There’s a community focused on independent journalism that might interest y’all [email protected]

They’re building the surveillance state.

According to a report in The Washington Post, the woman alleged that her stepfather used Grok to manipulate a photo taken when she was 11 years old to create more than 7,000 explicit images of her. The woman also said that her stepfather was found dead of suicide two days after the images were uncovered in a law enforcement raid.

Jesus fucking christ.

This was a fun read! Her customizations are so cute and I love that she’s a Stardew Valley player as well.

Women like this are gender traitors imo. She’s got videos literally claiming that DEI has killed the fun in video games. She’s sold her soul to shill for Microsoft.

Yeah embrace that internalized misogyny, queen! Tell those men that they don’t have to treat their peers that are women with respect, they have ART to make!

Ok then don’t try to have a conversation here with people who have watched it.

Step in when you need to for sure, but stop at that line and go no further. HR should be there for HR reasons, Legal should protect the company from liability, and marketers should market the product, but none of them (or the executives) should be swaying the creative process to make their jobs easier. It’s their jobs to protect the creative process, not the other way around.

I totally agree with you. Thanks for coming back to the discussion table with me, so to speak.

As long as the creative process doesn’t include objectifying and sexually harassing their women coworkers, absolutely. There’s honestly a fine line, I know it doesn’t seem very fine, it seems really obvious that it shouldn’t be happening, but the entirety of the history of creating games has been tainted with the pervasive sexism that’s allowed to bloom under a “boys will be boys” kind of approach with these creatives.

Maybe the future of gaming isn’t with the big companies at all anymore. Maybe they’re too big to succeed the way they used to.

Also, I wasn’t the first one to bring up “gamer gaters” in this conversation, but you sure came at me like I was:

https://sh.itjust.works/post/65037722/26885280

now it’s become where everything is so coated in foam that there’s only the “approved” way to do things, which means covering the user in bubble wrap before sending them through the feel-good forests, and it’s making things very boring to play.

Is this because of HR or maybe it’s because of capitalism’s penchant for the enshittification of everything? If a product is appealing to everyone, it appeals to no one.

I think the HR issue is separate from the quality of the games. Indie dev companies are putting out really great quality games at a higher frequency than when AAA games were dominating the marketplace. Maybe there’s an argument that the smaller dev teams don’t need as much involvement from HR because they’re smaller and can police each other better about not being assholes to one another. It’s an interesting topic regardless.

I’m having a conversation with you. God forbid I reply to your points.

The video is very strongly opinionated about HR being useless now and that HR is ruining games. It completely ignores WHY HR became so involved in the gaming industry at large. I’m trying to have a conversation with you about it.

Did you watch the video?

However, the bell has swung the in the other direction now,

I’d like to see some sources on this proving that the rampant sexism and toxic work environments have been done away with in the last 5 years before being this confident about it.

There’s room to have a discussion here, most certainly. But not in a way that scoffs at the entire idea of needing to be respectful of others in a work environment.

“Now, why HR? Because people are at the heart of every business challenge and every business opportunity that we’ll face in the future and we are the experts and people in our organizations, or at least we should be, but clearly based on the comments I’ve read and what I’ve seen in the industry this is not the case because game makers aren’t happy and it’s simple - makers are happiest when they are making. They don’t want endless meetings about safe spaces, ok? They want to obsess over their art. They don’t want an environment where they feel like they’re walking on eggshells.”

The reason the game makers need to sit in those meetings about safe spaces is because of the incredibly toxic work environments that these companies were fostering.

Where’s the heat for the CEO and CFO then? Aren’t they the ones inviting HR into the boardroom?

The complaint boils down to whining about having to sit in meetings being told they should treat their coworkers with respect. Blaming HR for why games suck now is reminiscent of DEI being blamed for government corruption. Of course gamer gate types are going to gobble this up hook, line, and sinker.

I wish there was a transcript I could read. I’m intrigued by the topic. Gaming has long had a real problem with interpersonal issues and toxic work culture - it’s very understandable why HR became a more important part of the industry. Certainly HR is overstepping by trying to run the entire company so to speak, but I don’t want to speak too much without taking the time to watch the video.

Whoops, I spoke too soon - there is a transcript!

Edit: Oh Jesus Christ, someone in HR really fought back against the term “Senior Technical Artist” because it might offend elderly people? The pendulum swung too far smh

“You see, from my persepctive, what happened is that HR decided that the day-to-day work of actually helping people wasn’t enough. They wanted a seat in the executive meetings and they got it. Today, most executives have HR sitting in influencing decision and driving cultural change and a lot of them want to run the entire company.”

Oooooook…HR aren’t the decision makers here. The executives are. @[email protected] is correct on this - the directives are coming from C suites that fear controversy and risk.

If game makers don’t want endless meetings about safe spaces, maybe they shouldn’t force their women coworkers to crawl around on the floor so they can upskirt them like at Blizzard? Source

A complaint, filed by the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing on Wednesday, alleges that Activision Blizzard Inc. “fostered a sexist culture” where women were paid less than men and subjected to ongoing sexual harassment including groping. (Activision and Blizzard Entertainment merged in 2008.)

Officials at the gaming company knew about the harassment and not only failed to stop it but retaliated against women who spoke up, the complaint also alleges.

This was only 5 years ago.

Yeah the upside to my kid being able to explore music and have that whole world opened for him outweighs moving to a different, but still shitty in various ways, music streaming service.

I meant on Reddit as well.

Some may use AI, but looking at post history is a long held tradition on social media sites.

Same, I still lurk in some subreddits because there isn’t a spot here for them yet. Niche hobby subreddits are Reddit’s strong spot.

Nah I do my own post history digging by hand. Usually only look when a user is being particularly ornery or an ass and then a post history look reveals whether they’re a troll or not.