On July 13th, we asked the community for your opinion if you would like to change the name of this community.
Results of the Survey :
Yes - 28.1%
No - 71.9% (winner)
Of the 1,201 responses received, we as a community have democratically decided that we should not change the name from PC Master Race. I am grateful to our community for your input, as this was a difficult topic to navigate together.
We'll pin this post for some time and then consider adding a bullet into the sidebar for this Community to help stave off further discussions around this topic as the community has already decided collectively.
What should you do if you are unhappy with the results of this survey?
I understand you are disappointed. This is how democratic decisions work, and is the reality of the situation.
My opinion here is for you to take a moment to look inward and decide for yourself how you want to proceed.
If the name of this community bothers you, my recommendation is to do the only thing you can do as a person: make a choice and opt out.
There are other communities you can join and collaborate in. You can always spin up a new community in the Fediverse, on any instance out there, and create new content to attract users.
However, if you are okay with accepting that the name of this community will not change, stay with us. We'd love to have you here.
Final notes to remember:
We are all gamers. We are all united by our varying levels of PC enthusiasm. Let's stay united in our hobbies, rather than allowing ourselves to become divided. Seems like these days there is so much division all across the world, all across social media, in our news, etc.
For all the evils out there in the world, this is a safe place for us.
Every person on this planet out there has a different opinion. Remember to be kind to others, even when no one is watching you.
And it's not just about what you have the "right" to do. You're capable of moves like maneuvering to take control of its parent instance, starting a new alternative community, lobbying real governments that wield hard power to brutally suppress anyone using a name involving "master race". Or buy up a bunch of PS5s and give them away to people who are on the fence about whether to get a console or PC.
Not that I want the name to change myself, but don't try to limit what our opponents can do about it. Who knows, maybe their practice here will give them experience that will help overthrowing other oppressive regimes.
In a democratic government you have the right to protest. Less-so here. At the end of the day the mods have the final say. They could, at any point, dictate extra rules to us and enforce them with bans. We would have no choice but to obey or leave. That's their choice because they own the community here.
It's harder to leave a country than it is to leave a Lemmy community. That's why protests won't work here. If you disagree with the result of the poll, and by extension the way this community is run, you can always leave with a single click.
Side note: Morality is inherently subjective. Many middle-eastern countries consider women showing off their bodies to be immoral, but in the west it is accepted. Both cultures generally consider their way to be correct.
Folks seem to be missing why PCMR is even a thing. It is a tongue in cheek representation of PC users during the console brand fights of PS2/Xbox though PS4/Xbox One. The idea is that PC users sneer down on console users and don't see the precarious position we are in with our bloated upfront costs to entertainment.
It was never meant for a direct "PC is superior" idea - in fact it's making the statement that PC users are silly and take themselves too seriously.
And even if it weren't, jokes are allowed to be edgy.
You can say fuck on the internet, as they say.
And I for one lived through enough of the 90s (all of 'em) that I don't care for this "must sanitize everything, think of the children" attitude just because it's suddenly coming from the left.
So yeah, fuck'em, communities are accountable to their members, not random mouthbreathers barging in demanding to be accommodated.
You wouldn't do it at your clubhouse and you shouldn't do it here, either.
Something I have really learned about the "sanitize everything, think of the children" types are that the huge majority dose not mean "protect the children" they mean "ban it for everyone, because I don't like it" and a lot of them don't even know what they want removed, they just looked at the cover and said "this is bad"
And over the last few years that upfront cost has gone up insanely between everything costing more during COVID and GPU pricing miking gamers first during the crypto craze and now with the AI one.
Seriously. It was a constant shitting on. Games would skip PC. Console gamers would brag about their Master Chiefs and Kratos. Hell, I remember we were even lower than Mobile Gaming during that era! Fucking Angry Birds and Candy Crush was more important than any PC game!
Then thanks to Steam and mods and indie games, we reign supreme. Companies came over in droves. I, a PC gamer, can finally play Halo and God of War and Sonic. Nintendo still holds out but that's okay.
So the master race was a joke, but also a rally cry for representation.
Rock paper shotgun used to have a tagline like "PC Gaming since 1873". I always love that tongue in cheek.
I mean that's fine but master race is a direct allusion to nazi germany . . . We could stop comparing ourselves to victims of genocide. But im not on reddit anymore so doesn't affect me at all.
As a PC enthusiast my main gripe has always been the lack of choice over performance options. I want the choice between higher fidelity or higher framerates. The new generations of consoles have included this option, and it is awesome. I also like how newer generation hardware has been able to run the older games it is compatible with at higher fidelity AND higher framerates, bringing the hardware improvements to those older games and increasing their lifespan/playability.
the problem isn't that it's offensive to console gamers it's that it's offensive to people in groups (jewish, queer, communist, Russian) who the Nazis killed over 12 million of, jesus why is this so hard to understand
Because it feels like those groups would have to go out of their way to find the offense when they, themselves, should see that it is mocking the Nazis. It seems baffling that making fun of the Nazis would be offensive to their victims.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but as someone who just started programming like 2 years ago, main makes more sense and is a more approachable name to me than master
Going to change to anything that made sense in git, trunk would have made most sense (or something along those lines). Since your project can have many branches... Tree puns!
But changing it after the product was out was a dumb idea regardless of whatever makes sense and what doesn't. It was blatant pointless virtue signaling that broke some automation and makes a bunch of documentation needlessly confusing (someone just starting out and seeing main but the book they bought to learn says master... Now has to find out why).
The concept of a master branch reaches back to CVS (that's Concurrent Version System, not a pharmacy), and Subversion. Makes sense it wouldn't make sense to you. Frankly it doesn't make sense to git at all, but that's a much larger discussion.
Wait, what? When did this even happen (in general)?
Ah, screw this. I'll probably keep "master" in anything that currently has it, and the next time I start something I'll just go back to calling it "trunk" even though I was too young at that point to actually call it trunk, but it makes the most sense for the organization flow.
While convention is not about making sense (does Java class names make any sense?), master makes more sense in this case because main implies that there are secondary that's not related to it. Which really shouldn't happen in any sane repo.
I still use it. When GitHub first forced it on everyone, it broke one or two of my scripts - so I ended up just changing the default back to master out of spite, and haven't touched it since.
It took me all of 5 seconds to fix my automations when GitHub changed that. Also "forced" is a bit strong, they didn't touch existing repos, and it's only the default branch if you let GitHub initialize the repo (which I never do).
Unlike dodgy racial theories, the superiority of PCs over console plebs and iToddlers is an unmutable physical, psychological and metaphysical fact of the universe. No, I am not being ironic.
Yeeeh, I do feel very inferior to my computer. She’s a genius. My partner’s computer is even younger and smarter. And can run so fast. They both best me in almost every way.
I mean, they are. PCs are superior to a console in every way except the price point. Consoles shouldn't even exist in this day and age, the only reason they do is because of exclusives, all the bullshit around PC parts and more recently bad PC ports.
I put together a server once as a favor for someone at a university. This person didn't know how to change the hostname so I set it to "killbot9000". For years that whole lab had to log into killbot9000. (I'm sure they could have figured out how to change the name if they tried - I guess they thought it was funny too.)
Anyway my point is that I should have called it "ubermachine" and now I will live with this regret for the rest of my life.
My God, this is still going on. I'm still having trouble comprehending whether this is just a very elaborate parody. The term "master race" is not in any way offensive and even if it is (to a small amount of people) they are perfectly within their right to be offended, but not to ban other people from using it.
I kinda noticed the first one, but didn't think it had anything to do with taking offense. The second one I haven't noticed at all as well as the third one (the third one is especially bullshit in my opinion).
And this is a good thing. Those changes are far more clear on their intention and it avoids some dated language that makes some folks uncomfortable. It's win/win.
I mean, people were saying the same thing when it became not cool to call someone a gay slur for fun. Language evolves, and with it, what is acceptable evolves.
I personally am not offended by PC Master Race, but I also don't give a fuck about the name, so what's it really gonna hurt rebranding?
Honestly don't get the attachment. Not like it's particularly clever or anything.
This thread already allowed me to identify a handful of people who I made a note not to piss on if I ever find them on fire in an otherwise dark alley, and the more of those we identify early and possibly ban for being screeching morons the better.
Especially the "this made me realise this is not a community I want to be part of" crowd, who were so upset with the name they decided to
Join this community whose presentation they knew upfront wasn't up to their stellar ethical standards.
Demand it be changed to suit them.
Threw a shitfit when they didn't get what they want.
And to those people I say: that language is very telling. You were never a member of this community, if you were the name would not have deterred you one bit, if anything it would have been the reason you found this place. No, you were making an attempt at subverting this community and I am glad you failed.
Oh for real, the people who self-selected to be in a community with a racist name don't have a problem with the name? That's really surprising, that must prove the name is fine then
Yeah, go ahead and keep the nazi verbiage. That's helping the image.
I don't think most people get that it was originally denigration of the elitist attitudes some PC players had and Yahtzee was making fun of them. And yet they use his imagery still. Y'all are bafflingly obtuse...or perhaps like the comparison? Can't tell which is worse.
Umm, that’s entirely the point. We aren’t celebrating fucking Nazis, we are making fun of them. Literally playing along with the joke Yahtzee made. The sub is literally playing along with the joke. I think you may be the one being obtuse
Well, this is kinda gross. Missed the poll, but pretty disappointed with the results. The big swell of tongue-in-cheek nazi jokes to go along with it is really telling and discomforting.
Anyways, good luck with the crowd you're about to attract, and see ya on the other side of an instance block (or not, rather).
You realize this name isn't new, right? The poll was to keep the name, not switch to it. If it attracts a certain type of people, they've been attracted this whole time.
It also literally makes fun of it. There is no glorifying of Nazism, it comes from a Zero Punctuation video making fun of PC elitists. Y’all really need to go touch grass.
Fuck I’m as left as they come, even marched in a Pride parade IN FUCKING IDAHO no less this year. And even I see the joke. For fucks sake people.
"I'm as left as they come" is a really weird thing to say to try and defend against criticism from further left... make peace with your reactionary position, or change your opinion, you can't have it both ways