A space to continue the conversation from earlier. I do feel that left-leaning opinions are more prevalent here. That doesn’t bother me personally. What does bother me is the assumption that they’re right and can’t conceivably be wrong. That is sadly pretty common, and does indeed often make the site feel like an echo chamber.
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I think it is a bit unreasonable to expect people to make allowances that they may be wrong on serious and emotionally-charged topics where they’ve put a lot of thought in and arrived at a firm conclusion. You and anyone else are also allowed to express your own opinions in response, and are not necessarily entitled in my opinion to a friendly response when “asking questions” about something sensitive.
I tried to jump in that thread and give what I thought were firm but non-inflammatory responses, since I saw this coming. But I don’t think those who were there to disagree were really interested in that kind of approach and preferred to spar directly with the louder voices. Most users here are not going to be like that, but I do not want to throw those people under the bus because again, I think they are perfectly allowed to express strong feelings on serious topics, even if I myself would rather not get into a big back-and-forth on the homepage with people whose goals for the conversation are not really looking productive.
Long story short, though… I don’t know about everyone else, but I come to this site every day and have for almost 5 years, and most of the posts are just about video games. I don’t really see how this is a major issue with the site.
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We allow people to express the opinion that Sonic is good on this site. Any echo chamber I’m in would not express that opinion!
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I don’t see anything wrong with posting political opinions on this website. Be liberal, be conservative, I enjoy hearing a range of opinions and perspectives.
However, there’s an absurd amount of socio-political commentary on a site ostensibly for cataloguing videogames. It’s exhausting. If you guys like that, then you do you. I was curious if you wanted an outside perspective, seeing as I’m relatively new.
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It’s arrogant to speak as though anyone who disagrees with you is automatically wrong, which is what happened. The conversation devolved into, “If you like this song, you’re a bigot.” That is an inherently divisive statement that leaves no room for a dissenting opinion. Millions of people like those two songs. Are they all bigots? Are a couple of people on a video game forum really the arbiters of right and wrong?
No one ever said “If you dislike this song, you’re a bigot.” It’s not about considering other viewpoints so much as considering that other flesh and blood human beings may hold contrary viewpoints, and so don’t deserve to be talked down to. A little humility would go a long way.
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The ironic thing is that I never said anything about the songs themselves. I was using them to illustrate something I noticed about the website. Yet there’s such little nuance in the discussions here, that people assumed I must be defending them.
I like “Richmond,” and I don’t like “Small Town.” Guess that makes me half bigot.
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Did someone say that?
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Politics is going to happen with gaming because gamers like expressing themselves
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I think every kind of community is inherently some kind of ‘echo chamber’ in a way, but i don’t think this is a bad thing per sé.
When you join a community, you’re automatically going to check what other people write and think, and if most of it doesn’t align with your own thoughts, you’d eventually leave, this seems like a natural process. What happens because of this, is the people that stay are always somewhat aligned in opinions with the other people, be it by direct opinion about the subject, or just general behaviour, leaving you with a group of people that will largely agree with eachother, i think this is the base of any community, not just digital ones.
One could label this as an ‘echo chamber’ (when you write something ,the chance of other people (partially) agreeing with you are very high), but i think that term has a very negative tone to it, i think ‘community’ covers the subject much more nicely, and essentially it means the same thing.
Now, with gaming communities, i think most of them lean toward the political left side of the spectrum. I don’t know why this is, maybe because gamers are inherently more politically left-oriented (?). So naturally, you’ll see a lot of politcally left opinions.
Because art, and especially moving media art like games and movies, is so tied in to daily life, naturally it’s very close to politics too, and i think some gamers are therefore likely to be tickled to talk about politics in gaming discussions, which is not a bad thing as long as it’s kept as civilized discussions.
On Grouvee in particular i’ve seen, way more then in other communities, a level of inclusiveness and freedom of opinion. E.g. everyone is allowed to say their piece, and hardly ever do i see someone reacting negatively. What does happen a lot here, is people are very engaged and happy to react to or discuss what was written down, and that sometimes leads to a political discussion.
I don’t mind this at all, more so because said discussions are usually of a very intellectual level and not demeaning.
What i do mind, is sometimes it’s certain boundaries that are not being followed. For example, in the discussion this topic is refering to, the original poster asked several times to stop the political discussion in that thread and talk about their original question instead, but regardless of this the political discussion was carried on for quite a while, eventually leading to the thread dying out, which is a shame cause the original point of discussion from the OP was a very nice one.
At least in my opinion, when a poster asks people to stop with, for example, political discussions in their thread, people should follow suit and take said discussion elsewhere, for eample here on the forums, or in their own thread otherwise.
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“but i think that term has a very negative tone to it,”
So, to me, the reason for that is that “echo chamber” conveys the nuance of ignorance. It’s not just “a space where everyone agrees”, it’s “a space where everyone agrees because they aren’t even exposed to different views”.
That’s why I agree with the OP here - the issue isn’t “we all have left-wing views”, the issue is "we all have left-wings views and “we make all these character judgments about people who don’t agree with our views”. Those character judgments are what’s wrong. That is why I said (on the main grouvee feed), I don’t care at all if you dislike the songs or think the lyrics are mean or whatever whatever, the issue is when you imply that people who do like the songs have certain motives behind it. Because it’s just straight up not true. As was said in here, millions of people would agree with those songs. Polls generally show that something like 50% of americans disagree with “insert left-wing opinion that is vastly held on grouvee and similar sites”, and it’s not because 50% of americans are morally bad hateful people. (Then again, some people would disagree with that I guess)
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Did someone say that?
No, not explicitly in those words. But it feels heavily implied.
You can see this by the sleight of hand that is used in some of the comments.
“Does disliking the organization Black Lives Matter ™ make someone racist?”
“Well if they don’t support black rights, they are racist”
The answer doesn’t follow from the question at all. Which would lead a reader to wonder why that change of topic is happening, and the conclusion I reach is because a judgment is being implied.
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No one ever said “If you dislike this song, you’re a bigot.” It’s not about considering other viewpoints so much as considering that other flesh and blood human beings may hold contrary viewpoints, and so don’t deserve to be talked down to. A little humility would go a long way.
Considering the songs themselves can be considered bigoted, I don’t feel bad referring to people who enjoy them as bigoted. They either agree with the sentiments in the song (In the case of “Try That in a Small Town,” that there is somehow something wrong in criticizing police for the very real issue of the extrajudicial murder of black people) or don’t care that they are in the song. Yes, the millions of people who don’t see that issue fall into one of those categories, and there should be some serious introspection if someone can’t understand the problem. That’s part of a wider social issue in America, but I digress.
It should go without saying that things said on the internet on a social media site are opinions. I have no power over you or anyone else’s dissenting views, nor am I the arbiter of reality–My opinion is not preventing you from having or voicing a different opinion. Whether Grouvee is or is not an echo chamber is besides the point, but I’m actually perfectly happy to discuss these things with someone anyone who may disagree.
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Continuing this from main grouvee feed:
That was not my experience. He was very frequently aggressive, sanctimonious, and self-righteous. I remember him defending racism in Final Fantasy. I remember him using the Bible to say that emulation is wrong (something that isn’t in the Bible). I remember him telling me to get offline because I ended my relationship with a Conservative after they were an asshole to me.
I don’t have to go into details of this stuff but I don’t like people coming on here and acting like he never deserved any push back on his statements which often caused pain.
These are the lyrics to the song-
“And the obese milkin’ welfare, But God, if you’re five foot three and you’re three hundred pounds, Taxes ought not to pay for your bags of fudge rounds”
That is what people have a problem with. You should learn the lyrics that people don’t like before saying that the people who don’t like those lyrics are wrong.
Okay, well, if I’m wrong about farmboy then I’ll apologize. I was basing it off of what I saw in that thread, which to me came across as heated but reasonable. But the truth is I don’t necessarily trust your judgment of those events, because the way people were summarizing farmboy’s behaviour in today’s thread also sounds bad but then when I looked at it it wasn’t as bad as described. Now, if you’re telling the truth, then that means I’m being an asshole and dismissing your valid experiences, but I can’t agree to take your word for it.
And I am aware of that lyric, actually. I ended up learning most of the contentious points via osmosis. My point in saying I didn’t watch it was just to disclaim that I’m not some big fan of the song. But the point, either way, wasn’t “you’re wrong for not liking the lyrics” (which I definitely did not say), it was “you’re wrong for the way you’re characterizing the people who like the song”, and I would still stand by that. Especially because the majority of the song seems to be about wealthy politicians and that line is a one-off.
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Well said. It’s basic manners and those ignoring it are showing a level of social immaturity.
Throwing in my two cents. It’s worth noting that from what I’ve heard in the past, Grouvee is used by thousands of people every day, the vast majority choose not to comment or post statuses at all. Of the minority who do, most don’t engage with the political stuff.
Those claiming Grouvee is an echo chamber are coming to that conclusion based on a very small sample size of users. If that very small minority of users is in an echo chamber, well it’s not a very good one given the amount of disagreements and discourse from all sides present and active and hardly ever banned (the original poster chose to leave) on the site.
In conclusion, Grouvee is a safe place for that tiny minority of commenters to debate this stuff, but they’re all off topic on this game cataloguing website so shouldn’t be surprised when others get sick of it.
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To ensure that Grouvee doesn’t become an echo chamber, I’m introducing a new AI profile named Swirlie Stuart. He’s a chad bully who hates video games. He’ll stop the echo chamber by offering a different opinion on video games, commenting things like “look at this fucking dork” and “nerd alert!”
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But when someone says “Grouvee is an echo chamber”, obviously they don’t mean “I can tell that all the 1000s of silent users who just track their backlog all agree”, they clearly mean “of the active message-posting userbase, most of them agree.” The fact that some things get some pushback (i.e. this topic doesn’t change that) because the people giving the pushback are vastly outnumbered, and also most of the time they just don’t speak up to pushback at all because the numbers are clearly against them and there’d be no point.
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“Does disliking the organization Black Lives Matter ™ make someone racist?”
“Well if they don’t support black rights, they are racist”
This is where I’m scratching my head at the whole thing. If you don’t support black people’s rights, how is that not racist? It’s ridiculous to say you can not be racist and at the same time think it’s OK for black people to be shot extrajudicially by police.
And at no point did I ever imply someone needs to like the supposed BLM “organization,” (Which is not really an “organization,” by the way, it’s a decentralized movement). I brought it up because Jason Aldean’s use of BLM protest footage explicitly indicated what the song is about. But I can concede that this may have been a misunderstanding.
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I really didn’t want to get back into this, but the question about BLM is the change of topic. People were pointing out that the lyrics of a very specific song (and not all country music as was implied was being argued at one point) song contained a racist sentiment. There was an attempt to focus the song meaning exclusively on BLM, while ignoring the broader lyrics that are not at all BLM related (an example was provided to you by @georgeypoorgey on the main site). Then the question posed was whether being anti-BLM was racist, which I said was reductive and focused the discussion back on the broader claim. The attempt to focus on BLM was a way of trying to refocus the conversation on whether or not people would claim the person in question was racist, and that was not what anyone was attempting to do. Refocusing the conversation from a general critique of language in a song by trying make people declare whether or not they think a specific user is racist is a confrontational act. And this is why I posited the general statement that opposing individual rights based on race can be understood as racist. People can negotiate for themselves what that means. I don’t think it is particularly controversial to say that if people don’t want people to have the same rights based on race that this ideology or position is rooted in racism, is it? People are perfectly capable of looking at that and saying “that doesn’t apply to me because I want people to have the same fundamental rights” and know that they are not racist. My point is people need to negotiate that for themselves.
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This is where I’m scratching my head at the whole thing. If you don’t support black people’s rights, how is that not racist? It’s ridiculous to say you can not be racist and at the same time think it’s OK for black people to be shot extrajudicially by police.
I don’t see at all how you’re getting this from the example exchange I quoted. The person asking about “Black Lives Matter™” isn’t asking if you support black people’s rights, because the organization is not synonymous with the rights. It’s like me asking you if you support PETA and when you say “no” I say “so then you think its okay for animals to be abused”. It’s just very possible for a person to disagree with an organization even if they agree with the basic principle being espoused by the organization, for many reasons. If you agree that people don’t have to like the organization, then that means your answer to the person asking that question would just be “no”! No need to pivot or assume what they “really mean”. (And that can apply to a movement as well)
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It’s because the BLM question was misdirecting based on trying to refocus the conversation on support of BLM as a determiner of whether a person is or isn’t racist. That’s why I said it was reductive, because nothing fruitful was going to come from that question because that wasn’t the claim made. The BLM portion was an offshoot from the discussion of the music video, it wasn’t the heart of the claim about the lyrics. The question “does not supporting BLM mean your racist” was an attempt to set up a strawman argument.
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