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[Bauglir]

So, I'm thinking the original comic was fine. I actually thought it was pretty funny, and the punchline definitely wasn't "Rapelololol". The joke was not "Rape is funny". Taking offense to it is also fine, because the experiences that allow me to see it as funny and not feel threatened are not universal. Talking to the authors to point this out is also fine, because how else can they gauge their audience? Giving feedback is good, and at this point a reasonable creator would say, "Oh, sorry, I apologize for upsetting you. That wasn't my intent." They would make this apology whether or not they believe the joke to be justified.

And then a reasonable creator would make an effort in the future to evaluate whether or not it's worth doing the same thing with future jokes and maybe make an effort to telegraph it somehow if they decide the joke can't work otherwise. Doesn't have to be anything so unambiguous as trigger warnings on each comic - even a heads up that this is something that might continue to appear in the comic, so readers should be aware of that, would do the job. Just an obvious attempt to exercise conscious judgment and to help readers out with a problem they've raised. Basic customer service.

That's not what happened.

[kaijyuu]

Well said, mr Bauglir

[freeformschooler]

Yes, thank you.

This is, on the most basic level, much like the Ocean Marketing debacle, but with an operations director (?) instead of a PR wonk.

[scriver]

Bauglerman summed up my position as well.

In addition, I feel a lot of people in the "geek culture" don't generally understand the power of an apology. Or even the concept of apology. I guess one could attribute it to the crippled social understanding a lot of geeks have, but I don't know. It's seems part of the whole self-righteous aura that's all over "geekdom".

But then again, a lot of nongeeks could stand to learn to apologise more as well. After all, civilization was built on apologies.

[Vector]

Yeah, that's my feeling on it.

I similarly didn't find the comic all that offensive--kind of hate the strip because I don't think it's funny, much like Megatokyo, but that's unrelated.  But the T-shirt thing. . . man, I understand the idea ("we feel insecure so we're creating a sign of our solidarity around this rape joke!") but it's sort of gross.

Here's my favorite article on the subject: Penny Arcade, Geek Culture, and Hegel's "Beautiful Soul"

[GlyphGryph]

The whole entire thing was stupid, and Mike did stupid dick things in response to stupid dick things, each side mischaracterized and misunderstood the others, and since the people who hate Mike and Penny Arcade are never going to admit that they themselves made a mistake (and many on that side of the issue created and popularized plenty of outright falsehoods) the only proper course of action for the PA team was to apologize to those they offended and disengage.

That was the point of the most recent quotation that set things off - they shouldn't have created the follow up content, they shouldn't have put up the merchandise, and they shouldn't have pulled it, because at every point they were engaging with people who only wanted to make them look bad - people who don't care about what you do, but who just want you to engage in any way so they can find an opening and take another bite.

Articles like the ones linked with hilariously inaccurate comments like "Mike and Jerry posted a rape joke. They were respectfully called out on it." don't really serve to elevate the discussion.

I understand Mike screwed up his response bad, but I also understand WHY he screwed up his response, having had to deal with people of the same mindset about different issues (and stop people I'm working with from actually engaging with them and making us look bad in the process)

[freeformschooler]

I have no idea what's accurate or not in terms of articles on the subject. The Financial Times and Wired ones seem okay (both sites have very good, sourced content most of the time) but everything else just seems like a blog, and with a subject like this you get people's feelings really distorting the writing.

[GlyphGryph]

Unless you were there from the beginning and had your finger on the pulse of multiple different communicate sources it's hard to get a complete picture. But I distinctly remember criminal accusations, death threats, demands that they stop doing the comic, all sorts of accusations. It felt like there were a few people with legitimate grievances who just went about it the wrong and a lot of others who were just waiting in the woodworks for this sort of opportunity to lash out at the PA guys and saw this as an opportunity.

Since then there's been a lot of hyperbole, clickbait, and defensive lashing out. It's... blegh.

The whole thing is just so stupid.

[Putnam]

It's not a rape joke. A rape joke is a joke where the punchline is rape, where rape is treated as funny. Rape is used in this joke as an example of extreme horribleness that happens to people. The joke is that MMO protagonists tend to do the minimum requirement for quests even if that leaves people in terrible, terrible fates.

Also, here's Mike's side, since nobody decided to post that despite being clearly applicable.

[ChairmanPoo]

To be honest I  found the joke not-very-funny to begin with, but I don't really think rape jokes are inherently worse than any other horrible-event jokes. Still, freedom of speech obviously involves freedom to criticise as well. By lashing against their critics in such a way with their media muscle, the Penny Arcade bunch were trying to quell freedom of speech in the name of freedom of speech, which I don't know if it's ironic or just moronic.

...this is actually the kind of shit /b/ and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad love to do, come to think about it...

[anzki4]

To be honest I  found the joke not-very-funny to begin with, but I don't really think rape jokes are inherently worse than any other horrible-event jokes. Still, freedom of speech obviously involves freedom to criticise as well. By lashing against their critics in such a way with their media muscle, the Penny Arcade bunch were trying to quell freedom of speech in the name of freedom of speech, which I don't know if it's ironic or just moronic.

Except that freedom of speech also involves freedom to lash out against your critics.

[ChairmanPoo]

Freedom of speech involves freedom to speak against your critics. PA's campaign went far beyond that into plain bullying.

[10ebbor10]

Freedom of speech is not absolute. (For the argument to make sense, this has to be the case). Question is, how much are you willing to give up.

[Bauglir]

Also, here's Mike's side, since nobody decided to post that despite being clearly applicable.

Ah, hey, that's good. That's significantly more reasonable than what I'd seen from him earlier (which was the stuff he's calling kneejerk now - fair enough), and is pretty much all I could ask for at this point.

[SalmonGod]

You guys will love this...

DC is holding a contest over who can draw the best four-panel strip of Harley Quinn attempting suicide naked.  The winner gets to contribute to an upcoming comic, giving them a foot in the door to the industry.