[kelnos]

I don't really understand this attitude, or line of reasoning, or whatever you want to call it.

Sure, if a company does something that you find reprehensible, not giving them further money (or attention) is certainly a reasonable -- and honorable! -- thing to do.

But if you've already purchased a standalone[0], non-subscription product from that company, and that company doesn't gain any benefit from your further use of that product (or lose anything from you stopping use), I feel like you're only hurting yourself if you stop using it.

I will concede that if the act of playing one of these standalone games makes you think of the bad thing the company did and makes you angry/upset, I guess it makes sense to stop playing them. But unless the bad thing they did is something personally/viscerally important to you, it feels like that's a bit of an odd trigger.

[0] If the game is multiplayer, and connects to a company-run server, I guess you could make the argument that they benefit in some way from their active-users numbers being higher. I personally don't find that argument all that compelling, but everyone can of course decide where the cutoff of benefit is for them.

[ctrl-j]

One of the things that companies rely on these days is engagement and playerbase. If you don't find that compelling, that's up to you, but Blizzard invests millions every year into maintaining their playerbase - so at least they find it compelling.

Just by being a part of the starcraft community, you are providing support to activision blizzard.

If we were talking about offline-only non-community driven content, sure... but this is a company that is almost entirely driven off of multiplayer games.

[lapetitejort]

To play Starcraft II, one must open Battle.net, potentially exposing themselves to ads for the latest shiny game, and may lead them to break their boycott by buying said game. Having to visit the store to use the product changes the dynamic. If I bought a widget from the widget store, then found out the owner sexually harassed their employees, I would continue to use the widget while boycotting the store because I would never have to visit it. But if I had to occasionally bring in the widget for a free cleaning, I'd stop using it.

[bakuninsbart]

Some of the best fiction was written by people with absolutely despicable opinions like Francois Céline or Knut Hamsun. You can see it in their art, but their art isn't limited to it, and still holds a lot of value. Friedrich Nietzsche's opinions on women and politics are plain dumb, yet his other thought can be extremely compelling, and he is rightfully one of the most influential thinkers of modern times.

Going back further in time will only make you miserable if you hold the work closely accountable to the person. Terrible people can still say really good things, and I don't believe it is different with games or modern entertainment in general. Old Blizzard games are still good, and old Louis CK sets are still funny.

[aftergibson]

Celine and Hamsun aren’t getting engagement activity from their in-app analytics. They also can’t respond to all of the legitimate criticisms against them. Activision can and they’ve decided to bring in the Pinkertons.

At the end of the day, another player booting up an Activision game is another (tiny) data point that says whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player. It’s not revenue driving right now, but in 6-12 months, this has blown over and enough of the tiny subset of temporarily outraged players will eventually start to generate revenue. That’s what they’re banking on.

Decide what you care about or don’t, but at least accept/own the impact of your decisions and don’t conflate the situation with century old authors.

[dylan604]

>whatever activity Activision/Blizzard is engaging in is a-ok with that player

This is definitely how Activision/Blizzard will interpret it. However, not every single gamer is tuned into these kinds of stories about the game makers. Some will be totally unawares of any of the shenanigans that occur behind the game. Not everybody has the time and/or interest for that. Just like people do/don't care about Amazon, Walmart, Nike, etc. Someone that does care will bring to light something that may garner media attention. Some people will see that, and get worked up about it. However, the majority of people will be just as happy to put their head back in the sand and continue on with their day-to-day.

I also came here to see if anyone else was calling that Activision/Blizzard's next move were to call in the Pinkertons.

[aftergibson]

I completely agree that you can’t act on what you don’t know. It’s almost impossible to act as an entirely ethical consumer today, who could know if a suppliers, suppliers supplier is doing something dodgy?

But let’s not throw the baby out with the bath water here. This case however is a pretty simple B2C relationship and if a consumer is aware of what Activision is up to and continues to support through revenue or engagement, simply accept that you don’t care about these issues enough to change your behaviour, we all make compromises in life.

What I’d like to avoid is consumers deluding themselves into thinking that playing Starcraft is fine because it’s the same as people buying the books of dead racists.

[falcolas]

One small difference between those specific artists and Activison-Blizzard - they're dead. But more importantly, their beliefs are also a product of their times.

ACTI doesn't have that excuse. They're all with us now, and their actions don't have the shield of being reasonable in the society they exist in.

[temp_account001]

Why should we value greatness more than morality? Should the magnitude of someone's impact overshadow the morality of their impact?

Opinions of celebrities don't exist in some sort of extra-dimensional cloistered thought bubble; they influence other minds and affect society in very real and measurable ways. Amplifying the celebrity status of these individuals by cherry-picking their acceptable works will in turn, unavoidably, also amplify their less-acceptable opinions -- though probably not by the same magnitude. But in general the masses are terrible at sorting out "oh, this is a righteous opinion that I should listen to" vs "this is a despicable one by the same person, but I have the intellectual & emotional maturity to be able to compartmentalize it". We're too tribal a species, on the average, for that. Our brains, societies, and cultures have not evolved to effectively handle multiculturalism well, ivory-tower internet freethinkers notwithstanding.

The flipside of cancel culture is moral nihilism, in which speech has no consequence and exists purely as a form of harmless intellectual exercise. But that's just not how it works in the real world. Speech has consequence, and for those wishing to prevent those consequences, sometimes ignoring the speaker and refusing to amplify their voice is the only realistic option they have, if they have no power to censor them outright or sufficiently amplify contrary opinions of their own. A canceled author isn't really very different from a boycotted company; it's a moral vote by a like-minded mass of humans who together value their version of morality more than that author's impacts. It's really not that difficult to not be an outspoken asshole.

Saying "I don't want to read this book" or "I don't want to play this game" because you don't like the author's values is a perfectly reasonable thing to do. It's very different from, say, government ban lists. So what if someone doesn't want to read Harry Potter or watch Weinstein movies anymore?

Back to the first question: why ought greatness be the measure of a person, instead of righteousness? Our species is largely full of mediocre apes with mediocre thoughts who nonetheless manage to coexist and thrive to some degree, yet are all too often led astray and into peril and evil by the "great" Machiavellian few among them. How does that help anything at all?

[mnowicki]

What we're Nietzsche's opinions on politics/women? I'm not surprised based on the bit of his work that I read that he has some unappealing thoughts on women, but am surprised to here his politics may be problematic as well(aside from the whole nazi affiliation thing - which as I understand is a misrepresentation of his work by his sister and her Nazi husband).

[boomboomsubban]

Nietzsche was ultimately pro authoritarianism and anti liberalism. His view on women is fairly standard nineteenth century misogyny, like how he "compliments" them by saying they are more clever and wicked than men.

[acituan]

You missed Heidegger being an outright Nazi, and not even a rank-and-file one.

Not being able to relate to an other if they are not pure is a failure in having strong enough ego boundaries. High functioning requires complexification of our boundaries; a confidence in deciding what goes in and what doesn't on the fly without requiring rigid codification of rules, which ultimately requires a confidence in ourselves; what we are and what we are not.

All-or-nothing purity is a way of keeping things simple and reducing the complex calculus the reality demands. Not saying this in a demeaning manner, because we all do this in varying degrees. But if one can't tell if they are being a "bad" person or not for making use of a "bad" person's valid idea/product, that could as well be a shortcoming of their own self-conceptualization than the "badness" of the other.

[user-the-name]

Terrible people can say good things, but there are a million good people out there saying good things that you could listen to instead.

Why spend the limited time you have in this world on consuming the works of terrible people? There is more out there than you could possibly experience in a lifetime. Why not dedicate that time to people who are not awful?

[harpersealtako]

There are a million authors worth reading if your standards are low enough, but there's only one Friedrich Nietzsche.

[user-the-name]

There are plenty, plenty of people who are as good or better to read.

There is only one of any given person, that is not an argument to read them either.

[yowlingcat]

A problem with privileging "good" is that it is socially constructed, and social constructions of good can sometimes reveal themselves rather painfully to be fads of the time which ironically are anything but good, such as Lysenkoism [1].

On the contrary, real insights tend to stand the test of time, which is why Nietzsche continues to remain relevant and timeless. Lysenkoism, not so much.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysenkoism

[user-the-name]

You are somehow turning a remote possibility into a near-certainty in this argument.

[manofmanysmiles]

Learning from an “awful” person helps you grow as a person.

Also understanding the enemy.

Also not all “consuming” of work is for “entertainment”.

[user-the-name]

Does it, though? Does it do that in a way that's better than just paying attention to people who aren't awful? I'm really not convinced here.

[akudha]

I guess different people draw lines at different levels. And it is a personal decision. One extreme would be to just care about the art and not the artist at all (especially if the artist is long dead and lived in a completely different era) and the other extreme would be to only support artists who we think are nice people. I suppose most people would fall somewhere in between.

We still celebrate conquerers like Genghis Khan after hundreds of years, even though they brought a ton of misery (especially Genghis, who was known for his cruelty) to the people they conquered and often to their own people. The pyramids, great wall of China etc were all built on the death of tens of thousands of workers.

Sometimes the more we learn, the more depressing it gets (Ignorance is bliss? lol)

[donmcronald]

Maybe it’s just a normal thing as you get older, but knowing the company mistreated people sucks the fun out of it for me. I’m not completely against playing the stuff I’ve already paid for, but they won’t get another penny from me.

I’d like to have a database that tracks the C-Suite employees. I’d personally boycott any company that hires any of them. Their careers should be over IMO. I wish we could take away Bobby’s money too, but that’ll never happen.

[akudha]

This app has been around for a while https://www.buycott.com/campaign/browse I do not know how good it is.

We should totally not give our money to shitty companies. But global commerce is so intertwined that it would quickly become very difficult to buy anything if we start closely looking at every company we give money to.

I don't know what the solution is. Boycotting is a start.

[cogman10]

Yeah, it really sucks and points to problems with our weak UN and world governments.

Sure, we may have somewhat high manufacturing standards in the US, but take a step into foreign soil and all the sudden all the rules are out the window. With companies specifically using countries with the weakest safety regs to cut costs.

It's why walmart keeps getting busted for using slave/child labor.

[XMPPwocky]

I don't think it's entirely unreasonable to feel weird about watching old DVDs of the Cosby Show, for example. With the "benefit" of context, the vibes are sort of irrevocably off.

[tcbawo]

Bill Cosby's character was a gynecologist whose office was in his basement (!)

[Phenomenit]

Yet Michael Jacksons music is still played on the radio and in other media contexts.

[anoonmoose]

Better comparison would be R. Kelly who, like Cosby, was actually convicted of what he was accused of, and did end up having a lot of radio stations (and other media contexts) stop using his music. Not all, but a good number.

[waterhouse]

I googled around, and ... has R. Kelly been convicted? Searching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._Kelly for the string "convict" yields only the sentence saying "R. Kelly had not ever actually been convicted of any crime", quoting a news article from 2019. There is mention of a "sentencing trial", but the cited article (from Dec 2020) says he has pled not guilty and that evidence will be presented, which also sounds like it hasn't reached the conviction stage. And recent news results don't mention convictions (other than "If convicted") either.

Do you have a citation?

[anoonmoose]

Uh, damn, you're right. Honestly, he's been in jail for so long now- 2.5 years and 22 counts against him- that I wrongly assumed/forgot he wasn't/Mandela effected it.

At the time of this writing I had 13 upvotes for a mostly wrong take. Still maintain that the jail time puts Kelly closer to Cosby than Jackson.

[afavour]

The allegations against Jackson surfaced while he was still very famous so you could argue it’s already been “priced in”, for want of a better phrase.

[yaseer]

Aside, but there seems to be a much higher level of collective cognitive dissonance with Michael Jackson, perhaps because of his stature in popular culture. I'm guilty of this myself - my brain sets a higher bar for evidence, perhaps unreasonably.

[Phenomenit]

Yeah, his music is so deeply ingrained in my mind that the "new" information doesn't stick. I have to many fond memories associated with his music and art that it always takes a few seconds for my mind to change course.

[steaknsteak]

He's also dead, so it's not like he is personally benefitting from our enjoyment of his music anyway.

[klyrs]

Yeah, same. As a lifelong fan of the genre, I think R. Kelly's work is boring pastiche, almost entirely forgettable (notable exception, "I believe I can fly" does have some nostalgic value). So it's never been a challenge to put his music away...

[aeturnum]

I think for many people, but certainly not all, the wider culture of an escapist work is important. Looking at a fanciful image doesn't automagically distract you, there needs to be some amount of collaboration between your mind and the media you're consuming. You need to accept what it offers as an alternative. That can be harder for people when they learn about how things were really made. It would be hard to take a work arguing against slavery seriously, for instance, if it used slavery to produce it.

I also think that these kinds of products, because they are indivisible creative works, suffer from rotting from within. Where you might be able to use the "reasonable" parts of Facebook or Google, once you start to think about a core element of a narrative as being in-geunine or compromised, that can undermine the other elements of the story.

Especially in this golden age of game development, I think there are many other alternatives to Blizzard's games that allow people to think less and escape more.

[minusSeven]

You buy a game not just to play it but also to support developers. If you don't give a shit about this part you can always pirate it. By telling the company you will no longer use their product you are sending a clear cut message about that you a paying customer will no longer use their product.

[supercanuck]

In 2021, your attention is a more valuable currency than you're wallet.