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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26535 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 25, 2024

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As an old, I don't really play video games. But it's weird to me that the video game industry is so woke considering that the user base is so anti-woke. Why aren't there anti-woke game publishers?

Proposed answer: Political selection of devs.

Video games companies need developers who are competent, willing to work for low wages, and willing to tolerate long working hours. This is a tough sell. Competent devs in the US can easily earn 200-500k with cushy working conditions. Why get paid less than half as much and be subjected to semiannual death marches?

As a result of this rotten bargain, the men who choose this field will tend to be young, not have families, and be fixated on video games. Frankly, this is going to select for autists. To the extent that autism and MtF trans are correlated, I would expect that video game developers are trans at a rate at least far above the norm. This might explain a lot of the soy-type politics espoused by major game studios.

There's clearly a market opportunity for non-woke game publishers. But could they get devs? Conservative men tend to work in the field that pays them the best, allowing them to support their family. They aren't out there making children's toys.

Does this explanation make sense? Or is this just a $20 bill sitting on the sidewalk?

Proposed answer: Political selection of devs.

I mean, it's the political orientation of devs.

From personal experience, the vast majority of competent and brilliant software engineers are either progressive or turbo-liberals. It's an unfortunate truth, but conservatives have to face reality here -- there is no hidden trove of right-leaning engineers waiting in the wings to take over.

Yeah, the defenestration of Brendan Eich was one of the first big moves of the Awokening. High level devs just tend to be lefties, it doesn't have to be all of them just enough to make it SEEM like its all of them and keep righties in the closet (and Damore the ones who don't), and the unaligned will mostly go along with whichever group seems to be in the majority.

At the time of Eichgate Eichpot Dome Eich Mobilier Let's go Brendan whatever we're calling the matter, I was just beginning to follow the rationalist sphere; the wokists, then called 'social justice warriors' or 'SJWs', had not yet burned all their credibility, and I still looked with favour on the movement, despite dis-agreeing with it when I felt it was wrong.

I thus held the following Views on their actions:

  1. Desiring that the State offer privileges to opposite-sex couples that are un-available to same-sex couples, ceteris paribus, constitutes animus against gay people.
  2. A person who harbours animus against gay people ought not be the CEO of a company, as they cannot be trusted to take sufficient action should gay employees face discrimination from their supervisors or harassment from their colleagues. (The same applies to the head of the HR department.)
  3. However, such animus ought not be dis-qualifying for other positions; had Mr Eich been dismissed as CTO, CFO, EIEIO, Assistant Regional Manager, Assistant To The Regional Manager, or Deputy Assistant Head Of Purchasing For Custom-Colour Office Supplies Such As Red Staplers, despite not having acted on his animus while on the job, one could reasonably argue said dismissal to be an act of injustice.

Accepting (2) here is really wild. For one, it's quite hypothetical -- perhaps such discrimination never even occurs. Or perhaps it occurs and some lower-level management handles it appropriately. Or perhaps it occurs and Mr Eich recuses himself from the response and delegates it to his COO or other suitable entity. There are a half dozen ways that any putative animus need not have any impact on gay employees at all.

And even if it does come to Mr Eich to decide on the response (for whatever reason the CEO really handling such mundane personnel decisions), it's hypothetical that he would not conclude that he had to set his animus aside and decide on the merits. Either for his own ethical sense or at the advice of counsel.

hypothetical

Many bad things are hypothetical, but we guard against them anyway. It's quite hypothetical that Mozilla headquarters catches on fire, but we still insist that they have fire-alarms, sprinklers, and stairwells with doors and walls that won't burn through in less than two hours.

Furthermore, the CEO having given support to government discrimination against gay people signals to gay employees 'You Are Not Welcome Here', to homophobic employees that they are more likely to get away with mis-conduct aimed at gay people, and to managers dealing with said mis-conduct by sub-ordinates that a vigorous response to said mis-conduct might not be appreciated.

Affirmative Action is discrimination against jews, asians, and whites (in that order). Should someone who has contributed a few hundred bucks to the democratic party which works in favor of that ALSO not be allowed to be a CEO? Or does this just apply to causes lefties care about?

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