Flash essay: Style vs. Substance

[tagryn]

a.k.a. "When is it OK - even necessary - to be an a-hole, and when are you just being an a-hole?"

A friend of mine at Facebook linked to an essay written by Chris Kluwe on the GamerGate controversy. You can read it at that link - be warned, he has some rather NSFW language. Chris has a definite perspective, and I think it comes out very clearly in

Comments

[erikred]

Given that Kluwe's goal is a kind of smack-upside-the-head aggressive hard-love, I'd say that this is an example of it being okay to be an a-hole. The language here is the sort of level his intended audience (y'know, the jackasses who make mature in-game chat a futile endeavor) actually speak on; clever obscenity is, in fact, more likely to win an argument in 4chan or SomethingAwful that actual fact.

Make no mistake, though: you and I are not the intended audience. We're bystanders, regardless of where we stand, simply because we're people who discourse civilly.

That said, man, I do love me some clever obscenity in service of things I happen to believe.

[tagryn]

Hi Erik

[erikred]

Hi, Tom,

Apologies: when I said we're not the target audience and that we're bystanders, I meant that in the context of how Kluwe wrote what Kluwe wrote.

The main topic is definitely an issue for us, and by us I mean anyone with a shred of human decency, not just gamers, geeks, etc.

So I guess I'm writing directly to your postscript: I don't think Kluwe wrote this for a captive audience of people with similar views; I think he's really writing it TO the so-called "slackjawed pickletits" in the hopes of jarring some of the aforementioned "pickletits" out of their self-imposed huff. A lot of these folks have got some serious internet-fury-- they CANNOT let an article posted at them simply slide away. They're going to read this. And then they're either going to continue to hate it, or they're going to be genuinely amused by the invective, at which point they might just consider what he's saying.

But maybe he's wrong. And/or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the guy just happens to be a Tourette's cannon coincidentally pointed away from me.

[tagryn]

All well-taken points, my friend.