• jsomae@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    5
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    16 hours ago

    I’m not throwing any stones, yo. I’m just pointing out you can’t exactly say he’s not problematic. I have a tolerance for problematicity so it’s of no bother to me.

    • Brave Little Hitachi Wand@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      ·
      12 hours ago

      The word problematic is kind of weasely used this way. The pen name had an in-universe rationale that made sense and was funny because of the incongruity. Merely alluding to the existence of ethnicity isn’t “problematic” in itself.

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        9 hours ago

        I’m not the on who brought the word problematic into this conversation. But I bet you if I put a poll on, say, tumblr, asking about different potentially problematic things, “pretending to be asian” would score highly on the problematic scale.

        • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          3 hours ago

          He wasn’t pretending to be asian, though, the book John Dies at The End makes that very clear and gives a silly in universe reason for the now dead pseudonym. It really was not problematic, even at the time of it being used.

          • jsomae@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            2 hours ago

            Then I will rephrase – asking tumblr “is it problematic for a white person to go by an obviously Asian name as a pseudonym,” I feel that even phrased that way they would still say “yes.”

            I don’t really use the word ‘problematic’ in the social justice sense myself because it’s incredibly vague, but if you’re going to specifically use the word problematic and claim that Jason Pargin isn’t, then I feel that it’s a pretty cut-and-dry “yes that was ‘problematic’” scenario.

    • NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      7
      ·
      edit-2
      2 hours ago

      If he was still using the pseudonym and making excuses to keep using it, sure, but I’m of the opinion that once someone understands what they have done wrong and took the opportunity to learn from it and do better there is no more wrong doing. There are, of course, exceptions to this, but a pseudonym that someone came up with in their 20’s and had the wherewithal later to say, “That’s not ok, I need to stop doing that” and stopped doing that for the right reasons is pretty far from a reason to call them problematic, especially when it wasn’t a decision made under any form of duress and he has made no attempt at defending his choice to have used that pseudonym and stated it was not ok for him to have used that pseudonym.

      Edit: Also, it was used in a narrative context of the main character trying to throw off his identity, if They’re looking for David Wong then they wouldn’t assume it’s the burnt out white dude.