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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 27, 2023

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You would hardly be the first or last person to make that observation on the discrepancy between pure demographics and advertising, be it here on the Motte or elsewhere. That's not the same thing as this being false, it's obviously true for anyone who has eyes, but it's been debated ad-nauseum here.

Thankfully my diligent use of ad-block prevents such visual and auditory pollution from entering my sensoria, most of the time. That's ads themselves, regardless of content. May the day come soon when AR filters get rid of them from my perception of non-digital reality.

Thankfully my diligent use of ad-block prevents such visual and auditory pollution from entering my sensoria, most of the time.

It's not just ads though, but also stock images, staged photographs for college admission pamphlets, product pictures on Amazon, etc. (you can always quickly identify cheap Chinese imports on Amazon: they're the only ones with product pictures showing white people using the product).

I'm sure you can probably find white people in ads for euthanasia in Canada, at least.

It's increasingly difficult to find any refuge from the daily barrage of reminders that your society is signaling it hates you and is excited for you and your kind to die off.

Huh. The first few stock images that come to mind are a mixed bag. Harold, old white guy. “Why can’t I hold all these limes,” young black guy. “Distracted boyfriend,” three white people, one of whom is male. Maybe those are just dated?

Googling “stock photo” and looking at the first page of results gives a bunch of white people, mostly solo. The first black guy is playing a saxophone—does that count as stereotyping? There are a few Middle Eastern men, a couple Indians, and a single dog.

So I’m not really seeing it.

I work in video games, you may recall. I've recently been making art for the in-game stories, and for promotional material. It has been communicated to the art team that representing diversity is a requirement in every image by default, with rare exceptions. Diversity means non-white and/or female, preferably both. Exceptions are images depicting individual characters (some of whom are still allowed to be white, but of course are balanced by the requirement that other characters be non-white) or bad guys, who are of course not subject to diversity requirements. Assuming you aren't depicting a villain, white characters are required to be balanced by diverse characters. Diverse characters are themselves, of course, balanced already and need no corresponding balancing.

I'm a little amused that we're still debating whether this sort of thing is happening. It's absolutely happening.

Sorry, I was focused on the stock photo part, which is where the OP didn’t fit my intuition.

I recognize that Representation only gets invoked one way, and that it’s doing so more often now than it did in 2009. Your explanation downthread regarding the risk/reward of pissing off Twitter is convincing.

Can you describe how these instructions are given to you? Does your manager tell you this directly? Are these commands issued to your whole team from somewhere else?

Every time we made a piece of art that didn't have POC/gender balance in it, our boss told us it wasn't diverse enough and we had to remake it to be more diverse. This complaint never was made for anything involving villains. It took a dozen iterations before we started internally discussing where to put the diversity in a given image during the planning stage, and we still frequently are told that the images aren't diverse enough and we need to add more. Any time we do an early mockup with stock images that aren't themselves diverse, we're reminded that the finished version has to be diverse. I'm indy; the boss tells us directly.

Have you ever asked why?

Video games with more diverse characters don't seem to sell more.

I don't need to ask why. I've sat through a couple impromptu diversity lectures over the years. Both the indy space and Triple-A are completely dominated by progressive voices. The entire gaming press ecosystem is rabidly progressive. Influencers are more balanced, but everyone the boss knows and everyone the boss respects, cares about, and wants to impress are all on one side. You want to show your game at PAX, you want buzz, you want people cheering you on and giving you good press, well, there's a set of beliefs and behaviors that get you that, and there's another set of beliefs and behaviors that definately will not.

I could give more examples, but I'll leave it there for OPSEC purposes.

So it's more a matter of placing the company on the map of 'good guys' or for individuals to make sure that they can keep finding jobs in the same type of companies.

you want buzz, you want people cheering you on and giving you good press, well, there's a set of beliefs and behaviors that get you that, and there's another set of beliefs and behaviors that definately will not.

Making a good game with innovative, fun gameplay, interesting visuals and story, compelling characters etc, would definitely make you (commercially) successful as well. Insofar your company is not banned from payment processing I suppose.

Of course that's much harder so the sea of average workers of the industry just go for the low-hanging fruit.

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I assume HelmedHorror is listing the use cases for stock photos where they perceive the problem, not necessarily listing stock photos as a separate category that also has the problem. To the general question of Stock Photos, when I load up the Shutterstock home page, the Explore Popular and Handpicked visuals seems to have eight pictures with humans, and the only white man in the mix is Santa Claus (possible another man but he is too small to tell for sure).

All of your examples seem to be fairly old (5+ years?) memes, which technically started their life as stock-photos but are probably non-central examples of stock-photos, in as much as they are still used today.

Yeah, on further consideration, you’re probably right.

Huh. The first few stock images that come to mind are a mixed bag. Harold, old white guy. “Why can’t I hold all these limes,” young black guy. “Distracted boyfriend,” three white people, one of whom is male. Maybe those are just dated?

Googling “stock photo” and looking at the first page of results gives a bunch of white people, mostly solo. The first black guy is playing a saxophone—does that count as stereotyping? There are a few Middle Eastern men, a couple Indians, and a single dog.

So I’m not really seeing it.

If you had to search for it, perhaps it's because you're not paying attention when you come across it organically.

Let's try this. I'll go one-by-one to websites from Fortune 500 companies in descending order and see how white or nonwhite the photos of people on their home page are. Sound pretty objective? Alright, let's play.

  1. Walmart. Black guy.
  2. Amazon. Bunch of product images. I don't really feel like revealing to the world what Amazon wants me to buy again.
  3. ExxonMobile. First guy is poorly lit but the face look kind of black to me when zooming in. Either way, the next person is a black woman too, followed by a white man.
  4. Apple. Black woman (on the watch).
  5. UnitedHealth Group. Asians.
  6. CVSHealth. Female is ambiguous, but the guy is nonwhite.
  7. Berkshire Hathaway. No photos of people.
  8. Alphabet. No photos of people.
  9. McKesson. Black woman.
  10. Chevron. White woman.
  11. Cencora. White woman. Nonwhites are nonetheless 3 out of 5 of the people whose races are visible on the home page.
  12. Costco. Two black people.
  13. Microsoft. Black person. 4 out of 5 of those with visible faces on the home page are nonwhite.
  14. Cardinal Health. Ambiguous, but I'd say multiracial.
  15. Cigna. A white male!
  16. Marathon Petroleum. 2 out of 3 white.
  17. Phillips 66. 2 out of 3 nonwhite.
  18. Valero Energy. Some of the people on the boat seem white, but they're distant and backs are turned. First face is black.
  19. Ford. White guy, followed by ambiguous woman and 4/6 of the remainder being black
  20. Home Depot. Two black guys, ambiguous woman, white guy
  21. General Motors. 8 out of 10 nonwhite
  22. Elevance Health. Black.
  23. JPMorgan Chase. Hispanic? A majority of the remainder of the homepage are nonwhites.
  24. Kroger. No photos, but 3 out of 4 of the cartoon characters are nonwhite.
  25. Centene. Black.
  26. Verizon. Nonwhite.
  27. Walgreens Boots Alliance. Well, not exactly a stock photo: they're announcing their new Chief Information Officer, a white guy. The next slide in the auto-rotating display is 5 nonwhite out of 7.
  28. Fannie Mae. Nonwhite.
  29. Comcast. 2 out of 3 nonwhite.
  30. AT&T. Asian, I think?

You get the idea.

The effect is so strong that at some point pictures of single young white urban men in advertising have become gay-coded. Usually if I see such an ad on my commute it's trying to sell me PrEP.

product pictures on Amazon, etc.

Is this true?

When I search Amazon for the word 'shirt,' in the first 3 rows on images, 8 models are white, 4 are non-white.

Do you see something different when you search the word 'shirt'? Did you have some other set of categories you were talking about?

It's increasingly difficult to find any refuge from the daily barrage of reminders that your society is signaling it hates you and is excited for you and your kind to die off.

Well, why should your society, given that it hates you and is excited for you and your kind to die off, allow you any such refuge?

May the day come soon when AR filters get rid of them from my perception of non-digital reality.

"I'm sorry sir, it looks like you have installed unapproved software on your McGoggles™, report to your nearest Best Buy™ for a replacement pair. The route is being superimposed on your field of vision until you arrive. Your Tesla™ Model Q™ is already waiting to transport you. Likewise, your Amazon Prime™ account is suspended until you've watched 2 hours of content to satisfy your backlog of weekly Adwatch™ to cover server costs. We appreciate your business."

I manage to use ad-block and root my phone, I think I'll manage, can't make promises about the rest of you!