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[Arttemis]

CNET: Palmer Luckey lied -- and that matters more than his politics

Good article, I agree with pretty much all of it.

I'm glad to see a mainstream article ounting out the hypocrisy of the liar.

That said, it's sad to not see more criticism on the funding of trolls for the explicit purpose of spreading racism and hate to influence younger voters. Fucking disgusting.

 

[Lady Gaia]

CNET: Palmer Luckey lied -- and that matters more than his politics

I'm glad the story has legs and hope this isn't the end of it. I understand that criticism here is complicated because political speech is free speech, which is something we cherish as a country.

That freedom can be abused, though, and clearly have been more and more as years pass. Political positions that threaten the freedoms of others based on immutable characteristics like race, sex, gender identity and sexuality can be expected to draw sharp criticism that can leak over into direct impact on a business. When two constitutionally guaranteed freedoms come into conflict things are rarely simple from a legal standpoint, so I can't claim any definitive insights into what options Facebook has here.

I can say uniquivocally as someone who is routinely affected by alt-right rhetoric that I have lost all interest in Oculus for the time being. Typically a company is free to make personnel decisions when there is a clear impact on their ability to perform their job effectively. If enough people feel as I do then Facebook may be able to make a reasonable case about changing Luckey's responsibility. Speaking out before that's measurable can limit their options down the road as it makes the case that it's retaliation for a political affiliation, which would be illegal.

What would go a long way toward making me feel better in the meantime, though, is a statement of recommitment to diversity and a counterbalancing donation to a non-political advocacy group to champion the rights of potentially marginalized groups.

 

[Neuromancer]

Same except this part:



I don't see any indication of this being true.

The unsaid 4th option is that he's just another wealthy idiot.

 

[jayu26]

So, this got buried just like Oculus had hoped huh?

 

[Nabs]

So, this got buried just like Oculus had hoped huh?

I like how r/oculus mods buried discussion in a garbage megathread.

 

[Exuro]

So, this got buried just like Oculus had hoped huh?

I was hoping at least arthur gies was going to put up an article on polygon. He was pretty adamant on twitter about the situation.

 

[robotrock]

So, this got buried just like Oculus had hoped huh?

Yeah I dunno what to do. Do we just keep bumping this thread and let the conversation go in circles or do we hope a nice press member writes an article.

Facebook seriously needs to do something here. Maybe they'll feel it during Oculus Connect 3 next week?

 

[Nzyme32]

So, this got buried just like Oculus had hoped huh?

I like how r/oculus mods buried discussion in a garbage megathread.

Seemingly so. Hopefully people will remember and point it out when necessary. Palmer Luckey and Oculus have lied plenty of times now, but this from Palmer now is just despicable as well as Oculus happily paving over it. I'm certain it will be talked about at Oculus Connect and they will have to address it, and I expect it to be another similarly galling brief apology of a lie that they now have to stick with.

 

[bounchfx]

they released the article right before the weekend which certainly didn't help it stay relevant :\. I'm curious to see if it goes anywhere else.

 

[Balb]

I mean, there isn't that much to discuss at this point since there haven't been any updates to the situation.

I would imagine most people have still written Luckey (and possibly the OR) off even if they don't keep posting here.

 

[Quote]

where is gamergate when you need them to blow a case wide open?

Spoiler

/s

 

[SlipperyFishes]

where is gamergate when you need them to blow a case wide open?

Backing Luckey up

 

[Maiden Voyage]

Just listened to Jeff Gerstmann talk about this on the Bombcast. He did a great job discussing the crux of the issue. I really liked his take on it. I'm glad they discussed it considering how quiet it's been at other outlets.

 

[Quote]

Here is the Luckey segment from this week's Giant Bombcast (YouTube)

If the timestamp in the link doesn't work, it starts at 1:19:50.

 

[jblank83]

Just listened to Jeff Gerstmann talk about this on the Bombcast. He did a great job discussing the crux of the issue. I really liked his take on it. I'm glad they discussed it considering how quiet it's been at other outlets.

As if we needed more proof that video game journalism is not about journalism.

Good for GB and Gerstmann though. GiantBomb staying great.

 

[serversurfer]

So he's a coward as well as a shit. Perfectly happy to troll behind the scenes as part of some meme army, but isn't confident enough to stand by his batshit convictions publicly (unlike his girlfriend). If there's a path to choose that you'd be ashamed to reveal because it would negatively effect the perception of your company, maybe don't walk down it.

To paraphrase NimbleRichMan, if he were exposed as evil, reasonable people would no longer want to do business with him, limiting his income, and in turn limiting his ability to continue doing evil in the future.

That said, his public endorsement of Johnson likely wasn't so much a cover for his support of the alt right their champion, Trump, but rather a simple effort to funnel more votes away from Clinton. Most people won't hear anything more than he gave some money to some sketchy Trump supporters, but he really supports Johnson. Hearing a "smart" guy like Luckey is voting third party will embolden anyone who'd "also" been considering some sort of protest vote but were still voting Clinton over concerns about the possibility of a Trump presidency; hearing Palmer is voting Johnson will help alleviate those fear for some. It doesn't matter if it's not true. All that matters is some people will hear and believe it, and they're getting precisely what they deserve, amirite, Palmer?? /sigh

Maybe this is pedantic, but racism is a political belief. It's one that shouldn't be tolerated but manages to be a core concept to a lot of political parties. If the goal of saying it is not is to separate it as a thing we can attack, that's unnecessary. You can accept the Nazis were a political party and still not accept their message and call for their dismantling. It's a little dangerous, to me, to pretend things like racism and sexism are over there on the sidelines and not part of politics.

Rather than legitimizing racism, misogyny and other forms of bigotry as mere political positions, I would instead argue that such anti-social views implicitly disqualify one from commenting on things like civilization and how it should be managed.

At best, bigots deserve marginalization, though given their anti-social beliefs, ostracism seems more appropriate. Personally, I try to employ shunning as much as possible. Admittedly, shunning isn't terrifically effective when it seems like I'm the only one doing it, but I do what I can.

Same except this part:

I don't see any indication of this being true.

NRM mentioned they had a third, "silent" partner.

Trump, as bad as he is, turned to Breitbart as a last resort. He didn't become involved with them until he had exhausted every other reasonable (and fairly unreasonable) option, from crawling back to the Koch Brothers to getting in bed with pro-Putin Russian political strategists. He tried to court the establishment. He tried to pose as a good Christian to pull in the religious right. He even tried to attract the fiscal revolutionaries spurned by Bernie's failure. There's a case to be made that even he, dullard and demagogue that he is, wouldn't have turned to the alt-right if he had literally any other option. We're talking about a man who was slow to disavow David Duke, and he still didn't hook up with this group until his campaign was in an epic rout and he had run out of other snake-oil salesmen promising him a turn-around.

That's the quality of people that Luckey has chosen, actively and without prompting, to make himself the "proud" patron of. The sort of people that even Trump would have rather not associated with, given a choice.

I dunno about that. Trump opened his campaign with, "Mexicans are rapists," and all the parts of his campaign which aren't focused on what a miserable country America is are focused on that central argument that The Others are the greatest impediment to our success, and must be dealt with swiftly and forcefully; we'll just team up with Russia again.

Btw, the boycott is to show public disapproval for those types of actions.

Yup. You're entitled to think whatever you want, but the rest of us are under no obligation to continue associating with you once we find out what it is.

The distressing thing about this election cycle is that poor behaviour is being normalized. For example Trump suffers little blowback from gaffs that would have easily torpedoed other candidates. For comparison, Romney's 2012 campaign was dealt a death blow with his 47% remark, and Howard Dean lost his chance at the 2004 Democratic nomination just because he screamed too energetically in a microphone. This reaction is at least setting some base standard for some people about what is acceptable.

Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at NYU, wrote a very interesting piece on this phenomenon, "Asymmetry between the major parties fries the circuits of the mainstream press." The whole thing is worth reading, but in a nutshell, the right's systematic assault on knowledge and reason has eliminated the possibility of reasoned debate. This is by design, of course, and the shitposting campaigns Palmer is funding are similarly designed to drown out any possibility of actual discourse. A couple of passages from a book he cites, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks by Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein, frame the issue nicely:

The GOP has become an insurgent outlier in American politics. It is ideologically extreme; scornful of compromise; unmoved by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition. When one party moves this far from the mainstream, it makes it nearly impossible for the political system to deal constructively with the country’s challenges.

We understand the values of mainstream journalists, including the effort to report both sides of a story. But a balanced treatment of an unbalanced phenomenon distorts reality. If the political dynamics of Washington are unlikely to change anytime soon, at least we should change the way that reality is portrayed to the public.

The argument is that the Fourth Estate are failing their responsibility to the public by presenting these invalid and fallacious arguments as mere differences of opinion, and Rosen makes a pretty strong case. A couple of more excerpts:

The Trump campaign breaks this practice. If Donald Trump calls NBC’s Lester Holt a Democrat (in fact he’s a registered Republican) and attacks him as part of an unfair system, Trump’s campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, is later free to say that Holt is a “respected, brilliant newsman” who will do a great job as moderator of the first debate. An on-the-ball journalist can ask: hey, which is it? But that’s a practice with a premise. The premise is that a presidential campaign wants to put out a consistent message to avoid confusing people, and to deny journalists a “gotcha” moment. What if that premise is false? The rationale for interviewing the campaign manager, the running mate, or some other surrogate collapses. They say one thing, the candidate says something else and the confusion is not considered a problem.

When I say he’s trying to break the press, I mean the entire system that gives honest journalism a role in the republic. Trump is running against such basic notions as:

• “we need a fact-based debate or there can’t be consent of the governed;”
• “there’s a public record that cannot just be wiped away;”
• “a candidate’s position on major issues should be made clear to the voters;”
• “lying cannot become a universal principle in politics without major damage to our democracy.”

Not only is he running against such fundamentals, the continuity of which is assumed by all forms of campaign coverage, but journalists are the ones who understand best his assault on these basic principles. They’re living it every day. Of course, he’s running against them, too.

If you have no chance of winning an argument, then maybe you can win by turning it in to a fight instead. That's the logic of the anti-social element that has taken over the right wing of this country. The right has been waging a systematic war on our basic mechanisms of civilization — education, journalism, government, communication itself… — and they've been making a lot of headway with those efforts. So here we are.

 

[Par Score]

Wasn't sure this was worth a new thread, but more developers could be backing out:

Nothing quite like being lied to your face to sour you on a platform.

This May, 100 virtual reality developers from around the country gathered at Facebook’s Menlo Park campus for a bootcamp in making software for the Oculus Rift. They were there as a part of the Launch Pad program, a fellowship designed “for diverse creators to build for VR.” After a long day of meetings, the final speaker was Oculus founder Palmer Luckey, wearing his trademark Hawaiian shirt. By keynoting the event, some attendees felt, Luckey was sending a message: The future of VR looked like them.

Now, four short months later, many of the Launch Pad fellows are reconsidering their involvement with the program after revelations that Luckey donated money to a pro-Trump nonprofit associated with the alt-right, the online political movement of trolls that sees offensive speech as a patriotic duty and views cultural diversity with disdain.

The program also includes a community: a closed Facebook group set up for the fellows by in-house coordinators, where dozens of fellows are now sharing their anger and disappointment.

“Let me get this straight, the founder of Oculus thinks my sister should be banned from visiting me in the US because she’s Muslim? And hates my husband because he’s Jewish?” wrote one fellow.

Alejandro Quan-Madrid, a Launch Pad fellow based in Los Angeles, said Luckey’s political donations make him feel like a hypocrite. “I’m doing a Day of the Dead project and showing it at Day of the Dead festivals,” he told BuzzFeed News. “How can I promote that when the head of Oculus is giving money [to support] Trump — and Trump wants people in my community to be deported?”

Several of the fellows asked the Launch Pad coordinator, Oculus Diversity Lead Amy Thole, for clarification on Luckey’s apology. Thole, who declined to speak to BuzzFeed News, sent an email to the fellows yesterday announcing that because of a planned move to Oregon, Monday was her last day at the company. There would be an “Oculus Diversity Transition” to new leadership, she wrote. She did not mention Luckey or Nimble America. (According to the email, Thole’s replacement is Ebony Peay, who previously worked as an executive assistant at Oculus.)

This only goes to reinforce Luckey's duplicity as an aggravating factor in this whole mess. Standing on a stage and publicly praising diversity, then secretly bankrolling a white-supremacist/misogynistic/anti-lgbt harassment group is extra fucked up.

Also, what a very inconvenient time for Oculus' Diversity Lead to be leaving the company.

 

[Krejlooc]

I wonder if Palmer Luckey has hardcore buyer's remorse. Spent $10,000 towards shitposting, his name is now mud, and the guy he endorsed went on world-wide tv to talk about better cyber.

 

[Arttemis]

Wasn't sure this was worth a new thread, but more developers could be backing out:

Nothing quite like being lied to your face to sour you on a platform.







This only goes to reinforce Luckey's duplicity as an aggravating factor in this whole mess. Standing on a stage and publicly praising diversity, then secretly bankrolling a white-supremacist/misogynistic/anti-lgbt harassment group is extra fucked up.

Also, what a very inconvenient time for Oculus' Diversity Lead to be leaving the company.

Supporting Trump is hardly the most unscrupulous portion of this whole affair. What about actively funding hate groups?

 

[Lady Gaia]

Not really any news, but it's always good to see the press continuing to run with it. The dismissive sounding headline for the USA Today article is worse than the article itself, which is fairly accurate sounding but leans into the "he's just passionate" interpretation:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/09/26/oculus_developers_luckey_palmer/

http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/news/2016/09/26/facebook-millionaire-luckey-aligns-himself-alt-right-but-only-if-you-squint/91132042/

 

[Vyse The Legend]

I wonder if Palmer Luckey has hardcore buyer's remorse. Spent $10,000 towards shitposting, his name is now mud, and the guy he endorsed went on world-wide tv to talk about better cyber.

Trump supporters think he won the debate, though, and not by a small margin.

They exist within their own reality distortion field.

 

[Nzyme32]

I wonder if Palmer Luckey has hardcore buyer's remorse. Spent $10,000 towards shitposting, his name is now mud, and the guy he endorsed went on world-wide tv to talk about better cyber.

I wouldn't be surprised to here that the $10,000 number is also a lie and that it was actually much more.

 

[demigod]

Also, what a very inconvenient time for Oculus' Diversity Lead to be leaving the company.

Yeah, relocating sounds like a bs excuse. I wonder which group she belongs to, LBGT?

 

[FlappyHands]

I guess he has no plans on leaving Oculus.

What will be the dev response?

I'm sure he doesn't plan to leave but he might get forced at out at this point if nothing else just for damage control reasons. I don't think he can come back from this in any respectable fashion.

 

[jayu26]

I'm sure he doesn't plan to leave but he might get forced at out at this point if nothing else just for damage control reasons. I don't think he can come back from this in any respectable fashion.

Oculus thinks that they successfully buried this. Nothing is going to happen until their bottom line is heavily impacted and the reason for that can be traced back to Luckey's fuckery.

 

[Datschge]

I wouldn't be surprised to here that the $10,000 number is also a lie and that it was actually much more.

The legal upper limit to a PAC per individual is $5,000. So any more than $10,000 for Luckey and his gf combined could actually mean legal troubles.

 

[Ploid 3.0]

At the least, this information was useful to me. I know not to buy Oculus over Vive if PSVR never gets PC drivers, and I know to let others know that they shouldn't get Oculus. Sure Vive cost more I think, but it's also better anyway.

It seems like it might not be fading away. Google Oculus and the top stories are about this crappy guy. One site says devs are dropping support because he supports Trump though. How do people mess that up, it's not about his support of Trump.

 

[mckmas8808]

Yes. And for those who need a reminder of the sort of fellow he is, this is not even the worst of his exploits just the easiest example. Google if you must know more. I'm not spreading his shit.

Why would you fat shame someone that's literally IN THE GYM sweating to lose weight? Isn't this counter productive?

 

[Mahonay]

Why would you fat shame someone that's literally IN THE GYM sweating to lose weight? Isn't this counter productive?

Because people who do that get off on the bullying aspect. Of course it's counterproductive.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

Why would you fat shame someone that's literally IN THE GYM sweating to lose weight? Isn't this counter productive?

The line of reasoning, as explained by the man himself, is that fat people disgust him and should not be in his presence no matter the situation. They should be ashamed of their body, and shame is something you should take care of in private. Once you have taken care of your shameful aspects you are welcome to rejoin the rest of the population.

 

[FStop7]

The line of reasoning, as explained by the man himself, is that fat people disgust him and should not be in his presence no matter the situation. They should be ashamed of their body, and shame is something you should take care of in private. Once you have taken care of your shameful aspects you are welcome to rejoin the rest of the population.

Then Milo shouldn't go out in public until he fixes that corny dye job mess of a hairdo.

 

[mckmas8808]

The line of reasoning, as explained by the man himself, is that fat people disgust him and should not be in his presence no matter the situation. They should be ashamed of their body, and shame is something you should take care of in private. Once you have taken care of your shameful aspects you are welcome to rejoin the rest of the population.

Jesus man....your explain (while for good) makes that guy's actions even worse. Good break down on that person's type of mind set though.

 

[Mahonay]

The line of reasoning, as explained by the man himself, is that fat people disgust him and should not be in his presence no matter the situation. They should be ashamed of their body, and shame is something you should take care of in private. Once you have taken care of your shameful aspects you are welcome to rejoin the rest of the population.

This guy sounds like a sociopath.

 

[entremet]

I don't think this stuff will stick sadly.

Not really picking up in the gaming space, plus no bigger exodus of developers.

 

[PepsimanVsJoe]

I actually heard this story on the radio the other day.

Unfortunately, the guy talking about it left out about half of the details, and sorta painted Palmer (and his girlfriend) as the victims.

Thank God my eyes didn't roll out of my head while I was driving.

 

[ratcliffja]

The line of reasoning, as explained by the man himself, is that fat people disgust him and should not be in his presence no matter the situation. They should be ashamed of their body, and shame is something you should take care of in private. Once you have taken care of your shameful aspects you are welcome to rejoin the rest of the population.

He should be thrilled that Twitter banned him, then. They're just giving him the opportunity to remove his shame in private.

 

[Veritigo_X]

I don't know how Oculus and Facebook can sweep this under the rug. Palmer is the face of Oculus and this will all be brought up again whenever he decides to show his face again. The fact that he has been absolutely silent (besides the one statement last week) is so telling.

 

[SmiteOfHand]

Now imagine how a person with that sort of grasp on critical thinking applies it towards Blacks, Muslims, Women, etc... examples of which are easy to find, and you will start to understand why people have a problem not just associating with, but financially supporting their endeavors.

 

[Mahonay]

I don't know how Oculus and Facebook can sweep this under the rug. Palmer is the face of Oculus and this will all be brought up again whenever he decides to show his face again. The fact that he has been absolutely silent (besides the one statement last week) is so telling.

I bet the only thing they do is stop trotting him out for public events and call it a day. But I guess there's only so much you can do? I don't know.

 

[Quote]

I'm interested to see if they have him head Connect this year.

 

[Steve Youngblood]

This guy sounds like a sociopath.

Granted, it's only based on one story, but my takeaway after reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet is that he's probably just a troll who really doesn't believe what he's doing. Not that it makes his behavior more excusable, mind you. Just offering a different take that it's possible that he merely pretends to be this awful for the attention that comes with it as opposed to sincerely being that way.

 

[Mahonay]

I'm interested to see if they have him head Connect this year.

I don't see that happening. They aren't this stupid.

 

[Veritigo_X]

I'm interested to see if they have him head Connect this year.

If they believe his statement why wouldn't they?

 

[Mahonay]

Granted, it's only based on one story, but my takeaway after reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet is that he's probably just a troll who really doesn't believe what he's doing. Not that it makes his behavior more excusable, mind you. Just offering a different take that it's possible that he merely pretends to be this awful for the attention that comes with it as opposed to sincerely being that way.

Constantly "pretending" to have these specific appalling views over a long stretch of time, at some point it's a sign that it's actually their true feelings that are just turned up to 11.

I feel the same way about serial troll posters. It's a "for the lulz" smokescreen that makes them feel better about themselves.

 

[Ferrio]

Granted, it's only based on one story, but my takeaway after reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet is that he's probably just a troll who really doesn't believe what he's doing. Not that it makes his behavior more excusable, mind you. Just offering a different take that it's possible that he merely pretends to be this awful for the attention that comes with it as opposed to sincerely being that way.

So a sociopath?

 

[Steve Youngblood]

So a sociopath?

Ha. Yeah, that's fair.

 

[Quote]

If they believe his statement why wouldn't they?

Like i've said before, if I had to guess, FB/Oculus has been unhappy with Luckey due to so many PR misshaps in the past. With this, I think he will be out as soon as they can without legal lashback.

But if he shows up at Connect, then I have no idea what's going on in the company.

 

[Armaros]

Like i've said before, if I had to guess, FB/Oculus has been unhappy with Luckey due to so many PR misshaps in the past. With this, I think he will be out as soon as they can without legal lashback.

But if he shows up at Connect, then I have no idea what's going on in the company.

And him showing up at Connect makes the entire event about Palmer.

 

[MarionCB]

Surely though, not showing up at Connect is a story too? An admission of shame.

 

[cakely]

Granted, it's only based on one story, but my takeaway after reading this: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news...-cleveland-with-the-worst-men-on-the-internet is that he's probably just a troll who really doesn't believe what he's doing. Not that it makes his behavior more excusable, mind you. Just offering a different take that it's possible that he merely pretends to be this awful for the attention that comes with it as opposed to sincerely being that way.