From the trenches of #GamerGate

EDIT: I thought the argument was over, but it's flared up again, so I've added some more of the arguments below.

Republished from an argument with a friend-of-a-friend on said friend's facebook wall. The person with whom I was arguing professed not to be a member or supporter of GamerGate, but held some very GamerGate-ish views of Anita Sarkeesian, including, in the preceding posts, arguing that the reason she 'attacked' video games was to intentionally draw hate with which to increase her own popularity and victimhood.

My response after the jump:

Do I work for Facebook, or does Facebook work for me?

Here's a thought I've been having.

One of the things that Twitter does right is it allows you to customize and subdivide your news feed. If you want to make a list of only people you actually know, you can do that. If you want to have a list of just feminist film critics, you can do that. If you want to have a list of just ginsing growers in Laos, you probably can do that (assuming that there are actually ginsing growers in Laos with twitter accounts, which would not surprise me in the slightest). Google plus has something similar, allowing you to add accounts to one or more custom-made circles that you can check independently. Facebook, though, is all or nothing. There used to be an option to set a given contact to more or less frequent appearances on your wall, but those controls seem to be removed, and instead we see what the FB sorting algorithm thinks we want to see. There are no options that I can find to create specialty lists, and the only option to affect the frequency of a particular poster appearing on your wall is to block their posts entirely, in which case, you might as well not be following them. (You also can set your FB to show most recent posts rather than top posts, but I find that it seems to reset itself frequently, and that the result is flooded by even more garbage posts from pages you liked once four years ago and forgot about)

Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, Facebook's algorithm is designed to serve the dual masters of telling us what our friends are doing and making money for Facebook, to the detriment of the former. In particular, the feed prioritizes high-engagement content with lots of likes and shares. Among a group of friends, this might lead to more people seeing important posts like engagement announcements and the like. When a user follows both friends and other pages, however, the balance seems to become badly skewed toward pages. It's hard for anyone I know in real life to compete with Cracked and The Lion King and Al Jazeera English for post engagement, meaning that the people I actually know and care about are buried beneath posts from national and international pages. Furthermore, even posts from popular pages are filtered by their engagement. Felicia Day has blogged about the problems this causes for her - that it incentivizes her to post things tailored for higher traffic (read: pictures of her being attractive) and makes it harder for views - artistic, social, intellectual - to compete with 'mainstream' views; in effect, Facebook becomes an enforcer of the societal status quo. And that's a problem.

High five, low five: Guardians of the Galaxy

First, a note from the management: Google tells me that people are reading this! Granted, Google tells me that sometimes 20 people at a time are reading this in Turkey, which seems implausible, but many strange and magical things are possible on the internet. While I enjoy declaring my opinions to the self-affirming nods of the masses as much as the next guy, loyal readers and Turkish spambots also are reminded that comments are welcome and encouraged from whoever has something to add on any topic (which probably rules out the Turkish spambots, but oh well).

My expectations for Marvel's latest movie were fairly high. Guardians of the Galaxy is rocking a 92% on Rotten Tomatoes (for the first twenty or so reviews, it was 100%) and I had several positive endorsements from friends and coworkers. I have to say, what I saw did not live up to those expectations.  It's not a bad movie - there are things it did quite well, and things it didn't - but overall, I came away unsatisfied. And I'm disappointed, not to mention a little bit surprised; I've usually been in agreement with the general degree of approbation or opprobrium applied to MCU movies, or even erred on the side of liking movies that other reviewers found blah, and it's puzzling that so many reviewers and writers are responding to this one so much more positively than I. Are we sure we're all watching the same movie?

I'm not a huge fan of the traditional 'movie review' - I enjoy reading them after I watch a movie because they sometimes catch things I missed, but they're generally far to short and subjective to guide one in actually forming an opinion - but I kinda liked what I did for the second HTTYD movie, a list of five successful and unsuccessful elements, so I'm doing that again. Read on for five things I liked a lot and five that I liked not so much at all in Guardians of the Galaxy, complete with exhaustive explanations and diatribes thereupon.

Poster a gift from my boss, who saw it in IMAX instead of working on a night the state
supreme court issued three major rulings. I might forgive him eventually.

And yes, there are **SPOILERS.** Duh. Consider yourself warned.

(I've also tried to avoid too much discussion of the overall Marvel Cinematic Universe and the greater interaction of comic books and movies, not because that's not an interesting topic, but because it's too interesting, and to complex, to try to tackle alongside my specific thoughts on GotG. Look for another post on that sometime soon.)

Three stages of mastery

It's a little dismaying to look back at the coursework I did in education classes and realize how little I actually know today about how people learn things. Some I've forgotten in the 5-ish years since Ed Psych, but most I don't think I ever learned in the first place, nor realized I hadn't until I got to actual teaching. But while I don't have much to show for my academic training in learning, I have found a model that I quite like to explain the stages - if not the process - of learning, and on a related tangent, when, whether and how rules ought to be broken.

This almost - almost - pushed me to figure out how to resubmit memebase posters so that I could
say something along the lines of  'Oddly enough, Marvel seems to agree with you ...'

Creating necessary characters

First, some required reading. Before I explain my thoughts on how to fix Strong Female Character problems in fiction (not the sociological or economic forces that sustain them, but the legitimate and thorny storytelling problems that drive well-meaning storytellers so often to use Strong Female Characters), as I am about to do, you should read the following (unless you already read them after I scattered them around in this post, in which case, good job).

https://medium.com/@directordanic/the-problem-with-false-feminism-7c0bbc7252ef

http://thedissolve.com/features/exposition/618-were-losing-all-our-strong-female-characters-to-tr/

http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/08/18/why-strong-female-characters-are-bad-for-women/

http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2013/08/i-hate-strong-female-characters

Ok, back? Good. Now, a little context: a few weeks ago, a friend posted the first two of those on Facebook, which led to a very interesting discussion in the comments. I kept thinking about the issues raised in these (and the other two, which were linked off the others), and they helped me define the issues I saw with Astrid in the How to Train Your Dragon movies, as described in the post linked above. 

Because here's the thing: the articles are right. Strong Female Characters as they currently appear all too often in media are a flawed and ultimately unhelpful way to depict gender relations. At the same time, though, Strong Female Characters arose as an attempt to solve these problems, and to replace the even more flawed roles assigned to women before this new archetype was created. And I suspect that the vast majority of content creators who include Strong Female Characters in their works are doing so out of a sincere desire to do right by women, whether for ideological or market-driven reasons, because they have been told again and again about the need to avoid the problematic tropes about women that have been floating around ever since people first started using vocal grunts to signify abstract concepts. While their efforts are not entirely successful and demonstrate a certain lack of awareness and sensitivity on their parts, it's not really fair to demonize the creators who do so, unless they work for Disney, in which case for crying out loud, they should know better by now.

I also think that the debate about gender equity in fiction is too often approached from a perspective of things NOT to do. And to be fair, there are an awful lot of things on that list. But I wonder sometimes if the problem is that we spend all our time telling creators they're doing it wrong and not enough giving suggestions on doing it right. The Bechdel test is one of the more helpful offerings; it offers a basic, easy-to-follow checklist for creators to run through to see if they're doing it right. However, even the Bechdel test doesn't give terribly specific guidance about how to go about fixing a problem once diagnosed, and lord knows it's possible to write a thoroughly sexist and unenlightened story that passes the test; Bechdel is a helpful benchmark, but I think its primary value is as a statistical evaluation of fiction as a whole rather than a litmus test for individual works. And so creators - the test was originally and remains most often applied to movies, the vast majority of which are created by men - know that they AREN'T supposed to make women wimpy and submissive and reliant on men, but actual guidance on what they SHOULD be doing is sparse. And so they make female characters unwimpy and unsubmissive and (at least at first) unreliant on men, and if they're really daring, they try to create TWO such women, but they're still approaching the female sex as a list of don'ts rather than a list of dos.

So let's see if we can fix that.

Bonus post: Dragons pt. II

We interrupt your regularly scheduled weekly program to bring you another ginormous How to Train Your Dragon post. If that's not your groove, go ahead and move on to the next interesting thing on the interwebs.

After writing the first post, I saw the second movie again in theaters (with a family member who hadn't seen it before), and doing so and discussing it afterward helped me localize and identify several things I felt watching it the first time. You will have surmised from my previous post that I very much liked this movie, and you would be correct; in some ways, it is superior to the first. In others, however, it is not quite as strong; my overall preference at this point leans slightly toward number one. In no particular order, here are my five favorite things about HTTYD 2, and with them my five least favorite. Obviously, MAJOR SPOILERS ABOUND for both the first and second movies; proceed at your own risk.

(Edit 7/8/14: Further investigation has helped clarify some of the issues raised in complaint #3; I've amended that section accordingly)

It's the second blog post, so I use the poster for the second movie. See? I'm clever.

A consideration of Dragons

Yeah, I missed my Monday/Tuesday target update, partly because I had company over, but mostly because the post I've been working on keeps getting overtaken by events before I can publish it. I've got a 3-day weekend coming up, so hopefully I'll get it off then. In the meantime, I want to talk about dragons, and specifically, how to train them.

3D optional

I got a speeding ticket from the thought police

First, some housekeeping: in the last 6 months, I have completed courses for a digital photo and video certificate through my local tech school, which should improve employment prospects; unfortunately, it also put a moratorium on job searching while I've been stuck in place. But done now: woo! I've also been promoted to full-time as a newspaper copy editor, which is a welcome development, and spent several months as a freelance writer on Elance before gradually backing out due to coursework and increased work hours; I may return now that classes are done.

I've not been posting much, obviously, in part because for a while I took a break from following much of the news (as much as one can while working as a copy editor). I think I was a little burned out after the high-grain focus of the govt. shutdown and Healthcare.gov rollout (I think I intended to write a blog post about that; at any rate, I had a draft with no text but the title 'who left the three stooges in charge' when I opened blogger after my long hiatus), and I've also been much more engaged in following local politics; our city government in general and mayor in particular have been up to shenanigans, most of which have been exposed and reported by us. In any case, I've lately been getting back on the horse, as it were, and resuming my regular perusal of national and international news, and once again am starting to encounter thorny issues about which I need to ponder. And as always, one of the best ways to test my own thinking is to write about it and see if my thinking holds up.

There are three recent incidents that I've been pondering: the brief and tumultuous tenure of Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich; the racist spurging and subsequent ostracization of LA Clippers owner Donald Sterling, and the homophobic tweeting and shunning of Miami Dolphins player Don Jones. The third will undoubtably be a flash in the pan, and I'll not be surprised if the Wikipedia section I linked to is gone in short order, but it was big enough news to make it onto Google, and it ties into the other two.

The questions I'm puzzling over are to what extent, if any, the consequences these three gentlemen have faced for their positions are just, and whether or if at all their rights (moral, rather than legal) have been abrogated. I'm certainly far from the only one who is connecting these dots and asking these questions, but I've yet to see anyone come up with a result I'm fully satisfied with, so let's see if I can do better.

Thoughts on fitness

There was a very short period in my life, probably no more than a few months, that I could touch my toes.

It was right at the end of my senior year of high school.  By that time, I had long since dropped away from any sort of organized sports, and the only semi-consistent form of exercise I got was going on walks with my mom.  Around this time, for reasons I could not hope to reconstruct today, I started working out a little bit before bed.  Nothing fancy - some push-ups, some sit-ups, and some stretching - but it was something, and unlike so many other little initiatives, I stuck with it.  I kept it up nightly or nearly so for several months, and was quite surprised when one evening, while performing the venerable sit-and-reach stretch, I was able to snag my fingers on my toes.

This was unprecedented for me.  When we did the sit-and-reach tests in elementary school P.E., I couldn't even reach the end of the board.  To be sure, I have some natural disadvantages at play - long, long legs and not a lot of torso to go with it - but I also just flat-out wasn't flexible. And yet now I could touch my toes. It wasn't easy, and it wasn't fun, but I could do it. And over the ensuing weeks, it got easier and easier.

It couldn't last, of course.  Shortly after that, I shipped off to college for the first time.  I was far too self-conscious to perform my nightly routine in front of my roommates, or out in the lounge where anyone might walk past (although I did once pass another girl doing some stretches, which I remember only because of my vague sense of 'oh, I guess it isn't that weird after all' that failed to translate into any actions).  Our dorm was far from the campus athletic facilities, and I think I would have avoided them anyway out of a misplaced disdain for athletics and the meatheads that practice them.  So I just stopped.

I mention this because this stands out in my memory as my peak of physical fitness.  I doubt it actually was, since I had very little since of dietary self-control and was not likely getting such an enormous payoff from those walks, but it was the one time I can remember setting out to accomplish something relating to my physical fitness and then seeing actual results.  I feel proud of that little nightly routine and the small but measurable gains that I accomplished thereby.  After that, aside from occasional walks with my ladyfriend and, during the summers, playing racquetball and reading on the exercise bikes at the YMCA, I allowed my physical fitness to languish.

At several points during my not-very-pleasant year teaching in Iowa (more to come on that), my mom suggested that I find a local gym or the YMCA, and even offered to pay for my membership.  At one point, a mental health professional I was consulting recommended the same.  I didn't, largely because I felt too much guilt about all the other things I was supposed to be doing to add something else to feel guilty about not doing to the list.  Perhaps if I had, some things would have turned out differently.  Perhaps it just would have added to my stress. Who knows. It wasn't until mid-August, when I finally squared away my last responsibilities for my former employer, and made the decision that I would not be moving away from home again until I had some form of employment lined up, that the pressure of things I was supposed to be doing finally relaxed and I experienced a spurt of the highest productivity I'd had in years, sorting and catching up on paperwork, tying up loose ends, plotting out my finances - and signing up for a Y membership.  (And giving thought to blogging once again, as it so happens.)

I'm still struggling a bit with what exactly my fitness goals are.  Do I want to lose weight?  Well, probably; I'm well within the healthy range for my bmi, but I definitely have some mass on the front of my torso that doesn't need to be there.  Oh, so it's about looking better?  Well, probably; I certainly wouldn't object to being a little bit more alpha-masculine. At the same time, though, I have a deep and abiding contempt for the sort of institutionalized vanity that characterizes America, and am much more interested in health for the sake of health than for looking healthy.  Oh, so it's about overall fitness?  Strength?  Endurance?  Flexibility?  Well, probably ...

This has led to a rather scattershot routine; when I go to the Y, which is averaging 2-3 times per week, I start with some stretching (in which I fall at least 5 inches short of my toes), followed by some time on the various weight machines (chest press, seated row, leg press, bicep curl, and some weird thing that involves twisting your lower body with the sides of your abs, mostly ), followed by 20-30 minutes on one of the bikes, where I set it to cardio (not fat-burning) and generally run it at ~120 RPM.  (When I first started in August, I was lucky to break 90; this is another case where I think I can see measurable results from a self-motivated fitness effort.)  I'm still experimenting with different things, figuring out what looks useful and what doesn't.  I worry that without a particular goal(s) to work toward, I'll lose interest and fade out over time, but so far it seems to be working, and eventually I'll probably find something to work toward.

There are other ways to exercise than at a YMCA, and exercise is only a part of fitness, of course.  I don't think I eat a terrible diet (although they really should have built that Culver's further away from my home, dammit), but neither do I eat a particularly healthy one - lots of pasta and other carbohydrates and relatively lean meats, but not a huge amount of fruits or veggies.  Something to work on, I suppose.

I have been blessed by nature and happenstance with an ectomorphic physique that does not go out of its way to entrap calories, a marked lack of defects or early predispositions to non-communicable diseases, and a household that has never normalized the consumption of overprocessed snack food as a substitute for actual meals (although it's getting a little extreme; if Mom actually follows through on her plan to make chocolate chip zucchini cake, I may be forced to drastic measures).  And these factors have prevented years of benign neglect from causing dire or permanent consequences, like diabetes.  I also don't necessarily think I have a physique particularly disposed towards athleticism - not a body builder, not a soccer or football standout, not even particularly a runner - and I don't feel a competitive urge to become more so.

But I know that come 40 or 45, some of those natural factors will stop working for me and start working against me.  And more than that (because 'do this so it will help you when you're 40' is a pretty crappy motivational speech to a 24-yr-old), I miss being able to touch my fully extended toes.  I miss the feeling of accomplishment that comes from making a change to one's own body and seeing it take shape.  What those changes will or should be, I have not yet determined, but after a year characterized mostly by feeling a distinct lack of control over my own life, it's nice to start to see some concrete evidence that there are still things within my control, and that it benefits me more to invest in the things I can change than to fret about the things I can't.  So that's cool.