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TotalHalibut aka TotalBiscuit aka The Cynical Brit

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Jinxmenow Ghosts N' Stuff Remix from everywhere you look, everywhere you look Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: Not caught up in your love affair
Ghosts N' Stuff Remix
#151: Nov 21st 2014 at 5:19:15 PM

[up][up] Jim Sterling ranks high on the list of gaming personalities I think would be better suited to a burger-flipping job. He's too wishy-washy for me.

And if you're coming here just to complain, then hit the road, Jack.

"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."
shoboni Since: Oct, 2010
#152: Nov 21st 2014 at 5:24:47 PM

Jim has said a lot of things I strongly agree with(his stances on Piracy and people whining about gay options in games being backwards bigots being good examples), but he's said just as much that makes me go "what the hell?".

Jinxmenow Ghosts N' Stuff Remix from everywhere you look, everywhere you look Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: Not caught up in your love affair
Ghosts N' Stuff Remix
#153: Nov 21st 2014 at 5:47:40 PM

We've had a good talk about Jim Sterling. I think we should keep the rest of it in the Jim Sterling thread.

"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."
Jinxmenow Ghosts N' Stuff Remix from everywhere you look, everywhere you look Since: Oct, 2012 Relationship Status: Not caught up in your love affair
Ghosts N' Stuff Remix
#155: Nov 21st 2014 at 5:54:25 PM

Some people say that Total Biscuit is a bigot, or a racist, or a sexist. If that was the case, he certainly wouldn't attack notable racist, sexist, and bigot Dark Syde Phil with such vitriol.

And if you want proof that DSP is a racist, here it is

"Monsters are tragic beings. They are born too tall, too strong, too heavy. They are not evil by choice. That is their tragedy."
shoboni Since: Oct, 2010
#156: Nov 21st 2014 at 6:44:50 PM

Nor would he have a entire video discussing the subject of sexism in gaming and defending a reviewer for calmly pointing something that found offensive and spending the next 20min discussing the potential sexism of the Dn D trope quite a bit better than a certian someone else managed to.

edited 21st Nov '14 6:47:53 PM by shoboni

Nettacki Since: Jan, 2010
#157: Nov 21st 2014 at 7:23:31 PM

I wouldn't call TB any of those things. I would, however concede that he's what some would say a bit ignorant on certain social matters. For example, he doesn't think white privilege makes a lot of sense, saying that it's more of a class issue than a race issue. True, he may be right that a lot of talk about white privilege is America centric, and my impression is that he has at least admitted that since he grew up in a part of Britain that's predominantly white, he sees things differently from the average American who grows up in a multicultural area. His point is also that the people you're talking to can come from a different perspective than you, and thus one should hesitate mindlessly calling them names for not sharing your point of view, which I can sort of agree with. But even after saying all that, he's still a bit ignorant on race issues due to his upbringing.

And also, just recently he commented on a Ukranian pro Gamer's use of the word "rape" against a female competitor and agreed that suspending him was the right call, so again I can't really say he's sexist except in rare occasions where he comes off like it unintentionally.

edited 21st Nov '14 7:27:45 PM by Nettacki

shoboni Since: Oct, 2010
#158: Nov 21st 2014 at 7:29:25 PM

He's right in a way because(and I can't speak for the UK because I've never been there), in the US class privilege matters quite a bit more than racial privilege in all but a few things.

edited 21st Nov '14 8:08:43 PM by shoboni

SpookyMask Since: Jan, 2011
#159: Nov 21st 2014 at 10:10:01 PM

I can say that white privilege as concept IS hard to understand for people from countries that are... Umm, forgot the word, but it meant that population is mostly composed of single large group with some small minorities on top of it tongue

Anyway, dude, don't show up and be like "He has said things that make him total bastard in my opinion" without actually telling what those things are so that we can discuss it

edited 21st Nov '14 10:11:01 PM by SpookyMask

IFwanderer use political terms to describe, not insult from Earth Since: Aug, 2013 Relationship Status: Wishfully thinking
use political terms to describe, not insult
#160: Nov 22nd 2014 at 4:46:53 AM

Umm, forgot the word, but it meant that population is mostly composed of single large group with some small minorities on top of it
Homogeneous?

1 2 We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be. -KV
vandro Shop Owner from The little shop that wasn't Since: Jul, 2009
Shop Owner
#161: Nov 22nd 2014 at 4:59:11 AM

White Privilege is a thing that is very US-centric as an idea. Like people here don't tend to group people simply based on racial categories but more on class categories, so using the concept of white privilege in a country that is made up 70% of mestizos is meaningless as a way to express the inherent inequalities present in the system.

Heatth (X-Troper) Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
#162: Nov 22nd 2014 at 5:58:15 AM

[up]White privilege still shows up if the 20% of white people still have an underlying advantage over the others, so it isn't completely meaningless. It is still quite different as a phenomenon than what Internet paints, though.

Anyway, yeah, "White Privilege" an even the racial concept of 'White' itself vary a lot from country to country. To pretend it always work the way it works in US is one annoying trends in the Internet (and they do it fore everything, not just race).

Back to Total Biscuit. I don't know enough of Britain to be sure, but I am a bit skeptical when he says people of his town have no privilege for being white. Saying that "some of the richest people were Indian and Pakistani" means little without full contextnote . Even if that is the true on his home town, I would suspect the white folks from there who go live in London will have more advantages than black or Indian people who do the same. So, yeah, I suspect he is being ignorant in his rantnote . He is still not a bad person for holding that opinion, though. And he is not even exactly wrong as his overall point is probably correct. In Britain, classes matter a lot, so the concept of "white privilege", as it works in US, sounds silly for him.

vandro Shop Owner from The little shop that wasn't Since: Jul, 2009
Shop Owner
#163: Nov 22nd 2014 at 6:40:18 AM

I am sorry to keep the derail a bit. Like, that 20 percent of white is made up of Ashkenazi businessmen and really old money so, white here is not just the same white as in the US. What is more telling is that a big deal of people on the "mestizo" category here will still self-identify as white, me included. Which is odd when most of the police authority is either non-white mestizo or black.

shoboni Since: Oct, 2010
#164: Nov 22nd 2014 at 8:44:44 AM

That's the problem with the concept of privilege, it tends to get used in a very US-Centric context.

ShadowHog from Earth Since: May, 2009 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
#165: Nov 22nd 2014 at 8:52:13 PM

Anyway, dude, don't show up and be like "He has said things that make him total bastard in my opinion" without actually telling what those things are so that we can discuss it.
Well, it's mostly what Nettacki was getting at - his assertions that white males aren't in any way more privileged rub me the wrong way. It's not even an America-centric thing like he claims it is, either, since I know at least one British person who's had to endure racist remarks or actions just because he's noticeably slightly black. Heck, even in terms of world power, us white men have the biggest bulk of it, holding a good chunk of the seats of power both in North America and Europe. To say otherwise just strikes me as a mind-bogglingly blind thing to do.

There's also that time he explicitly mentioned the name of a woman writer with regards to a "sexism against men does not exist" Kotaku article he found ridiculous. Soon after, said woman was being bombarded with harassment. When called out on it, TB shrugged off any responsibility and claimed that he has no control over his followers. I do not find that true - he has control insofar as he could've, y'know, just not mentioned her by name, or perhaps even a token "guys, stop harassing this woman".

There's also, well, the verboten subject (you know which one), where his stance and mine are very different. I think they started to disown him or something around November 10th, though? It's hard for me to say.

In short, he's really bad when it comes to social issues, and that doesn't sit well with me. We can at least agree he's generally on the mark with PC games, but for me, personally, that aforementioned failing of his is too difficult to ignore.

I will concede, though, that in researching this a smidgen further while writing up this post, at least one of the points against him that I had lined up (calling Patreon "welfare") actually doesn't really work when read in its full context (although he doesn't exactly mention which Patreon accounts he feels are welfare, I can imagine such a scenario well enough that I don't think mentioning one was really necessary).

edited 22nd Nov '14 8:55:16 PM by ShadowHog

Moon
shoboni Since: Oct, 2010
#166: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:06:52 PM

I'd argue neither of those things are quite as bad you make out(and that's honestly hypocritical because some of the people Repurae, who's thread you frequent have sporked have received tons of shit as a result, like Queenie.)

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#167: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:09:27 PM

Then if I say the same thing? That I find Total Biscuit's calling out and then feigning helplessness when his fans harassed her to be utterly tasteless on his part? Because I'm NOT a Retsupurae fan.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
Elle Since: Jan, 2001
#168: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:18:21 PM

I'm not going to say I agree with him on everything, but I give him a lot of credit for both being aware of some of his own faults (mostly his temperament ones) and being willing to engage in calm discussion with people that don't agree with him willing to offer him the same. (This is at least partly behind some of the recent editorial videos.)

Also, he has told fans not to harass people he criticizes. Whether they take the hint or not...

edited 22nd Nov '14 9:19:50 PM by Elle

vandro Shop Owner from The little shop that wasn't Since: Jul, 2009
Shop Owner
#169: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:30:23 PM

"Us white men hold the biggest bulk of power"....Okay, that is true but I wouldn't say white privilege to the posts in Europe, I mean, what other ethnic groups have settlements in Europe that lasted to this day? Like, in North America I understand the concern given the bloody racial history of the region, the slavery, the genocide of the native americans, but Europe? That was white people killing other white people for centuries. Please expand on that, I wouldn't lump white privilege into a ball with xenophobia and racism, they are part of the same problem but are different manifestations with varying degrees of explicit and implicit forms as well.

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#170: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:39:52 PM

White Europe, even in it's wars, was able to take control of most of the Western world and pretty much destroyed the future of most of Africa and South America. It's the pillaging, enslaving, and eventual just leaving them to their fates that's why Africa is such a shithole today.

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
ShadowHog from Earth Since: May, 2009 Relationship Status: Healthy, deeply-felt respect for this here Shotgun
#171: Nov 22nd 2014 at 9:41:11 PM

I'd argue neither of those things are quite as bad you make out(and that's honestly hypocritical because some of the people Repurae, who's thread you frequent have sporked have received tons of shit as a result, like Queenie.)
I don't think that works. No matter how you slice it, racial and gender inequality is a very real thing. I'm lucky enough to have been born a white male, so I get spared the brunt of it, but I'm not going to pretend it doesn't exist just because I'm not on the receiving end of it. To act like it doesn't or is somehow not a big deal is just sticking your fingers in your eardrums and screaming "la-la-la can't hear you" - that is, incredibly insensitive to the people it actually does affect. Or, more accurate to what I believe TB actually was doing, to assert us white guys have it just as bad seems to be taking an inaccurately-skewed perspective.

And yes, Retsupurae has fully owned up to their fanbase going nuts on people they riff. It's part of why they generally have moved on to riffing on games instead of people trying to play games for the Internet, or in cases that they are riffing LPs, try to avoid giving away too many hints as to who they're riffing, not mentioning the channel hosting the video they're commenting over or blanking out scarecams. This is because they know that if their fanbase starts to harass the people they're riffing, they are indirectly responsible for it happening - so they've been erring more on the side of caution to not let it happen in the first place.

"Us white men hold the biggest bulk of power"....Okay, that is true but I wouldn't say white privilege to the posts in Europe, I mean, what other ethnic groups have settlements in Europe that lasted to this day? Like, in North America I understand the concern given the bloody racial history of the region, the slavery, the genocide of the native americans, but Europe? That was white people killing other white people for centuries. Please expand on that, I wouldn't lump white privilege into a ball with xenophobia and racism, they are part of the same problem but are different manifestations with varying degrees of explicit and implicit forms as well.
Well, I mean, you sort of implied it yourself when summarizing Europe as "white people killing other white people" when Europe has plenty of ethnicities other than that. It's not like France has no black people, or England has no people of Indian or Pakistani descent, yet when I think of the people in power in either country, or most European countries in general, the first thing that comes to mind is rich, gray-haired white people - probably not quite fair to the aforementioned non-whites.

Now granted, I'm nowhere near familiar enough with the people in power of every European country to say for certain that it isn't all white men. I could be very wrong there. It just seemed like a safe assumption to make, considering.

edited 22nd Nov '14 9:43:05 PM by ShadowHog

Moon
vandro Shop Owner from The little shop that wasn't Since: Jul, 2009
Shop Owner
#172: Nov 22nd 2014 at 10:04:31 PM

These minorities arrived way later than when my "white people killing white people for centuries" comment took place, only when the slave trade and the colonization of India did these groups move in any concerted way as inmigrants or slaves towards Europe. The answer to the question:"Why aren't the minorities in Europe more represented in its goverments" is not simply because "white privilege", there are class issues that are present in all if not most of these countries, where the children of the rich and powerful can afford to go to political careers where the children of the disenfranchised are not. Class categories are more important than race categories, because race categories fluctuate in time and place and are a placeholder for ingroup-outgroup labels.

maxwellelvis Mad Scientist Wannabe from undisclosed location Since: Oct, 2009 Relationship Status: In my bunk
Mad Scientist Wannabe
#173: Nov 22nd 2014 at 10:16:27 PM

It is pretty white privilege when not a lot of people protest France's efforts to basically stamp out Islam in their borders by oppressing all public displays of religion Muslims practice. If you recall, there was some law passed in France a few years ago that made it illegal for Muslim women to wear headscarves, hijabs, burqas, you name it, in public. Or is that just flat-out racism?

Of course, don't you know anything about ALCHEMY?!- Twin clones of Ivan the Great
vandro Shop Owner from The little shop that wasn't Since: Jul, 2009
Shop Owner
#174: Nov 22nd 2014 at 10:24:56 PM

Islamophobia, Racism, Xenophobia...Pick your poison. But white privilege that isn't. White privilege in racial theory is all about advantages to the ingroup. Banning displays of religious significance to a minority is rather the opposite, a demonstration of an innate disadvantage of the outgroup. People not caring for the outgroup is not a show of privilege but a show of disinterest.

edited 22nd Nov '14 10:26:17 PM by vandro

SpookyMask Since: Jan, 2011
#175: Nov 22nd 2014 at 11:23:38 PM

Yeaaaaaaah, white privilege isn't exact same thing as racism, sure its form of racism(its more subtle than what France is doing <_<), but its still pretty USA centric thing. I'm not saying it doesn't exist outside of USA at all, I'm saying that people don't recognize the concept outside of USA. Unless they spend enough time on Internet in certain circles.

And yeah, its annoying when people on Internet keep assuming whole western world works exactly like USA tongue

edited 22nd Nov '14 11:24:44 PM by SpookyMask


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