Calling people the things they literally are is not name-calling. For example, conservatives tried to overthrow our government, tried to overthrow our democracy, and have been sending elementary schools in my town bomb threats for weeks. It’s not name calling to say they’re terrorists.
Edit: To clarify, the bomb threats are because a librarian joked about having a “woke agenda.” These are the same types of people.
Not at all. I believe that people should have freedom of choice for how they want to play their games. Everyone has a different escape from reality.
I understand that Nexus Mods have the right to choose what they want to host, that’s not the point. I believe that the moderators of the site need to choose what really crosses the line. The mod itself is harmless. Do you agree with hosting the Kill All Children mod for Skyrim still? If so, why?
If the reality you want to escape from is that “sometimes people use pronouns that are different from the ones I think they should use”, you’re an intolerant bigot.
If someone made a mod to remove black people from the game because “sometimes I want to escape from the reality that black people exist” it would be entirely justified to call that person a racist. This is no different.
I’d like to clarify that my argument is centered around the role of platform moderation and how they determine what content crosses ethical or moral lines. While you’ve offered an extreme example with the hypothetical mod that removes black people, the comparison doesn’t precisely align with the mod under discussion.
I used the ‘Kill All Children’ mod for Skyrim as an example to point out inconsistencies in moderation decisions. The objective is to question where the line should be drawn and who gets to draw it, not to endorse intolerant or bigoted views.
No, I haven’t offered an extreme example. I’ve offered an identical example. Escaping from the reality that black people exist, and escaping from the reality that people can in fact just choose their own pronouns are not meaningfully different in any way. In both cases someone is trying to erase from their personal reality the existence of an entire group of people, in a way that is targeted on specific lines of bigotry.
If you’re not willing to acknowledge that simple fact then you’re not ready to have this conservation.
That’s why there is a meaningful difference between this and the kill all children mod. While tasteless and gross, there’s never been any meaningful indication that the people installing kill all children actually want to see children, as a class of people, erased from existence. They’re engaged in some extremely unpleasant roleplaying, but barring the rare exceptions that will exist in any sufficient sample size they’re not actively expressing views about the real world through this choice. OTOH the pronoun removal mod is very much about expressing a desire to, at best, refuse to acknowledge the existence of a group of people, and far more likely a desire that said group not exist at all. And if you don’t believe that desire exists in a not insignificant number of people then I beg you to look outside your window for once in your life.
We can draw a moral line between these two things by applying Popper’s paradox of tolerance; the only thing a tolerant society cannot tolerate is intolerance. There is a clear moral justification for the suppression of expression when it is an expression of intolerance. That is the moral principle that Nexus are applying here (whether they are conscious of it or not).
Not only can you be a defender of free speech and still support the suppression of intolerant speech; it is in fact absolutely necessary to do so. If tolerated, the intolerant will use their freedom of speech to destroy everyone else’s while pushing their intolerant ideals. It is therefore - paradoxically - impossible to support free speech while supporting the free speech of bigots. To be true champions of free speech we must be intolerant of the intolerant.
In response to the point you’ve raised, the issue of platform moderation does involve a complex balance between allowing diversity of opinion and restricting what is considered harmful or intolerant. However, it’s crucial to note that not all forms of censorship or moderation are created equal.
Your argument posits that the ‘Kill All Children’ mod and the pronoun-removal mod are qualitatively different, based on the intent or impact behind them. The latter, you say, has real-world implications, as it aims to negate the existence of a specific group, while the former is seen as “extremely unpleasant role-playing” that isn’t necessarily a call for real-world action against children.
Yet, the stance seems to be rooted in the assumption that everyone who would use the pronoun-removal mod does so with malicious intent to deny the existence of non-binary or transgender people. While that might be true for some, it could also simply be a matter of personal preference for others, without carrying any ideological baggage.
The use of Popper’s paradox of tolerance in this discussion is intriguing but might oversimplify the complexities involved in moderating a digital platform. While intolerance shouldn’t be tolerated, determining what constitutes ‘intolerance’ is often subjective and open to interpretation. Therefore, it’s crucial for platform moderators to engage in transparent and reasoned decision-making processes when determining what is allowed and what is not.
Your last point suggests that it’s not just permissible but necessary to restrict the free speech of those considered intolerant to protect free speech for all. However, this approach can easily lead to a slippery slope where the definition of ‘intolerance’ becomes malleable, potentially leading to an erosion of the very free speech rights that the policy aims to protect.
The issue is not straightforward, and the boundaries of what should or shouldn’t be tolerated in an online community are often fluid. Thus, there remains a need for a nuanced conversation around these topics, which goes beyond labelling something as intolerant and calling for its suppression.
While that might be true for some, it could also simply be a matter of personal preference for others, without carrying any ideological baggage.
Give me one single scenario in which a person needs to remove the option to select your characters pronouns, without that decision carrying, as you put it, ideological baggage.
A scenario that comes to mind is one where a player simply wants to streamline their game experience, eliminating any elements they perceive as non-essential to their gameplay. This wouldn’t necessarily imply ideological baggage; it could simply be an attempt to customize the game to better suit their individual preferences. However, I acknowledge that the topic is complex and there’s a lot to consider in the broader conversation about platform moderation.
Fair point about the default option being prefilled. However, the idea of what ‘streamlining’ means can differ among individuals. Some might want to remove elements they find non-essential, even if those elements are prefilled. It’s about catering to one’s own idea of what the game should be. Why should the interpretation of ‘streamlining’ be limited to your understanding?
Oh, now I see. It was never about the pronouns, it’s just about streamlining the user experience. How could I have been so stupid, thinking that the only intent behind this mod was bigoty, when in reality it was innocent streamlining.
…
Dude, the dog whistle isn’t subtle. Could you stop?
My aim is to discuss what types of content should be removed and why. The mod’s creator did include comments that violate guidelines, so its removal is justified on that basis. However, dismissing the topic as a ‘dog whistle’ doesn’t help us explore the larger questions around platform moderation and community standards.
If you wanted to discuss that, your first step would be to look for Nexusmods moderation policy and read it. Or if they don’t have one published to note that fact.
Then start a post discussing that moderation policy and asking how moderation should be done.
Instead you started your post by focusing on the removal of a particular bigoted mod, which of course makes it a needlessly charged discussion if you’re looking for purely rational discussion about how moderation decisions are made. Then you keep making these absurd arguments — like claiming this mod may have just been about streamlining. This looks like trolling. And it talks like trolling. You claim I’m missing the point. I don’t think I am. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck… it’s probably a maga troll that’s “just asking questions”.
While I acknowledge that the discussion started with the example of a specific mod, the intent was to use that as a jumping-off point for broader questions about moderation. However, I concede that the charged nature of that particular mod has perhaps overshadowed the broader discussion I was aiming for. I did review Nexus Mods guidelines, and the mod in question was rightly removed based on them. The idea was to prompt thought about how these policies are crafted and applied across a range of content. The mention of ‘streamlining’ was intended to explore the various motivations behind mod creation, not to justify this specific mod’s existence. I assure you, this is not an attempt at trolling but rather an effort to foster a meaningful conversation about platform governance.
I feel like the person posting that in the first place was not really acting in good faith - with as highly politicized as the topic is, and with how much people genuinely care about it given the way people’s rights to just live have been so quickly taken away, posting that was basically lobbing a grenade to watch what happens. It couldn’t just be an innocuous post because by nature of what it was, it wasn’t innocuous, and there was no way to not know that. People were going to get angry and the comment section was, very predictably, both here and in the Starfield comm it was cross posted to, going to turn into a dumpster fire. It felt like, to me, that the OP had an ax to grind, and that came out in their replies to people who were upset. It was by nature an incendiary post, and got incendiary reactions.
The recent exchange surrounding that post has raised serious concerns about the quality of discourse on this platform. Rather than engaging in reasoned debate to dissect the complexities of the issue, many participants seem to resort to inflammatory rhetoric. This unfortunate trend undermines the very purpose of a discussion forum and has led me to reconsider my continued participation here.
It is meaningless to engage in bad faith discussions. Are you aware of the paradox of tolerance? Tolerating intolerance only serves the purposes of the intolerant, while the tolerant get pushed aside (which could mean anything from disenfranchisement to death)
Therefore, the tolerant must be intolerant towards intolerance.
There exists no good faith or tolerant argument in which removing pronouns makes sense, it is at its base a message of intolerance.
There are no complexities and no discussions to be had, you are either intolerant yourself, or naïve, if you think this is a topic that can be discussed.
The intent of my original post was not to advocate for intolerance, but to question how moderation decisions are made, especially when there appears to be inconsistency. In doing so, I hoped to promote reasoned debate on that specific issue, not to engage in bad faith discussions.
While I understand that certain topics may be inherently fraught, the objective was to consider how platform moderation intersects with issues of free choice and community standards. That said, if the prevailing consensus is that some subjects are too divisive for productive discourse, then that too is a topic worth discussing.
I’m kind of curious to here about Nexus’ inconsistency. As far as I can tell they’ve been pretty consistent if the mod gets their attention. There was a Spider-Man mod that removed a pride flag, and Nexus removed that too. That feels consistent to me.
See, so many of the things below I can think of about games I was addicted to but wasn’t really enjoying. Like, if I’m hearing the music while I fall asleep? That’s a sign I’ve been playing it a crap load, but I also can think of many games that sucked me in chasing carrots and kept me up until dawn… but the actual fun parts were fleeting.
Games I actually enjoy have me grinning like a maniac once I start getting into top-tier flow with the actions available, like threading needles in a racing game.
The pronoun mod took away pronoun choices. It was created by an obvious transphobe, and Nexus got rid of it because they have no patience for obvious transphobes.
I first played Cyberpunk after 1.3 came out so I never had that early bad experience so many did (I only ran into one major bug, blocking progression in one sidequest). It was also my first introduction to anything in the Cyberpunk setting so I didn’t know what to expect, but I quickly fell in love with it. Even without Phantom Liberty, I’m sure I still have a half dozen major sidequests on top of the nomad origin story that I haven’t done yet.
I’m pumped for this, especially after being a bit disappointed in Starfield. I’m ready for graphics that pop again, the amazing facial animations, the fluid combat, and more Cherami Leigh. Hell, I’m ready to hear the character creator music again, lol.
Cyberpunk 2077 suffered from over-promising as well as people expecting things that also were never going to happen. Some of the other issues on launch like police and people were really only noticeable under certain playstyles. I had 100%'d the game by around 1.3 or 1.4 (and I took my time) and had very few bugs, all quest ones easily solved, and while there were some shortcomings with the game it was very few. Mostly, the ending. I just don’t like finishing a game and being put back into my last save with the quest still active. I don’t really if the ending makes it not make sense canonically… Other than that, my main issue was a bit in regards to end-game perspective. Once you complete all the quests, you’re effectively no longer able to be a passenger anywhere. No metro system (can be modded in though) and no taxi and no friends, just me driving around, unlike the rest of the game where I was just a passenger watching the city. I can’t drive dude, I’ll get a relic attack and kill us (plus I wanna get stoned to Night City). There was a cool mod for cruise control though, which somewhat solved my issue.
I recently loaded up my save just to see how it’s running and I’m glad to see it’s even better than it had been, though still not much for me to do lol. What I think I’m most excited for is once PL releases the game is officially complete. Modders hopefully will come to finish their mods and the game can truly be the best it could be. It doesn’t have the extent of Skyrim modding but it’s got a lot of potential. No more patches breaking things :)
All in all I had a great experience with 2077 on a 2070 -> 3080, though I didn’t following the marketing past the E3 release video so the only thing I missed was wall-climbing with the Mantis Blades. I got my Spider-Man (rope-swing) mod and that’s good enough for me.
I could not bring myself to finish Starfield. Such an old feeling generic janky game. Fucking fast travel simulator. They didnt even bother to fix the NPC faces. Like 5% technical improvements since Fallout 4.
Fuck that expensive crap.
Also looking forward to the Cyberpunk update.
Now maybe I can enjoy it. Love that world but I think I had every bug at release.
CP2077 was always an outstanding game to me, with flaws, but still outstanding from the start. Starfeld however… why is it 70€, it should cost 30€ then it would probably be worth it.
Damn I’m glad I bought AC6 at launch instead of Starfield, unlike half my friends lol. Pretty sure one of them got a save breaking bug on the same night I beat Balteus 😂😂😂.
I’ll probably still get it, but it’ll be months from now after the modding community has gotten established and the problems have been mostly worked out.
I mean, I played it. I liked it. Depends on your personal choice. I liked everything. From Graphics to Story to Gameplay. Clumsy at times, but didn’t bother me much.
Starfield on my Xbox Series S. I just love it. It’s finally the perfect No Man’s Sky. Kind of. With more story, even better graphics, a fantastic score and so on and so on. Just waiting for 60fps
The Crew Motorfest Demo on my Xbox Series S. It’s okay. Would be waaaay better without the Tearing problems. Waiting for patch. If they get rid of the Tearing problem I’ll buy it.
You start out in 1954 by saying, “Nr, nr, nr.” By 1968 you can’t say “nr”—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites.… “We want to cut this,” is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than “Nr, nr.”
Republican strategist Lee Atwater.
Atwater’s point here is that dogwhistles work, and they’ve been a core strategy of regressive bigots for decades.
Today’s hateful bigots understand that they can’t openly say “I want to legislate trans people out of existence, even if that means they all die.” So they engage in layers of abstraction, and wrap their abstractions up in leftist talking points. They claim to be defenders of “free speech” even as they support laws that empty out libraries of books, remove shows from television or make discussion of anything LGBTQ related impossible online.
So to you, the innocent rube, removing a pronoun selection from a game might not sound like an attack on trans people, but it very much is. The mod was a rallying cry, a call to fellow bigots to express themselves while pointedly saying to every trans person watching “You are not safe. We are here, we hate you, and we want to erase your existence.”
The existence of the pronoun selector impacted them in absolutely no way, shape, or form. There was nothing to be gained from its removal other than the statement it made, the proud declaration of their hatred encoded in a language of abstraction that made it visible only to their allies and their targets.
And the fact that they can get away with this; the fact that they can openly torment their chosen victims while the average idiot pats them on the head and calls them a “victim of censorship”… That’s their favourite part.
I understand the concept of dog whistles and the historical usage of coded language to advance certain agendas. My primary concern here is not the mod itself, but rather how moderation decisions are made and the criteria used. If we can’t openly discuss these topics, it’s hard to determine what is or isn’t acceptable. I’m not advocating for intolerance; I’m advocating for clarity in community guidelines.
Jaki kraj taki pirat. Mistrz MBA, zarządza, w radach nadzorczych zasiada i zarządach też NGO tajemnymi, “społecznik”. Okazuje się, że niektórzy posłowie Konfederacji są lobbystami rządu chińskiego a tu Pan jest lobbystą Polskiego Holdingu Nieruchomości. Nic nadzwyczajnego, taki mamy klimat. Wiele innych osób poselskich, tylko lepiej się kryje.
There cannot and should not be balanced and open discussion on this issue. You cannot “polite” your way into finding a way to say that non-binary people are not legitimate.
This is paradox-of-tolerance stuff. Maintaining an inclusive community requires being intolerant of intolerance.
The existence of non-binary people does not hurt you.
Insisting on finding ways to deny that they exist hurts them.
While the concerns you’ve raised resonate with many, it’s worth remembering JFK’s words, ‘Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.’ As a society, we must consider the nuance that exists in any debate, even one as sensitive as this. Open discussion should serve as a mechanism to understand what defines intolerance and how to appropriately combat it, rather than shutting down dialogue altogether.
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