Very true and there are actually laws in alot of countries that make these behavior and taking the law into your own hands illegal and for a good reason it's like this kind of thing didn't happen on the regular in the middle ages

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People love voting for the 6 feet underdog.

Well that’s just natural selection, innit

So, although they may not have a problem with trans people, you believe that one of those other labels must apply to them, just because they mentioned cancel culture? Do I understand you now?

And my answer explained quite clearly that I wasn't talking exclusively about transphobic people. If you cared to read what I said you'd have understood that I was saying that the mere concept of "cancel culture" comes from spaces that are heavily associated with various forms of discrimination, and that the only ones believing that kind of cancel culture bullshit are the ones that are already convinced by the rest.

If you talk about cancel culture seriously, I will take you as seriously as if you start talking about Bill Gates making an evil vaccine to solve overpopulation, or about governments controlled by lizards disguised as humans.

> We're talking about people with mortgages and health insurance and kids going to school who's livelihood will be destroyed by this.

Sorry, but not matter how you spin it, it was always a possibility the game would flop. Nothing is a safe bet. Therefore, guilting people who choose to boycott the game for ruining the livelihoods of the developers is just inherently silly to me. Highly anticipated games flop all the time. It's a shame, but even leaving politics aside for a second, no one is obligated to buy a product out of pity for its creators.

Especially since, as we've established, they have already been compensated for the work they have finished. All the sales figures affect is whether or not they get their bonuses and get to go on to create another game. But that was always going to be the case anyway. This is a normal process in the industry. Worst case scenario, they pack up and move on to the next project. No one is going to be permanently unemployed from this.

> But that's also not what's happing here. There's a LOT of harassment being directed at people who aren't boycotting, which isn't cool and just makes the anti-Rowling movement look bad. Getting mad at people because they're not joining in on two-minute hate.

I agree that attacking people over this is wrong, but let's clarify what an attack is.

Doxxing, ad hominem, verbal abuse, etc, yes those are attacks.

Advocating for people to boycott the game, educating people on Rowling's attacks on trans rights or criticizing bad aspects of the franchise itself are not attacks. That is activism, and you are not entitled to be unbothered by activism in the public sphere because that would defeat the entire point.

You can push back against the activism, criticize/critique it, choose to ignore it, etc. I think you raise some valid points, for example. But broadly categorizing it all as mere attacks and harassment sparked by two minute hate is reductive.

I partially agree, but it depends on what you classify as an attack.

Doxxing, ad hominem, verbal abuse, etc, yes those are attacks.

Advocating for people to boycott the game, educating people on Rowling's attacks on trans rights or criticizing bad aspects of the franchise itself are not attacks. That is activism, and you are not entitled to be unbothered by activism in the public sphere because that would defeat the entire point. Not being able to earn money from something that people are actively protesting against is not a tragedy. This is not the only game out there that people can play or stream.

No, wouldn't go so far. I'm sure many of the people buying the game simply just aren't that invested in the larger politics and just see it as any other game. Whether it is wrong to financially support someone who works to actively harm society is, I concede, a moral gray area. I'm not necessarily saying I agree with this site's intention, but I'm mostly indifferent to it personally.

I was moreso just arguing the larger point that just because bullying group X is wrong doesn't mean that group Y doesn't deserve that same treatment. Just because we know we shouldn't harass vulnerable or innocent groups doesn't mean we must extend that same kindness to bigots.

I am less concerned with any individual person's purchasing decision than I am of the words and actions of the figurehead spreading hateful speech in the first place, in this case Rowling herself. Going after the people who play the game isn't something I am personally interested in, but it doesn't mean I have to be outraged that other people do it.

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Let's be honest. We, as the human race, love this kind of food. With that said, it's better served in January or March. People with the best of intentions will fall into this trap for at least another decade. It's black history month and black people love fried chicken, and fuck, I do, too. Let's have it for lunch in February. Oh god I'm fired. Is that it, can we now no longer eat fried chicken or watermelon for 28 days? I'll just eat it quietly by myself.

no Chris Brown?

Sometimes a dead mayor is better than a living mayor

Whatever model you're using has to be trained on human speech, ideally the largest possible data pool of human speech available, and that's going to include some bigoted language most likely, especially since you're probably getting that training data from online comments and people tend to be more comfortable being assholes online. You can put in safeguards to try and prevent an AI from saying certain things, but you can't 100% predict what it's going to generate.

No they didn't. They just happened to serve it in February and of course the media is eating it up. Like who doesn't like fried chicken and watermelon? I'm white af and I like it.

Sounds about right

>No one should feel obligated to buy a product whose values they don't agree with so that the company who made it can get its investment back. Everyone involved in making the game is aware of the potential that it may flop going into it, and in fact that is statistically by far the more likely scenario.

True. But in this case, it's not the product whose values they don't agree with. The designers of the game seem to support trans rights and have even included a potential trans wizard in the game.

And I think they thought the game was a pretty safe bet when they were going in. When you start to produce a AAA video game based on the most beloved book series of the last twenty-five years having it "flop" doesn't seem likely. Not a lot of AAA games flop.

We're talking about people with mortgages and health insurance and kids going to school who's livelihood will be destroyed by this. And people are just shrugging them off as collateral damage to thumb their nose at a second richest author in the world who won't even notice the dip in her ridiculous net wealth.

>I know it sucks to be dragged down by association, but we didn't know then what we know now and that is nobody's fault.

Nobody's fault except the people declaring guilt by association.

>I still think it is perfectly reasonable to boycott the game on principle alone, regardless of whose paycheck it may harm.

Even though it has zero impact on the person you want to boycott, as they've already been paid, had no input on the game, and are unaffected by its success or failure?

Boycotting this to get back at Rowling is as effective and meaningful as boycotting Alan Wake II. She'll probably make more money just from the insurance on the billion she already has in the bank.

But, okay, boycott if you want.
That's fine. It really is.
But that's also not what's happing here. There's a LOT of harassment being directed at people who aren't boycotting, which isn't cool and just makes the anti-Rowling movement look bad. Getting mad at people because they're not joining in on two-minute hate.

>Also, I'm skeptical of the claim that the game devs get a bonus if the game does well, but JKR doesn't. Do we actually know either of those to be true? I don't think it matters either way, I just find it hard to believe.

Licenses tend to be paid in advance. That's how licenses work. You pay for the rights knowing the name will bring in more people and allow you to sell more copies than an unrelated IP allowing you to recoup the added expense of having to pay for the license.

If the license holder also got more money because the game was a success, that would defeat the purpose licensing IP.

Okay... she might get some royalties. But sales of Harry Potter grew in 2022. Philsopher's Stone was still the 2nd best selling children's book. So even if she gets a chunk of money from the game... it will be peanuts to what she's already making from continued book sales.

So it's killing a game studio and wrecking a bunch of lives and harassing a bunch of other video game players for literally no effect. For a game that Rowling cares so little about she couldn't even be bothered to hyper on her Twitter with a single retweet,

This is a really hard philosophical question. Does language have inherent meaning? What does something mean if it's created by a machine?

Even if a computer writes, "The dog ran up the hill," you understand those words in that order. I don't think it matters if the AI "understands" what it wrote because the humans around it do and can potentially be affected by its statements/actions.

I can understand bans like this. Kal Penn did a really good job of talking about racist jokes/stereotypes and how they messed with him as a kid.

Then there's the danger that humor is being used as a cover to just say cruel things and to push an oppressive agenda.

Partially because trolls intentionally bait the AI into saying something dumb.

I would suggest they make the world a better place by focusing their efforts on the root, Rowling, instead of cancelling or stream-bombing people who are just playing this game, or trying to starve/cancel the people who worked on it. The Harry Potter brand is popular enough that it might take generations to fade away even if this game never existed. From what I’ve read, Rowling doesn’t even get royalties from the game’s sales, and was only paid for use of her IP. Whether this game died in development, sells poorly, or gets buried by the backlash, Rowling is fine. She’s not the one who stands to lose anything from this witch hunt, and I don’t believe for a second that playing the game is equal to agreeing with her.

TL,DR: I’m not concerned about Rowling’s wealth. I’m concerned about the normies who are gonna get burned, unjustly, over this controversy.

I don’t think it’s prudish to say time and place, if u said not even in the privacy of your own home then you’d likely fall in that category

If someone states that they are going to kill people they are committing a crime. They don’t need a red flag law to address the situation and they keep people from buying guns in the sense that drug laws keep people from buying drugs. There are hundreds of millions of guns in the US. If red flag laws could keep prohibited people from obtaining firearms then we wouldn’t constantly see people arrested for having them illegally.

Red flag laws are easily circumvented by determined people and mass shooters are among the most determined.

Red flag laws deny due process standards. People are being deprived of rights simply on the basis that someone claims that someone else might misuse their rights. Can you imagine if the government simply determined that certain people couldn’t organize protests on the basis that they claim they might turn violent? Sorry people that want to hold police accountable. You are committing a felony if you organize a protest because the state decided your right to protest might be dangerous.

Are they, though? I suspect the vast majority are just people who like gaming or HP or earning a paycheck.

What you call "cancelling" is just "refusing to support, directly or indirectly, shit people". It does not and can not prevent anyone from talking or doing anything they want,it does not "cancel" anything. Harassment does those things but that's not what it is about here; also,harassment is illegal.