Questioning the Jimquisition 3

I am hes­i­tant to give him the traf­fic, but I sup­pose you should watch this video, since that’s what this arti­cle is about.  It is not real­ly safe for work, though, so do bear that in mind:

I gen­er­al­ly try not to pick fights here, but the ideas expressed in this video caused me to raise an eye­brow and strong­ly con­sid­er tear­ing out my hair, and I believe they might be deserv­ing of some atten­tion.  Further, I do think that I have some things to say that are worth lis­ten­ing to.

Now, I’m not sure, exact­ly, just how seri­ous Jim Sterling is with this video, but that’s sort of the prob­lem with Jim.  You’re never quite sure.  So, for the sake of argu­ment, I’m going to assume that he is at least part­ly seri­ous, and so I’m going to address why Jim is wrong, and why we should stop lis­ten­ing to him until he cleans up his act.

Problem One: He’s Not Correct

This is actu­al­ly the least impor­tant of my crit­i­cisms, but frankly, I don’t buy that act­ing like a petu­lant child is liable to get peo­ple to lis­ten to you.  His argu­ment seems to be thus: Fox News and sim­i­lar such places have mas­sive fol­low­ings, and they behave like scream­ing nin­nies all the time.  Thus, the best way to gain an audi­ence is to yell and shriek and throw dung.

This is not true, and to say oth­er­wise is to con­flate cor­re­la­tion and cau­sa­tion.

Fox News did not attract its audi­ence, it was con­struct­ed to meet the demands of an exist­ing audi­ence.  Rupert Murdoch, after see­ing the suc­cess­es of folks like Rush Limbaugh, real­ized that there was a whole group of peo­ple in the United States who felt ostra­cized by exist­ing news sources and per­ceived those sources as pre­dom­i­nant­ly lib­er­al and active­ly antag­o­nis­tic.  He thus real­ized there was demand for a prod­uct, and dol­lar signs lit up in his eyes while he real­ized it was about to be Christmas in Murdochville.

Fox already had an audi­ence wait­ing for it, and it did­n’t begin its real­ly ridicu­lous child­ish mud-slinging until that audi­ence had real­ly begun to trust it.  By then, the audi­ence had decid­ed Fox was trust­wor­thy, and loy­al­ly stood behind it as it got sil­li­er and sil­li­er.  Further, few peo­ple in the audi­ence need­ed to be con­vinced of Fox’s core polit­i­cal beliefs (inso­far as it has any beyond “make as much money as pos­si­ble.”).  They were already con­ser­v­a­tive, already dis­trust­ful of American lib­er­al­ism, and just need­ed some­one to rally behind.

You can get peo­ples’ atten­tion by rant­i­ng and rav­ing, but you will only win their sup­port with said rant­i­ng if they have some rea­son to trust you before­hand.  Lots of peo­ple will lis­ten to the crazy street preach­er on the cor­ner, but no one is going to change his or her lifestyle to match the lunatic’s com­mand­ments, because no one cares what he thinks.

Glenn Beck can draw cheers with his rants for two rea­sons.  First, his audi­ence already agrees, at least broad­ly, with what he says.  I sus­pect that the num­ber of lib­er­als that Beck has con­vinced into chang­ing their gen­er­al opin­ions on a mat­ter is sub­stan­tial­ly less than the num­ber of lib­er­als who might have been will­ing to lis­ten to con­ser­v­a­tive con­cerns, but are instead repulsed by his rhetoric.  That brand of child­ish pun­dit­ry, which Jim Sterling seems to be advo­cat­ing, does not change or win hearts and minds.  It sim­ply rein­forces exist­ing opin­ion and strength­ens a group’s morale.

Second, Beck’s audi­ence already trusts him.  For what­ev­er rea­son, the sort of peo­ple who are like­ly to have their opin­ions swayed at all by Mr. Beck already think of him as a cred­i­ble source.  Thus, even if they do dis­agree with him on a small mat­ter, they are more will­ing to lis­ten to his rav­ings and be impressed by his pas­sion.  This isn’t crazy: you are far more like­ly to put up with some­one get­ting car­ried away if you already think that per­son is worth lis­ten­ing to.

If Jim Sterling does go ahead and appoint him­self “Video games’ Jack Thompson,” charged with the solemn duty of “shout­ing down the idiots,” the only peo­ple he’s going to be reach­ing are those who already agree with him or are already pre­dis­posed to agree with him.  What he’s not going to do is change any­one’s opin­ion.  All he is going to do is make a lot of noise and make gamers look bad.

Even if he does suc­ceed in get­ting one of the oppos­ing mud-slinging chil­dren to change his or her opin­ion (as he implies the Amazon-bombing of Cooper Lawrence’s book did), that’s not real­ly the point.

There’s an excel­lent scene in Thank You For Smoking that makes the point bet­ter than I can.

Even in the unlike­ly event that Jim or some other video game-friendly child­ish prank-puller/pundit/whatever-the-hell-Jim-wants-us-to-be might con­vince an oppo­nent to change his or her mind, no one in the audi­ence is going to care.  The sort of crowd that is very inter­est­ed in loud spec­ta­cle is equal­ly unin­ter­est­ed in quiet, polite, dec­la­ra­tions of past mis­steps.

See, you’ll note that Cooper Lawrence put out her apol­o­gy and acknowl­edge­ment of wrong­do­ing in the New York Times, not on Fox News.  Do you know how many peo­ple uniron­i­cal­ly read the NYT and watch Fox News?

Probably pret­ty close to zero.

Problem Two: Even if He’s Right, He’s Wrong

But let’s put all that to the side.  Let’s assume, for now, that Jim is absolute­ly right, and that behav­ing like chil­dren and allow­ing our­selves to be dragged to the level of the Fox Newses of the world will make peo­ple under­stand that video games are worth­while or what­ev­er it is that he hopes to accom­plish.

The prob­lem is that being child­ish and obnox­ious isn’t just bad because of what other peo­ple think, it is inher­ent­ly bad.  It is bad to lie, and to treat other human beings poor­ly.  It is bad to inten­tion­al­ly dis­tort other peo­ples’ words to suit your own agen­das, and bad to dis­par­age some­one else’s work if you haven’t even read/played/watched/otherwise expe­ri­enced it.

Bad.  Wrong.  Unethical.

See, Cooper Lawrence did some­thing wrong when she went on Fox News and pon­tif­i­cat­ed about a game she had never played.  But the Amazon review-bombers, well-intentioned though they may have been, did some­thing just as bad when they spammed her Amazon reviews with one-star rat­ings with­out hav­ing read her book.  It was the same thing.

I fre­quent­ly find myself winc­ing at the tremen­dous dis­plays of GIFT-enabled jack­assery that can be found in the com­ments sec­tion of any major games web­site, and I’m not just winc­ing because other, non-gamers might see those com­ments and think poor­ly of gamers.  Yes, that con­cerns me.  But I also don’t like it that the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty seems remark­ably tol­er­ant of ass­hat­tery.  It makes me worry that the jerks might be the rule, not the excep­tion.  I find myself want­i­ng to say self-defeating things like “I’m not like those other gamers” not just because I don’t want to be seen as part of a com­mu­ni­ty that is per­ceived as dys­func­tion­al and obnox­ious, but because I find myself wor­ry­ing that the per­cep­tion might be right.

See, if loud mem­bers of the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty all decide to act like jerks and no one calls them out on it, it does­n’t just make the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty look bad.  It actu­al­ly makes the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty worse.  When we con­sis­tent­ly tol­er­ate obnox­ious and jerkas­sic behav­ior, we are actu­al­ly less­en­ing our own qual­i­ty.

The stereo­type of the gamer as the obnox­ious, hate-filled loser is not sim­ply a stereo­type.  The hor­ri­ble mes­sages sent into Fat, Ugly or Slutty, and the death threats that Courtney Stanton and Melissa McEwan received dur­ing the Dickwolves mess were not sent by robots.  Real gamers sent those mes­sages.  If we allow that kind of behav­ior in the com­mu­ni­ty, then it does­n’t just “make the com­mu­ni­ty look bad” on some kind of super­fi­cial level.  It actu­al­ly implies that the com­mu­ni­ty is bad.

Now, I don’t think that the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty is pri­mar­i­ly com­posed of jerks.  I know plen­ty of gamers that are won­der­ful human beings, and fur­ther­more, every­one occa­sion­al­ly screws up and says some­thing stu­pid on the Internet.  If you think I have never said dumb things in forum posts, then while I am hon­ored by your appar­ent per­cep­tion of me as some kind of saint, you are wrong.  Hell, I have even said very stu­pid or ill-timed things on this very web­site!

But the kind of behav­ior Jim seems to be advo­cat­ing here is not just the occa­sion­al slip-up, but rather a con­cert­ed and will­ful desire to be obnox­ious and stu­pid, and that’s not a plan I can get behind.  I’m not real­ly wor­ried that Jim’s procla­ma­tions are some­how going to cause a rev­o­lu­tion in the games com­mu­ni­ty and turn all gamers into hate-filled pun­dits, but I am wor­ried that con­tin­u­al­ly talk­ing about child­ish, pundit-like behav­ior as any­thing but awful will allow peo­ple to excuse them­selves when they feel like being jerks.  In other words, I’m not just wor­ried that Jim and those who take his advice will make us look bad, I’m wor­ried that we’ll become bad as a result of putting up with their non­sense.

Which, nat­u­ral­ly, brings me to the final prob­lem.

Problem 3: Jimquisition is Part of the Problem.

Jim Sterling is a very smart guy, and I’m sure his pub­lic, “Jimquisition”-style per­sona is exag­ger­at­ed.  He fre­quent­ly makes very inter­est­ing, thought-out points in his videos, and, pre­sent­ed in anoth­er, less obnox­ious for­mat, they might be worth explor­ing.  I want to hear what Jim Sterling has to say, and I used to be will­ing to put up with his obnox­ious­ness in order to lis­ten to his crit­i­cism.

But I real­ized the other day that the dif­fer­ence between Glenn Beck and Jim Sterling is one of spe­cif­ic con­tent and degree, not of form.  They are both obnox­ious louts who play up their points, valid or oth­er­wise, to get cheers and laughs from an audi­ence that likes to see things paint­ed in broad strokes.  Both of them prob­a­bly began their careers less obnox­ious than they are now, and both are prob­a­bly less ludi­crous in pri­vate than they appear in pub­lic.  Both cat­e­go­rize those who dis­agree with them as stu­pid or igno­rant and fre­quent­ly say patent­ly offen­sive things for no appar­ent rea­son other than because they want the atten­tion.  In short, both play to the worst parts of their respec­tive com­mu­ni­ties, Beck to the hate-filled, xeno­pho­bic theo­crat, and Sterling to the angsty, icon­o­clas­tic loser.

So for Sterling to say that the shout­ing and yelling match that is much of the American pub­lic scene is “sad” is fun­da­men­tal­ly hyp­o­crit­i­cal, since he does the exact same thing.

He and his sup­port­ers state that his more pre­pos­ter­ous state­ments and behav­iors are satir­i­cal, or that it’s tongue-in-cheek, or that his pub­lic per­sona isn’t the same as his pri­vate per­sona.  But that’s frankly irrel­e­vant.  I don’t care what Jim Sterling is like in the com­fort of his own home or only among friends, because that’s not the Jim Sterling that the world has to deal with.  In pub­lic, he is obnox­ious, loud, nar­cis­sis­tic and misog­y­nist, and the fact that he ends most of these state­ments with an over­done wink and a dec­la­ra­tion that he’s been per­form­ing satire or trolling or what­ev­er does­n’t mat­ter.

It’s satire ’cause I said a bunch of stu­pid, hor­ri­ble things, and then said “That was satire!”

I sent this arti­cle to my wife to edit, as I do with all my arti­cles, and she was flat­ly appalled by the video up above.  She told me she could not believe the Escapist pays him to pro­duce that sort of thing, and that she could not stand the obscen­i­ty, the obnox­ious­ness, the smarm, or the lazy, crude MS Paint doo­dles.

My wife, you must under­stand, is not eas­i­ly shocked by crude­ness. She real­ly likes Zero Punctuation.  She knows a fair amount about the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty, and quite enjoys Civilization IV, Left 4 Dead, Lemmings, and Plants Vs. Zombies.  She knows that gamers are not all jerks, and that there are won­der­ful things to be had in video games as an art form and the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty as a whole.  Jim Sterling nev­er­the­less gave her pause, and made her won­der about the qual­i­ty of the com­mu­ni­ty.

At some point, the nar­cis­sism, the lazy pro­duc­tion val­ues and the smarm stop being iron­ic or satir­i­cal, and start actu­al­ly being what they’re sup­pos­ed­ly send­ing up.  Jim passed that point some time ago.  He’s not funny, or satir­i­cal, or edgy.  He’s just an ass­hole.  

So, What’s the Point, Bill?

Why am I writ­ing about this?  Is it because I some­how expect Jim Sterling will come to my web­site, read this arti­cle, and change his prac­tices?  No, not real­ly.  I mean, that would be swell, but as Nick Naylor men­tioned above, I’m not real­ly talk­ing to him.  In the event that he were to read this and want to talk to me about it, that would be great.  But I’m real­ly talk­ing to you, the read­er, because I want you to do a few things.

First, and most obvi­ous­ly, fol­low­ing Jim’s sug­ges­tions and giv­ing into the nat­ur­al temp­ta­tion to ful­fill the gamer stereo­type when con­front­ed with will­ful igno­rance and mis­in­for­ma­tion is self-defeating, bad, and con­tributes to the very sys­tems of rhetoric that have made you angry.

Yes, like-minded peo­ple will prob­a­bly always be will­ing to lis­ten to the right pun­dits, and if you’re lucky, some­one will cast your child­ish antics in a pos­i­tive light, and maybe even give you a week­ly fea­ture on an oth­er­wise high-quality gam­ing site.  But becom­ing the enemy is not the answer.

A Call To (In)Action.

Jim Sterling is not a dumb guy, and beneath his vit­ri­olic per­sona is a pret­ty sharp mind with some legit­i­mate­ly inter­est­ing things to say about video games, both as art and enter­tain­ment.  But right now, I sus­pect he’s doing more dam­age than good.  By appeal­ing to the self-righteous, crude, jerk demo­graph­ic, Jim has already done what he asks us to do in this video.  He has already low­ered him­self to the level of the mud­slingers.  At best, he is an incomptent satirist.

So, let’s send a mes­sage to Jim Sterling and any­one else who wants to behave like this that we think the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty is bet­ter than Jim Sterling’s pub­lic per­sona.  We don’t want to cater to those mem­bers of our com­mu­ni­ty who think sim­ply shout­ing loud­er than the other guy is appro­pri­ate behav­ior.

Let’s not do this by rant­i­ng in com­ments, but by sim­ply refus­ing to watch Jimquisition, refus­ing to fol­low his Twitter account, and even refus­ing to read his Destructoid reviews.  If we send let­ters to him or his clients, let them be polite ones, but let us vote pri­mar­i­ly with our traf­fic.

If Sterling’s per­sona is pri­mar­i­ly played-up and staged, then he can take it off.  I do want to hear his thoughts on a mul­ti­tude of issues, but I can wait until he learns to behave like an adult, and so can you.  Let’s make him shape up, or ship out.  Let’s show that the gam­ing com­mu­ni­ty is bet­ter than the nar­cis­sis­tic, vit­ri­olic, child­ish, misog­y­nist ass­hole that is show­cased in Jimquisition.

See, Jim is right that the world likes to lis­ten to peo­ple who fling dung, and gen­er­al­ly prefers spec­ta­cle over sub­stance, but that does­n’t mean we have to ful­fill that desire.  On this point, Gandhi, Christ, Kant and Wheaton all agree.  Be the change you want to see in the world.  Do unto oth­ers as you would have them do unto you.  Act only accord­ing to that maxim where­by you can, at the same time, will that it should become a uni­ver­sal law.

Or, fun­da­men­tal­ly, don’t be a dick.