Minecraft’s creator excluded from event over his ‘comments and opinions’ | Hacker News Reader

Minecraft’s creator excluded from event over his ‘comments and opinions’

theverge.com

50 pointsamaccuish61 comments

It's sad how wealth affected Notch or perhaps magnified his character. A long time ago, I started following him on Twitter and I think I lasted about 2 weeks before I unfollowed him. The sheer negativity and woe is me is bananas. If there's a prime example that money doesn't buy happiness, he is one.

Notch's twitter, for reference:

https://twitter.com/notch/

To be fair- The Notch you are disliking is the same person he was __before__ the influx of Micro$oft cash. At very least, he's consistent.

I don't know if that's entirely true—I followed him on twitter for a period of time before and after the sale, and post-sale his tweets got more and more unpalatable. Perhaps you're right, and he didn't change at all, but at the very least the public persona that he expressed changed.

It gets dangerous when tons of the people around you are somehow seeking to feed off your wealth and thus you get very little negative feedback anywhere. Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.

> Everyone says they hate yes men. In practice most people love yes men.

Sadly true.

In my experience this is true, that money doesn't buy happiness, but it does allow you to focus on your actual problems instead of the boring old money problems that nearly everyone else has. In some cases, newfound wealth will not only not solve one's problems but may throw them into sharp relief, or worsen them by deflecting negative feedback. Many if not most lottery winners seem to be affected by this.

Money doesn't buy happiness, it's the lack of it that makes unhappy.

There's a saying that money magnifies who you already are. It's an important thought, even if it's not 100% accurate. If you know how to be happy, money can enable you to make yourself - and others around you - happy. If you're better at being angry or sad or anxious, money can make you miserable. That's a lot of people, perhaps including me. Having money and improving yourself are basically two separate efforts.

Given all that, it's pretty predictable what "jerk" plus "money" will add up to.

He was always like this. Wealth didn't change anything.

Notice Verge is quoting a politically-charged journal, called Roots, as proof of "problematic" language.[1]

I don't know. Microsoft can do what it wants, but as a society we need to consider doing two things:

A - Socially spurning all political language in non-political contexts.

or

B - Being tolerant of all political language that isn't DIRECTLY hateful. Using the word "white" and just saying a contextless tweet "It's ok to be white" should not offend people, or if it does, it should be tolerated. OR, we can have a long discussion about it, and go back and forth and try to figure it out.

_A_ seems wise. But society chooses [edit] neither A nor B and we get into fights over it.

And if C, allowing some opinions but not others is the course of action, then we have a real problem. We're not going to "eliminate hate" by going option C: selection of opinions that are Correct and Not Correct. Because those in the "Not Correct" category will regroup in far worse ways - don't we learn from history?

[1] - Read this and judge for yourself. Please read their OTHER articles and tell me if you don't find evidence of hate. https://www.theroot.com/minecraft-creator-goes-full-white-pr...

I tried clicking the links about Notch's non-pc comments. Those took me to newsweek articles which also talked about twitter but didn't link to the offending tweets themselves. Only one article linked (someplace called "the root") actually referenced any of his words per se. Among the problematic quotes were:

"Privilege is a made up metric used to silence and repress. We are all different, and that is ok. We listen to individuals and help each other based on individual strengths and needs.

We do not generalize based on skin color, bigot."

That's a far cry from the sensationalized title of "Notch hates diversity".

So in answer to your question, my guess is Notch basically a DeMoore type character and is being crucified by the media.

It took about 5 seconds of googling to find this:

https://twitter.com/notch/status/901192994971410433?lang=en

Another 2 seconds for:

https://twitter.com/notch/status/1101794469060337664?lang=en

I laughed at those, I think he's trolling.

If you look at the Twitter thread of the Q post, he seems sincere in his beliefs and is defending it. Given his other posts, it doesn't look like trolling.

For those of us at work, do you mind summarizing these tweets in a reasonably SFW fashion?

The first "(pizzagate is real)" second "Q is legit. Don't trust the media." the second is followed with him defending the Q conspiracy in the comments, the first all the replies have pretty much been deleted.

The actual text is:

(pizzagate is real)

(q is legit. don't trust the media)

huh. He really did go for that Q garbage. It wasn't just a joke.

This really upsets my priors about the average contrarian theory believer.

Seriously what the fuck happened to Notch. I don't blame Microsoft from excluding him at all.

I think it's a side effect of becoming so well known in a short amount of time.

It's a side effect of success and attitude/pov not being correlated.

He's self-made and not afraid to express his opinions even if they aren't politically correct. People like him should be applauded as they are increasingly rare in today's society.

Alternatively, we could not applaud racist assholes.

All I've found regarding notch's racist comments is this GQ article: https://www.gq.com/story/notch-whiteness-tweets

I would probably not interpret his comments as racist, at least not in an obvious definition of the word.

I've also read his twitter feed a fair amount, and have not spotted any clearly racist statements.

I've also heard he is anti semitic, but haven't seen any citations.

As for the links in the parent article, saying transwomen aren't women sounds like an opinion, not hate speech.

Calling women the c word is very rude, and That could be grounds for disinviting notch. But if so, I hope MS is consistent and bars people who call men the d word, african americans the n word, and so on.

Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous. Hardly grounds for disinviting someone, unless again MS is consistent.

> Believing in conspiracy theories seems pretty innocuous.

Sorry - Aren't we in the middle of a measles outbreak (U.S.A)?

Don't forget the guy who went to Pizza Restaurant and shot the gun into the ceiling because he said there were kid sex dungeons.

How is this related to conspiracy theories?

Misinformation driven in part by conspiracy theories has increased the spread of measles back into areas where it was thought to be eradicated.

> An unfounded fear of vaccines has spread around the world in recent years, with childhood vaccination rates reportedly declining in several countries as a result. Nothing in the belief system of Orthodox Jews makes them any more likely to oppose vaccines, and several Orthodox rabbinical organizations have called on parents to vaccinate their children. But Hasidic Jews are prey to the same misinformation that has affected others, and some ultra-Orthodox rabbis have come out against vaccines.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/nyregion/measles-jewish-c...

The article is paywalled.

So, there is a documented decline in vaccination, but is there a documented link between that and spread of measles?

https://twitter.com/notch/status/22330335379333120

Alright, notch is a racist. Best case he was saying that for shock effect, and that's no excuse. So, I have to agree with Microsoft banning him from the anniversary, and it's too bad he's gone this way. I guess you can't judge a game by its developer.

Since you posted this comment, the tweet has been completely deleted.

http://web.archive.org/web/20190430104624/https:/twitter.com...

Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions? This rhetoric plays into a common theme among extremists which is quite dangerous: "Everyone actually thinks the same way I do, they are just afraid to say it".

> Do you think the reasons most people don't express opinions like the ones notch has expressed recently is due to a fear of backlash over being considered 'un-PC' as opposed to not actually holding those opinions?

Repeated surveys show that the identitarian left accounts for about 8% of the population, and that their views are over represented in media, while people are genuinely afraid of being publicly lynched for saying the wrong thing.

The entire #walkaway movement started because of that.

Yes, I know many, many people who don't express their non-far left opinions for fear of losing their jobs. They are not extremists, quite the opposite, they view the current cultural zeitgeist of tech companies to be extremist but can't speak up against it.

Anyone can express their beliefs within reason (the US courts have put some limits on what falls under the first amendment, of course) - you just can’t be surprised when there are consequences for your public expression.

Notch obviously doesn’t care what people think of him anymore, that’s not something I personally feel we should be applauding. It’s one thing if you’re using “fuck you money” to speak against the status quo, it’s another to just be a bigoted jerk on Twitter.

Saying "Pizzagate is real" or that Q is legit isn't an opinion, it's making up false facts. And that statement has been used to push Pizzagate among the masses.

I haven't been following him and his comments. And I agree it's important to call out false statements.

But believing in and promoting demonstratively false and damaging ideas is much more common than people realize.

For example, many good people who are more important and educated than game developer falsely believe that President Trump said that white nationalists and neo-nazis are fine people.

Reporter: "The neo-Nazis started this. They showed up in Charlottesville to protest --"

Trump: "Excuse me, excuse me. They didn’t put themselves -- and you had some very bad people in that group, but you also had people that were very fine people, on both sides. You had people in that group. Excuse me, excuse me. I saw the same pictures as you did. You had people in that group that were there to protest the taking down of, to them, a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name."

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2019/apr/26...

Does that prove something? I'm not sure what your point is.

Here is the rest of the exchange where Trump explicitly says he isn't talking about neo-nazis and white nationalists when he says 'fine people' and explicitly condemns neo-Nazis and white nationalists from the article you linked to.

Reporter: "George Washington and Robert E. Lee are not the same."

Trump: "George Washington was a slave owner. Was George Washington a slave owner? So will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down -- excuse me, are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? What do you think of Thomas Jefferson? You like him?"

Reporter: "I do love Thomas Jefferson."

Trump: "Okay, good. Are we going to take down the statue? Because he was a major slave owner. Now, are we going to take down his statue?

"So you know what, it’s fine. You’re changing history. You’re changing culture. And you had people -- and I'M NOT TALKING ABOUT THE NEO-NAZIS AND THE WHITE NATIONALISTS -- BECAUSE THEY SHOULD BE CONDEMNED TOTALLY But you had many people in that group other than neo-Nazis and white nationalists. Okay? And the press has treated them absolutely unfairly.

Should people who believe in Russiagate be excluded from events?

> He's self-made

Well, Microsoft made him a billionaire—and they're also the ones choosing not to include him in the Minecraft event.

> “His comments and opinions do not reflect those of Microsoft or Mojang and are not representative of Minecraft.”

Do all the comments and opinions of every other participant in the event reflect those of Microsoft and Mojang?

Which other participant created Minecraft?

Notch seems to have gone a bit off the deep end, and I'm not referring to his conservative views. His tweets often sound incoherent. Maybe English isn't his strongest skill? I can't tell.

Someone in the Minecraft YouTuber community speculated that perhaps he got involved with party drugs (MDMA) and it affected him permanently, as they had seen something similar happen with a friend of theirs. Pure speculation.

Why did this get flagged?

If I felt that Microsoft was delivering high quality software and was a meritocracy I would cut them a lot of slack, no matter what opinions they espoused and who they favored or excluded.

Unfortunately I have to use Skype for Business literally every working day and it's symptomatic of a company that is fat dumb and happy, secure in its cash flow.

Microsoft is simply applying a strategy that's known to work (see: the study confirming that banning problematic subreddits has had a positive effect on Reddit as a whole). This is what happens when you hold views decent people don't hold: you get silenced, ostracized, and your name blotted from your own work. Want decent people to engage with you? Change your mind.

How do you reconcile that with censorship in general?

Censorship is being put in actual jail under threat of a gun for saying something.

Private individuals and organizations should not be forced to subsidize your speech.

> Censorship is being put in actual jail under threat of a gun for saying something.

I think that's kind of a limited definition. You can be censored without being put in jail or forced into it by violence.

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