Board 8 > Do you like Jontron?

(+) Yeah! (+)

voltch posted...

Don't particularly like him, but wouldn't have removed him from a video game either.

Was him not being removed from Hat in Time that big a deal in the end?

I thought he was removed from Yooka-Laylee.
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SantaRPidgey posted...

Offensive and "wrong" are not the same thing. You can think its wrong that the parking garage smells like pee, but it would be super bizarre to step into a parking garage and feel offended that it smells like pee.

have you like... never heard of a smell "offending your senses" or whatever? this is not bizarre at all, you're describing normal human reactions right now.
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Yooka-Laylee took him out

Hat in Time decided to keep him

Doesn't feel like doing one thing or the other made much difference for the games themselves.
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Dels posted...

essentially, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

wtf is this bullshit? some things SHOULD be attributed to malice.
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Of the three big Game Grumps personalities (Arin, him, and Danny), I find him the least funny. I'm surprised his videos generate millions of views because from the little I've seen, they don't seem particularly funny or entertaining.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

Dels posted...

essentially, never attribute to malice what can be attributed to stupidity.

wtf is this bullshit? some things SHOULD be attributed to malice.

sure. if someone is actually malicious then you can say they are malicious. i'm just saying the impression i've gotten from seeing highlights of that awful debate + his apology video is that he's not a malicious person, just very misinformed. i could be wrong.

ok but then it's not a case of "never attributing to malice what can be attributed to stupidity." it's just... saying a non-malicious person is not malicious.
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Kenri posted...

SantaRPidgey posted...

Offensive and "wrong" are not the same thing. You can think its wrong that the parking garage smells like pee, but it would be super bizarre to step into a parking garage and feel offended that it smells like pee.

have you like... never heard of a smell "offending your senses" or whatever? this is not bizarre at all, you're describing normal human reactions right now.

Ok you haven't been in many parking garages
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uh.

maybe i got the expression wrong...?

let me see

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor

okay, the word "never" is a bit misleading because i guess it implies (as you saw it) to never assume someone is malicious?

i guess what i meant is "sometimes things are malice and sometimes they are stupidity, so try to figure out which it is"

SantaRPidgey posted...

Kenri posted...

SantaRPidgey posted...

Offensive and "wrong" are not the same thing. You can think its wrong that the parking garage smells like pee, but it would be super bizarre to step into a parking garage and feel offended that it smells like pee.

have you like... never heard of a smell "offending your senses" or whatever? this is not bizarre at all, you're describing normal human reactions right now.

Ok you haven't been in many parking garages

Well we don't all spend our free time cleaning up pee in them I guess...?
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Dels posted...

okay, the word "never" is a bit misleading because i guess it implies (as you saw it) to never assume someone is malicious?

yeah, that's how i interpreted it. i agree that you should figure out which it is.
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he's not malicious, he just believes immigrants taints the gene pool. silly guy that one haha.

racism is inherently stupid, so "being stupid" is a shitty excuse that just needs to stop. sometimes being stupid is bad.
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i mean, i never said his views weren't bad or that he shouldn't be strongly encouraged to change those views. i'm just saying that from what i can tell, it's not a case of him being an overtly hateful or prejudiced person, rather just naive and misinformed.if you consider that an "excuse" then fair enough, but i'm not saying not to stop watching his videos, just giving my PoV. i'm naive too so maybe i give people the benefit of the doubt when i shouldn't.

tbh a racist viewpoint founded on willful ignorance is just as damaging as one founded on "malice", whatever that means. I know people tend to scoff at buzzwords like "privilege", but if you legitimately believe there is no such thing as discrimination in Western culture, this is so incredibly ignorant that I'd think you live in some sort microcosm absent of actual human interaction. It's absolutely ridiculous.

As for Jon himself, I actually rather enjoyed his early content but I feel like the increasing production values actually harmed him tremendously. Well, not the values themselves, but rather, as he grew, his writing became weaker. I dunno. I still really like his early stuff, tho.
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Well, those microcosms do exist. There are entire corners of the internet where the viewpoint that discrimination isn't actually a problem and that the country is totally fine, and anyone who tells you it isn't is just a racist or extremist or whatever themselves. And part of that is because certain buzzwords get overused to the point where the people who are susceptible to those views will start to see them as a joke or an exaggeration, which further makes those corners of the internet believe that they are in the right, and that they're fighting against a real enemy that is actually threatening, idk, the country, or white people, or etc. And the people in those corners of the internet are also an equal mix of actual malicious bigots vs naive people who get sucked in to it because it sounds sort of objectively right if you look at it from the right (wrong) angle.

Plus idk but I'm assuming certain parts of the country which are not as socially progressive do believe that concepts of privilege and inequality and etc are just liberal buzzwords are whatever, so those people will also believe the things Jontron believes, because they genuinely haven't experienced the other side.

Jontron's beliefs, even if they are naive or whatever, can still be harmful if people believe them, because there are people who are way more radical than him who will actually start to believe that shit like the gene pool and immigrants and whatever are a threat and might actually do something about it, so you're not wrong. I guess I just feel like the cure for ignorance is education and not just immediately assuming every ignorant person is malicious? Which is where my posts in this topic are coming from.

Dels posted...

i'm naive too so maybe i give people the benefit of the doubt when i shouldn't.

this is basically what I'm saying!

I just don't see the need to offer such a benefit when seeing how deeply ingrained racial ignorance is in society. This "stupidity" is everywhere, like sure I'm not going to just see a person and immediately assume they must be racist, but if you're saying or doing racist shit then yeah I'm not going to pretend it was something else.

And for the record, I don't at all believe being "racist" is some mark of death that means you're racist now you'll be racist forever. It's all entirely about education, and if you can catch yourself and reflect on your misjudgments. I'm not going to lie say I've never had a racist thought cross my mind, or I haven't overheard something stupid from a friend or family member but you just gotta call that stuff out, even of yourself, and see these problems for what they really are. You have to be able to accept when you're wrong, which is why I don't like attributing these mistakes to a benefit of doubt, it's letting people off the hook without a need for reflection. It does nothing but maintain a problematic status quo.
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yeah, fair point.

i mean i think you can do both - give people the benefit of the doubt, while not letting them off the hook.

like if jontron was my friend IRL i'd be like "hey dude, those people were wrong to attack you and call you a racist, BUT, like, can we talk about this because it sounds like you're really missing a lot of stuff and there's a reason why people were hurt by it"

but he's just some guy on the internet that i'll never have any contact with so all i can do is post on board 8

yeah pretty well, being an actual friend / person who has to interact with the guy is much different from most people on the internet's scenario ie me who can just drop and move on
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I think JonTron's issue was that he kind of got tricked into a debate by Destiny (noted POS) after having become buddies with Sargon of Akkad (much larger noted POS). He got a lot of weird stuff implanted into his head from Sargon and those goons and then Destiny kept baiting him into trying to defend points that JonTron didn't know much about when JonTron thought they were just going to have a discussion.

So yeah, it doesn't excuse much, but I don't think JonTron is actively racist or anything. He was just woefully uninformed with some sketchy stuff put into his head and forced into a bad situation where he was expected to debate them.
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I'd think such a microcosm exists if you live in a tiny rural village. If you're a big Internet personality like Jon and hold those beliefs, your ignorance stems from actively avoiding it, because you have the opportunity to do such a thing -- many people don't, and can't, because they are victims of it. At that point, you have no excuse. You're denying people's experiences based on your own lack of experience. I give the benefit of the doubt to a lot of people, but someone with very strong social capital that is both choosing to be uninformed and choosing to spread misinformation should take responsibility for the things they say. Whether you mean it or not, you're definitely negatively impacting people's lives with your comments.

And really, when is someone truly malicious? Most people hold beliefs because they are convinced they are in the right. If I was into eugenics and believed a certain subset of people are selfishly endangering the future of humanity with an inferior gene pool, am I malicious or merely misguided? I personally believe the current culture of condemnation or "cancelling" people as a knee-jerk reaction gets us nowhere, but malice or not, the impact is the same. Your intentions are frankly irrelevant.

Not that in the case of Jon it matters much considering he's still getting millions of views in the span of a few days. People can choose not to support his content if they want, though, and some rando judging Jon's self-conceit in the shape of extreme and harmful ignorance isn't making him lose any sleep. People don't like being confronted with accusations of racism and that makes them defensive. This is a cyclical argument on what is the best way to generate lasting change/awareness and we're not about to reinvent the wheel here.
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I am both surprised and not surprised this topic is like this now
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I would understand malice as someone knowing what's wrong about racism, but using it just to exploit the ignorance of others for their own personal gain

basically, "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket."
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If someone tells you wealthy blacks commit more crimes than poor whites and you automatically believe it and repeat it without research, its because some part of that statement aligns enough with your prior ideas about race that you WANT to believe it.
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yeah, it's an unfortunate part of the human condition that whenever we are accused of being incorrect about something, we instinctively dig our heels in and overcommit. i don't know why. humans suck, i guess.

but this is sort of why echo chambers exist, and it's possible for someone like jontron, even with the entire internet at his disposal, to confine himself to places that continue to support his views, while being convinced that anyone with the opposite view is just a brainwashed liberal or whatever.

so on one hand i agree with you that the microcosm really should not exist, but i think current social media trends prove that you can make your own microcosm wherever you want, sometimes without even realizing you're doing it.

it's true that everyone thinks they are "on the right side", so actual maliciousness can be hard to define. i started to actually take a peek at some alt-right forums and realized that if you ask them, they will legit tell you "oh we have nothing against other races at all! we truly wish the best for them, we just think it should be in a country that isn't ours", so i had to sort of step back and be like "well shit wait, maybe it's harder than i thought to decide where the line is"

i guess my simplified view is if jontron legit said "yes i believe black people are inferior and we should be keeping them out of the country" then i'd be like "okay that is overtly racist, very bad, malicious" but when he hasn't quite said that, i'm still in "benefit of the doubt" mode. but that may be overly simplistic.

and yeah i agree with you that kneejerk condeming doesn't help, and also that we're not reinventing the wheel here, so whatever. but ty for explaining your PoV, i do want to eventually get to the point where I can sort out exactly how naive i should be vs how much of a harder stance i should take, so this helps.

Punnyz posted...

I am both surprised and not surprised this topic is like this now

sorry >_> i think we're having a pretty civilized and reasonable discussion!

SantaRPidgey posted...

Offensive and "wrong" are not the same thing. You can think its wrong that the parking garage smells like pee, but it would be super bizarre to step into a parking garage and feel offended that it smells like pee. Like at what point are you going to get over it and start doing something productive (clean the pee) or ignore it.

Are you suggesting JonTron needs to be cleansed?
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Jakyl25 posted...

If someone tells you wealthy blacks commit more crimes than poor whites and you automatically believe it and repeat it without research, its because some part of that statement aligns enough with your prior ideas about race that you WANT to believe it.

yeah kind of this too. like if you tell me that statistic i will first of all press X to doubt, but also i'll think "well okay but can we examine the society those people live in, their economic standing, how they were brought up, how they were treated by society, etc, that might lead to a stat like that". so i can see why, if someone doesn't very thoroughly vet a statistic like that before quoting it, it's sort of... willful ignorance.

(for the record i have no clue where the stat comes from and/or what about it is wrong)

Destiny is cool
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what pisses me off about jontron in the jontron/destiny video is that jontron goes "young blacks commit a disproportional amount of crime" and then goes "but i don't really want to go into it." hey douchebag, if you "don't want to go into it" perhaps you shouldn't drop an extremely inflammatory line like that with no explanation. yeah, eventually he did elaborate but only because destiny was pushing him to do so.

maybe i would have given him the benefit of the doubt if he seemed more willing to have a legit debate about the topic but yeah, at the very least he comes off as quite unpleasant to me. racist, possibly.
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I think some of his videos are really funny. Typically the older stuff before he moved to NYC and increased production values and started having a set and stupid crap like that. Despite that, the Flex Tape video of his is my favorite of all his videos. It comes off as pretty natural reactions, lower production values than most his other new stuff, funny jokes, and frankly it just seems like he actually felt passionate about the video. Like I really believe he was at a bar, saw the commercial and thought 'this is insane I should make a video' and churned the thing out in like a day or two without overthinking.
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Mr Lasastryke posted...

what pisses me off about jontron in the jontron/destiny video is that jontron goes "young blacks commit a disproportional amount of crime" and then goes "but i don't really want to go into it." hey douchebag, if you "don't want to go into it" perhaps you shouldn't drop an extremely inflammatory line like that with no explanation.

maybe i would have given him the benefit of the doubt if he seemed more willing to have a legit debate about the topic but yeah, at the very least he comes off as quite unpleasant to me. racist, possibly.

yeah this was a huge problem to me, it just reeks of someone that truly believes awful shit but doesn't want to get into it because they know of the backlash.

which is what gives me less "benefit of doubt", as he comes off as someone that's hiding even more than he exposed and that any "i'm not really racist", or "i'm not saying this is what i believe, but..." hedging is due to the most obvious fact that racism is unpopular (at least, when it's admitted)
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I LOVE jontron

strongly disagree with his beliefs but oh wells. i don't think it makes him not a person.

Also while a few of the things he says goes too far, i think the very notion of him having anti immigration stances sets off a lot of people (here included) to calling him a racist. There are a few things that do make him racist, but I don't think concerns about tons of undocumented illegal Mexican immigrants automatically makes somebody racist. I think it's weird that a lot of people here think that way.
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a lot of people are bring up jontron's super racist meltdown when he was upset that "white nations aren't allowed to protect their culture" because it resulted in him being invited onto a twitch stream where he mentioned at least a dozen white nationalist talking points over a two hour interview, but not enough people remember when jontron went into a sexist tirade because the women's march happened

anyway, before jontron was known for being a shit, i'd only seen him in that shovel knight amiibo announcement trailer and i found that obnoxious, so no, i don't like him.
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CoolCly posted...

Also while a few of the things he says goes too far, i think the very notion of him having anti immigration stances sets off a lot of people (here included) to calling him a racist. There are a few things that do make him racist, but I don't think concerns about tons of undocumented illegal Mexican immigrants automatically makes somebody racist. I think it's weird that a lot of people here think that way.

he thinks foreigners dilute the gene pool and that any country with mass immigration is being ruined by mass immigration. weird how people are framing this as racist!
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iiicon posted...

CoolCly posted...

Also while a few of the things he says goes too far, i think the very notion of him having anti immigration stances sets off a lot of people (here included) to calling him a racist. There are a few things that do make him racist, but I don't think concerns about tons of undocumented illegal Mexican immigrants automatically makes somebody racist. I think it's weird that a lot of people here think that way.

he thinks foreigners dilute the gene pool and that any country with mass immigration is being ruined by mass immigration. weird how people are framing this as racist!

not just ruined but obliterated by overwhelming minorities

and in a truly incredible feat, cite the decimation of Native American populations as his reasoning
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i did say he's a racist
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CoolCly posted...

i did say he's a racist

yet you love him?

i like plenty of people i disagree with, but i probably wouldn't be able to enjoy anyone who's flat-out racist.
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i mean it doesnt make his videos any less amazing
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complaining about people bringing racism into the arguments about racial issues by someone you admit is a racist is pretty weird man
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I like his older content, but hate his political views.
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Jon's humor just gets to me. I can't help it. >_<
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Dels posted...

i guess my simplified view is if jontron legit said "yes i believe black people are inferior and we should be keeping them out of the country" then i'd be like "okay that is overtly racist, very bad, malicious" but when he hasn't quite said that, i'm still in "benefit of the doubt" mode. but that may be overly simplistic

<_< Is that really the only thing thatd make you think someone is racist or holds racist beliefs?
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ChaosTonyV4 posted...

Dels posted...

i guess my simplified view is if jontron legit said "yes i believe black people are inferior and we should be keeping them out of the country" then i'd be like "okay that is overtly racist, very bad, malicious" but when he hasn't quite said that, i'm still in "benefit of the doubt" mode. but that may be overly simplistic

<_< Is that really the only thing thatd make you think someone is racist or holds racist beliefs?

no i said that's the very simplified version

the line is... somewhere. i'd really have to judge in a case by case scenario haha. and there's a difference between overt racism and subconscious.

i don't really want to discuss that other than to say yeah you're right there's a lot of nuance so please don't take my simplified explanation there as anything other than one silly sentence