Originally shared by ****

Ok what happened?

From what I understand, John Tarnowski and James Desborough are trying to start a Gamergate-like “DnDGate” using a twitter hashtag, they also posted about this on some forums (but I don’t have the info on this). Please avoid vague posting about these issues, clearly giving information to avoid confusion is important.

They say that their issue is the prevalence of politics and politically correct language in games. They say that they are in favor of letting anyone play and that they don’t want to exclude anyone, that they are not targeting women, LGBT people and other minorities.

The thing is that using outrage baits like this ( SJW, triggers warnings, safe spaces, “PC” languages, etc…) quickly slide toward targeting anything associated with diversity, LGBT+, women, etc. This can only create a toxic environment that push away a lot of people like me (or worse, hurt us, etc.).

I think that people were right to react to this.

These outrage baits may also serve two other purpose: marketing and anti-diversity dog whistling and normalisation.

I remember that Tarnowski was strongly impressed by the defense tactics that LotFP and Zak S used against their detractors: using controversy as self-promotion and marketing. Like deftly using hateful comments made against them as promotional material. Nearly everything Tarnowski do on social media is self-promoting or marketing oriented, he use a lot of dog-whistling as marketing. James Desborough is also very marketing oriented.

Like Joe England mentioned, this is a know and “effective” marketing tactic:

https://plus.google.com/+JoeEngland/posts/4FWEryXj23c

So I think people should keep in mind that they have self-promotion motives to target PC language, “SJW” and other easy targets.

The second use of outrage baits is to try to reach out to a frustrated target audience.

The thing is that this can be easily recuperated and used by alt-right minded people or similar conservative anti LGBT and anti feminists influencers and hate groups to normalize their views and agenda. Who have never been annoyed by SJW and PC language? Targeting these things is a easy way to make contact with their target audience.

So even if Desborough and Tarnowski are not motivated by alt-right or anti diversity goals, what they are trying to start can easily be recuperated by toxic or hateful manipulators and can certainly create a toxic and hostile environment for women and minorities.

Understand me, as a potential target of these movements, I must oppose this bullshit.

On a positive note, the roleplaying community reacted by using it creativity to flood their hashtag.

https://twitter.com/RichAugust1

I think this was a positive response, creativity is probably our secret defense against that kind of shit.

Stuart Robinson also made a cool rainbow OSR logo variant:

https://plus.google.com/111524822183500809557/posts/LaCmhucCVFL

About the issue (and tactic) of targeting PC language, Contrapoints made a good two part video on the subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GGTDhutW_us&t=101s