Thomas Mahler (Moon Studios CEO) on "Cancel Culture"

It is deeply, deeply important [...] to be loving and show understanding even to those we vehemently disagree with. Proper discourse is more important than ever.

And journalists need to understand their responsibilities in all this and start acting like journalists again.
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If only the tweet could make this happen. Maybe one day, but not while these outlets live in a constant state of desperation.
 
People have been using those talking points for years and nobody seems to care. The ones leveraging cancellation as a weapon aren't up for listening to reason, self reflecting, or thinking critically about what they're doing, it's the fact that several groups of people that never had any power suddenly got some and have been using and abusing it ever since. Like look at that Alyssa """"journalist"""" from Kotaku. She started out just writing clickbait shit nobody cared about, then when she got popular for a shitty hot take, she decided to double down on being just the biggest asshole because she was backed up by thousands of other assholes. It's a power thing.

The best way to combat this is by not engaging/not buying/not watching/not consuming anything by people that do this sort of thing if you don't like it. That will force them back into the game guide mines where they belong.
 
Pejo said:
People have been using those talking points for years and nobody seems to care. The ones leveraging cancellation as a weapon aren't up for listening to reason, self reflecting, or thinking critically about what they're doing, it's the fact that several groups of people that never had any power suddenly got some and have been using and abusing it ever since. Like look at that Alyssa """"journalist"""" from Kotaku. She started out just writing clickbait shit nobody cared about, then when she got popular for a shitty hot take, she decided to double down on being just the biggest asshole because she was backed up by thousands of other assholes. It's a power thing.

The best way to combat this is by not engaging/not buying/not watching/not consuming anything by people that do this sort of thing if you don't like it. That will force them back into the game guide mines where they belong.
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If I want to know about a game I always use YouTube. I really don't read any of these magazines or articles or game websites. It's all just useless to me when I can just watch somebody plays through the game or play parts of it or listen to somebody talk about what they like or didn't like.
 
I don't think social media overall is bad. It allowed me to reconnect with people I lost contact with over the years. Growing up a military brat, and joining the Military my life was very transient. Social Media allowed me to reconnect with people I never thought I would ever hear from again. Can it be abused and distorted? Of course. But just like life in the real world, I only choose to engage in what I care about and treat everything else as white noise.
 
plip.plop said:
I don't think social media overall is bad. It allowed me to reconnect with people I lost contact with over the years. Growing up a military brat, and joining the Military my life was very transient. Social Media allowed me to reconnect with people I never thought I would ever hear from again. Can it be abused and distorted? Of course. But just like life in the real world, I only choose to engage in what I care about and treat everything else as white noise.
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I agree that social media in and of itself isn't a bad thing. The current problem is probably that it has created echo chambers that are now at a large enough scale to have an impact on society.

When presenting your opinions and views in public you're usually in a position to be challenged. Never having your ideas challenged (even if they are "good" or "correct") is inherently a bad thing. Silencing dissenting opinions regardless of how they are presented is a slipper slope. Just look at places like Twitter and Resetera, there is no room for any constructive discussions at all.

Online I have the same approach as you though.
 
I remember him drinking the authoritarian cool-aid on resetera some years back. Then he got hitpieced himself, which I guess readjusted his perception of the world.
Now posting this publicly is actually quite brave, because authoritarians will have newfound reasons to hate and try to cancel him again.
More people with some standing and reputation become brave like this, the more the pendulum will swing away from the authoritarians.
 
It's funny how this whole cancel culture thing only really exists through the lens of the internet and social media......years ago only a few people would ever get to hear the views of the average person,now everyone can scream their ignorance from the rooftops and the whole world can judge you......of course there will be consequences,even though most of it is just mad people looking for attention.....as someone who lived a portion of his life before social media I'm just fine continuing on without it,I have no use for it.If you choose to engage with the crazy people of the world don't be surprised if crazy things happen to you.,,,,and that's exactly what people are doing when they use social media,you are choosing to engage with a lot of absolute nutcases,fuck that,I don't need crazy people in my life,lol.
 
Denton said:
I remember him drinking the authoritarian cool-aid on resetera some years back. Then he got hitpieced himself, which I guess readjusted his perception of the world.
Now posting this publicly is actually quite brave, because authoritarians will have newfound reasons to hate and try to cancel him again.
More people with some standing and reputation become brave like this, the more the pendulum will swing away from the authoritarians.
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True, I also just followed the crowd when the whole NeoGAF fallout happened without questioning it. I always loved internet forums, openly discussing this or that subject with people from across the world. That's probably why Moon works the way it does and why it's such a joy right now to work hand in hand with the community on No Rest for the Wicked.

In hindsight, I agree that I was stupid not to question things. I was told that ResetEra was the new NeoGAF and just went 'Oh, okay then'. But looking at ResetEra now, it seems like a pretty toxic place, that's why I stopped posting there. Because a lot of people on that forum are all too eager to kick others just to make themselves feel good about themselves.

I mean, this is why we always need to have a critical eye not just on everyone else, but on ourselves as well. Because we all make mistakes, judge too quickly and tend to follow the herd, even when the herd is heading into the wrong direction.
 
SCB3 said:


Damn, pretty much nailed it in a great articulate way as well
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Maurice Weber is a well respected and intelligent guy. Writing this open letter in another language is nothing more than self-staging. Most people who will read this tweet have no idea who Maurice Weber is and aren't able to follow the conversation.
 
KaiserBecks said:
Maurice Weber is a well respected and intelligent guy. Writing this open letter in another language is nothing more than self-staging. Most people who will read this tweet have no idea who Maurice Weber is and aren't able to follow the conversation.
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I like Maurice as well and enjoy his content. But every now and then he makes it very clear on his social media that he's just shouting out the same old 'these people are right and these people are all wrong and stupid!' rhetoric, which is a pretty dangerous thing for a journalist to do since journalists often have a pretty large following.

My post was simply meant to make people reflect a bit.
 
thomasmahler said:
I like Maurice as well and enjoy his content. But every now and then he makes it very clear on his social media that he's just shouting out the same old 'these people are right and these people are all wrong and stupid!' rhetoric, which is a pretty dangerous thing for a journalist to do since journalists often have a pretty large following.

My post was simply meant to make people reflect a bit.
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I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying Thomas, but what's the point of saying it in another language? Maurice won't reply in English (because why would he) and your international followers have no clue what Gamestar is. It's like you're moving the conversation to another venue, with a different audience. Also, where is Warsoup! The people have a right to know!
 
KaiserBecks said:
I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying Thomas, but what's the point of saying it in another language? Maurice won't reply in English (because why would he) and your international followers have no clue what Gamestar is. It's like you're moving the conversation to another venue, with a different audience. Also, where is Warsoup! The people have a right to know!
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Because the conversation is bigger than his particular case and "cancelation" is part of a global behavior that wasn't born in present Germany but in the Anglo-Saxon sphere.
 
KaiserBecks said:
I actually agree with a lot of what you are saying Thomas, but what's the point of saying it in another language? Maurice won't reply in English (because why would he) and your international followers have no clue what Gamestar is. It's like you're moving the conversation to another venue, with a different audience. Also, where is Warsoup! The people have a right to know!
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Again, just to shine a spotlight at this issue since it's obviously not just Gamestar that has partaken and still partakes in this cancel culture nonsense. The echo chambers are pretty strong and I'm under no illusion that I'll have much of a chance to help people see things in a more nuanced way, but... if it even makes like 1 out of 100 people reflect a bit, that's already a win, no?

Warsoup actually still comes up every now and then at Moon because we loved the concept and still haven't seen any studio really take it to fruition. But right now we're pretty busy with Wicked :D
 
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He's probably already cancelled with the whole mob digging into every one of his social media posts since birth to find something to destroy him with.
 
SCB3 said:


Damn, pretty much nailed it in a great articulate way as well
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Bernoulli said:
The same people against cancel culture use it themselves when they don't like the other side
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I hope I didn't. Again, I like Maurice's work and I had no intention of causing him any harm at all. I just posted this so that he might just take a second to reflect on his messaging in the future because whether they like it or not, this kind of rhetoric does cause lots of people lots of problems.

If Gamestar cancels him because of this, I'd be happy to have him join Moon to help with building our community (y)
 
It's been so old and tired and I've been so anti PC and this cancel/woke culture is what seriously causes rifts.

A stupid vocal minority was allowed to change shit. Fuck that.

I'm very vehement about that take as well. Watching the Tom Brady roast gives me a sliver of hope to return to the funny and thick skinned people which build this country.
 
Physiognomonics said:
Yes it was well written by Thomas. It's refreshing to see some creative people still knowing a bit of real history.


Reeee is a marxist forum nowadays and almost openly so. It's tragic because those people don't know what marxism inevitably leads to: totalitarism.
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They do and they act accordingly.

Till when are we gonna take fascist cunts for "poor misguided folks"?
 
Optimus Lime said:
Social media really is the worst thing ever invented. The neutron bomb was a more ethical creation than Twitter.
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I initially felt like rolling my eyes when I first read this comment, but then I started to think... how many lives were destroyed by the use of the atom bomb and how many were saved by its use... versus how many people have had their lives ruined or have even committed suicide due to social media and how many lives have been saved by it?

...and there's every chance you're absolutely right.
 
Not sure of the full goings on here, but this reply further down is an absolute corker and really speaks to a certain mindset...

"..you cannot expect the journalist to look into something if he fundamentally does not believe it to be true."

:messenger_grinning_sweat:
 
Audiophile said:
Not sure of the full goings on here, but this reply further down is an absolute corker and really speaks to a certain mindset...

"..you cannot expect the journalist to look into something if he fundamentally does not believe it to be true."

:messenger_grinning_sweat:
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Yeah that stuck out to me as well.
 
He still gets flack from that tweet.. I'm afraid the trenches on both sides are so deep already, that they only see the dirt in front of them..
 
Physiognomonics said:
Yes it was well written by Thomas. It's refreshing to see some creative people still knowing a bit of real history.


Reeee is a marxist forum nowadays and almost openly so. It's tragic because those people don't know what marxism inevitably leads to: totalitarism.
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The people pushing woke stuff hardest are middle-class, metropolitan liberals who work for giga-corporations like Disney, Amazon and Microsoft - people whose primary concern is their stakeholders and their market capitalization. Marxism is focused on emancipating the working classes from exploitation and extortion by the wealthy - it's why the Soviet flag featured the tools of the labourer and the farmer (the Hammer and Sickle) and the October Revolution aimed at installing a government built of workers, soldiers, and peasants.

'Woke' ideals are derived from wealthy middle-class metropolitan demographics and are most prevalent in wealthy corporate spaces. Socialists form unions to protect their co-workers from unfair dismissal; the 'woke' actively petition mega-wealthy corporations to sack their staff for wrong-think. These two things have no overlaps. Wokeism isn't Marxism, it's a moral figleaf for super-wealthy corporates whose owners have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. If there was Marxist revolution in the US tomorrow, the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger and Elon Musk would be on the first planes out.
 
BbMajor7th said:
The people pushing woke stuff hardest are middle-class, metropolitan liberals who work for giga-corporations like Disney, Amazon and Microsoft - people whose primary concern is their stakeholders and their market capitalization. Marxism is focused on emancipating the working classes from exploitation and extortion by the wealthy - it's why the Soviet flag featured the tools of the labourer and the farmer (the Hammer and Sickle) and the October Revolution aimed at installing a government built of workers, soldiers, and peasants.

'Woke' ideals are derived from wealthy middle-class metropolitan demographics and are most prevalent in wealthy corporate spaces. Socialists form unions to protect their co-workers from unfair dismissal; the 'woke' actively petition mega-wealthy corporations to sack their staff for wrong-think. These two things have no overlaps. Wokeism isn't Marxism, it's a moral figleaf for super-wealthy corporates whose owners have more money than they could spend in a thousand lifetimes. If there was Marxist revolution in the US tomorrow, the likes of Jeff Bezos, Bob Iger and Elon Musk would be on the first planes out.
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They're likely referring to "cultural marxism"
 
Pejo said:
People have been using those talking points for years and nobody seems to care. The ones leveraging cancellation as a weapon aren't up for listening to reason, self reflecting, or thinking critically about what they're doing, it's the fact that several groups of people that never had any power suddenly got some and have been using and abusing it ever since. Like look at that Alyssa """"journalist"""" from Kotaku. She started out just writing clickbait shit nobody cared about, then when she got popular for a shitty hot take, she decided to double down on being just the biggest asshole because she was backed up by thousands of other assholes. It's a power thing.

The best way to combat this is by not engaging/not buying/not watching/not consuming anything by people that do this sort of thing if you don't like it. That will force them back into the game guide mines where they belong.
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I agree with the first paragraph, but absolutely not with your prescribed solution.

If the people who do this sort of thing were few and with limited platforms to enact their miscreancy, I would agree, but that's not the case today. In the West, they've virtually captured almost every sphere of cultural and political power and influence. As such, ignoring them and pretending they'll go away only amounts to complacent enablement.

We need the masses to do what Thomas Mahler is doing here, i.e. reasonable and rational people standing up and calling out the fucking lunacy and tribalist behaviour of bad actors. That's the only way to embolden the non-brainwashed masses to not allow themselves to be bullied into falling in line with the lunatics.

Bernoulli said:
The same people against cancel culture use it themselves when they don't like the other side
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Bullshit!
 
TheThreadsThatBindUs said:
Bullshit!
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Nah, I tend to agree.

Just like how some posters on this board lack any type of nuance and scream woke this and woke that all the time don't realize they're on the opposite side of the same coin of how some posters on Resetera scream everything's racist, sexist, white supremacist, patriarchy, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic, etc...
 
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RedC said:
Nah, I tend to agree.

Just like how some posters on this board lack any type of nuance and scream woke this and woke that all the time don't realize they're on the opposite side of the same coin of how some posters on Resetera scream everything's racist, sexist, white supremacist, patriarchy, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobe, etc...
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Think you meant to quote TheThreadsThatBindUs TheThreadsThatBindUs - broadly agree with your sentiment though. To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
 
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RedC said:
Nah, I tend to agree.

Just like how some posters on this board lack any type of nuance and scream woke this and woke that all the time don't realize they're on the opposite side of the same coin of how some posters on Resetera scream everything's racist, sexist, white supremacist, patriarchy, homophobic, transphobic, Islamaphobic, etc...
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The only folks going around trying to get people removed from social media platforms and fired from their places of employment are the lunatic activists pushing the agenda.

I don't see any moderates who are calling out their idiocy doing the same thing.

Unless you're trying to make an argument that the only people calling out cancel culture are the far-right extremists, then I think the sentiment is patently absurd. And any attempt to argue that the only people calling out cancel culture are far-right extremists is also patently absurd.
 
Bernoulli said:
The same people against cancel culture use it themselves when they don't like the other side
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There is a fundamental difference between "this should not exist/this cannot be created" and "this should be boycotted."

One still allows for the existence of the material. Generally cancel culture falls into the former category, hence why it is so dangerous, but of course it isn't always.
 
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