People complaining about the name are up there with people who think the git branch master is racist. If someone doesn’t want to take a few seconds to understand context, and intends to be offended from the start, they are going to find a reason to be offended.
Comparing critics of the PCMR name to people who think the word master is racist is pretty disingenuous. It's literally master race, a term that was coined to identify a group of humankind which is better than the rest, a term that is inseparable from Nazi's.
It's not about being offended. It's about being at odds with myself for wanting to be a part of a community because I agree with its values, while wanting to disassociate from the community because of a (seemingly) easy to change name that people don't want to change.
It isn't about being offended. The change hurts no one. The name has a stupid history. It doesn't matter to me. I don't know why people are so attached to this name. The stubborn stupidity about keeping it when it affects no one, proves that it should change. I haven't seen a single substantive reason for keeping a name with a Nazi origin. The vast majority of people do not know or care about an article from 2013. I have not read the article, or played the game. It was 10 years ago. There is no broad consciousness of this origin when a random person encounters the name of this community. Most people associate this name with Nazism and try to give the benefit of the doubt about it being satire. Non native English speakers are far less likely to understand the satire. People showing attachment to this name is a primary reason it should change.
Racist pieces of shit have already stolen swastikas (meh), viking stuff, white polo shirts, red hats, and the OK hand gesture among many other things that we can no longer in good conscience use. Stop letting these assholes have our words, symbols and clothing items. Take them back, make them our own again.
No one is seriously mistaking the PC Master Race joke with an honest attempt to genocide our way to a "pure race" or some evil shit. Suggesting that the name be changed is cutting the nose off of a community solely in order to spite it's face, and doesn't 'protect' anyone.
I would like to concur, namely because we know the exact context and exact intent of the actual, exact place the popularization of the term stemmed from: Yatzhee from Zero Punctuation. And the author did not in any way whatsoever expected it to be taken seriously, or with any derogatory connotation for those within or without (in thay the introductory joke was highlighting a better positioning of PC on a matter while also lampshading the PC's community fragile ego).
To change the name would be to say none of the context matters. It would be to willfully ignore the way it was made and the way it was used. No, that doesn't matter, "only that other meaning, and interpretation matters".
And you know what.
No it doesn't.
Nazis don't matter. Nazis should have zero cultural influence. Zero tokenism.
Let's treat them the way they deserve to be treated. They don't matter, and they have no say and no power. Fuck off, we're keeping it. It's our now. You get NOTHING.
Exactly. To add, what do people expect that it would be "changed" to? If you drop "master" and "race", all you have left is "PC"... and there are already enough PC gaming communities across the various Lemmy instances.
In "changing" it, the community would simply no longer exist. Those who are of the opinion that the community should no longer exist should probably just move along.
This whole thing is an exercise in futility. You're going to change the name, someone else will take it and nobody will use the new community because nobody's ever heard of it and pcmr will be there anyway.
If the mods want to switch their name to something else, do it, but don't hold the current community hostage. Go make a new community and hand this one over to someone who wants it.
Part of the joke is the fact that it's so over-the-top. All the suggestions I've seen for possible replacements have been terrible.
What would you be pointing them to if it's not called c/pcmasterrace? "Hey, go check out c/pc"? There are already multiple PC gaming communities across the various Lemmy instances.
Either this community exists, or it doesn't. Those who are of the opinion that it shouldn't exist should probably just move along.
I wanted to comment this on the why-google thread, but that was locked, so I'll post it here:
"What you should be doing is converting this light complaint into an hard feature request: Let Lemmy posts include polls. I don't doubt more would feel polls are a useful thing to have, and Lemmy is already very big on making things optional per instance and per community, so there's an answer to those who may dislike them.
Also, give those polls some control, like, allow only users who subbed for X time, who belong to the local instance, and stuff like that."
@CatZoomies@lemmy.world is just a mod, a user like you who also moderates a community. They have no control over the things you're talking about, which would require the Lemmy developers to implement.
LinusTechTips came out with a line of PCMR merch and the first thing I thought was that I wouldn't be caught dead wearing something that says master race, especially not in one of the major liberal cities on the west coast.
Joke or not it comes across as very insensitive and has imo hasn’t been funny since I was like 12.
I'm not personally offended by the name but I understand why it is problematic. If the name stays I won't be upset I get it's not meant in harm, but if people are offended enough by it and want it changed I'm not going to lose any sleep over it. It's not about the name it's about the comradare and community around PC gaming and hardware enthusiasm that we all share. And of course superiority over console plebs (even this mentality seems to have changed, which isn't really a bad thing, although PC is superior to console)
RE: "What happens if the name of this community is changed?
Lock this existing community and redirect users to the new one (this approach is similar to the Android community on Lemmy World)."
I don't think you will be able to cybersquat on c/PCMasterRace, @CatZoomies@lemmy.world. If the community votes to change the name, c/PCMasterRace will be taken over by another set of mods.