Honestly it feels like I’m talking to a brick wall here, you just keep saying the same things, ignoring the common sense in here.
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Perhaps I misunderstood what you meant by the above. To me it looks like conceding ground which shouldn’t be, because this is objectively not the right tactic to adopt due to your own preferred reasoning by letting decisions be dictated by the cold calculations.
Stats 2018 show 4chan has 22 million unique visitors. 47% from NA. I’m afraid I cannot get the exact ratio for how many are pol users but let’s say 50% for the sake of the argument. Unless you’d like 75%? Let’s say 75%. So that’s 16.5 million. And let’s also say that all of them are racists.
That’s like… idk, a bit more than the population of Istanbul. 1 city.
The ADL identifies Klan membership at around 3k. SPLC says it’s 6k. Let’s go with 6.
So we’ve got 16.5 million still. Idk who else to throw into this pot… you can perhaps suggest some other orgs with sizable memberships.
16.5 mil in a world of 7.5 bil.
I’m sorry but at the end of the day I don’t see that 51% point for the pendulum swing that you mentioned, and the trigger being pulled as a reaction.
It seems more likely that my supposition would be correct in this case and that forfeitting cultural symbols shouldn’t be the preferred tactic when the trolling op has no authority of any shape or form and it solely relied on useful idiots to breathe life into it.
You speak of the normies. They did this because… why?
They shouldn’t. Regardless of how true the self-propagation mechanisms you mention are, at the end of the day they do not have the manpower to sustain such an event. You do. People who subscribe to this do.
You effectively become the instruments working against what you try to preserve.
Because let’s face it. This isn’t H1tl3r ruining a beloved Hindu symbol. Far from it.
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The context of that is that the OK sign isn’t racist, but is popular with racists because people thought it’d be funny to make others think it was racist.
Apathy is not a solution as genuine, ideologically driven actors will perpetually self reinforce. Never pushing back at all is, I guess, the “don’t feed the trolls” approach which is all well and good up to a point but to further ignore why and how things get worse is to stand empty handed and confused when these ideas gain genuine power.
For our new audience members, the tl:dr of this whole essy on human social dynamics is that memes make politics, passivity is disarmament. Blizzard bans OK sign because they might lose money if they don’t.
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Not suggesting it.
What you should do is get a room full of minorities and make them all take a picture doing the 
“Take that racists. We don’t care. You can’t take this from us.”
EDIT: That is something to do after you’ve answered yourselves with the reasons for
- why take the bait in the first place
- why engage with a pol op
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So are you a racist? Because otherwise it wouldn’t matter to you at all, to you, it’d be “ok” and nothing more.
They’re not self-reinforcing, YOU are reinforcing them, by acknowledging their meaning of a hand gesture.
You’re doing exactly what they wanted you to do.
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I actually think this is a good idea. It worked for the Jewish community when they owned the triple brackets ‘((()))’ thing after the antisemites came up with that.
I think Levey is right in that simply ignoring dogwhistles just causes things to escalate further, and this suggestion is a positive way to deal with it.
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If everyone ignored it, it wouldn’t be nearly as popular, it’d just stick to 4chan, ofcourse ignoring it would be a good idea…
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Well alright. I still wish Blizzard would’ve pondered on why they engaged with it in the first place. And then furthermore ponder what is a good course of action.
Even if we apply the cold calculation threshhold, 51%, I don’t think 16-22mil 4chan users or other hate groups are playing Blizzard games (so being payees).
It sure doesn’t look like it to me.
https://imgur.com/vi1U9qg
Source for full uncropped image
https://dashboards.trefis.com/no-login-required/rWi7n6Qn?fromforbesandarticle=what-to-expect-from-activision-blizzard-in-2019
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Ground isn’t given and my approach is analytical, as is the simple reasoning of why blizzard banned the OK. It boils down to a simple cost-benefit analysis devoid of ideology.
It was a simple example, perhaps a bit cynical, but factual, that if Blizzard knows its customer base would be broadened by certain appeal, it will be pursued regardless of ideology.
The math behind board memberships and the like is its own issue since just the whole OK bit has spun off in its own direction globally far beyond the control of a few trolls.
Objectively untrue as these things take shape long before it slithers into the normie world as trolling. The ideological basis is nurtured and preserved, like a jar of kimchi. Coordinated trolling is a delivery mechanism but the ideas, the ideals behind it are sustained and self reinforcing in forums and social media bubbles. The racist doesn’t get less racist because they weren’t argued against.
It’s an approach that has its own long term issues but it’s a decent step in the right direction. If a symbol cannot be rehabilitated, it can be disempowered culturally.
This veers dangerously close to the argument that racism only exists because people are calling each other racist, which is a dishonest, bad faith argument actively designed by racists to reverse the accusation.
I can recognise that racists use the OK sign as a signal to their in-group without agreeing with their views.
Nothing exists in a vaccuum, I can only repeat this in so many ways so many times. A gesture, a symbol, a catchphrase, it all has a meaning that we recognise as human beings in a society. The alternative, with these extreme examples would be patchworks of secret societies with special handshakes everyone else choose not to recognise?
You can blame the media for it. Right-wing media outlets and personalities were quick to find the original 4chan source and run with it. Left and centrist media in return reacted to that. Collectively they exposed their audiences to it.
Blizzard is just late to the party.
You keep using that word, I don’t think you know what it means, you’ve just been repeating the same mantra over and over again, “some racists have their meaning of it and has shifted the meaning of this gesture so lets stop using it”
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Analytical. Also dispassionate. Not even amused by that meme. I’d just ask that you consider my points.
Not my point.
Concisely, it was actively engineered to use racism to provoke, then adopted by actual racists and pushing back against it is understandable. As is bizzard banning it, for entirely practical reasons. Furthermore, I believe that they wouldn’t ban it if public opinion and customer demographics were such that a benefits were to be made by license and even endorsement. Capitalism knows no loyalty, no ideology, no symbols, no gods.
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Oh i’ve considered them alright, and conclude that they hold no value
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It began as a troll op, we’ve all seen the screenshots, and only later did it get adopt by actual racists such as the WP who are in fact just 6,000 of them. And I don’t know that those numbers look that much better if you add in FB groups (largest platform right, or if including Gab/Minds is of use here), and account for duplicate membership from cross-groups but they’re not that many and most of them aren’t subscribers to Activision-Blizzard.
Because let’s talk about this
Do you have evidence of this, your own analytical model perhaps, that you can share with me and the rest who might also be interested.
Or better yet, do you have any proof that Blizzard themselves engaged in this analysis and actually thought this through?
This is my last post as it’s 5 a.m. but I would very much like to obtain some concrete answers and factual data from you because so far it’s been
- “cold caluations 51%” as if a simple majority rule accounts for whales in the gaming industry (those are the real MVPs that blizz cares about, this can be sourced)
- the presumption of a cost-benefit analysis as opposed to a kneejerk reaction (the banning of the player has followed shortly after only one tweet made it out to be racist, again, can source this)
- admitting that doing something is better than doing nothing, but at the same time adopting the defeatist mentality
Let’s not surrender everything good to racists shall we? Especially since with so many precedents now in line, I fear that the worst is yet to come. This doomed trajectory is clear. Please. See that there is a better, proven, course of action:
all the years where 4chan ops were ignored by the media (the piss-knickers for example)
taking it back, if the mistake was made and the trolls were engaged to begin with
Because this is a sample of 1 Levey. This ok_hand troll op has been successful precisely because it has been given attention instead of letting it fizzle out (weirdly, as you claim it will happen regardless in a few years)
So by now I don’t know what to take away from this worthwhile conversation as I’ve identified this contradiction in your post.
Are you for or against inaction? Which one is it.
And coming back to what I said, I can make this argument that leaving it out to die on its own because there’s a larger sample that supports it (tumblr piss-knickers campaign, waterproof/microwave iphone campaigns, Taylor Swift and the deaf campaign, #CutForBieber etc.) As well as part of you, I guess, when you said that it’ll blow over regardless.
Hey, thanks for engaging, good night for now I really should head to bed.
In the end, I’m of the opinion that we shouldn’t engage with the troll ops to begin with, and ESPECIALLY neither should the media nor Blizz. Because history shows that they do indeed die out when ignored. And I will take this evidence to support my argument, contrary to the method of feeding the trolls which seems to have backfired, to nobody’s surprise.
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Except that nobody would really care if nothing was done about it.
I’d dispute this given arguments made against things I never said, but I’m also unable to convince you by reason alone.
Constructively speaking, what is your solution other than ignoring the usage until it presumably goes away? I’m wholly unconvinced of its efficacy given how these ideas spread and like I said, racists don’t get less racist by not being challenged.
Excuse me, what?
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New memes will rise, racism will endure. My point in that post was that outrage culture will continue to distract from real issues regardless. I’m sorry, but responding to these cherry picked deconstructions is exhausting…
I know I said the above would be my last post but couldn’t resist.
Good juxtaposition, basically summarises the entire night.
Levey, gg play again next time.
Sorry man, it really can’t be, because these aren’t cherrypicked.
Either way, people can simply click the quoted post to see for themselves the extent of the context.
I spotted it the first time you made it but kept it for a holistic summation finale in my above post.
Either way, I hope you ponder on my suggestions and also my requests! Good night
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Cherry-picked? I’m just showing you’re contradicting yourself.
So why ban memes if the racists will change to something else, anyways? Do you honestly think any company really cares about this? “Oh, this one girl tweeted that it’s racist, let’s cut all ties with Blizzard” give me a break.
Secondly, by banning this you’re ensuring the spread of this “racism” (Let’s be honest, it’s not real racism, it was invented by some 4channers who simply like to troll the extreme left.)
So why go with the outrage culture and ban the damn emoji?
Hey, you know what’s bad publicity, though? Banning a player from the competition because he did a 
sign in the background.
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