Friday, November 11, 2005

Favorite Language, Blue


Thanks
to Majcher, for sending me a link on IGDA forums that had a minor little back-and-forth on my Warren Spector post.

Most surprising, to me, was this little nugget, from arsagano:

"How you present an argument is more important, if not drastically so, than the argument itself. Since I couldn't finish the article, I have no idea if his points were valid or not. When you attempt to debate using such harsh language you completely undermine your viewpoint."

The saddest thing, to me, about such a statement is that the author will probably never experience Bukowski, or Hunter S. Thompson, or Chuck Palahniuk.

They'll probably never give a chance to certain types of music simply because they use vocabulary in a manner they find distasteful. And they'll ignore the many excellent movies that have employed vulgarity.

I don't think I undermine my viewpoint by using harsh language, because my viewpoint includes harsh language.

The presentation is more important than the message? Did I miss a memo? Or is this some kind of extension of the videogame industry's fixation on graphics over gameplay?

Here's gametitan:

"I couldnt get past the harsh language, just seemed to juvenile.Warren's post was well written and mature from a developer with a praised career. Countering that with something that is juvenile just makes Warren's case more stronger."

I would have rather had some discussion of, oh, my content rather than the window dressing. As it is, disparaging my post (and not reading it) over some potty mouth makes me wonder, then, gametitan: What's your point?

You didn't read the post and then you cite the presence of a few curse words in order to label the whole thing too juvenile.

What really bothers me when people dismiss ideas whole cloth simply because of "bad" words (and when they use their dismissal as grounds to call the work childish) is the implication that when I use profanity it's reflexive; As if I were not aware whatsoever of my word choices and the reactions that some people might have toward them.

Believe me, I'm aware.

I have a dream . . . that in the future my words will be judged, not by their content, but by whether or not I use harsh language.

Anyway, thought this was an interesting little aside.

Now I'm going to wait for the inevitable comment that suggests I'm far too sensitive and shouldn't post on the Internet and so on.

4 comments:

Chris said...

What a fascinating model for political revolution this is... We need not come up with arguments to overthrow oppresion - we just need to make the tyrants talk profanity, as this weakens their position!

Seriously, I am sensitive to the fact that some people have been conditioned to respond in negative ways to swear words, but it is pure sophistry to claim that a person's argument is strengthened by an opponents decision to employ "bad language" (except perhaps in politics, a formal debate contest, or in a newspaper war of words, where public support is an issue).

Such delightful nonsense!

Anonymous said...

Look maw, someone taught a pussy to talk!

Anonymous said...

Politeness? Man, fuck that shit.

Anonymous said...

i see a clear distinction between a juvenile message and juvenile vocabulary. it makes me think of jack thompson vs. penny arcade.