the general audience. You can't say Film Studies is irrelevant to the audience's perspective because if you start talking about the audience's perspective you're suddenly doing film studies and if you want to make the film critics shut up your only option is to stop talking about the audience's perspective. Objectification isn't something the audience perceives, its a way the audience perceives women.

It comes from Lacan's Gaze theory. Its all about perspective. Self-awareness is not a requirement.

Of course Objectification quickly vanishes when you use a non-Feminist method of critique, but that's just because its a concept within Feminist critique. It doesn't mean any style of critique is any more correct than any other because a critical style is just something that is useful because it gives different interpretations to other styles.

[LibraryOgre]

The Mod Wonder: I would suggest that y'all move away from political topics.

[Jayngfet]

Also, we're talking about how things influences the behavior of the audience. Studies on what influences the behavior of the audience seems pretty relevant. That the audience doesn't know the studies, on the other hand, doesn't. And a discussion from the perspective of somebody without particularly deep knowledge idly stating their thoughts doesn't seem like it'd lead to anything productive.

Right, but that's the distinction you aren't getting. You're studying effects that have been heavily muted by time. Citizen Kane is all but unknown to modern audiences as an actual movie so much as pop cultural osmosis, and random beer commercials from the 90's sure as hell aren't Citizen Kane.

Their modern counterparts don't conform to the same research and have a totally different makeup. Those commercials are the ones currently effecting the audience in an active and direct way, not stuff from a decade ago or more.

[Dragonus45]

Why should anyone care if any theoretical concept is 'objectively a thing'.

You're just protein and water, when you die you will remain protein and water. Have fun being 'objectively soulless' if you want to think of yourself like that but its not really relevant.

Objectification is a second wave feminist theory based on the psychological theories of Lacan. Its not supposed to be 'a thing', its a tool to help people think about things. Criticism isn't supposed to be objective, its a subjective lens to allow us to see a variety of perspectives.

The objective is not objectively superior to the subjective. Throwing it about as a buzz word is just distracting

It matters because people are saying it is objectively a thing and people and things should be judged for doing it because it supposedly is bad. If people want to call things bad and "problematic" because it supposedly objectifies then they should be willing to prove it is an actual thing.

[Zrak]

The danger of media coverage compared to say, history, is that media moves fast. Something from last year is going to be dead and buried and a decade ago may as well be so far back in the archives the audience doesn't know it exists. This was one of the things that was very clearly impressed upon me in my brief stint in the liberal arts.

I think you're misapprehending the goal of the studies you criticize for selecting "outdated" media. The goal was not to choose media that is hip or "relevant," but to choose media that was hip and relevant during the era when the subjects were most likely to be impacted by the media they consumed. Since those studies are more concerned with the impact of objectification in media than the prevalence of objectification in media, media from the "formative years" of subjects is more relevant than contemporary media. The commercials from ten or twenty years ago are the commercials from the adolescence of today's adults; it's not how many people pay attention to commercials that no longer air, it's how many people still remember their jingles.


To be absolutely fair, if you're referring to ScowlingDragon, he's not saying it doesn't exist, he's asking for a specific definition that works under scrutiny. Which is fair because he isn't an academic and doesn't have as much experience.

I initially assumed this to be the case and provided two definitions and their origins. Since he neither accepted the definitions nor clarified his objections, merely repeated that he rejected the term, I have to say his remarks do not strike me as an earnest attempt to further his knowledge on the subject.
Moreover, an astute observer will notice that Poison_Fish quoted a statement by Dragonus45 about whether or not objectification demonstrably existed at all. As such, one would assume the articles are intended to respond to the claims of Dragonus45.


And therefore Lacan is relevant. Even if a lot of his ideas are...weird. Such as the fact that mirrors are a naturally occurring feature all humans have to deal with. Which raises the question of what he thinks people were like in the neolithic.

To be fair, the actual act of looking at oneself in a mirror is a conceptual jumping-off point more than an integral part of developing into the "mirror stage," as Lacan himself clarified later, when new studies reflected that the age at which an infant could recognize itself in a mirror was higher than it was thought to be at the time of the idea's publication.



That happened to be, I still stand roughly by that statement. Objectification is not anywhere near what people in this thread are trying to use it as and is not objectively a thing.

In what sense is it not, objectively, a thing? It is a constructed concept; it exists by virtue of being defined. The concept exists to the same extent basically anything represented by a linguistic signifier exists. Are you saying the phenomenon the concept describes absolutely does not occur, or merely that it cannot be objectively said to occur? I won't necessarily contest the latter claim, though I will argue that it's a basically meaningless assertion. As for the former claim, I would ask you to provide evidence in support of it and address the evidence provided in other posts against it if you wish others to seriously consider its validity.

[Closet_Skeleton]

If people want to call things bad and "problematic" because it supposedly objectifies then they should be willing to prove it is an actual thing.

They're not talking about things, they're talking about effects on individual's psychology. In order to talk about and investigate psychology, we need abstract concepts that may not actually reflect reality.

It would be nice if psychology could be as easily proved as other forms of medicine but we have to live in the world as it is, even if we want to work out how to change it. (but if you actually look into biology then in certain important cases we don't actually understand regular medicine that well)

[Dragonus45]

In what sense is it not, objectively, a thing? It is a constructed concept; it exists by virtue of being defined. The concept exists to the same extent basically anything represented by a linguistic signifier exists. Are you saying the phenomenon the concept describes absolutely does not occur, or merely that it cannot be objectively said to occur? I won't necessarily contest the latter claim, though I will argue that it's a basically meaningless assertion. As for the former claim, I would ask you to provide evidence in support of it and address the evidence provided in other posts against it if you wish others to seriously consider its validity.

The latter, and I say it has meaning because if people start labeling things as bad or harmful because of it then they should first be able to properly prove so objectively.

[Closet_Skeleton]

The latter, and I say it has meaning because if people start labeling things as bad or harmful because of it then they should first be able to properly prove so objectively.

That's kind of what those studies are trying to do. There are an awful lot of studies on the self esteem of social groups.

[Jayngfet]

I think you're misapprehending the goal of the studies you criticize for selecting "outdated" media. The goal was not to choose media that is hip or "relevant," but to choose media that was hip and relevant during the era when the subjects were most likely to be impacted by the media they consumed. Since those studies are more concerned with the impact of objectification in media than the prevalence of objectification in media, media from the "formative years" of subjects is more relevant than contemporary media. The commercials from ten or twenty years ago are the commercials from the adolescence of today's adults; it's not how many people pay attention to commercials that no longer air, it's how many people still remember their jingles.

Which is a faulty line of reasoning if there ever was one. Targeted demographics exist for a reason and you rarely see beer ads on a network or programming block.

When I see people talk about commercials they remember, it was mostly stuff that played between cartoons, not an old budwiser ad. People remember, they just don't remember the things talked about.

[Terraoblivion]

And as we all know, the only memories are the ones leaving distinct sensory impressions in your memory...What do you consider knowledge, attitudes or belief systems if not forms of memory as well? I mean, you must think them something else. Either that or something that is formed wholly without outside input.

[Zrak]

The latter, and I say it has meaning because if people start labeling things as bad or harmful because of it then they should first be able to properly prove so objectively.

Well, what about other things which can't objectively demonstrated to occur, but are universally regarded as pretty bad? Even doing our best to avoid going down the inane rabbit hole of where the line between objectivity and subjectivity is drawn, most definitions are actually pretty subjective. Do we not agree that murder is bad, and harmful, just because exactly what delineates murder from other categories of killing is, to some extent, subjective?


Which is a faulty line of reasoning if there ever was one. Targeted demographics exist for a reason and you rarely see beer ads on a network or programming block.

When I see people talk about commercials they remember, it was mostly stuff that played between cartoons, not an old budwiser ad. People remember, they just don't remember the things talked about.
If you never watch sports, maybe. Even then, I don't think beer adds are nearly so rare as you seem to believe. Regardless, lots of people do watch sports, including a lot of kids. Even putting all that aside, your anecdotal experience establishes nothing meaningful about larger social trends.

If you can prove most kids don't see beer commercials, with actual data, then you have a valid critique. Until then, you have unsubstantiated conjecture.

[Jayngfet]

And as we all know, the only memories are the ones leaving distinct sensory impressions in your memory...What do you consider knowledge, attitudes or belief systems if not forms of memory as well? I mean, you must think them something else. Either that or something that is formed wholly without outside input.

They're the ones with the greatest impression. The rest is just the rest. Just thrown in the background with the millions of other vague half remembered things one finds in their brain.

If a single concise message is portrayed consistently across years, then maybe. But unless you can prove that beer companies are pushing a sexual agenda across the board that's kind of far fetched.

[Tengu_temp]

I wonder is Zousha even reading this thread anymore.

[Terraoblivion]

They're the ones with the greatest impression. The rest is just the rest. Just thrown in the background with the millions of other vague half remembered things one finds in their brain.

If a single concise message is portrayed consistently across years, then maybe. But unless you can prove that beer companies are pushing a sexual agenda across the board that's kind of far fetched.

No, it's the constant background noise that is the greatest impression. No one lame joke you heard as a kid, no one episode of a tv show, no one movie is ultimately going to do that much. But attitudes that are constantly repeated through thousands upon thousands of hours of your life are. A lot of them become such commonly accepted truths that we don't even think about them. Identification with the nation, instinctive support for the rule of law, rivalries with other regions, trust in the strength and character of the military...I could go on. These don't come from nowhere, nor do they get instilled in people because superior reason make them us realize they're true. They come from being endlessly repeated in an uncritical fashion. Objectification of women fall into the same category which doesn't care about how many or how few specific snippets repeating them you can remember from your childhood.

[warty goblin]

I wonder is Zousha even reading this thread anymore.

For his sake, I really hope not.

[Dragonus45]

That's kind of what those studies are trying to do. There are an awful lot of studies on the self esteem of social groups.

And Jayngfet has done a pretty good job tearing those apart.

[Terraoblivion]

And Jayngfet has done a pretty good job tearing those apart.

No he hasn't. He's been tearing into a small, secondary bit of them. And done a poor job of even doing that. He hasn't actually made any arguments against the main points, nor has he addressed how scholarly consensus is that objectification is a process. Nor has he actually made any substantial arguments to back his claims that things change too fast for older media to hold any power as a topic of study. Instead he's devolved into anti-scientific knowledge, somehow claiming that people who make a career studying something are incapable of talking about that topic or describing trends in it, and pedantic obsession with the exact nuances of beer commercials.

[warty goblin]

And Jayngfet has done a pretty good job tearing those apart.

I haven't found his arguments particularly persuasive as a general disproof of the existence of the objectification of women, if indeed he means them as that. At best, I think they show that given cultural drift, ten year old studies do not adequately address whether objectification is a current issue. Which does not actually address whether objectification is something that is currently happening to women or not, only the relevance of a particular line of evidence about that question.

To actually take the presented arguments as convincing disproof of the continued objectification of women, one would need to assume an incredibly specific level and direction of cultural drift over the last decade or so, across a wide variety of different media. This sort of very specific claim is one that requires substantial evidence, none of which has been presented as far as I'm aware. This means that, at least to me, the most that can be said for what you are advancing as a solid counter-argument to the women are objectified hypothesis is that even in light of ten year old data showing women were objectified, it is not entirely outside of the realm of possibility that women aren't objectified any more. Or at least at a drastically lower 'rate', however one would go about considering a rate of objectification.

This is not a convincing argument by any stretch of the imagination, unless one is so entirely determined to disbelieve the hypothesis that the possibility of falsification now passes for actual falsification, or has not rigorously considered what statements are being argued against, and what their falsification means. Personally I consider the former unreasonable, and I am of the view that one generally cannot reason with the unreasonable. The second case is simply a thing that regrettably happens, but can be remedied through careful and critical thought.


* * * * *


In the interest of full disclosure, I find the hypothesis that objectification is a thing that exists, damages people, and is rooted in the something one may as well call the 'male gaze' to be fairly convincing. It seems to explain for instance the near symmetry in rates of eating disorders among straight women and gay men. I know at least one person whose life has been seriously harmed by these issues, unless I am to assume this person is lying about their cause. Since I'm not entirely blind to how women and men are portrayed in advertising and other forms of media, I find the hypothesis that this harm is in part caused by these portrayals is pretty believable. Given that, I am forced to conclude that arguing against objectification as a real thing is coming from a very strange place, and not one I want to associate with.

On the flipside however, it is plausible to me that a claim of objectification can simply be made as a convenient method of setting the speaker on the clearly right side of a discussion while framing any disagreement or questioning of the label as further proof of the other party's wrongness. I don't think this means the concept itself is invalid, or that every time it is used in an argument it serves to shut down discussion, only that in some small number of cases it is probably is used to do so; a number substantially less than the incidence rate of people complaining about it because they cannot accept the possibility that they might be in the wrong about something. In light of both false positives and false declarations of false positives therefore, I think one should keep one's powers of critical thinking and empathy engaged, and as always be highly suspicious of arguments to the contrary.

[Zrak]

And Jayngfet has done a pretty good job tearing those apart.

This position contradicts your earlier assertion that something must be proven to be objectively true in order for it to be a valid criticism. He has provided no data of any kind in support of his criticisms. If he can prove that few children or adolescents ever see beer commercials to be influenced by them, he will have supported a criticism of one part of one of the studies. He has failed, thus far, to even do that; the most tangible evidence he has provided is the far-from-objective metric that of what most people he sees talking about commercials talk about. Whether or not you imagine he's right is irrelevant, whether or not he is right is irrelevant; unless he can prove that he's right, Objectively, his criticisms are invalid by your standards.

[Jayngfet]

For his sake, I really hope not.

Agreed. Nobody is enjoying this thread.


And Jayngfet has done a pretty good job tearing those apart.

Unless of course you've already decided that I'm wrong and in opposition to you. In which case it doesn't matter how shoddy your research is or how loaded your statements, it's still good.

[warty goblin]

Agreed. Nobody is enjoying this thread.
I've found it somewhat interesting. Since the good Archpaladin was trying to get a straight answer about something however, I suspect the last few pages probably haven't done him any good at all.




Unless of course you've already decided that I'm wrong and in opposition to you. In which case it doesn't matter how shoddy your research is or how loaded your statements, it's still good.

For the record, I did not decide you were wrong before reading your arguments. I've read fairly convincing arguments before that I think do a pretty convincing job demonstrating that at least in some cases objectification is not a useful or meaningful criticism of something, so I'm open to it happening again. I'm actually more or less in agreement that ten year old data is not of tremendous relevance to the modern popular culture, or at least is not immediately applicable without some work figuring out how the culture has evolved. However I don't think that legwork has been done, and am not willing to read the possibility of women no longer being objectified as proof of that point.

[Zrak]

Unless of course you've already decided that I'm wrong and in opposition to you. In which case it doesn't matter how shoddy your research is or how loaded your statements, it's still good.

If you want to convince me that the research is shoddy, demonstrate that it's shoddy. I asked you to support your criticism of the research methodology with some solid evidence. You have yet to do so. Accordingly, I do not take your criticism seriously. I have no personal investment in the articles cited, and I resent the insinuation that I am incapable of critically examining a study because of your preconceived notions about the manner in which I am reading it. If you want your criticism to be taken seriously, support it with evidence rather than wholly unsubstantiated conjecture.

If you want your wholesale rejection of the studies to be accepted, you'll have to demonstrate why that criticism invalidates the methodology, then do that again with other criticisms for all the other aspects of the various studies which were not demonstrably invalidated by the first criticism.

[Jayngfet]

However I don't think that legwork has been done, and am not willing to read the possibility of women no longer being objectified as proof of that point.

You don't have to take my word for it. Go and watch the modern examples for yourself. The data explains itself.


If you want to convince me that the research is shoddy, demonstrate that it's shoddy. I asked you to support your criticism of the research methodology with some solid evidence. You have yet to do so. Accordingly, I do not take your criticism seriously. I have no personal investment in the articles cited, and I resent the insinuation that I am incapable of critically examining a study because of your preconceived notions about the manner in which I am reading it. If you want your criticism to be taken seriously, support it with evidence rather than wholly unsubstantiated conjecture.

I'm gonna tell you what I told him. Check out the specific examples from modern media with your own eyes.

Since I apparently have to do everybodies legwork here, and I have some extra time this evening, here we go:

Coors: 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoE3wx0TI4k). 2 (http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7Syx/coors-banquet-the-banquet-beer). 3 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9b4M-79Kv_Q).

Bud: 1 (http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/video-bud-light-super-bowl-676065).

Dos Equis: 1 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6otdwyxsN8c). 2 (http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7yrn/dos-equis-the-most-interesting-man-in-the-world-walks-on-fire).

Five minutes of research, zero clevage shots. All of these from within the last 12 months. The data doesn't lie when it's video staring you right in the face. The numbers you're working from plain don't function as they used to. The only one that even vaguely counts is this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uczXEMpwGE) corona commercial, and even then barely.

[Poison_Fish]

Jayngfet, I'm still waiting for you to explain how quibbling over one page of a large review somehow makes the entirety of the review invalid and loaded.

Again, we clearly aren't even on the same discussion here.

[Jayngfet]

Jayngfet, I'm still waiting for you to explain how quibbling over one page of a large review somehow makes the entirety of the review invalid and loaded.

Again, we clearly aren't even on the same discussion here.

...because it's the page that can be measured. It takes specific subjects filmed under specific conditions and measures them and uses percentages.

I have no interest in getting into a discussion over philosophy. All I give a crap about is hard data. Your hard data is essentially useless, and that's my sticking point.

[Math_Mage]

When did cleavage shot count become the point of the discussion?

Also, the Dos Equis videos aren't helping your case. Didn't look at the others.

[Jayngfet]

When did cleavage shot count become the point of the discussion?

Also, the Dos Equis videos aren't helping your case. Didn't look at the others.

Because that's the specific measurement the actual linked articles point to for objective data. It's a specific thing one can point to and measure. Statistically it's fallen out of use and isn't nearly as signifigant as older and out of date studies portray it as being, since it's using videos 20 years old.

If you're measuring cultural trends based on objective evidence, you have an obligation to keep as current as possible, lest your risk misrepresenting the situation.

[Zrak]

I am going to help you out with this since you seem to be having a hard time. I am not sure if you are having trouble recalling the claims you have made, understanding what evidence is required to support those claims, or some combination thereof.

If you have trouble remembering what evidence you have been asked to provide in the future, allow me to review:

You said:

Which is a faulty line of reasoning if there ever was one. Targeted demographics exist for a reason and you rarely see beer ads on a network or programming block.

When I see people talk about commercials they remember, it was mostly stuff that played between cartoons, not an old budwiser ad. People remember, they just don't remember the things talked about.

To which I replied:


Your anecdotal experience establishes nothing meaningful about larger social trends.

If you can prove most kids don't see beer commercials, with actual data, then you have a valid critique. Until then, you have unsubstantiated conjecture.

The evidence you provided to support the claim that kids neither see nor recall beer commercials was a list of six contemporary commercials which do not feature cleavage, with no information of any kind about how many adolescents viewed them. The evidence, in other words, has no meaningful relation to the claim you're making. Just because your evidence is a fact that is true of six beer commercials does not mean it is proof for every claim you could ever make about beer commercials. For instance, if I were to say that beer commercials are more common then pizza commercials, I could not prove this to be true by showing that there have been several beer commercials featuring frogs.

Hopefully you can see why I am unable to accept the links you provided as adequate evidence to prove or even support the claim with which I took issue. If you would like to provide evidence actually related to your claim, now that matters have been clarified, I would be happy to examine it and potentially reconsider your criticism.

[Math_Mage]

Because that's the specific measurement the actual linked articles point to for objective data. It's a specific thing one can point to and measure. Statistically it's fallen out of use and isn't nearly as signifigant as older and out of date studies portray it as being, since it's using videos 20 years old.

If you're measuring cultural trends based on objective evidence, you have an obligation to keep as current as possible, lest your risk misrepresenting the situation.
If you are disputing whether the studies portray the current state/method/use of objectification, I don't know who you're arguing against. If you're using that as a jumping-off point to make a more general statement about whether objectification actually occurs, you haven't done anything to justify the more general statement.

[Jayngfet]

If you are disputing whether the studies portray the current state/method/use of objectification, I don't know who you're arguing against. If you're using that as a jumping-off point to make a more general statement about whether objectification actually occurs, you haven't done anything to justify the more general statement.

Neither. I'm stating the data is wrong. I'm not saying objectification does or doesn't happen. I'm not trying to shape a more general discussion. I'm just saying that the actual information presented doesn't hold up to the current realities it's portraying due to it's own nature.

I don't have some big sweeping political point to make, I'm just saying the data presented isn't accurate to the current issues.

[Poison_Fish]

...because it's the page that can be measured. It takes specific subjects filmed under specific conditions and measures them and uses percentages.

Did you miss the hooters discussion? If your requirement for this is not in how data is used nor what the focus of the topic actually is, but only if a discussion is using percentages and measurements, you'd have noticed this page as well.

Really though, that doesn't explain how the rest is 'loaded'. If the data is there (referenced), but not in easy access, it wouldn't be a question of 'loaded'. It'd be "not enough data". So how is it loaded?


I have no interest in getting into a discussion over philosophy. Your hard data is essentially useless, and that's my sticking point.

Did you miss the discussion on impact? Are you still missing why I linked a quick sampling of articles? How does this disrupt anything anyone else has said in regards to this discussion? How does this invalidate research on impact or other objectifying environments beyond beer commercials? How does this even invalidate "Exposure to Sexually Objectifying Media and Internalization of Cultural Messages", the purpose of that couple of paragraphs within the lit review?

If you are actually going to contend with the article in question, please actually engage with it. Please go further to tell us how that invalidates an overall review of using Objectification theory as a tool. How is this even still loaded?


All I give a crap about is hard data.

Just earlier you were trying to insist that only artists matter for a product, not critics. You didn't provide any proof that all 'critics' were not-artists and made a bunch of non-important claims about skill. If all you are interested in is hard data, why do you make absolutist claims on the video game industry and then can't even support it? Why are all these claims from just your experience, not even as a sampling of what other industry veterans have said, but what you claim to be?

You do not seem to be concerned with hard data. You seem to be concerned with a minor quibble that isn't relevant to what anyone has said. But yes, you are right. If I wanted to make claims of beer commercials today, I shouldn't use beer commercials from 20 years ago. This is not in contention though.

[warty goblin]

...because it's the page that can be measured. It takes specific subjects filmed under specific conditions and measures them and uses percentages.

I have no interest in getting into a discussion over philosophy. All I give a crap about is hard data. Your hard data is essentially useless, and that's my sticking point.

I work with actual data obtained through rigorous randomized procedures according to well developed mathematical theory, and firmly believe it is the absolute gold standard of evidence gathering. It is not the only standard, and it's frankly poor practice as a data analyst to consider it so.

But, since you're asking for actual data, here's some stuff trawled from Google Scholar.

Calogero & Jost, 2011 (http://www.researchgate.net/publication/49710450_Self-subjugation_among_women_exposure_to_sexist_ideolog y_self-objectification_and_the_protective_function_of_the _need_to_avoid_closure/file/79e4150eee03d7c2a4.pdf)
I have some methodological issues with this, the non-random sample makes broad population inference problematic at best, and despite making a lot of comparisons within each experiment, I can't find anything suggesting they used any Type I error control technique, but if the goal is to prove simple existence population-wide inference is unnecessary.


Here's (http://www.researchgate.net/publication/257663866_Time_Since_Menarche_and_Sport_Participat ion_as_Predictors_of_Self-Objectification_A_Longitudinal_Study_of_Adolescent _Girls/file/9c96052670041e906c.pdf)a nice longitudinal study.

This one (http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-011-9933-4/fulltext.html) shows an objectification measure to be a significant predictor of relationship satisfaction. The regression coefficient is, not shockingly, negative.

Here's 18,000 results (http://scholar.google.com/scholar?start=0&q=objectification&hl=en&as_sdt=0,16&as_ylo=2010) for scholarly articles in the last four years.

Unfortunately most of the really good articles are behind paywalls. However unless literally the entire field is run entirely by incompetents, I find the case for the existence of data pretty well made.

[Zrak]

As I already addressed that criticism. You responded with the argument I quoted above. Then I asked you to support that with evidence. You didn't. Then I asked again, and you responded by listing six beer commercials without cleavage. Then I explained why this didn't prove the point I was asking you to support, quoted my previous post to clarify, and asked again.

To paraphrase and summarize the exchange thus far:

Jayngfet: Old media cannot be used to measure trends in current media.

Zrak: The studies are not attempting to measure trends in current media, but the long-term effects of trends already observed in past media.

Jayngfet: That line of reasoning is misguided because children and adolescents rarely see beer commercials. I, personally, don't often hear people talk about beer commercials they recall from their childhood or adolescence.

Zrak: I don't accept the unsupported assertion that children and adolescents rarely see beer commercials. Your personal experience is not necessarily representative of larger trends in society. Do you have any evidence to support the claim that children and adolescents rarely see beer commercials?

Jayngfet: There are six beer commercials from the past twelve months without cleavage in them.

Zrak: So, how about that claim that children and adolescents rarely see beer commercials?

Jayngfet: Anyway, old media cannot be used to measure trends in current media.

Zrak: Okay, sure. Anything about kids seeing beer commercials, buddy?

[Jayngfet]

Right, sorry. I've wound up ignoring you. My bad.

To summarize your issue: I'd need to check with the relevant sites to see what demographics are watching what. Getting the specific relevant data might take a bit, but I'll be back to address it.

EDIT: This is a bit of an issue. It looks like it's a bit harder to see what KIDS are watching football rather than stuff specifically designed for them. Certainly there's a dip a few times when major sporting events take place, but the only measured demographics are adults and to a lesser extent kids. To figure out day to day is something of a challenge. It's one I'll gladly take up, but it's not something that can just be done casually.

However, the fact that they aren't considered significant is indicative of the less than noteworthy numbers.

Update: 2-17 makes up about fifteen percent (http://www.sportsbusinessdaily.com/Daily/Issues/2012/02/01/Research-and-Ratings/SB-demos.aspx) on average over the last decade, and that's the Superbowl. Given that covers everything from Kindergarden to highschool it's kind of a wide bracket. Even counting all of them together that's by a wide margin the smallest group viewing. The next highest group being six percent higher.

[Zrak]

Haha, no worries. It happens in long discussion threads; if I came off as annoyed, it's just a naturally sarcastic disposition.

I'm pretty sure sports alone are going to establish that a pretty significant chunk of the population sees beer commercials pretty frequently from a pretty young age, but I could be overestimating the number of kids and adolescents who follow at least one sport.

EDIT: Fifteen percent of the Super Bowl audience is over 20% of the U.S. under-20 population. Given that there are numerous places besides the super bowl to see beer commercials, I'm still not buying this as rare.

[Jayngfet]

Haha, no worries. It happens in long discussion threads; if I came off as annoyed, it's just a naturally sarcastic disposition.

I'm pretty sure sports alone are going to establish that a pretty significant chunk of the population sees beer commercials pretty frequently from a pretty young age, but I could be overestimating the number of kids and adolescents who follow at least one sport.

Hey, I'm not saying it doesn't happen, I'm saying they're a statistical minority and by enough of a margin that most people who make and distribute media don't really see them as a viable sports demographic, at least by comparison to the others.

Neilsen demographics are kind of a hobby of mine, but they're admittedly kind of crap by virtue of being so broad. We can't tell offhand how many of those viewers are in preschool vs highschool in a lot of cases and that's kind of a huge difference to just overlook. Given the size increase to next demographic up I'd say the younger slot is skewing a bit older, but that's conjecture on my part.

[Math_Mage]

Neither. I'm stating the data is wrong. I'm not saying objectification does or doesn't happen. I'm not trying to shape a more general discussion. I'm just saying that the actual information presented doesn't hold up to the current realities it's portraying due to it's own nature.

I don't have some big sweeping political point to make, I'm just saying the data presented isn't accurate to the current issues.
"The data is wrong" and "the data isn't current" are very different claims. I don't think Poison_Fish was selecting specifically for articles with current data on objectification, because the goal wasn't to demonstrate the current state of objectification in particular (and also because paywalls represent a more pressing concern when you plan to take a fine-toothed comb to the articles).

[Zrak]

Huh, that is less than I thought, but not that much less. Fifteen percent of the Super Bowl audience is over 20% of the U.S. under-20 population, which makes it an even higher percent of the 2-17 population. Given that there are numerous places besides the super bowl to see beer commercials, I'd still be more inclined to guess having seen beer commercials somewhat regularly isn't really particularly rare. They're not as ubiquitous in prime-time programming as they are for sporting events, but it's not like they're unheard-of, either. I'll agree that beer commercials alone aren't the best thing to go on, but they're probably relevant enough to be considered as a part of a larger tableau.

[Jayngfet]

"The data is wrong" and "the data isn't current" are very different claims. I don't think Poison_Fish was selecting specifically for articles with current data on objectification, because the goal wasn't to demonstrate the current state of objectification in particular (and also because paywalls represent a more pressing concern when you plan to take a fine-toothed comb to the articles).

Right, let me reiterate a bit more clearly: The data isn't current, and it compromises any finer points being made. Big, sweeping issues could be correct, but it doesn't actually reflect the current reality of the culture it's writing on.


Fifteen percent of the Super Bowl audience is over 20% of the U.S. under-20 population, which makes it an even higher percent of the 2-17 population. Given that there are numerous places besides the super bowl to see beer commercials, I'd still be more inclined to guess having seen beer commercials somewhat regularly isn't even all that rare.

Right, but the point is quickly becoming exactly how exposed is the average child. Which is a totally different issue from the one originally tackled and written about that would require a totally different study working from a different sort of data.

[Zrak]

Oh no, edit ninja'd. Like I said after the edit, I don't think it's great if it's the only thing you have to go on, but even 20% of kids isn't so rare as to be irrelevant to looking at a broader picture. It would be a problem if it were the only thing there were studies on, but that doesn't make it a bad thing on which to have studies.

[RPGuru1331]

Oh my lord and taylor, if nerds spent half the time they spent on adding exclamation marks and allcaps to SCIENCE!!! instead actually learning science I might not hate my people. But really, having seen educated people run around insisting they're immune to biases because they're scientists, I'd just hate them even more. Oh, but nerds do that anyway, so tough call.


Neither. I'm stating the data is wrong. I'm not saying objectification does or doesn't happen. I'm not trying to shape a more general discussion. I'm just saying that the actual information presented doesn't hold up to the current realities it's portraying due to it's own nature.
Uh, you're going to do that for 8 studies by talking about one? One which only was linked to demonstrate that yes, timmy, people objectify women? It's a topic that has had 5400 articles published on it this year alone, and the year's not done (though it ain't young either), with 10 years as the rough standard for a shelf date

Also, for all your claims of hard data being the only thing you care about (now), you've not only repeated numerous claims in contradiction to the data, but you have only once linked to a single source on ANYTHING WHATSOEVER. You used alleged experience as a game industry veteran for most of it, as well as apparently the common casting of events.

[Terraoblivion]

Not to mention that just going out and hand picking six beer commercials hardly counts as hard data. No statistical methods were applied to establish the validity of the sample. But even if you did and the commercials, which I haven't seen yet, really did paint a different picture then, bravo, you would have proven that beer commercials have changed. Which is kind of a small claim and has very little bearing on objectification as a whole. You'd still need to look at all other classes of commercials, Hollywood movies, video games, popular tv shows and so on.

If you want to dismiss actual scholarship as flawed, use academic methods. Your intuition and common sense has no validity on its own, especially when your background is in an unrelated field. Otherwise your claims of hard data will end up looking ridiculous as you don't even know what constitutes hard data in a given field.

[Jayngfet]

Oh no, edit ninja'd. Like I said after the edit, I don't think it's great if it's the only thing you have to go on, but even 20% of kids isn't so rare as to be irrelevant to looking at a broader picture. It would be a problem if it were the only thing there were studies on, but that doesn't make it a bad thing on which to have studies.

Bare in mind this is 20% of kids once a year during which numbers swing unusually highly upwards. It's not 20% of kids across the board. Heck, it's not even 20% of kids because again, the age data is flawed.


Not to mention that just going out and hand picking six beer commercials hardly counts as hard data. No statistical methods were applied to establish the validity of the sample. But even if you did and the commercials, which I haven't seen yet, really did paint a different picture then, bravo, you would have proven that beer commercials have changed. Which is kind of a small claim and has very little bearing on objectification as a whole. You'd still need to look at all other classes of commercials, Hollywood movies, video games, popular tv shows and so on.

If you want to dismiss actual scholarship as flawed, use academic methods. Your intuition and common sense has no validity on its own, especially when your background is in an unrelated field. Otherwise your claims of hard data will end up looking ridiculous as you don't even know what constitutes hard data in a given field.

If you feel so damn strongly on videos that you haven't even bothered watching then maybe you can do your own study. That was an example based on five minutes random googling. I don't have the time needed to look through the 50+ needed to recreate every single piece of it.

[Terraoblivion]

I sincerely doubt you have either the analytical or statistical training necessary to recreate the study, but even if you did you pointedly haven't engaged in proper scholarly methodology, yet claim to have been able to debunk a study with a bit of common sense and a random sample of whatever you happened to fight. You don't have the time or the skills? Fine, then accept that you can't actually refute the articles. Would you try to disprove a paper on the vibrations of quarks without bothering to do the math or references other physics papers? This is fundamentally the same thing, you're just capable of reading the words and therefore think it's simpler or less difficult to do properly.

Of course, you still wouldn't have disproven anything as you'd just be poking around at a tiny, tangential fraction of what the articles actually say.

[Scowling Dragon]

Well I have to Say TerrorOblivion. In that case yes. Its very hard to go through huge amounts of data and disprove it one by one with no funding and no scientific background. So by sheer virtue of swamping with data you give the impression that the facts are just so indisputable that there is nothing to say.

You have me in a place where you would want me, looking as if I just can't counter the data.

I would like to bring this to a simpler matter. I can believe that self esteem can be hurt, and self value can be damaged. However thats a personal thing, and no amount of banning and self denial will make it better.

So I would like to ask once again what you define as objectification. Give specifics. That way I know what Im arguing against.

Sorry for not responding much I don't have much time.

[Foeofthelance]

Would it help to rephrase the question?

I believe the issue at hand is thus: Jayng is not saying that the studies themselves are invalid, simply that they only observe and report on objectification in older forms of media that do not reflect the current state of media. Therefore the question shouldn't be, "Does objectification exist?" but, rather, "Is or has modern media moved away from objectifying women, or simply found new, more acceptable standards with which to do so?"

[Rodin]

Would it help to rephrase the question?

I believe the issue at hand is thus: Jayng is not saying that the studies themselves are invalid, simply that they only observe and report on objectification in older forms of media that do not reflect the current state of media. Therefore the question shouldn't be, "Does objectification exist?" but, rather, "Is or has modern media moved away from objectifying women, or simply found new, more acceptable standards with which to do so?"

I'd say no to that. Since Jayngfet used commercials, the obvious immediate response to that is modern Hot Pocket commercials. I actually boycotted the company for the past year or so because they had horribly offensive commercials (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZImzWIr21s). There was another even worse one with a yoga instructor. The message of both commercials was "eat Hot Pockets and beautiful women will want to sleep with you!"

The media certainly hasn't changed. Whether or not audience reactions to it have changed is a topic I am not qualified to answer and I'm not touching the "is an entire field of study bunk" discussion with a 10 foot laser pole.

One thing I would love to see is a comparison of the amount of skin shown in League of Legends splash screens. That there is a difference is obvious from a quick Google image search - the women mostly are running around in bras, halter tops, mini-skirts, and skin-tight suits, while the men tend to be wearing plate armor and are generally more covered up (although there are certainly counter-examples).

That the double standard on how men and women are portrayed in media exists is 100% clear to me. I would like to say more about how harmful it is, but it would require diving headfirst into political discussion so I'm going to refrain.

[Coidzor]

I've found it somewhat interesting. Since the good Archpaladin was trying to get a straight answer about something however, I suspect the last few pages probably haven't done him any good at all.

It is rather hard to answer his ultimate question of "is it ok to [sexually explicit activity]" when discussing sexually explicit activities is verboten.

[Closet_Skeleton]

When did cleavage shot count become the point of the discussion?

Also, the Dos Equis videos aren't helping your case. Didn't look at the others.

[snide exaggeration]Technically those women aren't objectified, they're so depersonalised they're wallpaper rather than anything supposed to even draw attention.[/snide exaggeration]

But seriously, all those examples have shown is that Jayngfet doesn't know what he's talking about.

If you want to talk about women in adverts beer commercials are silly place to start when there's a very wide beauty product industry full of products from razors to shampoo.

Anyway:

First Coors advert
Male character is being talked at by woman in background. He then makes eye contact with male bartender. No eye contact with the woman is ever made.

Second Coors advert
Few women appear except for two who are part of a group appearing to socialise. So its actually quite good except for the minor point of generally showing brewing as a male job which could just be factually accurate. Except I know plenty of wineries and breweries and family businesses and thus have a relatively equal mix of men and women but this is a big commercial operation so that may not hold true.

Third Coors advert
Two girls in bikinis and a guy at a desk in front of a partying crowd. The guy has headphones and appears to be an actual DJ while the girls are just dancing there for some reason. Are the girls also supposed to be DJs since there are two black boxes (mixing desks?) on the table? They aren't doing any DJing at this point, are they just demonstrating dance moves for the crowd? The guy is also waving his arm in the air so it would be a group of three equals if the guy wasn't (ironically multitasking) by fiddling with his other hand and the only one with headphones. I suspect they're just there so the advert has bikini clad girls from the front in it, which is basically objectification. Maybe this is reflecting reality and this kind of beach party does have arm waving girls to help out the male DJs, I don't go to them so I don't know, but in that case its reflecting a tendency to objectify in real life so its still bad.

First Dos Equis advert
Women only appear fawning around male character as an extension of his fan or in bikinis as part of the beach ambience

Second Dos Equis advert
Man makes eye contact with a seal. Man looks at women at table with him, but doesn't seem to actually make eye contact. On the other hand, it may just be that the supposedly 'most interesting man in the world' is actually less interesting to those women than the random seagull that just landed. It still has the general advert problem of failing to convincingly portray a men and women as an actual group.

Corona Commercial
A beer advert where the guy actually interacts with the girls in his group if your 'even vaguely counts' one? Seriously, this is the closest one to actually portraying men and women as equal friends. The random woman he skips passed even gets an actual close up rather than being a blurred background like the girls in all the above adds.


So I would like to ask once again what you define as objectification. Give specifics. That way I know what Im arguing against.

Or you could just read any of the real essays that explain exactly what it means and which inspired the greater concept rather than attacking the definition held by one woman on the internet.

Just read Laura Mulvey's original essay (http://imlportfolio.usc.edu/ctcs505/mulveyVisualPleasureNarrativeCinema.pdf), its only 10 pages.

[Scowling Dragon]

No I want YOU to give me it. Just so we are on the same page. Tell me what the definition of objectification is too you.

[Jayngfet]

{Scrubbed}

[Poison_Fish]

{Scrubbed}

[Jayngfet]

{Scrubbed}

As a singular example we've become fixated on, yes. But it's just one indication of a number of flaws within your sources.

In any case where specific dates, times, and techniques are applied to a range of media, their modern counterparts don't display those same trends. This is also true of your article talking about video games. You need modern and relevant sources to have a proper conversation, instead of just regurgitating old work.

[Scowling Dragon]

Sorry Jayngfet, I simply find you wrong in this case. Modern commercial counterparts DO display similar examples.

See for example the Axe Commercials with Running Bikini babes. However I would simply toss out the whole bloody study to begin with and burn it to the ground and use its dust to plant orange trees, because at least that way it could be useful.

EYE CONTACT? Are you KIDDING ME? Lack of EYE CONTACT in a BEER commercial makes it some kind of insidious threat?

By that logic, the study conducted about how kids that played violent video-games, didn't pick up knocked down cups is equally legitimate.

No Im serious. By that logic one MUST assume that violent videogames make children vile and immoral.

The fact that this study is even attached to this whole thing just shows how Laughable this """"""""""""""""""""Research"""""""""""""""""""" Is.

[Jayngfet]

Sorry Jayngfet, I simply find you wrong in this case. Modern commercial counterparts DO display similar examples.

See for example the Axe Commercials with Running Bikini babes. However I would simply toss out the whole bloody study to begin with and burn it to the ground and use its dust to plant orange trees, because at least that way it could be useful.

Right, but Axe is in a totally different industry and thus outside the realms of the original data.

[Dragonus45]

Right, but Axe is in a totally different industry and thus outside the realms of the original data.

Considering the purpose of body spray is generally to make one attractive to the gender of choice having women flock to a person using it is completely different than tossing TnA into beer commercial.

[Scowling Dragon]

Its all about association. The idea is that you remember something subconsciously every time you see the product.

Victory, Superiority, Fun, heck even T&A. It has been decreasing with time because of the intensity of marketing.

However making something viral has a whole other spin too it.

[Closet_Skeleton]

EYE CONTACT? Are you KIDDING ME? Lack of EYE CONTACT in a BEER commercial makes it some kind of insidious threat?

I never said there was any insidious threat going on.

Any particular example is at best a symptom the greater culture. Whether or not a advert objectifies (which is what I was demonstrating) is a completely different discussion to whether or not objectification is harmful. Since I am only trained in film criticism and not sociology or psychology studies and therefore only capable of answering the first question that was the only area I went into.

I'm not personally that invested in these studies. Not because I think they're wrong or irrelevant, but because I don't think the self esteem of a large section of population is something I can do anything about.

Eye contact between characters is important, its part of how the filmic language in those adverts is establishing characters.


No I want YOU to give me it. Just so we are on the same page. Tell me what the definition of objectification is too you.

I have no interest in a discussion of objectification with a person who clearly has no interest in the topic to read a proper essay.

Objectification is a broad topic, that's why it appears to "mean something different from moment to moment". Its not something I can easily describe and there are whole aspects of it I know nothing about.

My definition of objectification is meaningless since I'm not an influential scholar. If you have an actual interest in this topic, read definitions by actually influential writers. If you just want to win an argument on the internet and call work you admit to not understanding 'stupid' then do whatever you want.

[Scowling Dragon]

Sorry Lad, but You had just Bananified me. You didn't call me by my internet handle and merely by the insulting and degrading title of "You". Don't you know how one person addresses another is critical? Its a horrible terrible offense that points to larger cultural context and is offensive and horrible. What does it mean? How does it matter? Well Im a secret scholar and I say it does, so you even knowing what the hell it is is irrelevant.

Your just at fault. Fall to the ground, demand censorship, give me money and flagellate yourself.

Im serious. Im DEAD serious. Do it. Chop chop.

[Closet_Skeleton]

I'm sorry that my civility drops when people use terms like "laughably stupid" rather than try to argue conductively, but I honestly have no idea what was meant to be said in the above (?) post. I assume there's some hyperbole but how much and where I have now clue.

[Math_Mage]

I'm sorry that my civility drops when people use terms like "laughably stupid" rather than try to argue conductively, but I honestly have no idea what was meant to be said in the above (?) post. I assume there's some hyperbole but how much and where I have now clue.
It's rather clumsy parody. But I don't see a reason not to give a definition of objectification more accessible and referable than "Laura Mulvey's essay". That seems to be the current sticking point.

[Poison_Fish]

As a singular example we've become fixated on, yes. But it's just one indication of a number of flaws within your sources.

So you don't actually have the methodology that you claimed to have. You have purely your own observations.
1. Do you accept that you are talking out of your ass as much as you claimed Closet Skeleton was then?

2. We have become fixated on? You've been falling back to the commercials constantly. What other flaws? You went through a 32 page review, couldn't put words to it and decided to focus entirely on half a paragraph of it's content. You kept using the term loaded and failed to actually qualify that. You then decided to make an argument out of something no one here was having about modern sources. That someone disagreed with your analysis doesn't somehow put yours above theirs. Especially since your only attempt at claiming validity was "I used the methodology". Which is clearly a lie.

3. You also are continually forgetting what I used a smattering of studies for. Did I make a specific claim on the study of using specifically recent information? Did the review article on objectification theory do so? Or was it demonstrating the use of the theory? Come on man, stop arguing with ghosts that you set up to shoot down.


In any case where specific dates, times, and techniques are applied to a range of media, their modern counterparts don't display those same trends.

Not found in evidence. None was provided. You made a claim, one that clearly doesn't stick to other individual laypersons interpretations and from a small sample.


This is also true of your article talking about video games

Not found in evidence. None was provided. You made a claim. Considering your track record of making all or nothing claims on the video game industry, I have doubts of you being capable of providing basic qualitative information.


You need modern and relevant sources to have a proper conversation, instead of just regurgitating old work.

No one is saying there is no need for a modern source. But interestingly, if you were studying trends, you would also need old information. When you became so fixated on beer commercial and trying to set yourself up as authoritatively greater then any other layperson in this thread, did you somehow forget what a trend was?

[Roland St. Jude]

Sheriff: This thread seems to be going nowhere but Flameville by way of Trolltown. Thread closed.