Okay, Fred.

I have experience as a paralegal. People sue every day for things you might think are crazy. Once you get in front of a judge or a jury there’s no way to predict how it will go.

I stand behind what I said. If someone sues because they are denied access due to a comment they made on Twitter, they stand an excellent chance of winning. There are cases in the pipeline now where people are being punished for things they post on Facebook. Guess what: a lot of those people are winning in court.

Freedom of speech only has to do with what the government has to say about your speech acts and the notion that you don’t understand this but pretend to know anything about lawsuits is just absurd. WotC could literally ban people for like, no reason and face zero legal consequences.

Part of the freedom of speech is the freedom to offend. Offensive speech

and hate speech are two different things. Big Brother is quick to come down

on hate speech. Offensive speech is protected. Check out Jerry Falwell’s

lawsuit againts Larry Flynt. Your argument that the content of the tweet doesn’t

matter is an epic fail.

Does WOTC have the authority to ban people because of something someone

said on social media? It’s doubtful that could stand up to a lawsuit. If they ban

someone over something as inocuous as that Yu-Gi-Oh comment and the person

banned gets a lawyer, WOTC might as well go ahead and write out the check and

save everyone a lot of time.

Jason is a writer that frequently puts out content with tongue-in-cheek phrases. This is defensible.

The tweet in question was some moron nobody knows about being a moron. Not so easily defensible.

BTW, I’m offended that you think it is unfortunate your wife its going to life. I think it is offensive to be so flippant with human life. Now that I think about it, it reflects badly on the magic brand. We can’t have everyone thinking that those misogynistic comments speak for WotC.

Censor it all.

You are looking at a situation where a tweet started a large debate about wizards, their power to protect their brand, whether they should police free speech and how the use of a hashtag in the offending tweet mattets and are instead focusing on the contents of the tweet. You are literally missing the entire debate because you can\’t see the forest for the tweet. The comments about Feline Let ngmore raise identical questions and the only difference in using that example is that you no longer have an argument.

I have a feeling that it is about as benign as you can get with stereotypes. I can’t imagine it is any more offensive to have it said that you play YuGiOh than Magic. I like how suddenly there is so much social esteem from playing Magic over any other game. I feel like people are getting all upset because someone thinks that their dark elf costume is better than someone else’s battle droid costume. I can’t imagine the bar being any lower for offensive speech than this.

Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it is offensive to have it said that you play YuGiOh, I don’t know. I’ve never played YuGiOh.

The harm is that someone was offended. If the tweet had merit on its own and someone was offended, maybe that person is easily offended. If the tweet has no merit, does not provoke a debate, does not add to the discourse or advance the community, why defend it? I defend controversial speech. That isn\’t the issue. This is speech that has literally no use other than to cause harm and offense, so there is no basis for its defense and since it\’s offending people, WOTC should see if this guy is just a career troll, and if he won\’t respond to reason, they will likely institute a policy to curb this sort of trolling and punish future violaters. It\’s not \”overly PC\” to want to curb malicious speech with no merit, whether or not YOU find it offensive.

I think that would almost the definition of overly pc. If it has, as you say, a kernel of truth to it, I don’t know if censoring as a preventive measure isn’t offensive in itself. If it has no basis in reality, then show me the harm. No one should be prohibited from speaking nonsense that does no harm.

If it isn’t overly pc to prohibit all topics of race including ones containing kernels of truth and/or ones that are inoffensive, then I don’t know what is.

Reasonable people don’t take offence to blather.

Or maybe it is some supreme, big deal, secret code, n-bomb prohibiting people from playing magic comfortably.

My .02, also goes for gender, orientation, etc.

Probably just tripped the auto-filter. Approved to the post, silent toward the content.

Whatever, it gives me chance to clean it up.

It is about as racist as saying all Asians like Seinfeld. Unless there is some negative stereotype involved, this is much ado about nothing. Racism requires that one race be superior to another based on some sort of racial characteristic.

Just making ludicrous claims about blacks is hardly something to take serious. One can make all sorts of preposterous claims about races that don’t amount to racism.

All mexicans like chow mein. Moslems prefer shoes without laces. Black people smack people.

Unless we are nerdy enough to think magic is objectively superior to yu gi oh.

All this fuss is white guilt. There I said it.

Interesting perspective. Hashtags are such a weird grey area right now. Doug\’s going to be a better legal analyst than I am so I won\’t stick my foot in my mouth too much since I didn\’t ever take the bar or practice law, but whether or not Wizards owns the hashtag (I mean it would be really tough to argue that they did. I certainly don\’t want to make that argument) isn\’t necessarily relevant in this case because it is explicitly linked with their brand.

Interestingly enough, though, your comment got me thinking a bit more deeply and I realized that Wizards is not in a unique position to do something. SCG could also, if they elected, refuse to allow entry to their events to people who violate a policy (one they\’d have to enact going forward) regarding hashtags associated with their events. I don\’t know that anything can be done now, besides keeping tabs on the offending individuals should their behavior escalate or continue, but an official policy moving forward would be good. You could get a DCI suspension or ban for saying the things said on twitter to a person\’s face, so we can\’t allow the internet to be a shield to allow cowardly people to become emboldened and say things that are even worse than anything they\’d ever say face to face. I tend to doubt that guy would have said \”I thought black people only played Yu Gi Oh\” to Cedric Phillips\’ face and I think there is more than one reason that\’s the case.

I don\’t see this as abridging rights or policing extra-curricular behavior. I see it as by extension enforcing an official policy that\’s already in place because if calling someone a racist or homophobic slur can be dealt with with disciplinary action when it happens in person, it should be dealt with the same way when done digitally. I argue that digital slurring is worse since the tweet is recorded for posterity and many more people are exposed to the offending statement.

I\’m all for the First Amendment, but let\’s not forget about decorum and let\’s not allow people in our community to bully other people in our community. We\’re better than that.

I didn\’t hear about the Feline debacle until after I\’d published the article. All the vague references to the comments made about her on twitter were sufficiently vague that I thought they referred to the racist tweet.

Personally, I think Feline Longmore is a disgusting human being. Who plays High Tide?

Her deck choice aside, though, the homo/trans-phobic tweets directed at her were pretty embarrassing. There are a lot of times when I\’m proud of how intelligent and progressive the average Magic player is and this weekend was one of the times I wished I didn\’t have to be associated with a lot of them. Feline Longmore had to endure the confusion of being raised as a boy, had to endure a lot of bullying from the jocks and knuckle-draggers at her high school and has to endure people looking at her sideways on a daily basis. The last thing the LBGT community needs is additional shit from our community, which should be much more tolerant due to the fact that many magic players were outcasts themselves. It\’s all using twitter as cover- the anonymity of the internet emboldens some of the more cowardly members of the community to tweet things they\’d never have the balls to look Feline in the face and say to her.

I\’m proud to support the LBGTA (A for allies, something I consider myself) community and I\’m proud to condemn people who are using twitter as a bully pulpit to assail them. I\’m in favor of a good, off-color joke myself. I think some pretty awful shit is funny. But there is a difference between a joke and trying to make someone feel shitty about who they are as a person.

The community was quick to condemn the awful things said about Feline on twitter and I got the chance to be proud all over again. We\’re not going to tolerate people using magic hashtags to target people and harass them. We\’re not going to encourage this type of behavior. I think most of the community feels the way I do.

Again, not a first amendment issue. It\’s a tact issue, and we could all use a refresher in tact once in a while, myself included.

With regard to RUG Delver declining in popularity I think it has more to do with the fact that people still can’t play the deck well ;p

It’s also true that some people have just gotten board of playing the deck. Many Legacy players just aren’t that interested in jamming the same deck week in and week out regardless of how good it is. I even heard a local guy say he put down RUG because he was winning too much…

I think that it’s interesting that you didn’t weigh in on the reaction to Feline Longmore. I was really expecting your two cents on that debacle. I think that there is a lot to say and that it goes a lot deeper than most are giving it credit for.