Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
If you're talking about extremists, you'll need to specify that, because I don't think "SJW" carries that connotation to a lot of people.
I get you Iscah, and thanks. I have been shifting the terminology I use in the FFXIV community because like you said, people use it differently. Honestly I'd also much rather have the kinds of extremists I'm referencing unheard of here to the point of being considered strawmen than the alternative, it's just been a sort of weird adapting process. From my perspective you guys seem like you're stuck in 2009 haha.

It's also been sort of surreal because of how common the behavior and label use is elsewhere. I've picked up that there are people here who feel terrified to the point of near paranoia that the persecution going on elsewhere could spread to FFXIV, but I've also noticed areas where if extremists did enter they could get an easy hold and cause a lot of damage. I think you guys have some natural deterrents here, like conventionally beautiful body types in-game and using mostly equal-opportunity fanservice instead of none. Part of me is waiting for the other shoe to drop though, because I've seen that happen before. Makes it trickier to tell who's just trying to shut up social criticism and who might have a legitimate issue going on.

I'll keep trying to substitute extremist for SJW or SJ stuff here, but I do want to let you know--in non-videogame and anime communities, SJ will commonly mean left-wing identitarianism. Intersectionality is the way that identitarianism usually gets phrased by the extremists, and the reason it goes bad is because it erases all individual experiences to assume moral character and quality of life exclusively based on demographic. Demographics get judged in ways that are inflexible, absolute, and generalized according to limited parts of the US. It's prevalent to the point that if say, a college course says it uses a social justice lens it can be accurately understood most of the time to promote identitarianism. Extremists who subscribe to that mentality are generally proud of themselves and truly believe what they're doing will help underrepresented groups (even as they beat a pair of Latino marines while calling them racial slurs and accusing the Latino marines of white supremacy, for example) so you might find similar pride in the label with them. I mention this because the extremists are seriously dangerous and I don't want an FFXIV player to run into problems elsewhere because there's a different connotation!