Please remove Shark Fin Soup

[Noutaja]

I learned a new word while reading all of this. Slacktivist. That is an awesome term. I love it.
Anyways Red_Wolf, stop thinking when your gaming. Start thinking when your doing something else. How about that? Could work better.

[Avenger]

I am somewhat ashamed to admit that in FFXIV my character eats – and, even worse, mercilessly slaughters, for no other reason than "experience," various forms of currency, or just for the "fun" of it – many creatures that I would never harm in real life (at least the ones that exist and are not extinct like Dodos.) Fortunately in FFXIV, unlike real life, this does not seem to affect their numbers or habitat...

[That being said, I think OP may have a point about the accuracy of the description. It's possible that sharks in Eorzea have tasty fins I guess, and probably the game shouldn't be considered a source of accurate information or a model for how you should conduct yourself in real life, but I could imagine that someone who cared about sharks in real life might not want to see shark fin soup in the game, particularly if the description ties into a well-known misunderstanding in real life which has led to a wasteful destruction of the shark population.]

[Noutaja]

I actually never knew about finning sharks for soup and that it is such a controversial matter. This is not a bad thread, you are making ppl think and aware.
Nevertheless, the only reason you find a political agenda in a game, is cause you are for some reason searching for one. You are using your smart head for something that is really stupid.
Not trying to be rude, just being blunt, sorry.

[Amenian]

No, what makes them trolls is being condescending dickheads about it.

Sorry, but when OP is a condescending dickhead saying people who disagree with him lack brain power he kind of brings it on himself. You don't sway people to your line of thinking by being a condescending dickhead and if he wasn't trying to sway people to his line of thinking, then what the hell was the point of this thread.

[tocsin]

I believe a light-hearted TL;DR to the OP's post would be (and pardon the bad imaging, using a web editor atm):



That said, its a game. It isn't real life. Leave the real world out of it.

[Tiggy]

My issue is the language in the description of the item. It perpetuates an old tired lie that justifies a barbaric practice. I can't help but believe it was put their on purpose.

Actually this thread reminds me a lot of the Streisand Effect. Not one person here probably thought twice about shark fins except you meaning it wasn't perpetuating anything since it was just flavor text most of us ignored. Now we are all are aware of the text and still don't care. You're the only one drawing any attention to this.

[PokingAround]

Sorry, but when OP is a condescending dickhead saying people who disagree with him lack brain power he kind of brings it on himself. You don't sway people to your line of thinking by being a condescending dickhead and if he wasn't trying to sway people to his line of thinking, then what the hell was the point of this thread.

Your reasoning is flawed because it's anachronistic. His original post doesn't contain any of that stuff. His second doesn't, either. In fact, this here comes long before he starts firing back at anybody:

You people and your "apply real world ethics to video game worlds" crusades crack me up. Please go purchase a stick extraction tool for that one crammed up your butt.

Recognize that face?

[Silkerin]

This whole situation reminds me of when some animal rights activists in some country were angry at pokemon because it promoted animal abuse...

also... in the ff14 game no shark is captured , have their fins cut and put back in the sea *due to the crafting process and flavor text*, the whole thing is captured and used *and they are most likely killed swiftly the moment they are pulled up*. So to being actually being relevant to be mentioned in comparison to ff14 would have to be the decreasing number of wild sharks, but that will never happen in this game, but if you really want to apply real world scenarios to this game.... the moment the expansion comes and new fishing spots and fish comes, there will be less people interested in fishing those sharks, meaning that the shark population will increase once again...

TL;DR dont mix reality and fantasy plz

[Shneibel]

I nominate this thread to the list "beast thread of 2015"

[LineageRazor]

This whole situation reminds me of when some animal rights activists in some country were angry at pokemon because it promoted animal abuse...

Heh, funny you should mention that. While I played and enjoyed Pokemon (the first couple editions, at least, before the sequelitis burnt me out), I immediately recognized it as pretty much boiling down to glorified cock fighting. It's glossed over, and the implication is that the Pokemon are at least semi-intelligent and "want" to fight each other for their masters, but that's really what it is.

It's just a game, though, and I never really saw it as encouraging or justifying real-life animal pit fights. Anyone that plays it and thinks it's okay to force animals to fight each other is sick in the head, much like anyone who plays a FPS and thinks it's okay to shoot real people is sick in the head. There are many, MANY similarly morally dissonant things you do in FFXIV, even apart from Shark Fin Soup. Adventurers as a matter of course kill monsters for some specific item or ingredient, presumably leaving the rest of the carcass to rot, something which would be pretty deplorable in real life. And let's not even touch the issue of attacking and killing non-aggressive beastmen, for which there is no penalty whatsoever.

The original post does bring attention to the evils of shark finning, which I don't think is a bad thing. It is, however, very confrontational, and makes assumptions of SE's intent that I think were unjustified. A better tone might have been, "I'm uncomforable with Shark Fin Soup because real-life finning is horrible," rather than "SE is clearly promoting shark finning with this dish! Remove it at once!"

As for real-life finning, it's hard to believe that shark meat is THAT horrible as to make the carcass so unusable. People eat lutefisk, after all!