It’s been a wild afternoon. KingofPol had his farewell (yes, again, lol) stream with Anna Merlan of Jezebel, and Sargon of Akkad. Afterwards, she thought it was fair to release an out of context email exchange she had with the host, but that’s Gawker for you. The stream was a little testy, but at least she came onto the show. Leigh Alexander, Zoe Quinn, Ben Kuchera, Nathan Grayson…they all ducked chances to come on. So props for that, Anna. I am a little disappointed they didn’t get to ask you about your UVA rape hoax fail, but hey, you can’t get everything you want, right?
Still, I didn’t come here to talk about that, actually. I came here to talk about a new study the federal government is funding. It deals with research on the “toxic rhetoric” of online gamers. It’s not a huge sum of money, but you can see where this is headed. I can at least…and I don’t like it.
Here’s an excerpt from the Free Beacon article:
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is spending $29,403 to study the “toxic rhetoric” of online video gamers.
The grant is part of $22.8 million in new funding the agency announced Monday, which also includes $33,000 to create a college course on “whether peace is possible.”
The video game initiative, entitled, “Notoriously Toxic: Understanding the Language and Costs of Hate and Harassment in Online Games” is being conducted by the Georgia State University Research Foundation.
The project is described as a “cross-disciplinary workshop and follow-up activities to develop a set of essays and a metadata schema to understand and describe toxic rhetoric in online spaces, with an emphasis on large-scale multiplayer computer games.”
So they’re gonna go out and study people talking shit to each other during online gaming sessions. Sounds like it should be illuminating. I’ve seen some crazy ass studies, so I don’t know if I can call this one the absolute worst. But it’s damn close. People get heated and say mean shit sometimes on the Internet. Do we really need to spend money on finding that out? I don’t think so.
Where do they intend to go with this? The study mentioned today is only one small piece to the puzzle, but as I’ve always said, I fully expect our SJW foes to launch a frontal attack against online anonymity within the next couple of years. Also look for them to push for harsher restrictions on speech in general. The warning signs all point to this. The good thing is, this will bring in more reinforcements. The bad thing is, a lot of things we hold dear will be on the line.
I’m going to cut this one a little short, though, because I’m really fucking tired after a day full of events. Also, I have a new computer that just came in, so I’m going to go pick up a new monitor, and hook that bitch up. I’m finally joining the PC Master Race lol. Be sure to let me know what you think about either of these stories down in the #BasedCommentSection.
