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The Legend of GayBlade

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51–60 of 135 posts

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

If you were getting beat up for the way you sound, that was regular homophobia, not the game. In smear the queer, you only get chased and tackled if you have the ball; if you get tackled you throw the ball away and someone else gets it and everyone chases the new person. What you described does not sound like a game of smear the queer.

Kids games have a lot of regional differences. I don't deny the existence of the game you describe, but I and others were beaten up by crowds of bullies yelling "smear the queer" with no ball to be seen.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#53
post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for responding with that clarification. I'd like to clarify, in turn, that my original post was intended more as observation than accusation. No malicious intent imputed! One thing I would like to add, that I think we would both agree on, is that regardless of everyone's exact motivations and the actual causal chain of events, the post is still, de facto, part of the miasma of publicity for the series. Anyway,…

I think there's been a discussed theory that if something gets public attention, and people respond to it, even if they're not intending to, that they're contributing to the promotion of that item. That goes back many decades. I don't mind that discussion but I definitely don't want people thinking in any way we got money to write the entry; we simply put into a formal entry that we've had this for a while. A popular…

>I definitely don't want people thinking in any way we got money to write the entry

Certainly; archive.org has been singularly beyond reproach in that regard.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#54
post #41

When I was a child, Smear the Queer was a game all the boys played. Fag was a commonly used slur. When I was in high school the state of California told gay couples to go fuck themselves. Societal progress is a wonderful thing to see.

I play games with people in their mid-20s and a few have let out "that's gay" as a synonym for something being bad. I don't think any of them would qualify as homophobic, it's just more a case of hearing something so much that it creeps into your lexicon and comes out by mistake sometimes in a moment of distraction or emotion. It took me a while to unlearn it myself because it was extremely common in the 90s at my sc…

They probably aren't explicitly homophobic, but it's disrespectful and a tiny bit homophobic to not adjust your language a tiny bit, because it's obviously negatively impactful to gay people (not everyone, but I know it is to me).

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The "queer" in the game's name probably means odd, not homosexual. As in the person holding the ball is the odd one, and everyone should try to hit them. That doesn't stop people from misinterpreting it, since queer mostly means homosexual or some other sexual minority. It's slightly more pessimistic to think that the game is teaching our kids to kill homosexuals vs. some undefined oddness.

Here is a citation in 1981 describing the game and absolutely not related to the term "odd". https://archive.org/details/BAR_19810115?q=%22Smear+the+Quee...

> Casually strolls up to a group and throws the designated victim to the ground and screams fag and runs away.

That's not the game were talking about.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#56
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, this is a post by Jason Scott of the Internet Archive. I trust him. And he posted the source code and online playable game. (In a submarine ad, the intentions pretty much matter. It refers to an article directly commissioned or written by a PR firm).

Well, as you saw, someone brought up "Death of The Author" (i.e. I may not even know I'm posting an ad) so there's that. But. The blog post is 100% posted because of the Netflix documentary. It's causing literally hundreds of people to go 'Now I hope they found GayBlade! How do we find it!' and also a screenshot of my twitter account (which I had nothing to do with and became aware of after people starting pinging me…

Thanks for the clarification! I definitely consider you and the Internet Archive part of the "good guys", and well deserving of my trust.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#57
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I play games with people in their mid-20s and a few have let out "that's gay" as a synonym for something being bad. I don't think any of them would qualify as homophobic, it's just more a case of hearing something so much that it creeps into your lexicon and comes out by mistake sometimes in a moment of distraction or emotion. It took me a while to unlearn it myself because it was extremely common in the 90s at my sc…

They probably aren't explicitly homophobic, but it's disrespectful and a tiny bit homophobic to not adjust your language a tiny bit, because it's obviously negatively impactful to gay people (not everyone, but I know it is to me).

I agree but everyone has moments of emotional weakness where things come out without thinking. It becomes more about breaking a habit so it doesn't happen unconsciously. Or apologising if it does happen.

It can take a moment to realise, my original post said "bad/lame" because the use of "lame" was another popular one that took over as supposedly less offensive than "gay", but it too has the capacity to offend those that it would apply to so I thought it best to edit that out.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#58
post #20

When I was a child, Smear the Queer was a game all the boys played. Fag was a commonly used slur. When I was in high school the state of California told gay couples to go fuck themselves. Societal progress is a wonderful thing to see.

It is a great thing to see, California is described as some sort of lefty-socialist-liberal bastion today but like you said it was only 12 years ago they (unconstitutionally) voted in a ban on gay marriage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_...

> but like you said it was only 12 years ago they (unconstitutionally) voted in a ban on gay marriage

Shouldn't that be as follows?:

> but like you said it was only 12 years ago they voted in an (unconstitutional) ban on gay marriage

Or was the vote itself deemed unconstitutional?

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#59
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's a submarine ad?

An advertisement that entices you to buy a submarine. Actually, it's a reference to Paul Graham's observation that when news articles start to appear about anything almost simultaneously, it might be the result of a deliberate effort on someone's part to sell something along with all the generated talk: http://paulgraham.com/submarine.html

Isn't this just native advertising?

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#60
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol so when I was getting my ass beat in middle school for sounding a bit effeminate during a game of "smear the queer" it was just because I was "odd". That must be why the called me a faggot too.

Same. In my experience, this "game" was only "played" targeting femme boys (or in my case, "boys"), and never with their consent. But if we'd hide behind a teacher the mob would be all "oh it's just a game" and more often than not the teacher would try to goad the victim into playing. Fuck that

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