Overprotective Creators and the Reverse Chilling Effect

There is no doubt in my mind that when Randy Queen, artist of Darkchylde, confronted the curators of the noted EscherGirls blog, he thought he had the law and authority on his side. After the blog, which famously deconstructs the terrible posing and art choices of comics, promotions, official game art, and other pop media sources, featured some of his content to rip into, he took advantage of the famously lax system of copyright protection on Tumblr to try and not only take it down but to menacingly approach with a lawsuit.

The work of a professional artist that in no way manipulates both boobs, an ass curve, a panty shot, and a supermodel leg into one panel

This, of course, is foolishness, because criticism and critique is well-known to be fair use. He promptly got torn to shreds by popehat, techdirt, and themarysue among others, and later retracted the defamation suit, and apologized publicly on his facebook page to an audience of reassuring fans and sycophants.

the DMCA and lawsuit I assume was meant to be a statement of dominance, a threat to promote the chilling effect over criticism of his artwork, backfired in a major way. Now he'll be lucky if this isn't a career killer, even with a plea to his broken marriage and the death of his late mother as his excuse.

I suppose poor mental health is a case for sympathy but I have very little patience for his sob stories if he considers parody, commentary as "harassment" as if the big bad tumblr blog actually had an impact on the viability of his livelihood, self-security or salary.

Queen's case isn't unique, however. In a recent episode of Jim Sterling's Jimquisition, Sterling details the behavior of "suicidal indie devs" that make small studio video game development look as bad as AAA establishments by picking fights when sub-quality product gets deservingly torn a new emergency exit.

The Escapist : Jimquisition : Corrupt, Censoring, Suicidal Indie Devs

Perhaps the key word here is "suicidal" in terms of their behavior. Sterling phrases it,

"While it may feel cathartic to have a video torn down from the public eye because it made fun of your shitty game, the long-term effects so far has only ever proven to be bad for the dev: who only gets negative publicity that does not translate into game sales." 

And of course, sales and the numbers are of paramount worth to the publishers that might carry games, comics, books, and other media. If you've made a fool of yourself on social media or even with a useless lawsuit, fewer publishers are going to want to risk dealing with not only your nonsense, but also the public knowledge that you're a hack and that you couldn't deal that someone said your stuff wasn't perfect.

Large studios, whole comic labels, and corporations of any sufficient size largely don't care if somebody doesn't like their products. They engineer products such that even if some people protest, their media is formulated to be as trivial, samey, and "safe" as possible. There's even books about how to do this. No matter the backlash at Disney for, say, the laziness of re-using their designs for main characters in a major animated film, the amount of money and esteem they lose is minimal, droplets of consumer tears in a desert of blistering corporate indifference.

But individual artists, small studios? In their quest to swagger and never suffer impactful criticism, to enjoy product safety just like the big guys, they just prove how much they are the little guy by waving the legal notices and the social media threats at critics, who don't take any of their garbage. And neither do their followers, which see, tweet, and reproduce the work like crazy.

This leads to perhaps a reverse chilling effect, where attempts to stifle or censor criticism and speech instead increase and popularize said speech. The two narratives compliment, actually: both improving one another. On one hand, the published or released product isn't very good. On the other hand, the person who made it likes to bully anybody who doesn't like their stuff. A bully makes unmentionable bad stuff. Bad people making bad things is something that people like to talk about. I'm talking about those people right now, even!

I'm talking about people talking about those people, who don't want those people to talk about them.

And what's better; this trend of hubristic gentlemen with willing lawsuit-waving spirits and weak flesh is in no way new. Harlan Ellison, a science fiction writer who penned hundreds of short stories has also filed plenty of lawsuits from the '80s to around the early 2000s for supposed stealing or infringement or criticism of his work-- famously trying to shake down James Cameron and Terminator for supposed IP theft to no success. Later, in 2006, he went after Fantographics supposedly for publishing defamatory, anecdotes about him in their publication. There was a settlement, links to the case were taken down off Fantographics' website, but there was no payout; presumably the threat to him was not real enough for him to win a case.

Perhaps the reaction is even more panicked in our current media environment, because when critics take apart media it's not just a bad score on Rotten Tomatoes or an unflattering column in an entertainment mag. It's Let's Plays, interactive blogs, and video reviews that have full advantage of fair use to not only in review blow the content to smithereens, but also to break it down visually and sequentially with detail, to connect it to other greater trends, to do it in an environment where some critics can even become web stars themselves.

Some have even started their own businesses.

It's harder to shrug off "Eh, it's just one unprofessional snob" when that critic has thousands of followers on youtube or twitter. But when you go to try and silence that person so they can't broadcast to that audience anymore, that audience notices and suddenly you've been caught being a total jerk by hundreds of people. Attempts to prevent something from reaching the audience, alert the audience to that someone is trying to stop something from reaching it. The public is impossible to control at least in this way.

Beyond corruption, and beyond greed, it's lack of control and insecurity that drives these self-destructive creators to break themselves on the rocky shore of social media and public review. They may want to look tough, perhaps, but they probably don't feel so tough. They know they're not so tough, and fear a world where the first google result for their work is a mocking beatdown.

Unfortunately, with childish media responses, they make that reality true by their own hands: a bloodbath not just of their work, but for their ugly control-freak personalities.

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Link: Book Reveals Youth's Views of Politicians

Being involved or informed with politics is incredibly powerful, even if government is a depressing topic for many. Socially, few more powerful demographics exist than young people, save for corporations and their lobbyists. But to go with the reality that shook the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the youth demographic is typified as disenchanted and apathetic to politics, which is just as often stereotyped as an old man's game.

A book published by Professor John Street, Dr Sanna Inthorn and Dr Martin Scott, seeks to dispel ideas that young voters have no sense of care about politics.

Personally, I wish that it didn't top off at nearly 100 dollars on Amazon, but then how would they make money off college kids who need it for their courses?

Of note to me personally, the book does this by examining research about popular culture and media icons, and how young voters (aged 17-18 years old) in the UK see politics through the lens of that popular culture. By examining what young people thought about celebrity icons and if they could be 'trusted,' and then comparing those findings to what they thought about political figures, researchers like Professor Street could analyze how to appeal to younger demographics and even what might be wrong with current approaches at presentation in modern politics.

The linked article provides some interesting summary of the team's findings and some of their interview statements,

Politicians need to come across as people who care about and understand an issue, and young people like to know if someone's personal experience has informed their political views. Politicians willing to reveal a little bit about themselves, who explain why something matters to them, might not gain 'legend' status like certain musicians or celebrities, but might improve their chances of being trusted and listened to.

As a  young person myself, I wholly agree with this statement. A flaw of delineating on party issues, to me and to a lot of my peers is that understanding an issue is not a political statement to me, it is a pre-requisite for participating in a discussion at all. Much of the current political race is denial of facts and of realities that I and my peers face daily, in the most advantageous way as to appeal to party and corporate benefactors.

Many people my age can see right through politicians. You can pretend to us all you want about how much you care, but if the answer to the question, 'why are you here,' is 'because it's advantageous to me' or 'My peers think I will win the election for them and give power in the government back to their party' then we don't want that. It's an unsaid but obvious, painful throbbing reality that Street and his researchers seem to have stumbled upon: on average, younger voters want to see a personal connection to the issue.

And nothing is a more personal connection than the media we love, and the experiences we go through every single day:

"The links between popular culture and politics are dismissed when it is thought that popular culture diminishes politics, for example when politicians appear on television shows like I'm a celebrity get me out of here. The assumption is that what they are doing is a desperate attempt to appear 'relevant' or to revive a flagging career. "But there are times when these links are taken with the utmost seriousness. During the Arab Spring of 2011, much was made of the role played by music and musicians inspiring the rebellion in Tunisia or the crowds gathered in Tahrir Square in Cairo."

The media we love and the celebrities we watch and the shows we take seriously and the books we read as if they're our personal canon, matter. They are portraits of what we look for when we want something to enjoy and admire.

There's that old adage, 'be the change you wish to see.'

Well, we have hours and hours of media that's exactly what we wish to see. Why don't politicians look for something to be, there?

I absolutely promise that if you are a politician and you can pull off the presence of Optimus Prime, the wholesomeness of Superman, the kindness and duty of Steve Rogers, the responsibility and class of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, you're going to be all set.

And maybe the good looks of Tom Hiddleston, I think that would land you the tumblr vote.

And if you're not a white guy, which would be great, we need to use this fact that pop culture is relevant to make it absolutely necessary  to add more idols of color, female idols, that can have an impact in politics and beyond.

If pop culture is well-known to manifest in politics, then it becomes an imperative that pop culture be representative, else all we're going to do is promote inequality in politics.

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Feeding the Trolls: Social Media in Politics

Anyone who has ever had access to comment boxes, discussion threads, or any kind of unmoderated forum knows what trolls are. Well, maybe not everybody; the definition's been a bit muddied, but the original one is still good: someone who posts inflammatory or obviously attention-seeking opinions with the intention to incite an angered response or backlash.

A troll draws near! (But ignore it, it's probably a cry for attention)

The point being, the poster is not sincere. A troll is not a troll when they sincerely spit a bad or stupid idea and then try to defend it with 'just trolling,' that's just an ordinary bigot that also happens to be a coward.

However, in a landscape of political conflict, trolling seems to have a new stage: a paid stage. In India, there are individuals recruited to endorse a political party on social networks by attacking opposing party speech:

Arjun, who joined Twitter in 2010, started actively tweeting in June 2011 - primarily sharing his views music, sports, recent events, life and politics. His tryst with political trolls started the day he tweeted some information about the Gujarat CM Narendra Modi.

As Arjun started taking these trolls head on, he realized that his follower count was increasing dramatically. It didn't take long for some prominent political leaders to start 'following' him and engaging in chats with him. After his tweets got featured on a television debate, he was approached by the 'recruiters'. 

Their proposition was very simple. He was asked to write blogs promoting the party's agenda and policies. In return, he was promised up to Rs 10,000 or more per blog depending on the word limit. While journalists are often termed as 'paid media', concept of 'paid trolls' is still considered to be an urban myth.

It's no secret that in the USA, social media was a huge point of force in the 2012 presidential election, and yet its power is still dismissed with the fact that some people tweet pictures of their lunch. How long until the trolls are actually fed - and clothed - by real money for their efforts?

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Analysis of a Parthian Shot.

Is this now going to be a short series on feedback media? OK, I guess this is now a short series on feedback media.

A few days ago, I discussed how feedback can create a dialog between consumers and content producers. Then, I discussed how feedback can create a dialog between consumers and other consumers. Now, I guess I am going to talk a little bit about manifestations of feedback-based dialog in real life, and how it's part of a bigger issue.

If anybody here's brushed up on historical or period warfare, the Parthian Shot was a tactic used by ancient Parthian (which was a middle-eastern empire) mounted archers. They would retreat, or pretend to retreat, and fire arrows behind them; chasing troops would advance into the cover fire.

Old school drive ride-by.

The shot I want to look at today didn't happen in the first century AD, but on September 25, 2013, and it happened on the internet. Tech blogger Jessica Roy left the online tech journal BetaBeat, and left behind a list of all the things she's not going to miss.

The list boils down to, ultimately, 'sexism.' But there are some interesting elements to her strongly-worded displeasure. Some of the highlights worth mentioning:

8. The notion that being the slightest bit critical makes you a “hater,” and the idea that providing any kind of coverage that isn’t a big sloppy BJ shows a lack of “journalistic integrity.”

Here, Roy comments on the reception of criticism and the nature of feedback. Note the similarity to Carolyn Petit's predicament when she dared to give a popular video game a 9/10, and tell me that there isn't a pattern. What is it about this feedback culture that frames professional critics as a threat when they do their jobs and are critical of media?

Also, all those snotty mansplainers and people who called me a “cunt” for talking about women in tech, and anyone who tries to derail honest conversation about these issues by finding minor typos or formatting errors that they can use to discredit my entire perspective so that they don’t have to reflect on their own participation in a culture that so clearly devalues women’s beliefs.

We can probably assume safely that the audience giving Roy and Petit feedback is similar: men who object to the voice of a woman (and all that nasty 'perspective') in their domain of choice. But Roy isn't just talking about her experience, she is also speaking about the media she's tried to produce: it's a stone-cold fact that only a quarter of IT jobs are held by women, and that many graduates with tech degrees find they cannot be hired to apply them. The comment contributors Roy curses for dismissing her points and coverage also are dismissing reality, not merely a matter of opinion or a difference in personal worldview. And they do it on a micro-basis: in a comment box, over a misplaced comma or a typo.

It's ludicrous to think that a copy error means that a proven fact of the tech industry and the perspective of somebody actually there, are invalid. But I guess that's why Roy left.

This is a dialog where the comment box intersects the real world, and real world decisions to stay or leave employment. It's easy to dismiss the significance of a mob of anonymous strangers, but as micro-aggressions build up over time, the feedback culture has the power to override artistic integrity, stop other consumers in their tracks, and even deny reality.

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Comment Box Beatdown: A New and Violent Dialogue.

I'm going to assume that almost everyone reading this knows what a comment box is. There's one below every post here. Bastions of free speech: moderated comments allow anyone who cares even a vague amount to express their opinion to everybody who passes by. In the least calm and rational manner possible, in some cases.

It sort of looks like this. (Photo: Flickr user sokup)

The crux of every social media site includes comments, along with media sharing. Even sites dedicated to user-generated (rather than shared) content communities, like Deviantart, Fictonpress, Ravelry, and Etsy include comments as a focal part of their platform: allowing anyone to create written, art, or craft work and then receive feedback on it from a general audience.

As mentioned yesterday, audience feedback is a dialogue that has taken on a new form and sense of power from the presence of the internet. Fan approval or outrage can sway the sales and distribution of media, and either laud or revile the personalities that talk about it.

I'm talking about critics. The push-button-to-hate culture doesn't make it easy for them to handle what essentially is considered the general public's beloved baby.

Why did you downvote my baby?! (Gif: Spirited Away)

The fifth installment of the popular video game franchise Grand Theft Auto was recently released, after about five years of development. Fans were elated to get right back into the popular wide-open no-consequences sandbox game and start stealing cars and running over grandmas.

Then Gamespot, popular gaming community hub, rated the game a lowly 9/10.

The resulting backlash of not getting a perfect score was so great, Gamespot made a response video calling out the chaos.

Pictured: Gamespot's audience gets told.

As the host of Feedbackula eloquently states,

"There were so many comments this week saying that political discourse doesn't belong in game reviews, or that it's 'just a game' and 'we should just shut up and deal with it.' Really though, honestly, what kind of attitude is that? How does that make the gaming community look? If we ever want to see games being broadly accepted as an art form, or as anything but a slightly quirky pass-time, we have to include politics. we have to ask questions about gender, about the portrayal of characters, and about the limits of satire. Because satire isn't satire if it doesn't challenge the thing it copies; that is repetition."

As most readers can probably infer, the non-perfect score was awarded due to the limited roles of women portrayed in the game: as unsatisfied wives, hookers, straw-feminists made to mock actual strives towards gender equality, and other less-than-empowering roles. The messenger of this dissatisfaction was Carolyn Petit, a game journalist who also is a trans woman. This went over as well as one could expect in a largely unprogressive, male-dominated gamer culture.

Not well. (Creative Commons)

The theme of an insecure male-dominant fanbase (despite over 40 percent of gamers identifying as women) being uncomfortable with women being an authority on the games they are possessive of is pervasive and certainly nothing new. Raging fans created a petition to try and get Petit fired from Gamespot (since removed). Anita Sarkeesian, feminist media critic and host of Feminist Frequency received death threats for daring to make a video series commenting on sexism in video games, and one maladjusted individual even created a whole flash game about battering her.

Trying to fire Petit, and trying to silence Sarkeesian, are two unorganized, organic efforts to try and subdue a discourse that some consumers find threatening to their worldview. The studios that make these games, have nothing to do with this dialogue; consumers are yelling at other consumers, through the easy-reward-low-investment-low-accountability interface of a comment box.

Youtube is trying to clean up the veritable hive of scum and villainy that rests below every flash player on their site. Their approach involves algorithms that sort comments, burying the least valuable ones to humanity below ones that at least don't wear underwear on their heads. Theoretically, this is supposed to limit visibility of frustrating comments, so nobody reacts to them and their presence is not rewarded, discouraging their presence. Whether this is censorship is debatable. By trying to encourage people to link their google pages accounts to YouTube, Google has tried to reduce the shield of anonymity on offensive comment trolls, but with limited success.

The determination and free time of angry internet trolls are limitless, however, and one can only imagine how long it will take for someone to invent a web gadget that restores the comments to how they were before. Whether this is in defense of free and unrestricted speech, or over-entitlement to the right to call people fags behind an anonymous mask, only time and downvotes will tell.

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4 Rules to Make Star Wars Great Again: Fans Lay down the Law

If there's anything that permeates childhoods spanning the last 30 or so years, it's probably Star Wars. Whether you're a fan, or if it's 'that science fiction series' to you, you probably know the names of the characters. You probably know who Darth Vader is.

You also probably know that the three 'prequel' movies released between 1999 and 2005 weren't well-received.

You might even know that a third trilogy, a sequel series, is slated to begin release in 2015 with a release every 2 years.

The marketing and animation company Sincerely Truman has something to say about all of this.

Pictured: Some really good points about why the prequel series flopped.

As of this post, the main video site DearJJAbrams.com, has over 5300 supporters. However, this is more than a needy public voice demanding content from producers and directors. This raises questions. Is the public entitled to be pleased? Are the creative decisions of a content creator like a director or artist subject to be influenced by the wishes of fans? And is it a good idea to give fans what they want?

Videos like this one, as well as other similar criticisms, are a seemingly one-sided dialogue attempted between content consumers, and content creators. And they are not always unsuccessful: after an ending almost universally-regarded as terrible, public outcry convinced Bioware and EA's Mass Effect 3 developers to add DLC content to their game that modified the ending somewhat. Ethical debates about false advertising popped up; the game promised different endings based on player choices, and yet all of them shared nearly the same ending with some lighting colors changed. They didn't do this with pleasure, but to avert future disgrace with their primary consumer base. And even then, they didn't change much.

Outraged fans were called 'rebellious' by news media, and much-mocked even within game culture, to the point of other developers changing endings to mock the 'spoiled brat' public. Was the public over-entitled? Was the studio lazy, advertising false material and subsequently got called out for it? Do we spoil fans too much by listening to their demands, or are content creators spoiled too much: their final decisions protected from all criticism and consequence by artistic integrity?

This concept isn't new, despite it's shiny and new internet guise. Arthur Conan Doyle killed off Sherlock Holmes in The Final Problem in an attempt to end his series. After resisting public pressure for 8 years, he wrote The Hound of the Baskervilles to appease his raging 1901 fans, setting it before Holmes' 'death.' This didn't work. He wrote The Adventure of the Empty House and brought Holmes back to life after 2 more years of public displeasure. Today, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes are considered literary classics, and much-beloved. But what of the behavior of the very first fandom? Was it right? Even in the long-run?

It's impossible to say if J.J. Abrams will heed or ignore fans, but it is reported that the sequels are being developed with fans of the original Star Wars trilogy in mind. On one hand, this is a relief for people who felt the sequel trilogy 'ruined' their beloved Star Wars. On the other hand, this approach may exclude things fans never knew they may want, and at least some of the surprise about what to expect.

Regardless of the approach, the $307,263,857-domestic gross legacy prays for Episode VIII not to swing and miss.

Pictured: By a margin of approximately 20 inches.

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