It sadly does not come as a surprise that one of the Penny Arcade boys made some ignorant, transphobic remarks. This is not the first time either of them was caught saying something dumb and hurtfull, nor the first time that they dug in first rather than apologise and acknowledging that they’d done wrong. It’s not so much that they deliberately set out to provoke or hurt people but rather that they’re somewhat more ignorant about certain hot button topics than they themselves realise, nor all that used to being contradicted. So instead of backing down, they double down on the offensiveness instead.
Why this is may be explained by their own history. Jerry Holkins and Mike Krahulik were your typical gaming nerds that through a combination of luck and hard work managed to make what was just another gaming webcomic into a multimillion dollar business, themselves into nerd kings. They’re in a position where they rarely have to listen to anybody else, with an audience that actively sucks up to them and they have that typical nerd mentality of thinking they know everything about anything. It’s not full on Dunning Kruger, but it does mean they have trouble recognising their own ignorance at times. Which is deadly when it comes to these kind of indentity issues. What’s troubling is that they also seem unwilling to address their ignorance, preferring to just not talk about these things instead.
In conclusion, Penny Arcade is a land of contrasts, not willfully evil but perhaps willfully stupid.
Russ Allbery
June 22, 2013 at 7:41 pmIt’s worth noting that, despite posting that blog post about not wanting to talk about it, they’re continuing to walk it back further. There’s another update today.
My impression is that they often have no feel or intuition for the topics and are a bit too confident in their own understanding, but they seem to be willing to realize when they’ve screwed up and make at least some effort to adjust. However, the whole process of initial defensiveness and backlash plays out in public since they don’t filter out their initial reactions, so it tends to be somewhat contentious each time it happens.
I think there’s a lot of good will combined with a lot of ignorance here. But I’m not sure the ignorance is willful. I would have been more willing to agree with that a couple of years ago, but at this point, I think the ignorance is increasingly less willful and increasingly something they’re putting in at least some effort towards changing.