That Penny Arcade Controversy

[Morrus]

Without going into the fine details of the non-grandma-friendly comic strip which started this whole thing, you might be aware of the Penny Arcade controversy that's been everywhere this week. Without going into too many details, it involves a several-year-old comic strip with an inappropriate joke, and the way criticism of that was handled; and how the issue was resurrected this week at PAX Prime due to another comment about the whole affair. Well, here's the apology/clarification. I've seen a number of game publishers and attendees stating that they intend to boycott PAX until this issue is resolved.

 

[Janx]

I think the world is full of people who look to make greater issues out of things than the original speaker intended.

I don't read PA. I'm sure it's funny and right up my alley. I'm sure in some light, something they say is probably crude and offensive to somebody if taken that way.

But it's just a crude comic strip and readers should expect to not agree with every thing in it and move on.

Telling a Sven and Ole joke does not mean the speaker is a racist and hates scandinavians and will discriminate against them. it just means he's telling a crude, insensitive joke.

I think history shows that once you make the mistake of telling such a joke AND somebody else makes a federal case out of it, you're pretty much screwed with anything you try to do. Because that person's goal is to crucify you and they don't care about your feelings either.

 

[Morrus]

I think the world is full of people who look to make greater issues out of things than the original speaker intended.

I don't read PA. I'm sure it's funny and right up my alley. I'm sure in some light, something they say is probably crude and offensive to somebody if taken that way.

But it's just a crude comic strip and readers should expect to not agree with every thing in it and move on.

Telling a Sven and Ole joke does not mean the speaker is a racist and hates scandinavians and will discriminate against them. it just means he's telling a crude, insensitive joke.

I think history shows that once you make the mistake of telling such a joke AND somebody else makes a federal case out of it, you're pretty much screwed with anything you try to do. Because that person's goal is to crucify you and they don't care about your feelings either.

I'm not intimately familiar with the history of this particular issue, but from what I can make out most of the issues are with the way it was handled afterwards.

 

[Janx]

I'm not intimately familiar with the history of this particular issue, but from what I can make out most of the issues are with the way it was handled afterwards.

And that's how the pitchfork wielding mob operates.

They jump on a mis-step, raise a hue and cry for apologies.

Then the person tries to explain, apologize or defend themselves and NO MATTER what they do, it won't be good enough for the pitchfork mob.

Bear in mind, if a person makes a mistake, they will also likely make a mistake in how they handle that mistake.

So it is an escalating witch hunt to make a larger deal out of something that would have been insignificant had the mob left it alone.

 

[Cadence]

I'm not intimately familiar with the history of this particular issue, but from what I can make out most of the issues are with the way it was handled afterwards.

An apparently fairly complete history of the issue http://debacle.tumblr.com/post/3041940865/the-pratfall-of-penny-arcade-a-timeline

Given the percent of people who are raped or sexually assaulted in the US, I'm ok with people getting called out for thinking jokes about it are funny ... and to their being continually called out as long as their attempts at apology are to make more jokes about it.

 

[Paraxis]

People overreact to others all the time, nothing new. When a comic makes a joke you don't like either move past it so you can enjoy the ones you do like or don't and just don't watch, listen to, or read that comics stuff anymore.

Personally I plan on buying some extra PA stuff this week to support them.

 

[DM Howard]

I don't have any real problem with the joke in of itself. The problem I'm seeing is that PA doesn't just clearly and sufficiently state that what they wrote was insensitive and they are sorry. That would quell most of this BS, but it's like a person who can't stand the fact that they should just say they are wrong (whether they think that's true or not) to their friends and go get some food.

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Meh. Nothing is so bad that some humor cannot be found in it. People who get worked up over jokes made in bad taste are the ones causing this to be an issue at all. I'm sure that PAX will be much better off without those people.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Hmmm...

The initial joke itself I don't have a problem with: the description of the torture is no worse than what I've read in more generally respected creative works that describe torture, such as Dante's Inferno. And make no mistake, some of that work's imagery was definitely understood to be "zingers" by the intended audience of the time. However, the way they handled the some of their readers' reactions was in poor taste, and highly likely to be taken as insincere and insulting...which it was.

(I am amused that one commentor said that "nothing on the Internet lasts more than 2 weeks" in regards to this, and we're now on year 3.)

 

[billd91]

Welcome to the outrage generator that is the Internet. I'm a little more dismayed at the tendency to throw the baby out with the bath water over a couple of punk moves. And that's what the whole Dickwolves merchandise thing was, as I see it, a punk move. It's not like PAX doesn't have some pretty progressive policies. It does. That an organizer pulls an ill-adcised punk move or two seems like small potatoes.