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MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

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Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#621

Post by BEEdwards »

holler wrote: post #595
BEEdwards wrote: post #525

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so you mean they can use coded language to spread hate without being discovered? Almost like a dog whistle, that only some can hear...

I mean, ok... Is saying "fuck!" spreading hate? what about "you asshole!"? Sometimes humans just express their emotion using words. It isn't always about race. Gaming in particular evokes lots of emotions and always has. Personally I don't like when words are scrambled such as the case with Rocket League, because as someone else pointed out, you end up with barely being able to say anything without some part of it be…

That is a disingenuous comparison and you know it. Calling some an asshole vs calling them a racial slur are not in the same ballpark.

That you don't think you can communicate without swearing and slurs says more about you and gaming culture than it does about censorship.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#622

Post by egypturnash »

greenie_beans wrote: post #317
soraminazuki wrote: post #221

While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics. For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a…

They're banning a hateful symbol. That's totally fair game for censorship. I don't know where you come from, but in my home state where we JUST THIS WEEK removed the Confederate emblem from our state flag, only people with real hatred towards non-white people use that symbol.

Congratulations on that, btw! Watching this shit finally come down in your hometown feels REALLY GOOD.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#623

Post by 8note »

baddox wrote: post #485
user982 wrote: post #452

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> clearly the Confederate flag has been spoiled -- the racists won out and now people associate the flag more with racists than Southern/rural pride. This postulates that the Confederate flag did not start out spoiled by racism.

Nothing could be further from the truth. It first started as a battle flag during the Civil War. Then in 1948 the Dixiecrats reintroduced it as a symbol of their opposition to integration and the civil rights movement. If it's being used now by people intending it to represent regional pride who are simply unaware of its history (which I find unlikely, but a lot of people are claiming that), then all it should take t…

The Confederates in the civil war were fighting to own black people as slaves.

As a symbol for part of the Confederate army, it's still racist even in its first use. Some of the people fighting might have been conscripted against their will, but the symbol itself is still one that promoted slavery of black people

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#624

Post by larsenwolf »

soraminazuki wrote: post #221

While it's emotionally pleasing to see racists being kicked out of online platforms, another side of me feels wary of these tactics. For starters, being deplatformed from major online players today would have serious consequences. Although it's true that these platforms are "private property," the entire society has become too reliant on them to be seen that way. I think it's dangerous when platforms function like a…

At my company we’ve taken a stand against cancel culture. We do not believe that anyone should be compelled to sign away their freedoms as part of our working relationship. The right to free speech is just that—a RIGHT. There’s more than enough legal precedence to manage our workforce effectively.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#625

Post by thaumasiotes »

filleduchaos wrote: post #560
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #510

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that it isn't a symbol of southern heritage for everyone doesn't mean it's not a southern symbol for many. Are you suggesting that African-Americans identify with the Confederate battle flag...? No, and nothing in my comments suggested that. It makes sense that they wouldn't since their relatives probably didn't after the war. For many people, their relatives did identify with the flag. It probably started a…

> It probably started as something racist by the survivors of the war, but morphed into what it is today, something that isn't considered racist by most around where I live. I am saying this as gently as possible: the majority of bigots don't walk around thinking or saying "Wow I sure am a bigot!". They mostly just think of themselves as normal people with normal values. > Do you really think NASCAR, a big business,…

> I am saying this as gently as possible: the majority of bigots don't walk around thinking or saying "Wow I sure am a bigot!". They mostly just think of themselves as normal people with normal values.

This argument tends to make me agree with the southerners who want a symbol of their own.

Q: What do you get when a San Jose doctor has a Google engineer over to dinner?

A: Lively conversation about how stupid everyone is in Alabama.

I'm not making that up. Here's the conversation piece (a piece of paper) a family friend brought over for dinner with my parents:

    M R DOGS
    A R NOT
    O S A R
    C M P
    L I B
    M R DOGS
As he delighted in explaining to everyone, this is the "Alabama literacy test". You're meant to read it as follows:

    'em are dogs
    'ey are not
    oh [y]es 'ey are
    see 'em pee?
    [w]ell I be!
    'em are dogs!
The southerners responding to this sort of sentiment are doing exactly the same thing Mark Knopfler did in Money for Nothing:

    That little faggot with the earring and the make-up
    Yeah buddy, that's his own hair
    That little faggot got his own jet airplane!
    That little faggot he's a millionaire!
The "faggot" in question is of course Mark Knopfler himself, responding to his own haters with an implicit "screw you".

Spend enough time telling a group of people that you hate them and everything about them, and they'll start developing cultural elements specifically oriented around flipping you a middle finger.

(And for what it's worth, it seems like a safe assumption that the use of the confederate battle flag as a symbol of southern culture derives from its use in that role on The Dukes of Hazzard.)

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#626

Post by eindiran »

reaperducer wrote: post #283

Why ban the players, and not just the design? I once ran a large online forum and set up a word filter to replace certain phrases with "fluffy bunnies" and other absurdities. It did a remarkable job of improving discourse once the foul-mouthed types realized their hateful messages were being massaged. Microsoft could use some kind of super-cool AI-drived ML-based image recognition to replace the flag with a rainbow f…

This is actually how "weeaboo" became a word (outside of the Perry Bible Fellowship cartoon[0]). There was a filter on 4chan that turned "wapanese" into a "weeaboo", and pretty soon the former was completely forgotten and the word that is actually in use in "weeaboo".

[0] This comic is the original source of the word: https://pbfcomics.com/comics/weeaboo

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#627

Post by freehunter »

DanielBMarkham wrote: post #534
baddox wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that all symbols are their meaning are made up. To say "this gesture is a symbol of X" is to say "people made up that this gesture is a symbol of X."

It's a really odd social phenomenon. It's one thing to say "We don't like X and find it in poor taste. Please don't do that" I don't like it when folks say such things, but I understand it. Instead, what many folks seem to be saying is that based on one thing they can tell what the person is like inside . It's an amazingly-broad generalization and people seem to be enormously confident of themselves when they make it…

If you're flashing an "OK" sign in clear view, I would understand that to mean things are okay. If you're flashing the sign below the waist so very few people would notice, I would understand that to mean "I'm giving this sign to very few people and only those in that community would understand what I'm saying".

Context matters.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#628

Post by pmiller2 »

Smoosh wrote: post #606
pmiller2 wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's terrible that people can be fired for literally no reason in this country. This wouldn't have happened in a country that has any semblance of workers' rights.

"Literally no reason" ?? He was recorded flashing a white power symbol while driving a (presumably liveried) company truck. Now I think, after hearing his story, that a public apology and explanation would have been enough. But he brought the company into disrepute. Firing him seems to be a valid option they could take. I personally think that raising awareness with a public apology and a statement from the company w…

You're going to tell me this one guy "brought the company into disrepute" to a point that warranted firing him, when Equifax can expose the financial history of almost every American adult, and nobody gives a shit anymore? The guy worked for the power company. What are people gonna do, stop paying their electric bills? Buy electricity and gas from another supplier?

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#629

Post by freehunter »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #617
baddox wrote: post #611

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The comment provided a list removing more and more capabilities from the game. That's exactly what a gradual process of banning someone would be. Sure, you can give them time to correct their behavior, but eventually you might have to ban them.

The other capabilities would only be removed if they broke other rules. That's not a gradual process toward banning. That's a completely unrelated disciplinary measure.

So basically, if someone murders another person we should ban them from murdering people but not put them in jail. They should only go to jail if they commit multiple unrelated crimes.

Re: MS will ban Forza players who add the confederate flag to their digital cars

#630

Post by bhupy »

rayiner wrote: post #487
softwaredoug wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remove themselves, so they can own slaves. Read The Cornerstone Speech[1]: that "Our new government['s] foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man." Don’t fall for Lost Cause mythology.[2] 1 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech#Speech_ti... 2 - https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Cause_of_the_Confederac...

The Cornerstone Speech is required reading: https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornersto... > The prevailing ideas entertained by [Jefferson] and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew…

The Cornerstone Speech is really important, and I'm surprised it isn't more well known. A lot of progressive dogma rests around the (incorrect) notion that the entire American experiment was white supremacist by design / from the beginning.

This historical revisionism is strikingly similar in its ignorance to the "Lost Cause" narrative that the CSA was about "states rights" and not slavery.

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