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The Legend of GayBlade

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Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#81

Post by krige »

Nacdor wrote: post #6
skc wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, found that docu-series highly frustrating because they left out so much. But I suppose there was only so much time.

It never claimed to be an exhaustive history of the video game industry so I'm not sure why so many people levy this criticism against it. It reminds me of the G4 show called Icons, with each episode covering a specific game, developer or piece of gaming hardware. I thought it did a great job of covering the topics that were chosen. It wasn't quite as good as The Toys That Made Us but it was still very enjoyable if y…

Exhaustive or not, it is very wrong on quite a number of topics it claims to cover. For example Chun-Li being a first fully playable female video game character? No matter how you try to frame it is either wrong or extremely wrong.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#82

Post by godelski »

justinpombrio wrote: post #80
godelski wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't this just native advertising?

Close but not quite. A native advertisement is an ad , dressed up to look like news. A submarine ad is news . It's true, it's newsworthy (though that seems to be a low bar), it's a perfectly reasonable thing to be published as news. It just... happened not to be discovered by a journalist. Instead it was discovered by a company who hunted for possible news stories that would make them look good or would mention their…

Thank you for the clarification. I can see this being a pretty blurry boundary between the two but I think the distinction does make sense. In one sense I wouldn't really call native advertising lazy, but it seems like that is a defining feature of submarine ads (if we use "lazy" in this specific way).

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#83

Post by cycomanic »

hnick wrote: post #57
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You know what I only realised now from your comment what "lame" in "that's lame" actually means. It tells you how easy it is to create certain associations without someone realising.

Mind you I don't use that's lame, not a native speaker and probably also too old for that phrase.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#84

Post by cycomanic »

hnick wrote: post #77
onionisafruit wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I played smear the queer as a kid and had no idea queer meant gay. That was a few decades before you played it though. I think I was in my twenties before I knew queer meant anything other than “unusual”. I even had a couple of gay friends who never let me in on it.

I have a similar story, growing up in Australia we had Eeny, meeny, miny, moe [ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeny,_meeny,_miny,_moe ] and like some other countries we used the n-word instead of tiger. I'm not sure where that came from since I don't think anyone knew what it meant and it definitely wasn't used as an insult by us kids. I don't think I learned what it meant until well into my teens. Pre-internet days,…

We had a a game in Germany which was called "wer hat Angst vorm schwarzen Mann", which means "who is afraid of the black man". I remember that in my mind it was always a chimney sweep, I only realised at some point as an adult that it's actually an incredibly racist name for a game.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#85

Post by taurath »

devenblake wrote: post #76
djaque wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I'm amazed at how quickly things have changed. My sister who is only five years younger than me has a friend who is gay and went to the same high school that I did. In only half a decade the culture shifted from just clear and open homophobia (including some teachers) to him being able to be out and open in HS without too much of an issue. The problem isn't really out in the open harassment anymore though. I hav…

My sexuality isn't public but I can say that none of my friends have ever mentioned encounters with implicit homophobia, and that my local school administration (while not being the best) would put an end to that very quickly. However, in Maine it's ground-up: I learned about queer struggles as a kid and I learned about how to protect oneself from any sexually transmissible diseases from a teacher that didn't use gen…

It was explicit for me as late as 2004! I am still rather shocked at the progress. I’ve also noticed a huge distinction between lgbt people of different generations, gen y is practically prudish comparatively. “Sex positive” is far less of a thing it seems.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#86

Post by [deleted] »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #46
klyrs wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yup. I learned pretty early on that telling the teacher would only make the beatings worse. For all of those reading that think this is ancient history; I'm 27 and went to school in a city more progressive and accepting than any in America.

[deleted]

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#87

Post by Pfhreak »

dragonwriter wrote: post #72
textfiles wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

That is, obviously, a homophobic “game”; I suspect it is newer than the ball game of the same name, and probably the result of homophobes applying the name of the ballgame. That article claims the homophobic, ball-free game was new in 1981, the ball game seems to be well established in 1969: https://www.postandcourier.com/free-times/archives/smear-the... . I don't see any reason to believe that “queer” in the ballgam…

Queer was used to denote (pejoratively) a gay person starting in the late 19th century, and increasingly was used that way into the fifties and sixties. The term was later reclaimed by the queer community in the 80s, 90s, and aughts.

The term, particularly in the mood century, was absolutely used to describe gay people.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#88

Post by Pfhreak »

bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #79
geofft wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "probably" mean here? Does it mean "Here is the evidence-based argument why this is more plausible than that," or does it mean "I would be happier believing this than that"?

It's part of HN's tradition of gaslighting victims of demographically-targeted violence by ignoring any kind of context and pedantically claiming "it couldn't possibly have been $bad_thing". Of course, because being contrarian is more important than learning about the history of LGBT abuse.

Thank you for this. I expect you'll get down voted or flagged, but my experience as a queer person on hn had absolutely been full of exactly what you describe.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#89

Post by Pfhreak »

hnick wrote: post #57
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I've been really trying to cut out lame, crazy, and mad from my lexicon as of late. It's challenging to break those patterns you learn as a kid.

Re: The Legend of GayBlade

#90

Post by ed25519FUUU »

klyrs wrote: post #44
bhfasdhjgdgsuyv wrote: post #42

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

Yep and not just gay. The nerds, fat, awkward, people who spoke with a lisp. Basically a way to identify anyone not in the “in group” and punish them.
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