@lt_kettch237: The fact that you can't see the alien/animal quote as the most racist thing she said is probably the biggest issue.
But even then your argument regarding military security as well is just as all over the place. Look at your American solider thing. This isn't just a situation where Ash's first exposure to aliens is them on board her ship. I don't think anyone is saying "she should automatically trust them with open arms." Trusting operatives you could be weary about and being on guard regarding security is entirely different than dismissing an entire species or race based on your own prejudices. Entirely, different.
The animal remark she makes lines it all home. She. Does. Not. See. The. Aliens. As. Equals. The fact tha they have eons of history, society (peaceful society as well), and all these other species have sentience and she completely ignores that because she had conflict with one single alien species is the literal definition of racism.
That would be like if every person who was Jewish said "all Germans want to kill me" following WW2. That was a particularly tough time to be on either side of the war, but a person who isn't ignorant understands that a collective society of a different race of people or a different species is made up of a lot more than just soldiers. It's why Mordins genocidal tendencies don't get treated as harshly. It isn't a justification of his actions. It's that the species he's acting towards has a history of nothing but war and conflict ALL the time. With all the people. Remember how big the Citadel is supposed to be? The moment Ash walks into the Citadel, if she isn't going "holy shit there is a million things I don't know" and is instead going "all this is a front for species I shouldn't trust" then you know something is wrong. Her hatred blinds her. That is the character.
@clarity: Did that not happen in this stream though? Dan taunted Alex for much of the stream, especially with the voice. Alex wasn't winning many mini games. Following Dans taunting Alex had several big mini game wins, including a few against Dan. He even reveled and smiled into the camera to celebrate his wins against Dan.
Then at the end, after it was a tie, the rest of the crew voted and joked about how Vinny won. (Clearly labelling Dan the heel who shouldn't get what he wants, like your stating.) Then Vinny proceeded to win the next 3 MP mini games. Then he finally agreed to Dans challenge and beat him there.
Every aspect of this played out where Dan got his comeuppance. Vinny even connected it to an old bit about how Dan is overly competitive and finds ways to get people to bet or do things like that with him by referencing Dan buying everyone a sandwich.
I am totally with you, if your the type of viewer who sometimes gets triggered by these things, even if you acknowledge some of it is on your end and you want to bow out, by all means do so. But to then come into these comments as others have, and overblow the perspective as if the narrative is that GB crossed the line in this instance? That starts to push some of your expectations and experiences onto the entire aspect of content they create.
This kind of discussion needs to be able to take place. People who are triggered or made uncomfortable by behavior like Dan's in the video, or even people who just found it distasteful, need to be able to talk about it, without fear of facing harassment or belittlement for it (note that I am not saying that that does not mean without facing disagreement - I think you disagreed with me, as an example, without any hostility or disrespect).
Absolutely, agreed that if people want to voice concerns or criticisms over content be our guest. I know some people on here have silly attempts to silence or are critical, but in general I think there is just a lot of "eh I actually like heel Dan."
I would still argue though, that if the ultimate goal is to get them to remove content of this type, that it is arguing in bad faith at that point. If the attempts of piling on either personally negative experiences, like yourself that aren't rational but emotional, and combine those with others who simply dislike the way Dan is on streams like this and don't want to watch it, are only to say "Hey GB stop making this sort of content." Then you shouldn't be surprised to see some uproar.
Mario Party Party is one of their most watched series, they did it live to a raucous audience. I feel like if anything all this discourse tells me is that potentially GB should put warnings on streams like these for some competitive tension/moments of intentional awkwardness that could trigger some people. That way those that do have problems with this can know up front, hey this stream isn't for you.
I think that is really what some of this boils down to for us. We don't understand the need to want to remove this type of content. A lot of us are absolutely fine with it, hell look forward to it. If there are those that are either triggered or offended for absolutely justworthy emotional reasons such as yourself, or those who just hate Dan (which there are some in this community who do) at a certain point for me it becomes more about trying to let you guys know these aren't the streams for you so the rest of us can enjoy them. I just don't see the point in battering home more and more "hey Dan we hate your heel personal because X."
@fedallah: I think that is a pretty fair and nuanced take to have. I'll add though, that at what point does the viewer (you in this instance) take responsibility into your own hands?
I am totally with you, if your the type of viewer who sometimes gets triggered by these things, even if you acknowledge some of it is on your end and you want to bow out, by all means do so. But to then come into these comments as others have, and overblow the perspective as if the narrative is that GB crossed the line in this instance? That starts to push some of your expectations and experiences onto the entire aspect of content they create.
In the case of this video, I don't see any real reason why someone would come into this not expecting "heel persona" Dan Ryckert being competitive. It's a mini party game, they made allusions to it being similar to Mario Party Party, a series Dan was on tons of and has a history of being this. At some point you need to own and say "this video series isn't for me". Which duder, that is fine. There is tons of content on this site that doesn't have some of these slants, and I think in this instance it wasn't a case of Dan being any extra edgy or weird than he usually in these contexts.
I think I may be more open to understanding "hey woah is something wrong here" when the crew does it out of character in a stream out of nowhere. But nothing that happened in this stream that wasn't completely in line with the established rules and loose competitive play that the crew has done in the past, specifically with Dan.
I'm just going to bump my own blog post here with a brief update.
Our channel Pajodcast Media has been going for a year now, as today is the anniversary of the first year running. We have roughly 500+ videos and continue to go strong. If any are interested please check out this highlight video for some of our antics during features. Thanks.
People really want numbers to go up. It's almost as if our minds have been poisoned by addictive gambling-like psychological designs in recent games.
It is a weird game though, and the animals and skeleton murdering quests seem kind of bland compared to the treasure hunting and PvP but maybe they pick up later, though I'm not necessarily counting on it. Only a few hours logged on release so far. Even if they don't there is enough here for me, this is 100% my jam.
Nice to play a game where I don't have to think about the numbers and where my opponents wear their advantages on their sleeve, if any. Since everyone has the same gear, it's crew, skill and ship that are the only real advantages you can get. If they ever do add traits to gear I hope it's PvP only stuff. Keep the guns all vanilla.
Couldn't get a crew on a galleon due to some error, and only saw one other sloop who I helped keep afloat due to feeling sorry for him trying to solo a weeping chest (Which is super doable unless it's your first rodeo). I should have robbed him but I didn't want to go full Rust and betray his trust. Hopefully the MM is fixed when I try again tonight and we can get into some sick 4-galleon clusterfucks like in the alpha/beta.
You realize there are ways to do progression without just numbers going up right? Even if you removed the numbers going up from something like a Dark Souls, your weapon types all play entirely different. Not a single you earn in this game does anything. It's all just appearance for appearance sake. How is that rewarding? If you feel any aspect of the combat, ship exploring or pretty much anything in this game is a chore, you basically have zero reason to play it. Because none of the items you can eventually gain improve that in any capacity. Whether that be by the numbers, or by adding new weapon types, new ship types, or just in general new types of things. It's just "here is another thing that operates like what you have now" except it looks different. Woohoo?
I could understand the argument for the simplified approach to "progression" provided it was purely a balance reason. But people have already been talking about how users just stay on an outpost and grief people who try to come in. And since the game is "balanced" to the degree that everyone can always do the same things, you'll never be able to out grind those griefers to get an advantage against them. Like everything about this looked like "repetitive the pirate game" to me. Which is kind of a bummer because I think mechanically it seems to offer something, where at least encounters can feel a bit dynamic and what have you.
@sharkman: So, when you hear a person say to no one in particular "Jesus Christ!" when they stub their toe, that offends you? Or when they express frustration? Because what you're talking about isn't directed at anyone, either directly or indirectly. Now, if someone said to you "Your lord Jesus Christ is a real asshole" you would have every right to be offended, I think, but as it stands I think you're trying to move the goal posts a little bit.
This has gone so far off the rails from the initial innocuous comment. The only overall point I think is that mocking people's ethnic names, intentionally or unintentionally, is kind of lame at best, and potentially hurtful at most. I don't think pointing that out means I don't like comedy, or I'm incapable of having fun. I also think that there is a difference between potentially mocking an individual (say, if their ethnic name is Dong) and simply using saying "Jesus Christ!"
Finally, this idea that it's impossible to not offend someone so why bother is extremely disingenuous and a little sad. Personally, I'm always trying to better. When I was in high school, things that were stupid were "gay". I have since grown up, and learned that that can be very hateful to queer people that I either know, or am not aware of. I have adjusted my behavior to be a better person. I did not take that opportunity to dig my feet in my sand and claim "Well, someone's always offended, so why even try?"
See where I think there becomes hang ups is when you see the elitism baked right into your post. Do you hear the words you use? "trying to be better". The implications is consistently that if you do something that offends someone, you have to rectify it. But that simply isn't true. Harassment has to be rectified, either through apology or legal means. Because that is an attack. But if you are not attacking something, whether it offends someone or not provided you aren't breaking laws. That is your business.
Not saying people have to agree with it, or can't criticize it for being offensive. That is well within the same rights. But people are no "better" or "worse" because of that. That is all subjective. And what bugs me about the constant "PC police" angle is seeing people challenge those who don't think like them to be "better". The fact that they don't think like you doesn't make them worse, it means they don't think like you.
I earnestly feel like a lot of people forget a simple fact. Human beings are mammals. I'm not even saying I agree, as analyzing ones self and the impact their actions have on others I think is a healthy part of societal development. But if someone wants to tell me they don't give a shit about offending people because they want to be them, that is their right. Ergo if someone wants to act more like a mammal and react on their baser impulses. Whether any of us agree with it or not, crimes have to be committed for crimes to be charged. As someone else in this thread brought up, accepting shitty and horrible things, or things that seriously offend you is part of life too. I get it, it's harsh. It's harsh to think about the awful stuff that is going on in the world. But I always go back to a line in the movie Inception about what the most hard to kill parasite is, an idea. Ideas don't die.
Anyway; it's all really moot since this whole thing started over relatively nothing. Not the Dan comment in the video, if people want to be offended by that, it is their right. But the person who claimed they were worded it in a way in the first response to be very click bait, and has since not only re-clarified but after discussion (the few in here that was earnest) was just looking to properly state their absolutely fair criticisms. Me personally? I didn't find it offensive, and didn't think the comment section would blow up because of it. But that is the state of the world now I guess? Everything is about sides to a lot of people that those of us who aren't on either side are sitting here look at the line, you know the line someone has to cross before you start to really go "man is this a "bad" person?" and seeing how you have people on all sides willing to cross that line regardless. Because hey if someone is an asshole I'll be an asshole back to them. Or you have people overreacting to times when it's not even come close to crossing that line.
Ultimately though, people are allowed to be racist. That doesn't inherently make it something that has to be eradicated at all costs. Should we be aware of the people who are racist, to make sure that they aren't put in positions of power/influence that can create actual racist problems? Absolutely. But again, cart doesn't come before the horse. People don't get convicted for thinking about bad things they get convicted for attempting or plotting on doing bad things, or of course doing them. I just think the fact that the world isn't black/white bothers a lot of people, because "fixing it" would be a lot easier if it was.
Also those Clenchies shirts are pretty much a thing of gold. @ozzie Are those best ofs a good way to experience the endurance runs, or would it be better to go through them? Honestly I started Persona and got like 70% through it, but the crew did two different runs through Deadly Premonition if I recall correctly, and that is a lot too watch.
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