Smartface Bubba doesnt need to be removed
There is nothing wrong with smartface as a cosmetic. Yes, some people use it as an additional way to target POC players, streamers, and survivors, but thats only because they GIVE the power to the cosmetic. Calling it "blackface bubba" is giving it power that it doesnt have without these complaints. Even if it gets removed, what does that solve? does that make all racist players quit? No. If people want to be racist in a game they will.
Tagged:
Mod
Comments
I've had a bizarre encounter where a guy in the pre-game lobby asked if I could also play as "the [n-word]". All 3 others were Claudettes. The guy then proceeded to write out an onomatopoeia of monkey sounds.
It's really not just smartface Bubba users. I really shouldn't think we're removing Claudette from the game, now would we?
If I understand the argument, he's saying that it could also be used by bigots to display bigotry. This was, if I recall, the first reply to BHVR's announcement of the charm (something along the lines of 'oh yay now I'll get tunneled for wearing it).
In both cases, you have an innocuous, if not well intentioned element of the game that could 'enable' bigotry.
What he's essentially arguing is that it sets a silly precedent.
At least that's my impression.
Nobody is saying it's just the Bubba players, however it's a tool allowing implicit racism. That was explicit racism and entirely bannable
I get what you're saying and it would just be weird if Bubba only had Meg or Dwight's face, but excluded Claudette and Jake's.
However there is a difference between the pride charm and blackface Leatherface.
Nobody uses blackface Leatherface to represent themselves and display pride in their identities in the match. It's not like there's some movement to do so either, when you have several characters for representation (such as Dwight, Meg, Claudette, Adam, Elodie, Jake, Zarina). However people do use the pride charm for that.
Furthermore, people equip blackface Leatherface to be racist, people equip the pride charm and have homophobic/transphobic actions against them. A better comparison would be asking about removing every non-white survivor, to which the logical answer would be "######### no".
I'm just giving it as an example that "removing a tool" is just ultimately futile, in my opinion. This is my logical-to-a-fault reasoning that removing the tools to express racism isn't going to solve the core issue, being the racism itself.
No, and nobody is arguing that it will. However, you can be implicitly racist, and explicitly racist, and what you described is the latter. It is also much easier to prove, and thus much easier to ban for. Removing the tool for implicit racisim means they'll either have to be explicitly racist- and thus risk a ban- or keep their views to themselves- which enables people to be far more comfortable while playing.
...Then I actually just don't see the issue. If the racist keeps their opinion to themselves, then what's the effective difference between a 'normal' bubba player using the cosmetic, versus an actual racist using it as a blackface...thing. (I'm too tired to think of the correct terminology anymore.)
Because being implcitly racist isn't keeping your views to yourself, it's displaying them in a way hard to prove however still entirely capable of causing the desired effect.
I suppose you're right, but it still feels to me like that's going to be an edge-case. To that effect, the proposed change feels like an overreaction to me.
But, again, I'm aware I'm going to be biased. It's not up to me, either way.
So ban those people for being racist. And continue banning those people until they catch on and stop being so deliberate about their ignorance. Don't cave in to stupidity and stoop to their level just because it is an ugly annoyance. Show them why they are being ugly. Sometimes you have to show people what is acceptable and what is not, because they may have never been taught that.
Because the minute you cave under pressure they will keep doing more and more ugly things until there's nothing left to enjoy in the game. So remove the ugliness first, then we can talk about what is still relevant
It's probably up to the License holders if it got removed anyway.
You're a big supporter of a LGBT character being added to DBD. If a character was added and ######### begin using that character to harass LGBT streamers, would you advocate for that characters' removal? Or would you just want the ######### ban.
Okay, going point by point (not sure how to do that indented quote thing).
Whew. That was a lot.
Anyway, I'm going to go and play a few games. We can pick this up later if you'd like.
Sure.
My easiest example would be the maybe once-a-fortnight message I get in postgame threatening to report me for 'tunneling someone because they had a pride charm'.
Bad actors could target down these characters, and it would be incredibly difficult to prove their intent.
If a killer, then the same as what they are saying with Leatherface. If a survivor, body blocking, blowing gens, vaulting windows, unhook spamming, etc.
How else do you learn?
What he's saying is that the second you set apart a character by some minority identity characteristic, you 'empower' people to display their bigotry by giving people playing these characters a hard time, much as the argument here goes 'giving Bubba a non-white face option empowers these people to act in a racist way'.
I...think.
No, just like I'm not advocating for the removal of all non-White survivors. What kind of ######### strawman is this
i think it represents the original survivors its all it will/has ever meant to me. i've used them all before. idc what you use.
The blackface is also nonsensical. Its not paint its her skin. If you take issue with her skin being black then you're taking issue with her being black.
To the crutch of the issue. If streamers are really getting harass, as in racist end game chat. Ban the players making the racist comments.
It's entirely possible that some people grow up without the fear of consequence
Did Bubba say something racist to you? He just mumbles and stuff LOL.
And facecamping bubbas aren’t common?
Fear of consequence has a lot to do with racism... it means someone has never scolded them for their actions, or prevented them from doing certain things while in a terrible, distraught frame of mind.
I can tell you 100% that you will not solve racism by removing store items from the game. That's the worst band-aid I've ever heard of.
You are correct. It doesn't need to be removed. Thanks for your contribution.
Sounds like you're not even concerned about racism in the slightest. Just semantics...
I actually feel pity when I read your comments
Right... sounds like someone forgot to read into my statements. You should focus on more than semantics
Except someone said that a smart face bubba facecamping a black survivor is racist. Just read the thread.
I know swathes of people that think "it's not racism if it's true" unfortunately -.-
Even if someone said it like that it doesn’t make this discussion about that?
it is about players that are using Smart face Bubbas to then harass streamers that are people of color or only target and harass players that use characters in-game that are people of color.
Had to post the same thing to the same user earlier, haha.
Was tickled to see this @_@
You don't actually have to agree with or understand why someone is offended in order to take their feelings seriously and try to make a space more welcoming for them.
The only people that associate that with racism are the actual racist people because they can't get colour and gender off their brain.
Its the same train of thought that made disney only allow x race to voice the same race character or it is "racist" Or the people that petitioned to get uncle bens face off the rice packet because all they saw was rice + black man = racist. instead of someone proud to have built a business empire
Oh no, not this discussion again.
I'm hoping removing smart face is a deal breaker for the license holder and Bubba gets removed. Not many were playing Bubba except for memes before Billy nerf. To get more buying/playing Bubba they nerfed Billy so Bubba would be the more appealing chainsaw killer. Remove Bubba - Billy can return to his glory days as #1 chainsaw killer and racist players won't be able to harass with blackface killer, it's a win/win.
I agree delete bubba and bring back billy boy. Much respectable than this bloat whale spoil brat killer, hail all billies we want you back!!!!
I feel like this thread is softcore gaslighting poc, but I’m not gonna reach that far.
I wish we would get the rest of the survivors as faces. A Jeff skin mask would be pretty cool looking.
Well, the developers (or whatnot) are wanting to change it soo.. yeah.
A good replacement could be clothes. Clothes of similar style to the og four. Like gardening wear, a uniform and tie, athletic wear, survivalist clothes. I’m talking completely different outfits for Bubba to imitate them.
Better than just “masks”, if you ask me. It’d be a win-win, wouldn’t it?
This entire conversation in a nutshell...
After reading several pages...I'm still having a very hard time imagining a person go "Bubba wearing Claudette's face?! This is the PERFECT outlet for me to share my subtle brand of racism."
It's not blackface.
Bubba isn't performing the act for racist reasons.
You would have to really stretch the data available to you to accuse someone of using the skin in a racist manner (Because, you know, there are plenty of people who tunnel Claudette for OTHER reasons.)
And does anyone here really think that a racist puts on this skin and scratches their racist hardon? This last one is rhetorical I'm sure some of you contrarian nuts will chime in and say absolutely.
Nope, not for the people that liked the masks and worked to unlock them. It's a silly thing to remove (if they decide to).
Eh, I tried.
Bubba brutally murders people, butchers them, and wears their skin as a mask.
How is the race of his victim the problem in this whole process? Why is this remotely relevent?
You people are just looking to be offended at anything you possibly can. It doesn't matter. Sticks and stones. Move on.
If you can't handle it, then you are too fragile to exist online.
I don't understand some of you. Bubba is a serial murderer who eats and wears skins of all racial backgrounds. So contextually, him wearing Claudette's face is fitting to his character. What some of you want is to remove it because you're offended by it due to its connection to the past... But what do you think is going to happen if this actually passes through? There'll be people raising a movement to remove Clown because they think he's too similar to John Wayne Gacy, a real serial killer clown. There'll be people who are offended by Plague because she reminds them of many people who were affected or even died to the pandemic. This will set a precedent where anyone with loud voice on twitter or whatever social media will straight up remove valued content from this game (though, when it comes balancing, Behavior is completely deaf to those suggestions/demands).
Whatever connections something may have, the CONTEXT, NARRATIVE, and INTENT is what can overthrow whatever negative connotations and labels you add to something. I can show you a racist scene making fun of Africans, Asians, and Irish from Bioshock Infinite but is that game racist and discriminatory? Absolutely not, it's a game about how racism is ultimately evil and destructive, but anyone who hasn't played through it can see an image and scream racism and demand removal. And like I said before, the Smartface is not supposed to be racist, Bubba is just wearing the original 4 survivors' faces and one of them happens to be African. This is just my opinion, though.
Checks out except for the fact that I've been repeating almost word for word things that poc friends have told me about it and their experiences 🧍
If you'd looked at the responses for more than half a second you'd know this to be false jfc.
It's funny that when Bubba was released and people were earning and wearing the faces, nobody complained.
Now it's a huge issue because some people are offended just by seeing the color black (I'm making this a lot bigger, I know). But those people have absolutely NO problem that Meg and Dwight their faces are on Bubba. Isn't that racist as well then? Or is that different?
I don't think the faces need to be removed. I would add more faces to Bubba so people have more incentive to choose faces. And people have to grow a skin (hihi) and grow up. Not everything in the world is racist.
Racist people are going to be racist anyway, they don't need an Bubba face to do so.
What sort of situation would this leave us in if BHVR gets permission to remove this cosmetic, but can't renegotiate it to something else? Or is only allowed to change this one (maybe extend this to Jake, too).
Wouldn't that just offend a different set of people?
Not even counting the part where bigots might still use the Claudette-specific cosmetic to specifically target people, as making it less obvious won't necessarily change the incentive, and it'll obviously be on everybody's minds for a while to insure the conclusions can still be reached.