this post was submitted on 01 Dec 2023
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It's just not the medium for it. I read plenty of news, and I really don't need a rehash of all that in everything I'm interested in.
If I want news, I'll watch/read news. If I want games, I'll play games and follow gaming news. It's possible to stay informed without current events being constantly shoved in your face.
I get wanting to raise awareness, but there really isn't a lot of overlap between current events and video games. Some games portray current events, or at least something similar to current events, but the focus in a gaming event should be the game, not the current events.
Everything is political. You dont like it - fine. Doesn't change the facts thou
It doesn't have to be, we can discuss things at the relevant time and place.
Imagine people in Palestine hearing you say that we should wait for the relevant time and place to talk about them. Is that relevant time before or after grandma gets vaporized by the IDF?
The relevant time and place is in front of people with power to actually make changes. Protest in front of government buildings (or even in them), meet with representatives, run for office, etc.
Reading an open letter at a gaming event isn't going to do anything, your time is better spent elsewhere.
Your pleas aren't going to melt the hearts of representatives or make them see reason. They don't actually care about people. They only care about getting votes and bribes, so the only way to change their minds is to influence one of those.
And neither of those will happen at games events with an open letter.
The goal for something like the Gaza conflict is to change public opinion. You do that by being very visible and getting on the news consistently enough for people to decide to look more into it. The protest at government buildings isn't intended to change policy makers' minds directly, it's to get media attention in a place that has symbolic significance to viewers, and that change in viewer opinion is what policy makers care about.
At the same time, meet with reps in their offices to discuss mutually beneficial options. For something like Gaza, that means getting humanitarian aid to Gaza, which doesn't require the politician to flip on their support for Israel, but still shows a shift toward supporting Palestinians. As public opinion starts to change, push for ceasefires to establish humanitarian aid corridors, peace talks, etc. None or that requires the rep to abandon support for Israel, you're just pushing for peace.
Imo, that's how you get change. Open letters that most people will ignore do nothing but rile up people who have already formed an opinion on one side or the other.
Understood. FWIW I wasn't planning on reading about Gaza this morning, I was just reading game news and now they've got me thinking about Gaza at least.
Reps aren't actually listening to you at all, they're just trying to shut you up. So in this example they'd agree with you in person, then maybe provide limited aid in Egypt while continuing to fund the Israeli military.
They can do their jobs first, and then the protests will stop. Do not assume good faith.
I'm not. I'm proposing a mix of diplomacy (lobbyists meeting with reps) and public demonstrations (protests to get popular support). If bigger and more frequent the protests, the more the lobbyists can get from reps.
When a bill is considered, that's the point where individuals should get involved. Calling/emailing doesn't do much, but showing up at public hearings absolutely does, and a regular member of the public has way more sway there than a lobbyist. The goal here is three-fold:
An open letter isn't a protest, it's virtue signaling. Instead of that, actually protest.
That is assuming good faith. They will not engage in diplomacy with you, or work with you to draft legislation. They will lie to your face for as long as you'll let them. They. Do not. Work. For you.
You can call this protest not an Actual Protest or whatever, but it made this conversation happen where it otherwise wouldn't have. When we take to the streets, we'll be told that we're still "virtue signaling" 🙄 and the right time and place isn't blocking traffic.
This conversation only happened because someone who already agrees with the topic posted to a site where the majority already agree with the topic. That's the only reason we're discussing it. An open letter only scratches the backs of supporters, and nothing else. It's worthless.
Real change happens on the streets with protests (think Civil Rights movement, Vietnam protests, etc) and with lobbyists on Capitol Hill. It doesn't happen with open letters, social media posts, or emails to reps.
I wonder if maybe having a game awards show that will be covered in the news read this letter would be a good way to get on the news
Nah, it's a fluff piece that's only going to get posted to places like Lemmy.
Whereas if they'd been protesting outside the event, it would be all over CNN and Fox and MSNBC, right?
Maybe, depending on how large the protest was. I think chances are better if they did it at a state capitol or something.
interesting that u choose to empathize with gazian grandma getting "vaporized" but israeli grandma being kidnapped and murdered or worse, is fine and unmentionable.
some might call that hypocrite
The IDF kills orders of magnitudes more Palestinians than Hamas kills Israelis. It's not hypocritical to be more upset about ten innocent dead people on one side than I am about one innocent dead person on the other. Hamas is a terrorist organization, and the IDF even more so.
that's a shallow and the woke approach I see people keep repeating. u don't really care for Palestinians as much as u care to make yourself look humanitarian.
calling idf a terrorist organization not only make u sound clueless but also reduce the severity of real terrorist organizations, like hamas, isis, and the like.
Lmao if being against bombing hospitals and refugee shelters is woke then I guess I'm woke
q. e. d.
The whole point of using this venue to spread awareness is to keep it in your field of view. The human rights abuses and genocide are ongoing, they don't stop when you turn off the news and start playing a video game. We should be acutely aware of that, and demand that our politicians stop doing business with terrorists.
You shouldn't be pissed at the people keeping you aware of it, you should be pissed that what they're talking about is happening in the first place.
No, the whole point is virtue signaling. It's an open letter, so it's not a request for humanitarian aid funding or anything like that, and it's highly unlikely to effect any kind of change.
It's all part of this culture war nonsense. Just let a video game event be about video games. We don't need to insert politics and global events everywhere.
And I am mad about the Palestine situation. I hate Hamas for attacking Innocents in Israel and kicking of this whole mess. I hate Israel for killing so many civilians in their attempts to root out Hamas. I hate that Palestinians don't have a stable country to call home. But an letter at a gaming event isn't going to change any of that.
Protest is OK just don't bother anyone too much. Got it. All the major changes in history required a similarly meek and quiet approach.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
This isn't a protest, it's an open letter, and it's at a games event. Most people will ignore it, and those that don't will likely forget it happened five minutes later. It's not going to reach anyone in a position of power to change anything, so it's merely virtue signaling since media orgs will report on it after the fact.
If you want to protest, do it in public. Organize at state/province and national capitols, organize at universities, wear Palestinian clothes in public, fly flags, etc. Asking a games event organizer to read an open letter will do absolutely nothing, but maybe some virtue signaling for whatever political party uses the same talking points. If you want real change, be noisy in public, run for office, etc, open letters do nothing.
We all just read an article about it, so this is obviously the most impactful and public place these people could have possibly gone to protest...
We're only talking about it because:
Most people outside lemmy would never hear about it.
They would've had much more impact had they organized a protest outside the event (or at a local government building for that matter) and attracted media attention. That would've reached a much broader audience, and an audience who is looking to be informed about current, non-gaming events.
They would have had much more of an impact if they'd simply protested in a way that didn't get in your way? You certainly wouldn't be complaining about these protests happening outside the event has that happened.
I'm not sure what you're on about. A game event has a relatively small audience, and that audience doesn't have any particular edge in effecting change vs the public as large. So protest in public where more people are watching. You're just going to get a lot of people rolling their eyes at this kind of event.