Hey guys! At the current rate, we are only gaining about 1,000 signatures a day after the initial surge of signatures. At this rate, we are not going to be able to obtain the 49,000 signatures we need in the next three weeks or so. Please, please, please continue to reblog this whenever you can, and for god’s sake SIGN IT if you haven’t yet!
As a form of grounding when I was little my parents would take away my books.
grounding never really worked for my parents with me because i would literally just sit somewhere for 6 hours straight and just zone out until they shook me back to life to tell me dinner was ready
The PepsiCo-sponsored GAME_JAM started as a four-day, $400,000 event where game developers would collaborate and compete for prizes. It took just one day for the entire thing to go up in flames.
Filmed for YouTube and structured more like reality TV than a typical game jam gathering, the whole thing tanked within the first 24 hours, allegedly thanks to the behavior of PepsiCo media consultant Matti Leshem.
…
[Game developer] Adriel Wallick described the oppressive atmosphere during the first day of GAME_JAM, where contestants had to compete in a Mountain Dew sponsored film set, for Mountain Dew themed prizes, while drinking nothing but Mountain Dew. “Guys with secret service earpieces and disheveled clipboards barked instructions on how to properly represent branded products,” wrote Jared Rosen.
“You can literally trace back the entire crumbling of this show to one individual,” wrote Wallick. “Matti Leshem, CEO of Protagonist.” Protagonist has been Pepsi’s primary branding and media consultancy for the past decade, and Leshem was a constant presence on the GAME_JAM set.
According to accounts from several people present at GAME_JAM, Leshem’s behavior was brash and inappropriate throughout, culminating in a bizarre line of questioning where he attempted to get GAME_JAM contestants to admit that having a woman on their team put them at a disadvantage.
This whole thing is so fucked up, and I’m so proud of the developers who stuck together and stood up for what’s right.
Yeah, the more I look at this, the more utterly fucked up it is. There’s just something horrific about this. People tend to assume that once you get to the point where you’re recognized as a skilled worker, sexism isn’t still affecting you, but it totally is. And if you’re thinking “well, I’m a guy, it doesn’t affect me”, I got news for you: Everyone loses when good devs are treated badly. There are not so many geniuses that we can afford to laugh half of them off because they have boobs.
I don’t see much gender discrimination amongst geeks, only from HR, managers and marketing. The story seems to indicate that was what happened there, as well - the geeks were all together, but the non-geeks were F’d up.
Yeah, I think that’s generally the case. We do get a lot of severe sexism among video game players, less generally among the video game makers. Usually.
I think this story is particularly wonderful because the ubergeeks were having none of the fuckery, and they walked off the project in solidarity to protest abuse that was only being heaped on 2 of their number.
I firmly believe that the reason many Slytherins were easily convinced to join Voldemort was because they were treated like shit by the rest of the houses while they were growing up. Imagine spending seven of the most important years of your life being told that you were part of the bad house and therefore bad yourself. Everyone boos your quidditch team. All the houses will hang out with everyone except you. You grow up being hated by your fellow students and many of your teachers.
Now imagine someone comes along and tells you that you’re not worthless and bad. That you’re invited to join a family where you will right the wrongs committed against you. You have the opportunity to be wanted and powerful instead of a hated outcast. Several of your former classmates are telling you how great it is. How you’re welcomed and needed. These are the kids you grew up with. The classmates who went through all the same things you did. Being a Death Eater sounds pretty good now.
I’ve been waiting for a post like this.
THIS.
BLESS THIS POST
!!!!
thank
I was always bothered by the scene at the end of book 7, when the students are asked whether they want to fight the incoming Death Eater army. The Slytherin students are all like, “Uh. No?” And they’re treated like terrorists for it. In the movie, they’re even locked in the school dungeons while everyone cheers.
Did nobody stop to think and realize that if the Sytherin students had stood and fought, they would have been facing their own parents on a battlefield? Even if some of them weren’t really on board with the whole Death Eater thing, expecting them to fight was just cruel. They were children. The oldest of them were seventeen. Babies. And their own professors were asking them to shoot illegal killing spells at Mum and Dad.
Imagine you are a Slytherin and you are staying behind to defend your school and maybe restore some honor to your House. The other students are all giving you mistrustful glares. You know they’re waiting for you to start hitting them in the back with stunning spells. You consider doing it, too, because you’re already starting to regret the choice you made.
Then the battle begins, and you are up against a crowd of strangers who aren’t strangers at all. You recognize voices, muffled behind masks but still piercingly familiar. Your uncle. Your cousin. Your best friend’s big sister.
And then you see a tall man in expensive grey robes. A moment later you notice the small, curvy woman next to him, wand ready. They are guarding each others backs.
"If owning a gun and knowing how to use it worked, the military would be the safest place for a woman. It’s not.
If women covering up their bodies worked, Afghanistan would have a lower rate of sexual assault than Polynesia. It doesn’t.
If not drinking alcohol worked, children would not be raped. They are.
If your advice to a woman to avoid rape is to be the most modestly dressed, soberest and first to go home, you may as well add “so the rapist will choose someone else”.
If your response to hearing a woman has been raped is “she didn’t have to go to that bar/nightclub/party” you are saying that you want bars, nightclubs and parties to have no women in them. Unless you want the women to show up, but wear kaftans and drink orange juice. Good luck selling either of those options to your friends.
Or you could just be honest and say that you don’t want less rape, you want (even) less prosecution of rapists."
