A fuckin CENSORED greentext? Really? Never thought I’d see the day 4chan got whitewashed lol
Assuming OOP said ‘retarded’, that doesn’t fit their message well does it?
it’s called context switching, within 4chan the r-word is an honorific rather than a slur.
There is nothing wrong with the word “retard”, don’t let corporations push their double speak.
Americans and their hatred of random words. Lmao.
I’ve grappled with “retard” & “bitch” (made a thread about it a couple months ago too, trying to form/reform my opinion).
Clearly we have to be careful with any messages industry pushes. With that said -
What do you think about these statements from Special Olympians?
I appreciate your good faith response. I see and empathize with your perspective. To play devil’s advocate, you can’t control whether a group of people decide, out of the blue, to internalize hurtful language that isn’t aimed at them. The N-word had a very specific target and a very cruel purpose. The word “retard” did not. It basically has the same vernacular trajectory as “moron,” or “idiot.” From medical diagnosis to non-specific pejorative. Why aren’t those synonyms verboten? Because people like to make things about themselves.
I literally had an argument with @[email protected] about this a while back where he declared retard as against sub rules but then continued to call the poster a moron. They’re the same fucking word from different time periods on the treadmill of what is politically correct.
Either both are slurs that shouldn’t be used or both are acceptable.
They’re the same fucking word from different time periods on the treadmill of what is politically correct.
Either both are slurs that shouldn’t be used or both are acceptable.
That’s not how language works, and unless you go around calling Black folk ‘colored’, you understand that in other contexts. What words are acceptable and what connotations they have change with time and usage.
It comes from the medical diagnosis “mental retardation”. It was designed from the beginning to target disabled people.
The parallels between the ableist slur and the racist one run deeper than your argument seems to acknowledge. The word “retard” actually does have a specific history and a specific target. It wasn’t just common vernacular - it was a medical diagnosis.
The reason medical practice has completely abandoned its use is the same reason society should abandon it - it has a history of exclusion, prejudice, and measurable social harm.
By using an outdated (and objectively terrible) diagnosis as an insult for people who we deem intellectually inferior, we continue to associate developmental and behavioral disabilities with being inferior, and perpetuate the systemic and systematic injustices that some of our most vulnerable population still face to this day.
A “moron” was also a medical diagnosis. Historically, the n-word was designed to be cruel and humiliating. The word retard was not.
If you choose to be offended every time the word “moron” gets thrown around that’s your prerogative.
To break down my response to this
The R-word is EXCLUSIVE
There are people with high intelligence and those with low intelligence, bandying about with different words will never change that. Intelligence is crucial in social, economic and evolutionary terms. They are correct no one would ever want to be lacking in intelligence because it would only make life worse. There will always be a need for a word to describe someone of lower intellect, or describe an argument or position as being thoughtless, in order to dismiss the person or idea as quickly as possible with as little engagement possible. Preferably while using small words so they understand.
You can still say they have a room temperature IQ but they might not get the meaning…
We are someone that is not your kind.
I agree, and I would not want someone with an IQ of 70 to be in the military, or to be a teacher, or a doctor, as each of those scenarios would likely result in disaster not just for the 70 IQ individual but for everyone impacted by them.
Everyone has a gift
Yea no. This “everyone is special” bullshit just isn’t how the world works. The universe doesn’t care about you, the world is a harsh place where the unfit died early deaths until really intelligent people worked out how to increase food production, developed medicines, surgeries and hygiene.
Retard equates intellectual disability with being DUMB or STUPID
You only need to look up the etymology and history of clinical usage of both dumb and stupid to realise they were used to describe the same groups of people and behaviours during different time periods. More bullshit on the treadmill.
I refuse to censor the word retard while moron, stupid, dumb and idiot are considered fine. To censor a synonym of acceptable words, is to put it bluntly, fucking retarded.
Copying most of my response to a similar line of reasoning elsewhere in this thread - The word was used as a humiliating slur against a vulnerable group of people. This is indisputable fact. It is a word specifically referring to a group of people, and it was used against that group of people to belittle, demean, and humiliate them.
It was also used as a diagnostic criteria. That history doesn’t change the context for the better - it makes the whole story worse. It was a bad diagnostic criteria. Psychology, psychiatry, and neurology are young fields of study that are going through some serious growing pains - in this case, the usage of overly broad umbrella categorizations of deeply nuanced and complex disorders.
People will always use words to cause harm. But have you noticed the thing that’s missing in everyone’s misguided defense of this word? How everyone complains about “what’s next?” when they refer to idiot, imbecile, and moron?
Nothing’s next. This particular euphemism treadmill appears to have stopped on the word “retard”. Why? Because the fields of psychology, psychiatry, and neurology are outgrowing their old habits, and taking society with them.
We understand these disorders better now. We’re trying to find ways to treat them. We’re diving deep into all the intricate little details about symptoms, and causes, and care, and prognosis.
We don’t have one broad catch-all term like “retard”. We have dozens if not hundreds of diagnoses to replace it. And each “new” vernacular replacement-of-the-week is more awkward than the last and doesn’t gain remotely the popularity or ubiquitousness of its predecessor.
The euphemism treadmill stopped. Other terms will be used, and weaponized, and cause harm. But they’ll never be used by everyone, everywhere the way the word “retard” once was, nor will they ever be used in quite the same way. They will never carry that same weight of shared, mistreated identity. And because of that it will be immortalized - because it was used as a diagnosis and as a humiliating slur by the generations that began to understand the truth. That society has treated our most vulnerable populations so unbelievably bad for so, so long, and we can do better.
The thing is, you’re not entirely wrong in your reasoning. It is just a word. If the treadmill had continued for another generation, and a new word had successfully replaced it, it probably wouldn’t be a slur. It might be forever used as casually and as apathetically as we use terms like “idiot” and “imbecile” and lose most of its weight and implications (words, by the way, that I’m not defending usage of - I’m just not elevating them to the morally repugnant status of slur).
But that didn’t happen. This word still holds a terrible number of memories for the living. And it doesn’t need to survive. Plenty of incredible insults have died out from everyday usage for literally no good reason - language just evolves constantly over time. What’s the harm in letting this one die for plenty of very good reasons?
You - any of you reading this, anyone who needs to hear this - you don’t need to die on this hill with this word. It continues to wither away, and there’s genuinely no personal or societal value in trying to keep it in use. No history needs to be preserved in your vernacular, and certainly not such a troubled history.
No one is trying to take away your speech. No one is coming for your words. But you will upset people with your words throughout your life. You’ll upset people with the truth, and you’ll upset people with lies. You’ll upset people with words carefully chosen, and you’ll upset people with off-the-cuff remarks.
But in this case, you will upset people by carelessly using words that carry painful memories. You are not being bold or rebellious. You are not standing proudly against some nebulous tide of societal overcorrection for past mistakes. This is not some last stand for sanity in a world gone mad. There are many places to make that stand, many worthy causes to fight for - this isn’t one of them.
You’re just using the last word that many people remember being used for cruelty and humiliation against a vulnerable group of people. What is that worth, to you? What makes the word hold such value, that you would use it even though it upsets people?
Do you use it because it upsets people? Why? What purpose does that serve? Do you honestly think that this word - of all words - will provide some personal or societal benefit? Will you change the future for the better by using it?
The word was used as a humiliating slur against a vulnerable group of people. This is indisputable fact. It is a word specifically referring to a group of people, and it was used against that group of people to belittle, demean, and humiliate them.
Not something I have disputed, in fact I have made this point repeatedly about the word moron.
The euphemism treadmill stopped.
There will always be a need in language to describe people who are less intellectually capable so I absolutely disagree with this claim. Retard is simply still the word of choice despite efforts to censor its usage.
No one is trying to take away your speech. No one is coming for your words.
Censoring speech is exactly what you’ve claimed isn’t happening, yet it is happening and you are making an argument for the censorship of a word.
Do you use it because it upsets people?
Yes. Because I clearly don’t want to have to waste my time on people who are, or are acting, retarded.
That is true, if you use it against disabled poeple. I only use it against moronic able poeple who should know better.
Honestly, that’s maybe worse. If you’re using it to say something bad about someone else, that means it’s a bad thing and should be condemned. The people who it is actually meant to apply to (in its original meaning) then see them, as a group, as a thing that is insulting to even be associated with.
It’s wild how hard critical thought is for some people while discussing a word about intelligence…
Are the corporations in the room with us now?
It was used and is used to cause harm to vulnerable people. It is the last and likely immortalized step of this particular euphemism treadmill.
The treadmill stopped here. There is no one-size-fits-all diagnosis to replace “mental retardation” because that was a terrible diagnosis to begin with. That’s why something is wrong with the word. The people whose lives were ground up beneath the turning of the wheels that powered that euphemism treadmill are still alive today.
Yes, if the treadmill had continued for one more step before we stopped using such horribly broad diagnosis criteria to lump together vulnerable people with wildly different needs, the word would lose its weight and implications.
Whatever diagnosis that might have replaced it would be regarded with the same moral repugnance as this word is today, and this word would be used as casually and apathetically as we use the word “idiot” - because we can be reasonably certain that nobody in the room has any memories of themselves or someone they love being excluded, humiliated, and diagnosed by the word “idiot”.
Will other diagnostic terms be weaponized? Certainly. Will they ever be as prevalent or as ignorant in their origin and usage? Unlikely. I certainly hope not. And each new vernacular replacement is more awkward and holds less power than the last. That’s why you’re not here defending any term that came after this one. They were never elevated to a shared identity and a humiliating slur. They were never promoted to the public consciousness the way “retard” once was.
Not by corporations. By children abandoned and abused by the system who survived to become adults, and by the people that witnessed this abuse and worked to change it. By doctors, and parents, and peers, some who used the word in good faith and watched helplessly as it became twisted, and others who used the word from a place of ignorance and later learned how much harm could be done by a simple word. By a diagnostic label that was never enough to even describe the people it hurt, let alone help them.
The treadmill stopped. It’s okay. You can join the rest of the world and step off of it now, knowing that we are better equipped to understand and protect our most vulnerable, while also knowing that there is still much more work to be done.
I certainly did learn something out of this!
I’ll not use that word this way anymore, I understand more now.
I appreciate you!
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This post reminded me of that old Louis CK bit on not liking the term “N Word” because it transfer the burden of saying the actual word from the speaker to the listener’s brain
Louis CK’s bit on the word “retarded” is pretty damn good too.
Joke’s on him my brain is always saying it 😎
How about your heart?
Speaking sumerian.
depicted as
It’s so social media AI doesn’t block the image. Yeah, that’s our world now.
Wasn’t that just Reddit?
#NotMy4chan
I love the fact that the slave owner is not only the one unarmed person you don’t lose honor for killing, but you actually gain honor for killing him.
You also don’t lose honor for killing this guy, and can do it right in front of the police without them reacting
I can shoot that dude without getting a bounty? :O
I would never have guessed. I can’t even walk down the street in Saint Denis without getting bullshit “disturbing the peace” bounties. I like to pretend it’s because they’re jealous of Arthur’s awesome mustache.
I’m going to remember that for my next playthrough. I always just punched him and made him run away.
That guy was, I think, intended as a stand-in for real-life eugenicist and all-round villain Henry Laughlin. Killing him in-game was quite the treat.
Because attacking Norris will not affect the player’s honor, nor gain the player a wanted level, the player can hogtie Norris and drag him across the map to achieve the Rank 4 Horseman Challenge.
Hmm, I’ll have to give that a try
> You will not be able to play multiplayer without hackers ruining the experience
Is it as bad as GTA Online?
It’s worse. It is utterly abandoned by rockstar
I tried playing online when it first came out. It was fun for a few days, but wasn’t very long before cheaters would just spawn a hundred cougars right on top of you every game.
I’m sure that was frustrating for you, but from an outsider’s perspective that’s funny as fuck.
Yeah the first time was objectively funny. But it became a multiple times an hour thing, where you just couldn’t play the game any more.
Well if you can’t beat 'em, might as well join 'em.
Know of any good hacks?
David Cage is a pretty good hack
Eh nick cage is the hackiest hack of all time
Worse. I’m convinced that Rockstar only keeps the servers running because nobody knows which ones they are among the sea of GTA5 servers. The game has been entirely abandoned by the devs, because it never took off like GTA5 did.
Hacking in RDO isn’t just rampant; It’s downright expected. If you’re not hacking, you’ll constantly get blown up from across the map by people with unlimited explosive ammo, no reloads, and auto-aim. The bare minimum requirement is an unlimited health hack, just so you can survive the cross-map snipes long enough to finish a mission or two.
It seems worse. Though now days whenever I play GTA Online, it’s in private friends only mode.
Worse.
If you play on PC you can change 1 file in a text editor and get solo lobbies every time. Share the file or the changes with friends and you’ll all join each other, I assume it’s got something to do with file hashing
I made a YouTube video on it years ago when I noticed the load screen skip mod produced interesting results in lobbies and started testing and occasionally people comment that it still works lol
Article + video here: https://www.grunch.com/trick-play-red-dead-online-in-a-solo-private-session/
Oh fuck not only is that my video he hella stole my description lol
Not that I give a fuck the whole point was to give people the info
I’m honestly surprised that no one calls this game woke
Because the game sold and reviewed well, so it goes against the narrative of “get woke go broke”
I think literally every business in the world has managed to tow that line. It’s not like the right stopped drinking bud light. Although they probably should have.
Nobody except the craziest of crazy thinks negatively about woke stuff if the actual content is good. Examples of good ones from the top of my hat: Arcane S1, Last of Us S1E3, Twin Peaks S3E4.
This is how you actually influence opinions to a good direction.
When the wokeism was apparently more important to the producers than the quality of the actual product is when shit gets irritating and from the pov of activism, counter-productive.
i have only ever heard good things about that show. it apparently brought in a lot of new players (who then promptly left because they realized what the game and community were like).
I never played the game (League of Legends) and the show didn’t really make me want to play it. The show (at least season 1, I haven’t finished it yet) is still superb.
oh i read your post as if the show was an example of woke without substance.
Oh okay. No, I meant Arcane as an example of the good ones. Edited my post a bit.
Mainly because you can shove “woke” shit down peoples throats and they won’t care as long as they get to play a manly man or stacked chick and the story and characters are well developed. It’s just when the game is really bad that people care about it and then the studios can blame the poor performance on the alt-right as a cop out for their shitty game. I.e. Star Wars outlaws and Concorde
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people have been very uppity about the new dragon age even though i hear that’s good.
Outlaws is a good game though
I feel like people might have. I vaguely remember when it first came out that there was someone on youtube uploading videos of them assaulting the woman’s suffrage protester and they got taken down after blowing up.
What is woke about the game?
Anti racism is woke. Arthur actively beats the shit out of or yells at anyone who is racist. Arthur is woke. This is a good thing.
Also, you can murder random Klan members and increase your honour.
Did not know that
They mean just in general.
Yep, there’s a bunch of Klan meets you can happen upon, where every attendee you kill nets you an increase in honour.
Know what I’m doing when i finish dragon age.
I like to start with the dynamite when they’re doing the racist Hokey Cokey.
Not sure if satire.
Being not racist is woke now? I thought it was just normal.
What did you think woke means?
Have you seen the average gamer responses lately? The needle for woke has now moved to female protagonist = woke unless she’s shaped like an anime girl anyway
What do you think “woke” means?
Woke is just things the right don’t like. Even if it’s just a personal thing like salad.
I love comments like this. Reinforces how similar the left and right are.
Right: woke! socialism! communist! = thing they don’t like.
Left: racist! bigot! fascist! = thing they don’t like.
Two sides of the same coin.
Show me the example of a left-wing politician talking about woke.
Not to say that youre wrong, or to imply that ‘woke’ is a real concept beyond whatever makes fascist chuds feel bad in their undeveloped brains, but being anti-racist is a lot different than being not racist, and takes a lot more courage.
I didn’t say not racist. I said anti racist.
Tax is woke. The neighbour who fills up my wheely bin is woke. Kids who play music on the bus are woke.
Always has been
Literally everything mentioned in the 4chan post.
I don’t feel that it’s woke. It’s pretty standard for today. Maybe in the 1800s this could be defined as woke
The bar is extremely low now. Being a decent human being is woke.
Can’t even bang prostitutes, cowboy gta 1/5 stars
You can? Tho they are quite expensive, still cheaper than a gf tho!
But what does that have to do with this game?
Nah if you say yes it’s a set up. Why code something that isn’t available. It’s like making a door that never opens. Or a war game with no blood. Or an empty building. Immediate world breaking. Those nice honorable cowboys who have killed hundreds of men lol. The game just seemed lazy and repetitive to me. Good job Rock $tar. Also fuck you for having your own loader.
?
If you agree to the one lady of the evening she leads you into a trap.
I was not talking about the game? I never played it?
Neither of these sentences are questions? Stop using question marks on statements?
You know, I didn’t believe in postumus abortions until I read your comment?
Oh great. Now I just lost The Game. Thanks a lot.
Not that game.
And BTW, you won the game.
Whoosh 😂
whoosh
Of course the only person who feels the need to voice negativity about the game is also the person with a demonstable inability to read.
Rustled your jimmies aye? Aren’t you clever, how many languages do you read/write? Just proficient at cowboy cock I see. Y’all have fun up on that mountain hopefully your back is ok now.
I see someone had their ego attached to that opinion.
Bends over glide and pulls his skin back. Animation waste several seconds of life. “He smells awful.” Skunk skin +1.
instance checks out
And somehow this game is never part of the examples that some bigots are listing when talking about woke games.
Similarly with Cyberpunk 2077 and Baldur’s Gate 3. Both of those games are gay as fuck.
Which ones are they listing? I’m a bit out of the bigotry loop.
Usually it is any game that has a woman as a main protagonist.
The biggest examples are:
Horizon Zero Dawn
There was “controversy” where devs were releasing promotional material for the game and they released a video where they showcased graphical advancements and they zoomed in really close on the MC and you can see the very thin hair on her face that literally every person has. Some people didn’t like that.
The Last of Us 2 - very masculine woman
Fable - Not released yet, but the trailer had a woman that is not conventionally attractive.
Dragon Age Vanguard
Life is strange
Intergalactic The Heretic Prophet - new Naughty Dog’s game, Black Woman as MC
This is just from the top of my head.
That’s ridiculous, especially the Horizon one. On a positive note, I had no idea there is an upcoming Fable game, cheers!
Cyberpunk got a lot of hate by that crowd leading into release, and they dunked on the release a ton as if it vindicated them.
It’s obvious they’ve never read any of Mike Pondsmith’s stuff if they think gender and sexuality in the Cyberpunk universe is any way at all viewed from a conservative lense.
I mean, they were just chuds angry that you could have a character with male and female sexual characteristics, I don’t think any of them had the brainpower to read.
Well, yeah. That would require them to actually read and use their brain, and that’s liberal shit.
I only saw hate on release for bugs and for the way it ran. Not for being woke. Idk
The first time I ran into the KKK in the woods, I was really glad I had a stick of dynamite on me.
It’s funny if you watch them for a minute too, their burning cross catches its surroundings on fire, burning many of them to death.
Interesting. Muuuch more satisfying to blow them up, though.
Much people forget before black slavery there was white slavery… So its just good if there is none slavery.
Are you saying white slavery was as systemic and width spread as black slavery in America? If so I’ve missed a big part of the American slave history.
No, I’m just saying what I wrote. It is not meant to be an equality or anything else but just a statement that it is good without any slavery no matter what origin, skin color and (even if I am an atheist and despise any religion) religious affiliation. It was also not referring to Americans but a general statement.
Sure, but the image is about a game taking place in American history. I agree that no slavery is good but you comment doesn’t add much to the historical context. If anything removes nuance.
Would be good without modern slavery right? Penal labor. But well affected are black white whatever.
But I could have expressed myself more directlyThere is a certain type of whataboutism where people are just super eager to remind people that “well, actually, white people were slaves too” when referring to slavery in America. It’s likely why they appear to be more on guard about what you’re saying.
what is it that drives the desperate need you have to bring it up in this context?
the vast majority of people who know history know about indentured servitude. but it’s a footnote compared the the millions of people systematically stolen (not indentured, note), taken to another part of the planet and bred for labor.
Yes ok then say that you are happy that slavery of black people has stopped and that you don’t care about any other form of slavery. < That’s what the statement suggests because you’re not talking about slavery in general but explicitly about black slaves…
that’s what the statement suggests because you’re not talking about slavery in general but explicitly about black slaves…
pfft that’s the most 13-year old racist edgelord shit I’ve heard in ages.
No, that’s not what that says, you silly twat, lol… ok so there’s this thing called context. And the context in which slavery was introduced, in this thread, was regarding the protagonist in the game going after slavery supporters.
AND YOU HAD TO FUCKIN’ CHIME IN BUT BUT NOT ALL SLAVES-
motherfucking couldn’t resist the urge. So answer the fucking question: what is it, inside you, that is so desperate that you need to reply with that specious bullshit?
TAKEN IN THE CONTEXT OF RDR2, the history of the US, it’s referring to the human stain of racists enslaving black people for their entire lives, and the lives of their children in perpetuity. a very different thing compared to what irish indentured servants experienced.
The nice thing is that even population groups elsewhere on earth who never had anything to do with slavery condemn all slavery and also that it is good if slavery is generally ended. Without differentiating whether black or white because slavery is to be despised whether black or white. Do you think a black slave would have sought a difference to a white slave and vice versa? No…after all, both would have experienced the same fate… It is those who are not affected who want to differentiate as if one slavery is worse than the other… those who are affected would not do that…
The issue is Grice’s “maxim of quantity”. It’s a linguistic model of how we speak to each other - we provide the appropriate amount of information, and no more. Providing a surplus of details “for context” immediately puts people on guard because it quite literally is suspicious.
Breaking the maxim of quantity in this way is like saying “asbestos-free cereal!” It’s a detail that wasn’t necessary for context, and so its inclusion seems intentionally designed to communicate some implicit information that we’re meant to understand.
No, you don’t need to say “all slavery is bad” when someone says “slavery is bad” because that was an unnecessary detail to add in context.
People don’t need to defend themselves to you and say “you’re right, indentured servitude and prison labor are bad, so white slavery is bad too” because they weren’t talking about those things. They were talking about slavery as it is protrayed in RDR2 and you seem to be trying to change the conversation.
before black slavery there was white slavery
bzzt wrong. Portuguese slave traders worked out deals with african tribal leaders in the 1400s. Unless you’re going to relabel feudalism as slavery.
There was slavery before Portugal or feudalism were things. I’d wager slavery might even predate the homo sapien species and probably came soon after a species was able to communicate orders and threats.
ok, keep going, you’re almost there: if you follow that back to the Olduvai gorge, like you say, to the earliest humans - where were those hominids who were enslaving each other? come on, you can do it…
were they white people?
This idiotic statement:
Much people forget before black slavery there was white slavery… So its just good if there is none slavery.
Much people forget basic grammar too, apparently.
No, there’s always some idiot who has to bring up that some white people (maybe even their ancestors) were also slaves, so he shouldn’t have to XYZ. Or that people of color might have ancestors who enslaved each other, so XYZ. It’s all silly bullshit.
I was just responding to what you said, not the overall line of argument. I was going to add stuff about not being able to determine the colour of those first slaves and it not really being relevant either way, but it felt like it was getting rambly so I cut it back to the main point.
Not comparable
Slavery is slavery no matter who does it or whom it’s done to.
Not even close. Chattel slavery is much worse.
“White slavery” was white people that were slaves. Black slaves literally weren’t viewed as people! Thus, no one cared if you beat them, starved them, raped them, tortured them, and/or killed them. Which we as a country did. That’s the difference.
“viewed as people” is meaningless unless it confers some special rights afforded to people.
White slaves didn’t have any more rights than black slaves, largely because skin-color based distinction is a rather modern invention (compared to the institution of slavery) and the defining traits of both black and white slaves were that they’re slaves. And slaves were universally treated poorly. Even the most benevolent slave owners in antiquity were cruel, because why wouldn’t you be? The damn thing might start getting uppity if you didn’t remind it you’re in control. Just imagine it might cause damage to someone else, and you’d be dragged to court over it!
A crime against your slave was a crime against your household (assuming you’re the head of the household), which you were entitled to drag the other party to court for. But there was literally no legal framework that would allow any kind of prosecution for anything you did to your own household. You could also beat them, kill them, rape them, literally anything. They had no defense. The only person empowered to prosecute on their behalf would be the one beating them.
So no, “white people that were slaves” weren’t people in any meaningful sense, because oppression and supremacy in much of the pre-modern world didn’t care about skin color. The romanticism around white slavery is bullshit, because owning other humans has never been anything but cruel.
I don’t think it was about “white vs black” as much as it was about “America can take any system, good or bad, and turn it into something so much worse”.
Try again
This argument is fucking stupid. And racist.
The argument that chattle slavery and ye olde roman slavery are wildly different is stupid and racist? Cool story.
They’re both two types of slavery. They’re in the same category. They can be compared.
Of course they are comparable, just that the statement is a little strange in the context of American history.
Well sure anything can be compared in a literal sense. For example, based on your responses, I think you are either more racist or more ignorant than the average individual. However, the literal comparability of the two types of slavery is not exactly the point anyone is making here.
I must’ve misunderstood, sorry.
There was that other thread talking about Ubisoft games and how theyre putting a black samurai in there. I wrote a comment about how ubisoft marketing is so controversial but then they deliver these milquetoast Ubisoft games.
Just imagine if Farcry 5 actually went the route of RDR2 and had some fucking balls. Instead of try to appeal to both sides.
That’s what I don’t get, out of millions and hundreds of thousands gamers, how many are actually that stupid and bigoted to rage on anything they don’t like? These incel gamers always accuse many games as being woke, but then these games are blockbusters. Devs listen to a loud minority who don’t represent the entire community of gamers. The rest are silent majority who, have varying interest of games, like a game for being a good game, not because it is “woke”. And hate a bad game, because it is a bad game. It’s simple as.
Devs fall into the faux outrage bait from tiny minority of unthinking hordes, and it actually makes them bad than if they just ignore ridiculous baseless cries.
Edit: grammar
As someone who has been reading about gaming for a long time, it’s the console wars but now that gaming has become mainstream, it became political.
There has always been drama in gaming, there used to be PlayStation and Xbox fanboys that clearly wanted to be part of a team and for their team to win, it’s what makes it social for some people.
Then gaming became huge, the industry shifted and now we have a lot more diversity in types of games. So now you have these teams but it’s about other things (I’m on the story mode and no microtransaction team myself).
One team really benefits right wing media, and that’s the ones complaining about games being woke (and whatever that means). It’s amplified and hence why even though we live in the golden age of gaming choice, we keep hearing this loud minority.
I miss the era just before the internet really took off when the console war was fought on the playground between Nintendo kids and Sega kids.
Suddenly this has me wondering if the south is playing a whole’nother game.
It’s funny because moron used to be a medical term as well.
These actually had distinction:
Defectives was generally the term prior to like 1845, which is when Howe published “on the causes of idiocy”. That led to more classification
Idiot was what we could call severe intellectual disability. Requiring 24 hour care but some muscular control, cognitive, and speech capabilities. Use was phased out in the late 19th century because it had become pejorative
Fool was a subcategory of idiot with more significant impairment of reasoning and speech skills. This became pejorative and was phased out.
Simpleton was moderate intellectual disability. Some degree of functioning, capacity for speech, motor and reasoning skills, but required assistance with tasks. This also become pejorative and was phased out (see a pattern). This was replaced with several terms, including feeble minded, imbecile, and moron, which were also in turn phased out.
at one point in the 19th century there was a distinction when symptoms of dementia set in. If you got what we would now call early onset dementia, it was called “amentia”. By the early 20th century “ament” was kind of a catch all for “idiots, imbeciles, and feeble minded”
There was also “cretin” which was originally supposed to be a kindness for all intellectually disabled people as it means “Christian” in French or something, but it also became pejorative
Another super racist one was mongoloid/mongolism which was specifically for Down’s syndrome. This is because, no joke, John Down thought people with down syndrome looked like Mongolians. His reward for his racism was the condition bears his name forever, apparently. This was only changed because Mongolia had to petition the WHO to change it because it was offensive
Imo instead of policing language we should maybe recognize that the intentionality behind the use of these terms is what the problem is.
Saying the word “retarded” does not have to be inherently offensive. Describing something that is slowed or hindered as retarded is accurate. Using retarded as a pejorative term makes you a dick, sure. But if I go through all the effort to change “retarded” to “intellectually disabled” guess what happens? The same thing that has happened for the past 175+ years. The people who have used the terms in the pejorative sense will quickly adapt, making your efforts to police language pointless unless you intended to enrich their lexicon.
If you consider actions that could actually be meaningful for the individual it would be something that would address the harm caused by pejorative use. That’s a challenging road to go down (imagine criminal penalties: middle schools would be ghost towns!). we want to feel like we do something though so we instead do this, which is pointless.
That said if the disorder was named by an old racist based on his racism then by all means change it up but maybe don’t memorialize him when you do it. That doesn’t come up as much anymore, thankfully
Saying the word “retarded” does not have to be inherently offensive. Describing something that is slowed or hindered as retarded is accurate. Using retarded as a pejorative term makes you a dick, sure. But if I go through all the effort to change “retarded” to “intellectually disabled” guess what happens? The same thing that has happened for the past 175+ years. The people who have used the terms in the pejorative sense will quickly adapt, making your efforts to police language pointless unless you intended to enrich their lexicon.
I have addressed this argument elsewhere in this post, but please forgive me rehashing the message here, because your comment is prominent, informative, and based in historical fact.
The word “retard” was used and is used to cause harm to vulnerable people. So was idiot, cretin, and moron. The difference is it is the last and likely immortalized step of this particular euphemism treadmill.
The treadmill appears to have stopped. There is no one-size-fits-all diagnosis to replace “mental retardation” because that was a terrible diagnosis to begin with. That’s why something is wrong with the word. The people whose lives were ground up beneath the turning of the wheels that powered that euphemism treadmill are still alive today.
Yes, if the treadmill had continued for one more step before we stopped using such horribly broad diagnosis criteria to lump together vulnerable people with wildly different needs, the word would lose its weight and implications.
Whatever diagnosis that might have replaced it would be regarded with the same moral repugnance as this word is today, and this word would be used as casually and apathetically as we use the word “idiot” - because we can be reasonably certain that nobody in the room has any memories of themselves or someone they love being excluded, humiliated, and diagnosed by the word “idiot”.
Will other diagnostic terms be weaponized? Certainly. Will they ever be as prevalent or as ignorant in their origin and usage? Unlikely. I certainly hope not. And each new vernacular replacement is more awkward and holds less power than the last. That’s why you’re not here defending any term that came after this one.
That’s why - despite you mentioning it specifically as a spiritual successor to the word “retarded” - “intellectually disabled” is not successfully replacing it. It doesn’t bear the same emotional connotations, it never experienced the same popularity, and it shows no signs of ever coming close. Is it used in problematic ways, by people in good faith and bad? Yes. But terms like it are unlikely to ever even approach the moral repugnance of “retard” because they won’t carry quite the same history of professional ignorance and casual abuse.
The word “retard” - alone among these ableist terms we’re discussing - will forever bear the moral weight of all of them. Because it will be remembered as the last term used to humiliate and exclude a vulnerable group of people by a society that should have known better. A society that should have done better. A society that still needs to do better.
Other terms won’t be promoted to the same level of societal consciousness, because they hopefully won’t be promoted to the same level of professional malpractice at such a staggering scale. The word was misused and caused harm by doctors, and parents, and peers, some who used the word in good faith and watched helplessly as it became twisted, and others who used the word from a place of ignorance and later learned how much harm could be done by a simple word.
By a diagnostic label that was never enough to even describe the people it hurt, let alone help them.
Is it okay to use the term for purposes other than causing pain and perpetuating discrimination against vulnerable people? No. Because those vulnerable people are still alive and with us, and those wounds are still fresh. Will it ever be okay, long after they’re gone? Perhaps, but probably not.
The word’s abandonment will be a milestone on a path fraught with systemic and systematic abuses, and will probably never recover it’s original meaning. But that’s okay, because language constantly evolves, and we have plenty of old words to say what we mean, and we will find plenty of new ones along the way.
The treadmill stopped. It’s okay. You can join the rest of the world and step off of it now, knowing that we are better equipped to understand and protect our most vulnerable, while also knowing that there is still so much more work to be done.
Wow, that was their takeaway from that game? I honestly didn’t think about it once the whole playthrough, why are they so desperate to role play racism/sexism?
Oh we’re they saying these things like how much they hate Wokeness or something?
I thought this was an endorsement!
I thought OOP was saying it’s a good thing too
Coming from 4chan, I read it as loser whinging about “woke”.
"Women voting? Sure why not. Anyone dumb enough to want to vote should be able to”
I need to fire this game up again when I get home
Anon wants to play as Micah
