Sadly there's no projection involved, only a very basic interpretation of the views and opinions being expressed here. "Things should stay as they are", "our culture is not discriminatory", "we don't need more diversity" etc. are very explicitly
not apolitical statements.
Heck, it's kind of hilarious how this grand irony of all of this is lost on you and the others expressing similar sentiments - you're explicitly and unequivocally providing proof for the value and importance of initiatives like this (no matter if this specific example might be ham-fisted, cynical/exploitative, or otherwise flawed).
Retarded, or to retard means slow in French. Simple. It's not a catch all term for people with down syndrome? People will use the descriptive language they want to, and you have no rights to tell them otherwise.
... last I checked we're all writing in English in an English-language forum? That kind of silly pedantry is incredibly transparent and dumb, so please refrain from it. "Retarded" in English is a derogatory term for someone with intellectual or physical disabilities, and that was precisely the way the word was being used here. Trying to hand-wave it away as "technically it means yadda-yadda" is the most transparent bad-faith rhetorical move known to mankind. Please stop, you're just making yourself look even worse.
Maybe take a look in the mirror, dude? This literally made me laugh out loud, coming from just having read the previous quote.
Keep playing word games and projecting, the rest of us will most likely shop elsewhere.
That's your right, and AFACT nobody has shown any interest in denying you that right. All we've done is disagree with your put-downs and crying over how terrible it is that our hobby is diversifying.
Honestly, no never. I've always liked that "minimalist" plain black look. No RGB, no window, no fuss (think
Carbide 200 style and before that 'old school'
Rosewill Line-M. Turns out blowing cold air straight onto the hottest components via 2x side intakes actually makes sense...) Same for mice - been using a Logitech G300/G300S for years. Ambidextrous, 9 remappable buttons, highly functional, onboard memory = no bloated software needed running in the background. Cost £25. Never had any urge to buy an "dirt magnet art piece" mouse for 3-4x the price, then frame it, hang it on the wall and invite people round only for them to leave with
"Damn, that is one weird guy" mutters under their breath...
You seem to have missed about half my questions here. Your own preferences aren't especially unusual, but are you actually claiming that you are unaware of the
massive amount of effort spent by tons of PC enthusiasts on making their rigs look good? Remember, your statement that I questioned was that
gamers usually don't "self-express" over hardware
which, while it might be true
for you (though your statement above says otherwise - you're clearly putting a significant amount of thought and personality into your component choices, and while these might not be oriented towards looks and showing off primarily, none of that makes it any less of a self-expression - not all self-expression is extroverted, and "function before form" is an aesthetic ideal in and of itself), your initial statement was a generalization about (all) gamers. Which even a 30-second look on these forums, Reddit, or whereever else will show you is demonstrably untrue.
I think you'll find people are more bashing the "bandwagon jumping" marketing phrases than the minorities in question. Example - "Approachability = It needs to be white not black". So 'black is unapproachable' now, is it? Probably not quite what they mean but amusing as to how that could be interpreted...
The thing is, bashing the "bandwagon jumping" is a reactionary rhetorical move done - consciously or not - to try and avoid the consequences of representing said reactionary beliefs. Why is "jumping on the bandwagon" bad? Only if you think the thing represented by said "bandwagon" itself is bad, but you're avoiding attacking the subject directly by instead framing it as being anti-trendy rather than being anti-inclusive. Which, to even the most casual observer, is plain-faced, obvious and transparent BS. And, of course, framing it as "jumping on the bandwagon" is in and of itself a bad-faith and highly selective framing of reality, simplifying complex societal developments into "trends" and "fashion", again only worthy of criticism if you think the thing represented by said "bandwagon" is bad.
It's really, really simple to differentiate between good-faith and bad-faith applications of this type of critique: a good-faith approach will focus on the conflict between the nature of bandwagon-jumping and the cause nominally being represented, while a bad-faith approach will lump both together into a rejection or critique of both. Why? Because the fundamental thing that makes "jumping on the bandwagon" bad is the implication that the person/entity involved
doesn't actually mean what they're saying or doing. Which
only works as a critique if you
agree with what they're saying they are doing in the first place. Otherwise? You're just looking for cheap tricks to dismiss something you don't like.
There's nothing wrong with releasing products that are aimed at an alternate, or under-represented markets. There's nothing wrong at all with releasing a product and configuring it for a specific demographic. However, I can see why some people here are reacting in an unfriendly manner. The PR blurb is nothing less than fluff and nonsense which contradicts the very same thing it is trying to project. If you actually read parts of it, the marketing drivel is remarkable.
This for example:
Glasses? I wear glasses. I'm a male. Longer hair--are girls not allowed short hair? Is Logi telling woman to grow long hair? And only women wear earings. What about pirates? See the freaking contradiction?
I state again, it is only correct that gaming periperhals reflect the broad tastes of separate identities, regardless what they are. And those tastes ought to be accepted and the gaming community ought to be inclusive.
But this PR piece from Logitech is a blatant, tone-deaf, and manufactured piece of crap.
I agree that the PR blurb from this is ...
something (I brought this up, though indirectly, in my first response here), and some of your critiques here are absolutely valid. However, you are being
far too generous with the people being "critical" of this still. Why? Because the rhetoric and responses are straight out of the online reactionary/borderline far-right edgelord playbook, including but not limited to
- "If [company] keeps doing [things aimed at others than me in addition to the things they're already doing which are aimed at me] I will shop elsewhere"
- "We don't need more diversity"/"There's no lack of diversity here"/"the way things have always been, and which suits me and my demographic, is obviously neutral and inclusive (despite clear evidence to the contrary)"
- "Emotional"/"retarded"/"crying" etc.
Not to mention that the discussion hews quite clearly towards criticizing
the initiative rather than the ham-fisted, transparently cynical and borderline self-parodying way it is presented - with the exception of a couple of posts. I completely agree that that press release is rather absurd, but ... well, it's a corporation. They are, generally, absurd. Their logics and modes of expression generally do not align with my experiences of how humans think or function. This is no more or less extreme than most other press releases, it just does the same thing differently. It might thus be more surprising, but the posting here makes clear that a lot of the people responding take offense just as much to the views being presented as to the absurdist form of it.
The problem I see with this is the marketing campaign behind it. There is a group of gamers where the typical all black aesthetic is not something personally care for because it dosn't fit their personality, or for whatever reason its not to their preference. This addresses that and thats a good thing because nobody should feel unrepresented in society but this marketing and identity politics as a whole which this falls into is doing everything they are supposedly against by exploiting stereotypes and promoting exclusiveness twice as hard literally saying out loud the type of person that should be buying this. Its all very clumsy, heavy handed, insulting and ultimately counter productive to the people that felt marginalized in the first place.
I mostly agree with you here. The good thing about this, that makes me not bother being too critical about the ham-fisted, borderline self-parody of the PR here? That most people won't ever see this PR, or at most, they'll be exposed to a few promo shots in passing. Press releases are generally not read by ... well, people. So, the end result is mostly the availability of a broader, more diverse selection of equipment for a hobby already enjoyed by a very diverse group of (literally hundreds of millions of) people. Beyond that, to me this is standard fare corporate nonsense, no different than the thousands upon thousands of un-selfconsciously hypermasculine PR blurbs for other, comparable stuff. Yet, somehow, people only really get riled up when this stupid PR BS is framing something different. Almost as if ... oh, I don't know, some of these people take more offense at the thing being expressed than the ham-fisted corporate appropriation of it?
