Post by Cirno on Mar 17, 2016 16:09:56 GMT -5
www.npr.org/sections/alltechconsidered/2014/06/13/321673815/critics-renew-calls-for-more-diverse-video-game-characters
www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/10/video-games-diversity-problem-runs-deeper-than-race-gender
For a decade or two, video games have had an emphasis on protagonists who are usually White Males, or (rarely) White Females. Recently, the minorities who play videogames - People of Color, women, LGBT people, and the differently abled - have begun to make their voices heard, demanding representation in the medium that they consume, to no small amount of pushback; Gamergate comes to mind here, as well as the outcry against 'Social Justice Warriors' and the other accusations leveled at those who would like Videogames to be a little less white and male.
While progress is being made in this sector, there are pockets of resistance in the online gaming community that steadfastly rebuff any attempts to make their hobby any less White; the MU* community being one of them.
A few people in the MU*ing community have lamented the lack of knowledge about their hobby, due to a number of speculative reasons; MU*ing is considered a relic of a past era, populated mostly by people who began their sojourn in the hobby in the late '80s, to the early 1990's, and to a large extent these people are still deeply involved in MU*ing to this day.
It is also considered by some to be a hobby that is far too difficult for the modern-day Facebook-using, console-owning gamer who expects instant gratification and much less emphasis on intellectual skills such as telling a story via a text-based medium. Whatever the reason, MU*ing is largely unknown to the rest of the videogame community.
It is my opinion that those who hold power in the MU*ing community enjoy this, because there is no audience to scrutinize their antiquarian attitudes, nor is there any valid alternative to those who wish to challenge the status quo - the small size of the MU* community allows the popular majority to entirely control the narratives in the hobby, manipulating the opinions of other MU* players effortlessly, and perpetuating whatever agenda they see fit to proliferate in the MU* community.
Simply put: you do as the self-appointed Authorities of the community tell you, or risk being punitively silenced, ostracized, and vilified as some sort of super-human, catastrophic threat to the health of MU*ing and the MU* community. Hyperbole and manipulation of the narrative, along with rampant censorship and silencing is used to their advantage. There are precious few websites that actually cover the MU* community or provide venues of discussion for the people who play these games, and, consequently, you are forced to either abide by their authoritarian, tightly-controlled dogma, or risk being punished.
For most MU* players, who are either oblivious to the status quo, or are fully in agreement with it, this does not present an issue. In this regard, the control that a select few enjoy upon the majority is overlooked or supported.
If the MU* community was less obscure and under public scrutiny, this sort of thing would not last long; there would be an outcry, and the people who attempt to consolidate their control over the community would have been taken to task a long time ago. This is partly why MU* players enjoy the obscurity of their hobby; they are given free reign to do as they like, more or less.
The administrators of what few forums actually discuss MU*s can savagely silence dissidents, the wizzes of MU*s can enforce protocols that would cause a great hue and cry if they were exposed to the view of the general population. I need not elaborate upon what gaming journalists would have to say about a game like, say, Realms Adventurous, which openly states that no characters from the in-game world's equivalent of Africa may be created, or Kushiel's Debut, which chooses to conceal its racial protocols - and, indeed, due to the tendency of most white male - or female - MU* players to avoid rolling characters who are anything other than white, the racial protocols at Kushiel's Debut are mostly unchallenged and unchecked by anyone.
To go off on a brief tangent here, as an African-American MU* player, I play characters of all races; it does not occur to me to only roll black characters. However, it seems that in this grand community of people who play games that are, ostensibly, about imaginative, fantastic worlds, full of vampires, witches, demons, dragons, magic-users, and zombies, the mere idea of there being black people in their magical wonderlands is simply too wacky, too out-there, too ridiculous to bear thinking about.
I put the question to some of the aforementioned white MU* players, and their responses were that they prefer to be 'realistic'. I leave it to you, dear reader, to consider the incongruous nature of their statements: vampires and witches are 'realistic', black people are not.
Furthermore, even so much as raising the question of racism in the MU* community is met with tremendous outrage by the majority white population. Denial of racism is a very old tactic in the playbook of white supremacy:
www.timwise.org/2008/04/prototypical-white-denial-reflections-on-racism-and-uncomfortable-realities/
Furthermore, if a minority player has the utter cheek to contest their decision, the majority then falls back upon slandering the reputation and character of the player who raises an objection. This, too, is a long-standing tradition of white supremacy, popularly called Victim-Blaming.
It can be seen with the case of Trayvon Martin; White Americans declared that he was 'no angel', and bandied about pictures of him displaying gang signs and hand gestures, with the implication that Trayvon deserved his death because of his questionable behavior.
It can also be seen with the case of Michael Brown - taking a cigar from a mini-mart? Death is the only acceptable punishment.
The tradition of punishing minorities with totally disproportionate responses to their perceived infractions is writ large in the MU* community. Make people uncomfortable? Being removed is the only answer! Challenge the status quo? Well, of course you're just an awful troll who 'sucks the life out of people' and 'makes everything about them'.
Ignoring the pertinent fact that white racists enjoy claiming that minorities who rebel against their hatred are 'making everything about them' - in fact, this is one of the primary arguments those with an anti-minority agenda deploy against any dissent - the small nature of the MU* community allows for the prevailing racial attitudes, so deeply entrenched in the community, to remain firmly in place. You are forbidden from challenging these attitudes.
These petit fascists, these Mini-Hitlers, if you will (Accuse me of Godwin's Law if you wish, but quite a few people have decided that Godwin's Law must be decommissioned in the wake of actual fascists running rampant in the world today, such as Donald Drumpf, or PEGIDA), like Glitch, the Administrator of musoapbox.net , Skaldia, wiz of Kushiel's Debut, and whatever person is in charge of Realms Adventurous at the moment (they are currently experiencing a period of disarray, which, honestly, is to be expected if you leave ultimate power in the hands of a few, instead of democratically extending the power to both the owners AND the players of the game) enjoy being able to micro-manage the lives of the unfortunate people in their talons, and since most of their clientele are white males and females who hold similar views, very few people take offense to this.
In fact, they think it's just great! They enjoy the authoritarian, fascistic behavior of the people in power at these venues serving the MU* community - the games and the discussion forums, and since the MU* community is very small and obscure, there is no audience to scrutinize their behavior, as with the larger videogaming community in general.
Again, the obscure nature of MU*s, and the low population of MU* players - again, most of whom are White - allows for any disputes to be quickly rounded up and silenced.
Hence, games are allowed to have hideous, archaic, racist rules - written or unwritten - maintaining populations of characters who are mostly White. This is no error, no mere coincidence, or accident: by and large the MU* community contains mostly white males and females. This, too, is not an oversight or an error; while various excuses are made for this, the fact remains that the MU* community takes certain measures to ensure that their population continues to remain mostly White.
First, by ensuring that their hobby is obscure; if very few people know about MU*ing, the less chance minorities will involve themselves. One can count on one's hand the number of minority MU* players in the community, and those that ARE involved take great pains to avoid upsetting the status quo or 'rocking the boat' in any way, due to the aforementioned control a select few people wield over the community. The most obvious example of this is the very design of most MU*s themselves - one or two people, or Wizbits, are the ultimate arbitrators of the entire population of players on a single game. Naturally, this lends itself to almost laughably flagrant abuses of power.
Amusingly, MU* players sometimes complain about the abuses of power on the behalf of the people who run these games, and then proceed to support the ideology that lends itself so well to the authoritarian behavior so popular in the MU* community. Dissent, debate, and disagreement are rapidly squelched.
The (white) people who play these games also enjoy being able to relax in a fantasy world - albeit a text-based one - in which they can look around and see mostly white characters. After a long day of working and playing and living in an ugly, real world where minorities are flagrantly in their faces, the white people who play these games do not wish to log onto a game where they are confronted with even more minorities; they instead get to enjoy a time-capsule of sorts, a throwback to a past that may never actually have existed, in which a community of white player characters exists, with no diversity in their makeup. The white MU* players who champion this sort of thing (I am extrapolating here) find this relaxing; they find it comforting. They not only enjoy the majority-white, diversity-free rosters of characters on these games; they prefer it that way, and they are violently opposed to diversity on their games.
Subconsciously, or consciously, the white MU* players fight bitterly to ensure that this remains the same, using every single method at their disposal - either by banning black characters, painting anyone opposed to their agenda as trolls and World-Destroying, Air-Sucking Fiends from the Fiery Depths, and because the population of MU* players is so small, their campaign goes totally unchecked.
This is not to say that all MU*s are racist bastions of white supremacy; there are games with populations of black characters; however, they are usually exceptions, rather than the rule.
Nor am I saying that all white MU* players are awful white supremacists; I have met a great deal of polite, pleasant White MU* players, some of whom are even on this forum!
However, the majority of white MU* players espouse this fascistic, authoritarian attitude, and obey the commands of those who champion racist attitudes. In a just world, they would not patronize forums and games that squelch all opposition to the stranglehold of White narratives, White dialogues, and White populations. Nor would the attitudes of petit fascists like Glitch and Skaldia be tolerated.
I shall revisit this topic as I continue to uncover the truth behind the White-Washed MU* Community. I invite anyone who has taken offense to this post to register and challenge my opinion; I am not given to Naked Fascism and will not ban or silence you unnecessarily.
I am also forming a Contingency to shine a light on the deep-seated corruption in the MU* community. Making this forum as a haven for free speech and tolerance in the MU* community is merely the first step; the next step is to shine a light on the MU* community, and to expose the pro-white, anti-diversity attitudes popular within it, by calling attention to the MU* community from reputable electronic gaming journalists.
www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/sep/10/video-games-diversity-problem-runs-deeper-than-race-gender
For a decade or two, video games have had an emphasis on protagonists who are usually White Males, or (rarely) White Females. Recently, the minorities who play videogames - People of Color, women, LGBT people, and the differently abled - have begun to make their voices heard, demanding representation in the medium that they consume, to no small amount of pushback; Gamergate comes to mind here, as well as the outcry against 'Social Justice Warriors' and the other accusations leveled at those who would like Videogames to be a little less white and male.
While progress is being made in this sector, there are pockets of resistance in the online gaming community that steadfastly rebuff any attempts to make their hobby any less White; the MU* community being one of them.
A few people in the MU*ing community have lamented the lack of knowledge about their hobby, due to a number of speculative reasons; MU*ing is considered a relic of a past era, populated mostly by people who began their sojourn in the hobby in the late '80s, to the early 1990's, and to a large extent these people are still deeply involved in MU*ing to this day.
It is also considered by some to be a hobby that is far too difficult for the modern-day Facebook-using, console-owning gamer who expects instant gratification and much less emphasis on intellectual skills such as telling a story via a text-based medium. Whatever the reason, MU*ing is largely unknown to the rest of the videogame community.
It is my opinion that those who hold power in the MU*ing community enjoy this, because there is no audience to scrutinize their antiquarian attitudes, nor is there any valid alternative to those who wish to challenge the status quo - the small size of the MU* community allows the popular majority to entirely control the narratives in the hobby, manipulating the opinions of other MU* players effortlessly, and perpetuating whatever agenda they see fit to proliferate in the MU* community.
Simply put: you do as the self-appointed Authorities of the community tell you, or risk being punitively silenced, ostracized, and vilified as some sort of super-human, catastrophic threat to the health of MU*ing and the MU* community. Hyperbole and manipulation of the narrative, along with rampant censorship and silencing is used to their advantage. There are precious few websites that actually cover the MU* community or provide venues of discussion for the people who play these games, and, consequently, you are forced to either abide by their authoritarian, tightly-controlled dogma, or risk being punished.
For most MU* players, who are either oblivious to the status quo, or are fully in agreement with it, this does not present an issue. In this regard, the control that a select few enjoy upon the majority is overlooked or supported.
If the MU* community was less obscure and under public scrutiny, this sort of thing would not last long; there would be an outcry, and the people who attempt to consolidate their control over the community would have been taken to task a long time ago. This is partly why MU* players enjoy the obscurity of their hobby; they are given free reign to do as they like, more or less.
The administrators of what few forums actually discuss MU*s can savagely silence dissidents, the wizzes of MU*s can enforce protocols that would cause a great hue and cry if they were exposed to the view of the general population. I need not elaborate upon what gaming journalists would have to say about a game like, say, Realms Adventurous, which openly states that no characters from the in-game world's equivalent of Africa may be created, or Kushiel's Debut, which chooses to conceal its racial protocols - and, indeed, due to the tendency of most white male - or female - MU* players to avoid rolling characters who are anything other than white, the racial protocols at Kushiel's Debut are mostly unchallenged and unchecked by anyone.
To go off on a brief tangent here, as an African-American MU* player, I play characters of all races; it does not occur to me to only roll black characters. However, it seems that in this grand community of people who play games that are, ostensibly, about imaginative, fantastic worlds, full of vampires, witches, demons, dragons, magic-users, and zombies, the mere idea of there being black people in their magical wonderlands is simply too wacky, too out-there, too ridiculous to bear thinking about.
I put the question to some of the aforementioned white MU* players, and their responses were that they prefer to be 'realistic'. I leave it to you, dear reader, to consider the incongruous nature of their statements: vampires and witches are 'realistic', black people are not.
Furthermore, even so much as raising the question of racism in the MU* community is met with tremendous outrage by the majority white population. Denial of racism is a very old tactic in the playbook of white supremacy:
www.timwise.org/2008/04/prototypical-white-denial-reflections-on-racism-and-uncomfortable-realities/
Furthermore, if a minority player has the utter cheek to contest their decision, the majority then falls back upon slandering the reputation and character of the player who raises an objection. This, too, is a long-standing tradition of white supremacy, popularly called Victim-Blaming.
It can be seen with the case of Trayvon Martin; White Americans declared that he was 'no angel', and bandied about pictures of him displaying gang signs and hand gestures, with the implication that Trayvon deserved his death because of his questionable behavior.
It can also be seen with the case of Michael Brown - taking a cigar from a mini-mart? Death is the only acceptable punishment.
The tradition of punishing minorities with totally disproportionate responses to their perceived infractions is writ large in the MU* community. Make people uncomfortable? Being removed is the only answer! Challenge the status quo? Well, of course you're just an awful troll who 'sucks the life out of people' and 'makes everything about them'.
Ignoring the pertinent fact that white racists enjoy claiming that minorities who rebel against their hatred are 'making everything about them' - in fact, this is one of the primary arguments those with an anti-minority agenda deploy against any dissent - the small nature of the MU* community allows for the prevailing racial attitudes, so deeply entrenched in the community, to remain firmly in place. You are forbidden from challenging these attitudes.
These petit fascists, these Mini-Hitlers, if you will (Accuse me of Godwin's Law if you wish, but quite a few people have decided that Godwin's Law must be decommissioned in the wake of actual fascists running rampant in the world today, such as Donald Drumpf, or PEGIDA), like Glitch, the Administrator of musoapbox.net , Skaldia, wiz of Kushiel's Debut, and whatever person is in charge of Realms Adventurous at the moment (they are currently experiencing a period of disarray, which, honestly, is to be expected if you leave ultimate power in the hands of a few, instead of democratically extending the power to both the owners AND the players of the game) enjoy being able to micro-manage the lives of the unfortunate people in their talons, and since most of their clientele are white males and females who hold similar views, very few people take offense to this.
In fact, they think it's just great! They enjoy the authoritarian, fascistic behavior of the people in power at these venues serving the MU* community - the games and the discussion forums, and since the MU* community is very small and obscure, there is no audience to scrutinize their behavior, as with the larger videogaming community in general.
Again, the obscure nature of MU*s, and the low population of MU* players - again, most of whom are White - allows for any disputes to be quickly rounded up and silenced.
Hence, games are allowed to have hideous, archaic, racist rules - written or unwritten - maintaining populations of characters who are mostly White. This is no error, no mere coincidence, or accident: by and large the MU* community contains mostly white males and females. This, too, is not an oversight or an error; while various excuses are made for this, the fact remains that the MU* community takes certain measures to ensure that their population continues to remain mostly White.
First, by ensuring that their hobby is obscure; if very few people know about MU*ing, the less chance minorities will involve themselves. One can count on one's hand the number of minority MU* players in the community, and those that ARE involved take great pains to avoid upsetting the status quo or 'rocking the boat' in any way, due to the aforementioned control a select few people wield over the community. The most obvious example of this is the very design of most MU*s themselves - one or two people, or Wizbits, are the ultimate arbitrators of the entire population of players on a single game. Naturally, this lends itself to almost laughably flagrant abuses of power.
Amusingly, MU* players sometimes complain about the abuses of power on the behalf of the people who run these games, and then proceed to support the ideology that lends itself so well to the authoritarian behavior so popular in the MU* community. Dissent, debate, and disagreement are rapidly squelched.
The (white) people who play these games also enjoy being able to relax in a fantasy world - albeit a text-based one - in which they can look around and see mostly white characters. After a long day of working and playing and living in an ugly, real world where minorities are flagrantly in their faces, the white people who play these games do not wish to log onto a game where they are confronted with even more minorities; they instead get to enjoy a time-capsule of sorts, a throwback to a past that may never actually have existed, in which a community of white player characters exists, with no diversity in their makeup. The white MU* players who champion this sort of thing (I am extrapolating here) find this relaxing; they find it comforting. They not only enjoy the majority-white, diversity-free rosters of characters on these games; they prefer it that way, and they are violently opposed to diversity on their games.
Subconsciously, or consciously, the white MU* players fight bitterly to ensure that this remains the same, using every single method at their disposal - either by banning black characters, painting anyone opposed to their agenda as trolls and World-Destroying, Air-Sucking Fiends from the Fiery Depths, and because the population of MU* players is so small, their campaign goes totally unchecked.
This is not to say that all MU*s are racist bastions of white supremacy; there are games with populations of black characters; however, they are usually exceptions, rather than the rule.
Nor am I saying that all white MU* players are awful white supremacists; I have met a great deal of polite, pleasant White MU* players, some of whom are even on this forum!
However, the majority of white MU* players espouse this fascistic, authoritarian attitude, and obey the commands of those who champion racist attitudes. In a just world, they would not patronize forums and games that squelch all opposition to the stranglehold of White narratives, White dialogues, and White populations. Nor would the attitudes of petit fascists like Glitch and Skaldia be tolerated.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men should do nothing."
-Edmund Burke
-Edmund Burke
I shall revisit this topic as I continue to uncover the truth behind the White-Washed MU* Community. I invite anyone who has taken offense to this post to register and challenge my opinion; I am not given to Naked Fascism and will not ban or silence you unnecessarily.
I am also forming a Contingency to shine a light on the deep-seated corruption in the MU* community. Making this forum as a haven for free speech and tolerance in the MU* community is merely the first step; the next step is to shine a light on the MU* community, and to expose the pro-white, anti-diversity attitudes popular within it, by calling attention to the MU* community from reputable electronic gaming journalists.