This is the Quality Contributions Roundup. It showcases interesting and well-written comments and posts from the period covered. If you want to get an idea of what this community is about or how we want you to participate, look no further (except the rules maybe--those might be important too).
As a reminder, you can nominate Quality Contributions by hitting the report button and selecting the "Actually A Quality Contribution!" option. Additionally, links to all of the roundups can be found in the wiki of /r/theThread which can be found here. For a list of other great community content, see here.
These are mostly chronologically ordered, but I have in some cases tried to cluster comments by topic so if there is something you are looking for (or trying to avoid), this might be helpful. Here we go:
Quality Contributions to the Motte
Contributions for the week of January 30, 2023
Rowliphobia
Identity Politics
Contributions for the week of February 6, 2023
Who Teaches the Teachers?
@gog:
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Notes -
Maybe I’m just primed by the shitshow in this week’s thread, but I find the Motte’s taste in sexual politics abysmal. It’s like a license to throw epistemic hygiene to the wind.
Gender politics, on the other hand, go pretty well. @ThisIsSin has really given me a lot to think about; I’m surprised I missed that the first time around.
I actually agree. I am rather amused (and slightly embarassed) that it is my anti-feminist rants I collect AAQCs for.
Probably because it hits too close to home.
But then again, the reason this does feel slightly discomforting is because we are primed to be especially sensitive towards discussions that might be insulting to women.
I know that pain. (And whoever nominated the JKR one: did you care about the
«moneylender bad» aspect, versus the «Rowling's Wizarding world inherently runs on a magical equivalent of racial biodeterminism, which makes the anti-Rowling faction not-reasonably suspect her of thoughtcrimes relevant to the real world» argument I was making?)
Having one make it in in the last minute is weird too.
Because that's not the rationale behind it all. Let me go full-on bitch here; the latest yowling about Rowling was the whole "if you buy this game, if you play this game, if you even review this game, you YES YOU PERSONALLY are contributing money to the literal trans genocide where she literally wants to build torture conversion camps!!!!"
Since that went over like a lead balloon with anyone even semi-normal because it was too fucking batshit insane, they then shifted gears to "how can you be unaware of the RACISM? ANTI-SEMITISM? Oh yeah and we might sometimes mention the slavery angle" campaign, hence unintentional gems of hilarity like the ANTI-SEMITIC CHEESE.
The problem is, there are enough boot-lickers out there who are firmly planting their cowardly backsides on the bandwagon and are all "I continue to sternly refuse to sit upon the curate's knee!" about the game, to the extent of "this is my website and I'm going to delete any comments that say 'hey maybe she's not a trans genocider?', so beware" knuckling under.
I haven't played the game, I'm not going to play the game, and I'm grimly amused that the kind of people wetting themselves with joy back in the day over Dumbledore gay, Hermione black are now 'away with the trans genocider!' because this is the new cause to signal about, and people like Rowling didn't get the memo and get with the plan. If they honestly had principles about biodeterminism etc. I could respect that. They have no principles that don't fade away like the morning dew to be replaced by a new set, if that is what the baying mob determines.
I think you make a common mistake I see a lot here, the unstated assumption that woke activists are "getting memos,"shifting gears" - i.e., your typical conspiratorial thinking that assumes a hierarchy with someone planning and orchestrating things.
While I am sure there are people who actually sit down and consciously plot out how to "get" Rowling and other enemies, in the "that didn't work, let's try something else" model you are describing, I think for the most part it's all just free-floating outrage and what sticks is repeated, what doesn't gets forgotten.
The Hogwarts Legacy game is not the first time Rowling has been accused of using goblins as anti-Semitic allegories. Rowling had haters even before she came out as a "TERF." SJWs were on her case way back before the series even ended for her various infelicities regarding gender roles, racial archetypes, neoliberalism, Cho Changing, etc. And don't get me started on the Snape fangirls (or why I know more than any middle-aged man should about Snape fangirls) who think Rowling done their sweet prince wrong and also that he was a victim of sexual assault. And the whole "untrustworthy, greedy little bankers who live in their own clannish society hmm who does this remind you of?" definitely came up back then, a lot.
I don't think the anti-Rowling protesters have enough organization or savvy to do A/B testing to determine which accusations work best. (Indeed, I have seen trans activists complaining "no one cares about trans genocide, people only got upset when it became about Jews.") I think they just throw whatever they've got.
You mistake me. I don't think there's any co-ordination at all, that's what is so comical. Person A starts a campaign, it gets picked up by their social media followers and spread around, like-minded others think it's a great idea and they all start copying each other (again, being a bitch, because the excessively online activist types love presenting themselves as tragically persecuted victims, and the idea of Rowling and the game being concerted trans genocide allows them to go full-on dying swan in their tweets etc.)
That didn't work, as pre-orders for the game, Twitch streaming (and that was a whole other kerfuffle) and reviews continued. So somebody decided they'd try the "goblin slavery = racism and pro-slavery" bit (didn't seem to get off the ground) and then the "goblins = Jewish stereotypes, anti-Semitism" angle, and that got passed around too. As I said, I've seen what could be copy-n-paste arguments all over the place repeating the same talking points. I don't think this was co-ordinated, I think it was the usual parroting of talking points that you get all too often, especially in closed communities (I see it all too often in fandom - how something becomes 'fanon' and gets treated as Gospel from then on).
So a bunch of Persons of Self-Importance did the dying swan bit about "literal genocide!!!!", their followers, hangers-on, and people who trip over themselves to be allies copied it and passed it around, they hoped it would become a campaign (e.g. reviews on Steam all downvoting the game) but it failed miserably. No co-ordinated action, no conspiracy, just an echo chamber. And occasional unintended hilarity and gems like the anti-semitic cheese.
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