المناورات يلقي الحلقة رقم -- THE WARGAME CAST

ITT: White people saying what is and is not offensive to Arabs

MVDane

What if I told you that being offended doesn't entitle you to get a post removed? Satire can be both funny and offensive. If you don't take yourself too seriously you can laugh even then.

For what it's worth, if anyone is genuinely offended then I'm sorry, but it was never our intent to do so. As someone else has said, it's too retarded to be funny, and so I'd say the same about it being offensive. That said, I'm not sure why anyone would actually find the video offensive, as opposed to simply unfunny or stupid (both of which are understandable reactions).

For those who are feigning offence simply because they think it may offend someone, somewhere, then I suggest you stop worrying about hypothetical outcomes. If it offends you, you have a right to say as much and to then never watch it again. It does not mean, however, that others do not equally have the right to enjoy it for what it is: a childish piece of satire.

FYI, and as some here have already suggested, it was a deliberately poor quality (in terms of scripting, video and sound) attempt to present the idea of an Arab doing a Dane-esque CoH2 cast. Just to clarify, no Muslims, Jews, Christians or atheists were harmed during the making of this video.

Merry Christmas to you all, anyway.

James Hale.
He does it for free.
This is how he spends his time.

Let me start off first with the following:

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This is a racism-ridden post by yours truly, the moderator of both coh2.org and companyofheroes.com, James Hale. You're kidding me right?

Just for your information, a large portion of the Company of Heroes 2 community speak Arabic. They get the jist of the message, whether you hinted to it explicitly or implicitly.

I don't understand how this post is constructive in any way at all. It doesn't abide by any of the rules in this forum. In fact, it's really ironic to see that this is the prime example of a post magnitudes worse than the posts you'd usually lock in the forum. One would think a post like this wouldn't exist in a respectable community like this. But then, you have people like James Hale who produce these kind of posts but lock posts completely in-topic with Company of Heroes because it may offer some few remarks he personally doesn't fully agree with.

The post which by all means deserves to be locked by a moderator, gets written by one. MVgame?

Were you trying to accomplish anything funny in this post anyways? The video had me cringing. You just kept mumbling stereotypical gibberish in a stereotypical accent the whole time. It was straight-up racism. I don't feel the need to reiterate what you've already seen in the video. I'd consider Family Guy episodes multitudes more respectful than this.

Just to clarify, no Muslims, Jews, Christians or atheists were harmed during the making of this video.

For what it's worth, if anyone is genuinely offended then I'm sorry, but it was never our intent to do so.

Considering that a ton of people here in the thread think it's hilarious and clearly perceive it as a joke and the stated intention was that it is satire, I find it pretty hard to see it as 'racist' as some called it.

Why are you trying to diffuse the blatantly obvious issue here when you know yourself that your post was racist? Yeah, you didn't just offend Arabs, you offended several religions simultaneously.

"But wait... how could you take this as 'racist'? But I found it funny! Surely I'm aware of what is offensive to people and what's not"

• You used a Nasheed as the intro song
  Really? Out of ALL the Arabic music you could've picked from, you chose a religious genre? And you're telling me this is just "childish satire"?
  
  
• You show several clips of rockets and weapons while playing the Nasheed
  Talk about making a racist situation even worse right?
  
  
• You show the star of David
  Was that even necessary? Like you couldn't make a satirical video without religion or other concepts people consider sensitive and hold dear to them?
  

If this was childish satire, you wouldn't indirectly make fun of several cultures and religions in the same context.

Someone please ban this child. At the very least revoke his moderator status. I'm forwarding it to Ami and enforcement@relic.com in case they hasn't seen this.

Let me start off first with the following:



This is a racism-ridden post by yours truly, the moderator of both coh2.org and companyofheroes.com, James Hale. You're kidding me right?

Just for your information, a large portion of the Company of Heroes 2 community speak Arabic. They get the jist of the message, whether you hinted to it explicitly or implicitly.

I don't understand how this post is constructive in any way at all. It doesn't abide by any of the rules in this forum. In fact, it's really ironic to see that this is the prime example of a post magnitudes worse than the posts you'd usually lock in the forum. One would think a post like this wouldn't exist in a respectable community like this. But then, you have people like James Hale who produce these kind of posts but lock posts completely in-topic with Company of Heroes because it may offer some few remarks he personally doesn't fully agree with.

The post which by all means deserves to be locked by a moderator, gets written by one. MVgame?

Were you trying to accomplish anything funny in this post anyways? The video had me cringing. You just kept mumbling stereotypical gibberish in a stereotypical accent the whole time. It was straight-up racism. I don't feel the need to reiterate what you've already seen in the video. I'd consider Family Guy episodes multitudes more respectful than this.




Why are you trying to diffuse the blatantly obvious issue here when you know yourself that your post was racist? Yeah, you didn't just offend Arabs, you offended several religions simultaneously.

"But wait... how could you take this as 'racist'? But I found it funny! Surely I'm aware of what is offensive to people and what's not"

• You used a Nasheed as the intro song
  Really? Out of ALL the Arabic music you could've picked from, you chose a religious genre? And you're telling me this is just "childish satire"?
  
  
• You show several clips of rockets and weapons while playing the Nasheed
  Talk about making a racist situation even worse right?
  
  
• You show the star of David
  Was that even necessary? Like you couldn't make a satirical video without religion or other concepts people consider sensitive and hold dear to them?
  

If this was childish satire, you wouldn't indirectly make fun of several cultures and religions in the same context.

Someone please ban this child. At the very least revoke his moderator status. I'm forwarding it to Ami and enforcement@relic.com in case they hasn't seen this.

If you think this is racist and offensive, you must be a pretty boring person.

'I'm forwarding it to Ami and enforcement@relic.com in case they hasn't seen this.'


1. Do you have a source for 'a large portion' of the CoH2 user base being able to read and understand Arabic? To say I am sceptical at this claim would be an understatement. Either way, it is irrelevant.

2. (I'm pretty sure that) Ami has seen it. Other admins certainly have, as we have discussed it off-forum. I showed the video to Quinn as soon as I was linked to it.

3. Relic do not and can not enforce the entire Internet. What you are saying is the equivalent of someone writing to Microsoft because they saw a YouTube video of someone flying a plane into a building whilst using one of their Flight Sim games.

4. Whether people choose to accept this as the truth is beyond my control, but I did not record this video. In fact, I had no direct involvement in its creation.

Nonetheless, some of the points being raised in this thread are fascinating. Thank you for watching, and your feedback.

although i didn't get offended, i found this video had a humour of an internet teen shouting allahu akbar on CS.

maybe it is because i thought it was going to be a serious cast.

Racist disgusting filth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY according to parts of the coh2 community.

Or are certain jokes only okay as long as they are directed at certain nationalities, beliefs, religions, whatevs?...because that...would truly be a racist way of thinking

There is not one incident in this video where a nation or religion is depicted as being stupid or inferior. Thats all just in your head.

The only thing that kind of is made fun of is a language...which to me as a european simply sounds weird. Thats not racist. Its just foreign to me. I keep telling every single dutch person i met that i think their language sounds kind of goofy. It just does, i find it funny .So far nobody was mad at me because of that. And the gibberish spoken in the video? thats how some languages sound to me, its obviously exaggerated for comedy purposes, thats the entire point.

The people who are pretending to be offended by this should rather ask themselves if theyre not just desperately trying to find something that is "racist" about this video

I bet that if this had a german theme, with someone speaking made up german sounding gibberish the outrage wouldve been basically non-existent.

Racist disgusting filth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt4Dfa4fOEY according to parts of the coh2 community.

Or are certain jokes only okay as long as they are directed at certain nationalities, beliefs, religions, whatevs?...because that...would truly be a racist way of thinking

There is not one incident in this video where a nation or religion is depicted as being stupid or inferior. Thats all just in your head.

The only thing that kind of is made fun of is a language...which to me as a european simply sounds weird. Thats not racist. Its just foreign to me. I keep telling every single dutch person i met that i think their language sounds kind of goofy. It just does, i find it funny .So far nobody was mad at me because of that. And the gibberish spoken in the video? thats how some languages sound to me, its obviously exaggerated for comedy purposes, thats the entire point.

The people who are pretending to be offended by this should rather ask themselves if theyre not just desperately trying to find something that is "racist" about this video

I bet that if this had a german theme, with someone speaking made up german sounding gibberish the outrage wouldve been basically non-existent.

well, any topic revolving around anything about middle east is prone to really sensitive responses. i think we can all agree on that. whether that is justified or not, i do not know.

censoring art is FASCIST. The NSA doesn't look kindly upon fascist. Regardless of the country.

What if I told you that being offended doesn't entitle you to get a post removed? Satire can be both funny and offensive. If you don't take yourself too seriously you can laugh even then.

What if I told you that your comprehension is fucking terrible and that I'm not offended in the slightest by this video? Was simply pointing out that a bunch of white guys (oh hey I'm a white guy!) are declaring that this is offensive to Arabs. How would they know? They aren't Arab.

Making fun of accents is perfectly acceptable, its a regional thing. I can make fun of some American ebonics all day long but its not racist because over in the UK almost all the blacks speak correct English. And if a Brit is mocking a white trash American accent how the fuck is that racist?

All that said, this wasn't very funny.

Let me start off first with the following:



This is a racism-ridden post by yours truly, the moderator of both coh2.org and companyofheroes.com, James Hale. You're kidding me right?

Just for your information, a large portion of the Company of Heroes 2 community speak Arabic. They get the jist of the message, whether you hinted to it explicitly or implicitly.

I don't understand how this post is constructive in any way at all. It doesn't abide by any of the rules in this forum. In fact, it's really ironic to see that this is the prime example of a post magnitudes worse than the posts you'd usually lock in the forum. One would think a post like this wouldn't exist in a respectable community like this. But then, you have people like James Hale who produce these kind of posts but lock posts completely in-topic with Company of Heroes because it may offer some few remarks he personally doesn't fully agree with.

The post which by all means deserves to be locked by a moderator, gets written by one. MVgame?

Were you trying to accomplish anything funny in this post anyways? The video had me cringing. You just kept mumbling stereotypical gibberish in a stereotypical accent the whole time. It was straight-up racism. I don't feel the need to reiterate what you've already seen in the video. I'd consider Family Guy episodes multitudes more respectful than this.




Why are you trying to diffuse the blatantly obvious issue here when you know yourself that your post was racist? Yeah, you didn't just offend Arabs, you offended several religions simultaneously.

"But wait... how could you take this as 'racist'? But I found it funny! Surely I'm aware of what is offensive to people and what's not"

• You used a Nasheed as the intro song
  Really? Out of ALL the Arabic music you could've picked from, you chose a religious genre? And you're telling me this is just "childish satire"?
  
  
• You show several clips of rockets and weapons while playing the Nasheed
  Talk about making a racist situation even worse right?
  
  
• You show the star of David
  Was that even necessary? Like you couldn't make a satirical video without religion or other concepts people consider sensitive and hold dear to them?
  

If this was childish satire, you wouldn't indirectly make fun of several cultures and religions in the same context.

Someone please ban this child. At the very least revoke his moderator status. I'm forwarding it to Ami and enforcement@relic.com in case they hasn't seen this.

rofl, apparently just showing the star of David makes you an anti-semite or some bullshit.

Dude, I'm the person who voiced the Arab character. I genuinly tried to make it sound like Arabic to anyone who isn't Arabic. This is partly why the audio quality is shitty (the other being that the shitty quality makes it more funny). If it was straight up 'durka durka' I would understand what you're saying but this is just stupid.

The entire idea for this video came from when we were playing CoH2 and I was doing this impression of the elephant man while having my mic close to my face. Somehow this led us to me doing a voice that sounded like it could be Arabic (to anyone who isn't Arabic). We then decided that we had to make a parody cast with this Arab character, referencing inside jokes and CoH2 stuff, like Imperial Dane, Ami, etc (I personally was reluctant to put one of the references in but I won't say which one it is). Really the humour to me comes from that he (the character) references all these random things but you only have a vague idea of what he talks about. I showed a video previously in the thread that was partly the inspiration for this parody cast. I say again, are you seriously saying that would be offensive to Spanish people?
The whole intro thing came from Imperial Dane. He has combat footage as his intro with music behind it. We thought of those Syria combat video´s which often have nasheeds playing over them. We thought the idea of having an intro like that would be funny, so we put it in.

The entire goal of this video was to see if people would actually believe it was real, which would've been AA+ trolling.

Also dude, the mods have already seen this, if they had a problem with this it would've already been locked, you don't have to 'take matters into your own hands', stop being a tard.

@Basilone The voice I'm doing isn't the joke. Making fun of Arabic wasn't the intention. If you think the video isn't funny, that's fine.

Social Justice warriors make me sick. Its a joke. Jesus fucking Christ. And people wonder why the west is falling apart government and society. People can't take a fucking joke anymore and have to look for fucking reasons to be offended.

Welp, I'd say it's time to lock this now. Merry Christmas everyone!