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Minecraft’s creator excluded from event over his ‘comments and opinions’
- meddlepal 8y agoSeriously what the fuck happened to Notch. I don't blame Microsoft from excluding him at all.
- OedipusRex 8y agoI think it's a side effect of becoming so well known in a short amount of time.
- xsmasher 8y agoIt's a side effect of success and attitude/pov not being correlated.
- malvosenior 8y agoHe's self-made and not afraid to express his opinions even if they aren't politically correct. People like him should be applauded as they are increasingly rare in today's society.
- kevincrane 8y agoAlternatively, we could not applaud racist assholes.
- NotAnEconomist 8y agoWe are in the middle of applauding the Microsoft CEO for supporting racism against whites and Asians. I don't think that works as a theory for how to respond to this, unless we're just going to dislike everyone.
- yters 8y agoAll I've found regarding notch's racist comments is this GQ article: https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets I would probably not interpret his comments as racist, at least not in an obvious definition of the word. I've also read his twitter feed a fair amount, and have not spotted any clearly racist statements. I've also heard he is anti semitic, but haven't seen any citations. As for the links in the parent article, saying transwomen aren't women sounds like an opinion, not hate speech. Calling women the c word is very rude, and That could be grounds for disinviting notch. But if so, I hope MS is consistent and bars people who call men the d word, african americans the n word, and so on. Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Hardly grounds for disinviting someone, unless again MS is consistent.
- beart 8y ago> Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Sorry - Aren't we in the middle of a measles outbreak (U.S.A)?
- mullen 8y agoDon't forget the guy who went to Pizza Restaurant and shot the gun into the ceiling because he said there were kid sex dungeons.
- yters 7y agoHow is this related to conspiracy theories?
- beart 7y agoMisinformation driven in part by conspiracy theories has increased the spread of measles back into areas where it was thought to be eradicated. > An unfounded fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews are prey to the same misinformation that has affected others, and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-community.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-c...
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- rcxdude 8y agoDo you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions? This rhetoric plays into a common theme among extremists which is quite dangerous: "Everyone actually thinks the same way I do, they are just afraid to say it".
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago> Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions? Repeated surveys show that the identitarian left accounts for about 8% of the population, and that their views are over represented in media, while people are genuinely afraid of being publicly lynched for saying the wrong thing. The entire #walkaway movement started because of that.
- apta 8y agoAnd you're being downvoted, ironically (or maybe not ironically).
- malvosenior 8y agoYes, I know many, many people who don't express their non-far left opinions for fear of losing their jobs. They are not extremists, quite the opposite, they view the current cultural zeitgeist of tech companies to be extremist but can't speak up against it.
- temp1831 8y agoLook at the character assassinations that have happened in the media recently. Jordan Peterson is an excellent example, not only because so many left-leaning journalists have tried to defame him by deliberately misinterpreting what he says, but also because he has successfully defended himself against this attempted assassination. Peterson has a good reason to fear the backlash you describe, but he has a stronger backbone than all of his attackers. The current zeitgeist in the media is that past some fuzzy line, it is acceptable to defame somebody for having an opinion that is not politically correct. It is possible to cross this line by expressing facts or opinions that are entirely reasonable. The fear of backlash is real.
- snuxoll 8y agoAnyone can express their beliefs within reason (the US courts have put some limits on what falls under the first amendment, of course) - you just can’t be surprised when there are consequences for your public expression. Notch obviously doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, that’s not something I personally feel we should be applauding. It’s one thing if you’re using “fuck you money” to speak against the status quo, it’s another to just be a bigoted jerk on Twitter.
- belltaco 8y agoSaying "Pizzagate is real" or that Q is legit isn't an opinion, it's making up false facts. And that statement has been used to push Pizzagate among the masses.
- 99_00 8y agoI haven't been following him and his comments. And I agree it's important to call out false statements. But believing in and promoting demonstratively false and damaging ideas is much more common than people realize. For example, many good people who are more important and educated than game developer falsely believe that President Trump said that white nationalists and neo-nazis are fine people.
- pwinnski 8y agoReporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --" Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name." https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26/context-trumps-very-fine-people-both-sides-remarks/ https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26...
- 99_00 8y agoDoes that prove something? I'm not sure what your point is. Here is the rest of the exchange where Trump explicitly says he isn't talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists when he says 'fine people' and explicitly condemns neo-Nazis and white nationalists from the article you linked to. Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same." Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?" Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson." Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue? "So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS -- BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE CONDEMNED TOTALLY But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.
- mcphage 8y ago> He's self-made Well, Microsoft made him a billionaire—and they're also the ones choosing not to include him in the Minecraft event.
- nailer 8y ago(Replying to this comment as it's at the top, though the poster should read https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) From the links in this article: he called Zoe Quinn a c-word (which many people have), tweeted "It's ok to be white." (which it is), and says he doesn't regard biological men who identify as women are women (which is a fairly common belief). QAnon is a weird conspiracy theory, but the rest don't strike me as particularly odd. It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs.
- jayess 8y agoIt's the new puritanical movement.
- belltaco 8y ago>Zoe Quinn a c-word (which many people have) Examples? Sounds like Microsoft won't invite those 'many people' too then. His statements on Pizzagate being real and QAnon being legit have been used to push those theories among the alt-right and white supremacists. >It's probably worth having a Code of Conduct which requires explicit hard left belief systems if you're going to exclude people with mainstream beliefs. Pizzagate and QAnon theories are the opposite of mainstream beliefs. Also companies can and should go against mainstream beliefs if those beliefs are bigoted and racist. Otherwise slavery would never have been abolished and the civil rights act never enacted. Or women would never have gotten the right to vote. All those were against the mainstream beliefs at some point. Companies doing these things going against the mainstream can actually hurt them in the marketplace, which is more the reason to applaud them for taking the risk.
- nailer 8y agoYou can easily research Quinn's interactions with others online, including other left wing, trans, feminist, and activist figures. Pizzagate is indeed a fringe belief, as the comment you're replying to already mentions, but should anyone who believes conspiracy theories be excluded? What about left wing ones like Russiagate? Notch is not racist. If you think it's not OK to be white you may wish to look for racism closer to home.
- NotAnEconomist 8y ago> Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella recently emailed staff saying that if they didn’t support building a more inclusive culture, “your rewards, your career trajectory, and possibly even your employment will be impacted.” Translation: "If you keep pointing out we illegally discriminate during hiring and promotion, we'll fire you." His comment is a jab at the people complaining about actual racism at Microsoft -- a veiled threat meant to appease radicals who throw a tantrum if people don't cater to their bigoted world views, which all call for institutionalized racism to be enacted. Identity politics, and its manifestations such as "diversity", are merely authoritarian bigotry. The entire basis of it is a kind of racial and sexual essentialism, one of the most thoroughly debunked kinds of bigoted beliefs. Without a belief in that tribal essentialism, none of what the "diversity" advocates argue for even makes sense. "Diversity" is bigotry.
- otikik 8y agoNope.
- NotAnEconomist 8y agoThank you for your thoughtful reply, which addressed both the suppression of whistleblowers about racism at Microsoft, and the racist philosophy underpinning the "diversity" movement. You're truly a deep thinker, who challenged and then shifted my views on this topic. A person who stood out from the hoards who silently suppressed my view without a solid refutation, because they felt uncomfortable when their beliefs were challenged.
- dang 8y agoWe've banned you for primarily using HN for ideological flamewar, ignoring our requests to stop, and using multiple accounts to do it. Would you please not create accounts to break the site guidelines with? https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- NatoStrut 8y agoYou don't think you should be banning some of the racist, sexist, cunts infesting this (and many other) threads?
- kgwgk 8y ago> “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft.” Do all the comments and opinions of every other participant in the event reflect those of Microsoft and Mojang?
- the_mitsuhiko 8y agoWhich other participant created Minecraft?
- kareldonk1 8y agoNotch is absolutely right. Shame on Microsoft.
- belltaco 8y agoHe is right about Pizzagate being true and Q being legit? Enlighten us.
- lizardskull 8y agoThere were some freaky images on the owners Instagram account that has since been turned to private and I wish I had never seen them
- uclscount 8y agoI seriously doubt the mods here would allow an open and frank discussion about those topics, as evidenced by the censorship in this very thread.
- kareldonk1 8y agoEnlighten yourself. I have to post here with a throwaway account after my other account got shadow banned for not being PC. 99% of HN are sheep. Silicon valley is blinding you all. Logic is going down the drain. Diversity in mental illness is taking over.
- belltaco 8y agoThey're just fake news made up for partisan political purposes to make some boomers and gullible people believe fanatically in nonsense.
- dang 8y agoPlease don't.
- bitwize 8y agoMicrosoft is simply applying a strategy that's known to work (see: the study confirming that banning problematic subreddits has had a positive effect on Reddit as a whole). This is what happens when you hold views decent people don't hold: you get silenced, ostracized, and your name blotted from your own work. Want decent people to engage with you? Change your mind.
- apta 8y agoHow do you reconcile that with censorship in general?
- kthejoker2 8y agoCensorship is being put in actual jail under threat of a gun for saying something. Private individuals and organizations should not be forced to subsidize your speech.
- apta 8y ago> Censorship is being put in actual jail under threat of a gun for saying something. I think that's kind of a limited definition. You can be censored without being put in jail or forced into it by violence.
- NatoStrut 8y agoMost of the world fucking loves telling literal Nazis that they can't behave like Nazis. It's only Amerikkkunts who have this child-like fixation with freedom of speech, while simultaneously failing to understand their own constitution.
- segmondy 8y agoIt's sad how wealth affected Notch or perhaps magnified his character. A long time ago, I started following him on Twitter and I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I unfollowed him. The sheer negativity and woe is me is bananas. If there's a prime example that money doesn't buy happiness, he is one.
- mesofile 8y agoIn my experience this is true, that money doesn't buy happiness, but it does allow you to focus on your actual problems instead of the boring old money problems that nearly everyone else has. In some cases, newfound wealth will not only not solve one's problems but may throw them into sharp relief, or worsen them by deflecting negative feedback. Many if not most lottery winners seem to be affected by this.
- debacle 8y agoNotch's twitter, for reference: https://twitter.com/notch/ https://twitter.com/notch/
- _eht 8y agoTo be fair- The Notch you are disliking is the same person he was __before__ the influx of Micro$oft cash. At very least, he's consistent.
- mcphage 8y agoI don't know if that's entirely true—I followed him on twitter for a period of time before and after the sale, and post-sale his tweets got more and more unpalatable. Perhaps you're right, and he didn't change at all, but at the very least the public persona that he expressed changed.
- jshaqaw 8y agoIt gets dangerous when tons of the people around you are somehow seeking to feed off your wealth and thus you get very little negative feedback anywhere. Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.
- patrickg_zill 8y agoIf I felt that Microsoft was delivering high quality software and was a meritocracy I would cut them a lot of slack, no matter what opinions they espoused and who they favored or excluded. Unfortunately I have to use Skype for Business literally every working day and it's symptomatic of a company that is fat dumb and happy, secure in its cash flow.
- IIAOPSW 8y agoI tried clicking the links about Notch's non-pc comments. Those took me to newsweek articles which also talked about twitter but didn't link to the offending tweets themselves. Only one article linked (someplace called "the root") actually referenced any of his words per se. Among the problematic quotes were: "Privilege is a made up metric used to silence and repress. We are all different, and that is ok. We listen to individuals and help each other based on individual strengths and needs. We do not generalize based on skin color, bigot." That's a far cry from the sensationalized title of "Notch hates diversity". So in answer to your question, my guess is Notch basically a DeMoore type character and is being crucified by the media.
- bryanlarsen 8y agoIt took about 5 seconds of googling to find this: https://twitter.com/notch/status/901192994971410433?lang=en https://twitter.com/notch/status/901192994971410433?lang=en Another 2 seconds for: https://twitter.com/notch/status/1101794469060337664?lang=en https://twitter.com/notch/status/1101794469060337664?lang=en
- jbob2000 8y agoI laughed at those, I think he's trolling.
- belltaco 8y agoIf you look at the Twitter thread of the Q post, he seems sincere in his beliefs and is defending it. Given his other posts, it doesn't look like trolling.
- etrevino 8y agoFor those of us at work, do you mind summarizing these tweets in a reasonably SFW fashion?
- neaden 8y agoThe first "(pizzagate is real)" second "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." the second is followed with him defending the Q conspiracy in the comments, the first all the replies have pretty much been deleted.
- lizardskull 8y agoHey Notch if you are reading please do us all a tremendous service and show up anyway.
- temp1831 8y agoSaying "trans women are not women" is not transphobic. You can disagree with a tentative definition without being a bigot. I do not know the entire corpus of Notch's statements on transgender issues, but this single tweet should not crucify him.
- RandomInteger4 8y agoNotch seems to have gone a bit off the deep end, and I'm not referring to his conservative views. His tweets often sound incoherent. Maybe English isn't his strongest skill? I can't tell. Someone in the Minecraft YouTuber community speculated that perhaps he got involved with party drugs (MDMA) and it affected him permanently, as they had seen something similar happen with a friend of theirs. Pure speculation.
- mancerayder 8y agoNotice Verge is quoting a politically-charged journal, called Roots, as proof of "problematic" language.[1] I don't know. Microsoft can do what it wants, but as a society we need to consider doing two things: A - Socially spurning all political language in non-political contexts. or B - Being tolerant of all political language that isn't DIRECTLY hateful. Using the word "white" and just saying a contextless tweet "It's ok to be white" should not offend people, or if it does, it should be tolerated. OR, we can have a long discussion about it, and go back and forth and try to figure it out. _A_ seems wise. But society chooses [edit] neither A nor B and we get into fights over it. And if C, allowing some opinions but not others is the course of action, then we have a real problem. We're not going to "eliminate hate" by going option C: selection of opinions that are Correct and Not Correct. Because those in the "Not Correct" category will regroup in far worse ways - don't we learn from history? [1] - Read this and judge for yourself. Please read their OTHER articles and tell me if you don't find evidence of hate. https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-privilege-denying-whi-1820904201 https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr...
- kadendogthing 8y agoWhy did this get flagged?