Like so many of Rockstar’s games, Red Dead Redemption 2 trades heavily on its freedom. As you’d expect, you can go anywhere in the world and do pretty much anything you want, from hunting animals to hogtieing civilians and robbing trains. Of course, not everyone is going to use that freedom in the most positive manner, and YouTube videos of one player feeding a suffragette to pigs has prompted some controversy.
Shirrako, who has an impressive 487k subscribers, had his account temporarily disabled earlier, when YouTube caught wind of videos in which he murdered one of the suffragettes that you encounter in the New Orleans-inspired town of Saint Denis in a variety of ways. In the clips, he puts the “annoying feminist” on a train track and dumps her in a swamp with alligators, among others. YouTube originally removed the videos – and the channel – on the grounds that they breached its violence policies; the clips have since been restored with age restrictions added.
It’s perhaps worth pointing out that murdering suffragettes in Red Dead Redemption 2 actually lowers your Honor rating, while attacking members of the Ku Klux Klan improves it, so there’s definitely a message that Rockstar wants to get across. It’s strange for YouTube to specifically target these videos on violent grounds, though, considering you can literally blow the faces off enemies elsewhere in the game. What are your thoughts?
[source bbc.co.uk]
Comments 70
It's just slapstick at the extreme end. Harmless.
YouTube continues to embarrass itself
how pathetic of youtube, but I guess in game mass killing of others goes unpunished. Odd..
YouTube has been an utter mess for a long time now.
I don't want to go too in-depth on this but what really irks me more than anything is that there are much, much worse videos on YouTube that don't get flagged or reported or taken down. We're talking death threats to real people, incitement of real life violence — the lot. And YouTube is happy to just leave it all there.
Content moderation across the various social media platforms is a mess, honestly. Twitter, facebook, youtube, etc.
@Bad-MuthaAdebisi Hang on, lemme throw you off a bridge and feed your broken remains to pigs while I film it.
We can be the new Chuckle Brothers! Good ol' fashioned juvenile slapstick. It'll be a hit with the kids.
Shooting tons of nameless baddies is normal in video games. Torturing and killing a woman explicitly for being a "feminist" is not. In a world where real-life women get real-life harassment from angry gamers (often on youtube!), there's no comparison.
I definitely understand that you can kill everyone and the game promotes a sense of freedom. However, I can understand why with everything else going on in the world, videos depicting the murder of women standing up for equal rights aren’t exactly being looked upon kindly. It just shows that when gamers are given a nice thing, they still manage to give the rest of us a bad name by acting like misogynistic idiots. These people are using the word ‘feminist’ as if it’s a slur while talking about women fighting for the right to vote. Why is this any different than a game giving you the option to murder black civil rights activists? While I agree with the freedom, anyone actually that juvenile shouldn’t be given a platform in 2018.
It's one thing to use a game to role-play as a violent bigot in the privacy of your home—it's another thing to use the game to promote and glorify violent bigotry on a social media platform. For most decent people, shame and humility would preclude the latter (if not the former as well).
Using a video game to illustrate violent misogynist hate speech should be treated the same way any other kind of violent hate speech would be treated on the platform. If the guidelines prohibit it, then it should be subject to removal. Ultimately, YouTube can remove anything that they don’t want to host. Having your content hosted by a corporation on their platform is a privilege—not an entitlement. Restoring the videos was most likely a calculated capitulation enacted for PR reasons.
@nessisonett it's a damn video game where we can create out own "fantastical" reality good or bad. people like you injecting your unwanted political news media talking points into gaming are one of the many issues plaguing the video game community..
This shows how toxic are these SJW related matters are...
All companies (Youtube, Marvel, etc) are threading these matters like thin ice in afraid of getting the Social Media Disaster.
Real life threat problem? No one cares. Po
Controversy on YouTube, what a shock.
A Rockstar game being involved? Double shocker.
Men die in tv shows, movies, video games and nobody bats an eye. When it happens to women it has to be a discussion, even if it's woman on woman violence. It's always been this way. Wasn't shocked when I found out this happened, youtube, like everyother social media outlet is a train wreck right now. But to be fair, it did restore the channel. No harm, no foul.
@RoyalD People denying that video games have any connection to sociopolitical reality are far, FAR more of a problem with the gaming community than people who actually understand the importance of context.
I see arguments like yours much more in the gaming community than in, say, the world of cinephiles or classical music aficionados or literature lovers. People in those groups generally understand that art, no matter how great, doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's a product of the environment in which it was created, and people's reactions are also tied to their own times. They don't insist that everything must be completely apolitical and treated with kid gloves.
Certain gamers, on the other hand, really want to have their cake and eat it too. They want games to be respected as Great Art, but whine and cry about "SJWs" and the like when people actually treat games like other art forms are treated.
This is all beside the fact that this whole kerfuffle started when the Youtuber (who almost certainly considers himself an anti-SJW) made things explicitly political in his videos. If you can't see the political news media talking points in his tirades, you're not paying attention.
To put it another way: if you were really worried about people "injecting unwanted political news media talking points" into a game, you'd be aiming your ire at the guy who livestreams himself mutilating suffragettes while spewing Limbaugh-esque vitriol about feminists.
But you're not actually worried about that. You're worried that those darn SJWs are ruining all your regressive fun.
@nessisonett
'misogynistic idiots.'? For murdering a npc?
Look, my 9 year old daughter is bugging me to lasso an old lady npc because she saw one of her fav YouTuber do it. People are getting offended of things that are not real. It's like putting npc on the rails tracks to be crush by the train.
,'videos depicting the murder of women' standing up for equal rights
THESE ARE NPC IN A VIDEO GAME.
That so many people like your comment is blowing my mind. (NO ITS AN EXPRESSION I DON'T MEAN BLOWING MY MIND FOR REAL)
@Sondheimist not worried about it at all, as long the "terror" doesn't bleed into reality then so be it...
@JoeBlogs
Your welcome
I was about to post a comment like 'RockStar you maniacs. You allow migoginistic idiots to murder girls in you sexist game'. But I realised a lot of people would actually not get its sarcastic. I don't know if I should laugh or cry.
A normal, level-headed person like myself knows this is just a game, don't take it seriously and enjoy the free nature of the digital world, and that women's sufferage was (and still is) a legitimate issue, but what disturbs me is the many sickos out there on YouTube, etc... who cheer and laugh at stuff in games like RDR2 and wish it could be implemented on real people. .
@JoeBlogs
I'm afraid your underestimating the 'outrage' haha
I've read quite serious articles being offended by what you can do in the game. I. E. Beating up a npc
Edit.
Like I say above, which maybe need more explaining?
', videos depicting the murder of women standing up for equal rights'
Is wrong. These are video depicting what you can do in a video game. It's not depicting 'the murder of women'.
@JoeBlogs
Are you asking why people are being outraged by anything nowadays. It's the outrage culture. People are taking what they see on face value. And the media are loving it.
@JoeBlogs
It's easy to understand the technology has made it way worse Anyone can make a video (or take a video out of context) and prompt people to get outraged because they don't see the whole picture and get manipulated. It's a well known phenomenon nowadays I would think.
The press is exploiting out of context quotes all the time to get the expected outrage.
Just looks like another mental incel targeting women to glorify their battery and murder; since YouTube is a privately owned platform, they can treat his content however they like.
@ShogunRok
I agree and this is exactly the point a lot of people fail to realise. Whatever you do on video games is not real. It's fantasy land. I know graphics looks amazing but they don't even pass for real people. It's way more offensive to see real people victims of bad jokes or animals being mistreated for the sake of amusement
@JJ2 While yes, the game isn’t real, the message that the streamers are trying to convey is undoubtedly bad and they’re using the game’s freedom to forward the hatred of women. Just this week in the UK a group of men were arrested after burning an effigy of Grenfell Tower, a tower block involved in a large-scale fire where many people died. The effigy wasn’t as life-like as RDR2 but it sure got these idiots point across. Rockstar just need to be careful that their material isn’t used as a medium for spreading hate speech.
@turntSNACO
"Shooting tons of nameless baddies is normal in video games. Torturing and killing a woman explicitly for being a "feminist" is not. In a world where real-life women get real-life harassment from angry gamers (often on youtube!), there's no comparison."
So, you think people aren't getting shot every day?... they are, in droves, all over the world.
The fact of the matter is that you can engage in horrific things in an open world game centered around violence and acquisition.. many of these things (shooting random shopkeepers in such a way that they fall in a comedic fashion, for instance) are all over Youtube and far worse than an annoying NPC (I think this NPC is made to be this way, her shouts actually interrupt conversations your character is having with others) getting punched.
Your assertion that things that happen in real life, however vaguely related, shouldn't be allowed in video games... this would leave a very small number of things you could code.
Studies have shown that people become less physically violent when playing violent video games, not more... your entire argument is nonsense and blatantly predicated around not wanting something you admire being satirized or attacked in a video game.
@nessisonett
Because so many people watch a video of a video game character being assaulted and think "Yeah!! F**K women!! Beat them all up!!"
Are you high?
"Just this week in the UK a group of men were arrested after burning an effigy of Grenfell Tower, a tower block involved in a large-scale fire where many people died."
Yes, and disgusting as that joke was, it was just a joke... if you advocate this kind of policing of humour, then I hope you're never in any position to influence policy.
Material goods started to have more rights than human beings centuries ago; nowadays people pretend that any stupid, useless piece of crap someone decided to show in public via a social media has the right to exist in the name of some kind of freedom.
@huntsman34 An Italian far-right activist at a rally in fascist dictator Benito Mussolini’s hometown. "It's black humor" she said...
@andreoni79
You're comparing someone publicly advocating genocide at a far right rally with people burning an effigy privately (which then got leaked)?
In all things, context is important.
The whole point of freedom of speech is that the more unpopular the speech, the more protection it needs and should get (barring specific and explicit calls to violence and/or criminality)... popular speech, by definition, needs no protection.
@JoeBlogs
Of course it will be offensive.... but so what?
Offence isn't a bad thing... you don't get offended and then suddenly wake up with leprosy.... why does offence have any influence on anything?
I'm offended by dance music resamples of rock songs! Do I get to ban the practice?
@figboot
Congratulations on joining the site to sprout your sanctimonious BS.
@JoeBlogs
I definitely want mohammad and Jesus in games. Awesome idea.
Both playable so I can make them beat up tbe other one in turn.
@huntsman34 Oh dear, that comparison...
People should really learn something from history, but here we are, defending the rights to insult dead people.
At least, please don't forget that most of the 20th century dictators were legitimately elected.
@JoeBlogs
Oh... so you're psychic as well?
You know what the motivation behind every act you don't like is?
Calling offence "mental anguish and suffering" is such nonsense. Offence is seeing or hearing something which you find very disagreeable for whatever reason.
Right now, I'm saying things which I think have a decent chance of offending someone. Should I be stopped from voicing my opinion if I think there is even a 1% chance of someone being offended?
Everything is offensive to someone. When you're talking being offensive for the sake of it (ever been to a stand up show?) making one a terrible person... I find that notion rather offensive I think you know that I would... so... does that make you offensive.
This is an argument of subjective taste and you advocating limiting access to things not of your taste... it's totalitarian in basic nature (I would be surprised if you see it as such) and antithetical to any society with anything approaching a decent level of freedom.
@andreoni79
"At least, please don't forget that most of the 20th century dictators were legitimately elected."
Of course they were... that's the risk you run when giving the people the choice but, as Churchill said (I believe), "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time"
"People should really learn something from history, but here we are, defending the rights of insulting dead people."
Of course you can insult dead people!! I will insult Jimmy Savile (for instance) until the day I die and if they dug up his body I would punch it and then probably urinate on it... I'm fairly sure you'd be okay with this...
What you're saying is to not be allowed to insult dead people that you admire of have no issue with.
@nessisonett
I'm not aware of everything the YouTuber said so there obviously are limits to what you actually say being hate speech, just like you tube comment. However I think it's a different debate. A video showing npc beaten up in a games is not per se offensive and R* can't take any responsibility in this.
Maybe they should focus on rappers videos and stuff like that, those videos have nudity, extra foul language etc but nooooo...killing a woman in a virtual world is where the problem is.
Isn't this just similar to the hooker video when GTA V came out?
The game isn't forcing you to do this, actually, doing so nets you bad karma points. And if they didn't allow violence against these characters, they would complain about not being treated equally, if they excluded them from the game, they would complain about ignoring an important part of history, etc. Or people could just accept that this is a game in which you can do whatever you want.
In the meantime the spokesman for the italian prime minister defines as a "performance" the video in which he said he's disgusted by old people or people with Down's syndrome, just like someone else can be disgusted by spiders.
In his curriculm vitae he can boast a participation to the Big Brother and nothing else. He actually earns € 14.000 so he's surely better than me.
@JoeBlogs
You're acting like people need to be protected from being "resentful, upset, or annoyed"
"here you have it: 'upset'."
Yes.. toddlers get 'upset' when you don't give them chocolate.
Whiny morons get 'upset' when you call them such.
Jesus... you're taking synonyms as an argument and then saying that they automatically match up.
Okay, let's try that for something else:
ill
/ɪl/Submit
adjective
1.
suffering from an illness or disease or feeling unwell.
"he was taken ill with food poisoning"
synonyms: unwell, sick, not (very) well, ailing, poorly, sickly, peaky, afflicted, indisposed, infirm, liverish; More
So... an ill person is now automatically infirm! Who knew??!
No, I can see that if you think of offence as 'suffering' then you've lived a very charmed and/or pampered existence.
"If you do that deliberately, and this is your only aim, then I repeat that that makes you a terrible person."
So a person who is also trying to be funny with something he/she finds amusing is okay, then?
And we're also back to you being psychic. wow...
You know 100% the inner workings of someone's mind when they cause offence, you know exactly when a person is only trying to cause offence (this is extraordinarily rare).
You're a joke, pal.
You have no idea if the posters of these videos just found the act funny, found the NPC annoying, etc... but you're quick to try and stifle because in your little word, seeing something which makes you "resentful, upset, or annoyed" is 'suffering'...
Don't ever watch a documentary about history, sweetheart, you might 'suffer'
Jesus wept...
@JoeBlogs
"However, some things can be highly offensive to people and cause them to be very upset. If your little brother died in Auschwitz then that Italian woman's 'Auschwitzland' T-shirt above could cause a lot of distress."
I would take issue with the word 'distress' and downgrade it to 'offence' but the key word there is **could**... we're back to talking about taste again.
By your taste it is okay to risk causing me offence because the subjective rating (to you) is okay.
I've suffered actual trauma in my life (most people have, but by your comments about hearaing something mean causing suffering I am not certain if you have) and whilst I would find it offensive/uncomfortable to hear or see people make light of the subject I woudl never even dream of supporting the idea of their right to say/do such things being limited.
"I don't know why you think I'm trying to 'stifle' or 'limit access' to anything"
Because you're enthusiastically supporting the idea of removing content that people deem offensive.
If you support the idea of removing content on the basis of subjective taste, then you are a terrible person.
Wouldn't call them ad hominem attacks as there is no attempt to diver the discussion... they're petty insults and levelled purely to try to add some emotive context to how utterly moronic I find your arguments.
@nessisonett That's a false equivalence.
The arrest of those guys is shockingly dangerous.
What they did was in poor taste without doubt, but being labelled as actually harmful and treated as a public order offense is ridiculous. It cause no actual harm, it wasn't inciting either.
@KALofKRYPTON @nessisonett - I live up the road from those idiots and quite frankly, the amount of local vitriol they will get, will be enough for them to learn.(i hope).
And although i absolutely abhor the portrayal, i dont think it was done out of hate, just a very sick sense of homour, like those who dressed up as Jimmy Saville for Halloween a few years ago... Regardless of my personal opinion, they can do as they wish, just be aware of the consequences among peers.
The arrests if anything, highlight the lack of progress regards the corporate manslaughter charges, which are far more important... Inadvertantly, those idiots have at least highlighted the sorry episode again...
@KALofKRYPTON If you look at the actual effigy, the ‘people’ were all made of brown paper. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.
@nessisonett - Not seen it, but if so.... then that changes alot of things...
Oh dear, Youtube does like to unfairly meddle a lot these days. No one is being forced to watch this if they are sensitive to the triggering phenomenon, and this insignificant roleplaying offending folk is just another example of people who've been programmed by modern society and its Twitter obsession to chase after the moral outrage in order to get a high from it, because I think that is why some folk seem to genuinely enjoy being outraged and having that validated by others on social media, because it gives them a dopamine release. If this guy was inciting people to go out and do this in real life then it would be different, and I may be wrong here but it sounds like he's just having a laugh roleplaying to me. On a side note though, then I do think it's a pity that people tend to get modern day feminists confused with the olden days feminists, because the former mostly seem to just enjoy being outraged and being part of a mutual-validation club, where as the latter actually had good reason to be fighting! Haha, they'd likely be horrified if they saw the way that many claiming to be feminists today carry on!
Hot take here:
We need a war. And a draft.
I'd gladly take a bullet or twelve if it meant my generation of whiney, weak, easily offended, crybabies got to experience some real turmoil in life. Gladly.
Most of the people crying over this are adults. Grow the hell up, and stop looking for things to be outraged about. It obviously causes mental distress (Hahahahahaha!), so why look for things to be outraged at?
Man am I glad I was raised in a Latino household. If I cried I was asked why I was crying, and then told to stop, and if I didn't I got a good smack with the chancla. Sometimes my mom would just take that out and guess what? I'd stop crying.
Because it was mostly for attention.
TL;DR : We need a war, millennials are crybabies, and beat your kids.
;3
@JoeBlogs
When your response to a video being taken down and suppressed due to offending some peoples subjective taste is to explain how nasty offence can be... it's very difficult to not infer that you are in support of said action.
"Why, therefore, do you want to deny my right to my own value system in which I think causing unnecessary offence for its own sake is unacceptable behaviour? You don't have to agree with that; I'm just putting forward a viewpoint."
Finally we agree. You're free to voice your opinion and I'm free to call it daft.
Imagine if someone were to tell you that you were not free to voice that opinion... would that wind you up?
"I have a right to that opinion and to voice it without it being interpreted as an attempt to set up a 'totalitarian' system in which I'm 'enthusiastically supporting' banning things I don't like"
1) You have NO right to not have you comments interpreted in ways you do not like. No one does.
2) What I said was:
'This is an argument of subjective taste and you advocating limiting access to things not of your taste... it's totalitarian in basic nature'
and
'Because you're enthusiastically supporting the idea of removing content that people deem offensive'
No one said you were setting anything up.
As said, your coming down on the side of the offended (and yes you did it enthusiastically) in a matter of basic censorship on the basis of taste makes it very difficult to not infer otherwise.
@nessisonett What's your point?
The tower was predominantly home to people of colour. Are you suggesting that the 'accuracy' (or lack of) of the effigy to be tantamount to racism?
@dellyrascal @nessisonett Dark humour is just that, dark.
We're descending in to policing by outrage. Which is as regressive as it is nonsensical; it's also incredibly selective - which is fine for YouTube, fine for Twitter etc - but not the application of the law.
@KALofKRYPTON - Agreed wholeheartedly...
@JoeBlogs
I will grant that I can't know 100% (and never claimed to be able to do so).. I said (again!):
"you're enthusiastically supporting the idea of removing content that people deem offensive"
It's not mind reading, it's (again, as said) perfectly logical inference based on your clearly worded comments.
As said:
"your coming down on the side of the offended (and yes you did it enthusiastically) in a matter of basic censorship on the basis of taste makes it very difficult to not infer otherwise"
Not impossible to infer otherwise, but I would have to engage in some mental gymnastics to somehow cast you as playing a devils advocate position.
If I were to come down on the side of Donald Trump (for instance) when discussing an action he took by saying things like "He's a great president!" would you honestly see me as not supporting his actions, given the original subject matter?
And so far as I can see when reading back, I insulted you a single time, when I called you a joke.... far from egregious, but I will certainly offer an apology for that, if that means anything to you.
@Knuckles-Fajita sure, if it gets a laugh
@JoeBlogs
"Whether it should be removed is a tricky question. Probably not"
Okay. That's the first time you've said that (that I've seen, could be missing something)... up until now all that could be seen is an article about something being suppressed on account of being subjectively offensive to some and you explaining about what offence is and how insidious it is.
If I came to an article about Creationism (for instance) and it's weight versus evolutionary theory and started talking about faith, how much it matter, etc... you'd be hard pressed to not think I was on the side of Creationism, no?
Of course you can disapprove of it. I disapprove of it, too... it's a lame joke and too easy... though I admit a few years ago I would have probably laughed (getting old).
I find it hard to believe that such videos were created with entirely causing offence in mind, but neither of us can know.
Feels somewhat silly arguing the toss over something when it appears now that we're essentially in agreement, but them's the breaks with online discussion.
@Kidfried don't make me use the newly added downvote!
Today, I learned the word "suffragettes ".
I thought it was funny, just like how I find a villian getting punched in the nuts by Saitama is hilarious. Anyone who watched that video can't say they didn't at least giggle when he tied her up and took her all the way to a deep dark cave just to throw her into a bottomless pit, I was rolling on the floor laughing, and it was my niece who got me to watch the video because she thought it was hilarious as well.
Whoever complained about that video has no sense of humor at all, we all get tired of annoying NPCs at some point.
@wiiware lol.
@huntsman34 To clarify, my argument is not that Rockstar should not have coded a suffragette into their game where she might get hurt. I was trying to address the question of why Youtube would feel the need to pull this video in particular while allowing other violent video game content. And I blame the youtuber, not the developer.
And real-world context does matter. You can check out the comment sections under any of these videos for evidence of this context. There's a reason he calls her a "feminist", a word not even used in the U.S. at the time the game is set, instead of "suffragette" or just "woman". Hell, there's a reason he chose to kill this one particular character in multiple videos. And his viewers get it.
Well, you don't shift that many copies of your game unless you cater for stupid people as well
@Gremio108 people are stupid, just cater to people
Right. Next outrage : someone skins a ton of animals (actually in game sprites if you follow) and has a good laugh on you tube
I was in the tailor shop in Saint Denis trying on some dapper attire and all I could hear was this lady droning on and on outside. She deserved her game fate, not because of what she was saying but because she was really, really annoying when all a fella wants to do is buy some nice clobber.
@hadlee73
There were already plenty of drama queen's at the time but now it's even more popular.
https://twitter.com/vocativ/status/1060555297729667072?s=19
Feminism offender (as in someone who offends Feminism or something like that?) seems to be a thing now too.
@Kai_ How so? I can understand why companies dont want to be associated certain stuff. You may not like it but sometimes its better this way then a massive bad publicity. Its their brandname whats on the line.
@huntsman34 I always love the nonsense response of censorship so you can be racist, rape in game, touch little kids, a schoolshooter yeah sometimes it just goes to far. And i loved Manhunt the original one i own DOA bikini simulator. 😜
Im the Netherlands you cant say everything you want and thank god or whoever for that. Because some people are clueless or just racist. Freedom of speech does not mean you should say every terrible thing you think off.
Games like Omega Labyrinth Z look i would be ashamed if someone even knew i owned the game. And i cant understand for the life of me understand these games they dont add anything. But i do know they make games like Persona with adult subjects a target which is terrible because these games have depth. And i would hate to see these games dissappear. 😢
I hate censorship as much as everyone but i dont want to see my hobby get a massive target painted on their back.
@JJ2 If i hear a girl talk that she doesnt like it she is branded a feminist straight away. And they you scroll through the comments and i feel ashamed to be a man. Women should never have had the right to vote, youre only right to cook and clean, you are only around to pleasure me?
Yeah really funny and Its not a few "men" who say these terrible things. Even more scary to see people defend it to teeth and call you a White Knight if you say those things are not funny. And Its those idiots who make gamers look bad.
@Flaming_Kaiser
Man there are idiotic comment everywhere on the internet.
You haven't noticed how toxic you tube comments can be? That has even little to do with 'feminist' ' anti feminist' 'fanboy' 'antifanboy'. Etc
That doesn't have to obscure rationality. People are too often guided by their emotions rather than using their brain and that's valid for ALL
I rarely read you tube comments because they usually are useless.
Don't get distracted by childish comments drowning the fish.
@Kidfried rap is ok I guess. Most of it is pure crap but there are some good cases
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