D&D General Companies Cut Ties With Judges Guild After Owner's Racist Posts

Bolares · Feb 12, 2020

Maxperson said:
Having observed several boycotts here in America, they seem like a really dumb idea. I mean, it's cool if you just want to stop buying, but when you announce a boycott, those that support the idea you are against flock to buy from your target and they frequently end up making more money than if you hadn't initiated the boycott.

The way twitter does boycotts of companies often feel like free publicity

collin · Feb 12, 2020

Panda-s1 said:
yo let's not throw the mentally challenged under the bus here. you can be of very sound mind and choose to be racist. some people are just that openly self-serving.

I apologize. A wrong choice of words.

Umbran · Feb 12, 2020

FlyingChihuahua said:
As for the "there is no future" thing. Just take a look at what is happening around the world. IMO, we are at the beginning of the end of human civilization and there's basically nothing we can do about it except for fiddle as the world burns

Honestly? yes.

You realize that these two, combined, are self-fulfilling prophecy?

Celebrim · Feb 12, 2020

Morrus said:
Yes, you're right. When somebody talks about the challenges they face, the human answer is not to say "other people have problems too"; it's to acknowledge and empathize with that person. When my mum died, if somebody had said, instead of "you have my sympathies" but "well other people die all the time", my opinion of that person would not exactly be high. I haven't followed the exchange, but if that's what somebody has been saying to you, then I'd disengage. Not worth it.

First of all, I wasn't initially addressing him. I was addressing a particular justification for a viewpoint offered by another poster. And second of all, your analogy isn't an analogy for what I said.

To get at one of my larger points, there are all manners of evil that result from systematic hatred - by which I mean hatred directed at an individual because of hatred toward their perceived group or generally viewing individuals through the lens of a bias about a group. One of the evils that results from that that I have observed, which I think is particular to it and somewhat different from hatred and abuse directed at an individual, is that the object of the abuse can never quite be certain whether they are the victim of abuse as a result of say racism or sexism, or whether they are the victim of abuse as a result of the obvious fact that humans regularly and pervasively do not treat each other as well as they should. In other words, they can never really be sure if they would be in this situation if they weren't the member of the class. Did the cop pull me over because I was speeding, or just because I was black? If the cop did pull me over, would a white person in the same situation just gotten a warning? Is this person angry with me just because they get angry a lot, or is it because they specifically dislike me because I'm black?

To me, this seems like one of the worst evils to have to bear, because it is a burden that you largely don't have to bear otherwise.

One thing that I've noticed in discourse about this problem tends to be the unintentional exaggeration of what this burden is like, to the great detriment both of the persecuted class and to any attempt to resolve it as a social ill. If you accept consciously or unconsciously that all the hardships you are enduring in life would not be hardships that you'd have to bear if your weren't a member of a persecuted class, it will only produce greater feelings of persecution and greater feelings of ill-will. And if that ill-will manifests itself in going around proclaiming to people that they just couldn't understand what it is like to be treated differently, or to suffered insults, or any number of other problems, you are just making yourself miserable and displaying a gross lack of appreciation for the scale of the problems humanity makes for itself, and a gross lack of empathy that only breeds more of the very hatred you suffer from.

When someone says, "You can't know what it is like to suffer verbal abuse all the time, and this is why you oppose the certain of special protections from verbal abuse for people that do.", they are wrong on two counts. And I would think that knowing that they are wrong on both those counts, would lift a burden from their backs. They would I think feel a little less like a victim, and a little more like there could be a connection between them and the rest of the world on the basis of mutual empathy. Now, I can think of a lot of reasons someone might not initially feel like knowing that others suffer in much the same way they do wouldn't lift a burden from them. They might not believe it. They might think the failure to walk a mile in a pair of shoes lay with the speaker saying the road they walked isn't as lonely as they thought. Or they might have come to feel their victimhood makes them special, and someone is trying to take that away from them. I don't know. But I do know a bit about having been abused, and that if you haven't been beaten and mocked, you're in the minority. And if you have been, you aren't necessarily in bad company.

seebs · Feb 12, 2020

gyor said:
I agree that is some horrible things to say, but maybe through wise discussion he can be shown the errors in his opinions and become wiser for it.

That happens fairly often, in fact. Look up Darryl Davis, or look at what happened to the son of the guy who runs Stormfront. But it also happens in a context of society unambiguously and clearly rejecting the inappropriate behavior. You can, in fact, persuade people to stop being like that, but you can't do it without stating clearly that they're being like that and it's a problem.

billd91 · Feb 12, 2020

BrokenTwin said:
Yeah, vocal boycotts can feel better, but I find quiet boycotts (where you only tell someone you're boycotting the company/product/service when it's immediately relevant) are a lot more effective in the long run, because it avoids that loud "@$!# you!" pushback from the diehard supporters.
Like, there's plenty of companies (not RPG-related) that I refuse to do business with. I don't yell about how terrible they are, because that just draws attention (and therefore business) to them. But if somebody asks my opinion of them, then they get an honest answer.

Quiet boycotts are a bit like peeing in a dark suit, you get a warm feeling but nobody notices. Part of the point of a boycott is to gather support for it and make it known why. Otherwise, you're just a drop in a vast bucket of non-customers and irrelevant to the company. To work, a boycott needs large numbers of people so that the target of the boycott actually feels the impact and knows why they're feeling it.

Gradine · Feb 12, 2020

collin said:
I apologize. A wrong choice of words? Perhaps "mentally disturbed"? Hopefully everyone gets the gist of what I am trying to convey without meaning to target any particular group of people with mental illness or difficulties.

This is not really better and still has implications related to mental illness. It is possible and in fact easy to decry hated and bigotry without making inferences to their mental states or capabilities.

Celebrim · Feb 12, 2020

Maxperson said:
Having observed several boycotts here in America, they seem like a really dumb idea. I mean, it's cool if you just want to stop buying, but when you announce a boycott, those that support the idea you are against flock to buy from your target and they frequently end up making more money than if you hadn't initiated the boycott.

The basic principle of a boycott is to not announce one unless you represent an important customer base of that company, and you know that you can actually make the boycott stick.

Unless you have real economic leverage, it's pointless to threaten a boycott. It's very important to understand why the actions undertaken by figures like MLK worked, and why he advocated for them. They were not street theater, but carefully considered and well planned actions. The Civil Rights movement could not have been successful had not the black community had developed economic power. Nor could it have been successful if the majority was indifferent - witness how little traction MLK got in say Albany. The majority had to either care or it had to persecute, but nothing could be done against indifference. Now days we see tons of "protest movements" in the USA - from both ends of the political spectrum - which ape the forms of the Civil Rights era, but lack any of the substance. They exist mostly to give the participants feelings of affirmation and belonging, but they don't accomplish anything and eventually fade away as if they had never been.

Dannyalcatraz · Feb 12, 2020

Sadras said:
This ask becomes increasingly more common in 1st and 2nd generation families of immigrants and one may sympathise why - the minority group is attempting to preserve itself.

We’ve been in the USA since the 1840s at least. No excuses.

Umbran · Feb 12, 2020

Aaron L said:
I think it was meant as commiseration, not belittling your problems.

Probably.

You know how when someone has a problem, in an attempt to commiserate, lots of people say, 'I know how you feel,"? That's not generally a helpful approach.

Demonstrative, but true, example: Person A is talking about how they have PTSD from parental abuse. Person B chimes in, "Yeah, I know how you feel. My parents are abusive too." Turns out that Person B's "abuse" is "won't let me smoke in the house." Thinking these are equivalent shows that Person B really doesn't know much, but also makes person A feel like their problem is being minimized - That's what you think of this? I'm here in misery, and you think that's the same as having to go outside to smoke?

Whether it is intended to or not, the effect is often to belittle. So, not a great strategy.

Moreover, and often more importantly, saying, "I know how you feel," makes the discussion about you, and your history, and not about the person with the problem.