lumiele - Tumblr blog

lumiele · 2 years ago

Text

Hello, French here,

First of all i'm sorry that your previous experiences with minecraft communities were bad in terms of representation and inclusivity. I have never followed minecraft streams before QSMP, so i am quite ignorant ( but eager to learn) about the latin americans previous expreriences, within international communities.

In a very candid way what i like about QSMP is the fact that there are CC from countries that are not usually put on the spotlight ( in my very eurocentric POV of course), and i have loved discovering small part of ,for example, Brazilian culture through QSMP and their CCs.(ex: festa junina)

I think i understand and emphathize that in every piece of media and especially in international event it is often dominated by white english speaking americans, and that other communities can suffer from that as they can feel disregarded.

(Apologies for my poor english)

I didn't know Quackity before qsmp and if i remember correctly i think that the picture of his teen bedroom was indeed passed around as a joke, i remember thinking it was a montage (just an example of my ignorance) which was confirmed not to be by Quackity. The reaction i had was not mockery, i thought that it was or rather is amazing (at such a young age too), to have this growth as a person, and i remain admirative of his career and grateful for the QSMP. ( i saw the talk between Quackity and Forever and it was very touching)

I have never learned spanish or portuguese in high school ( only german + japanese which doesn't really count 'cause i'm shit in those language) but the QSMP has also been quite the motivator to pick up another language ( leaning toward portuguese)

Back on the ignorance there is with the french POV, back in school we mostly learn about europe, we are aware of some parts of US history because they are the dominating force in the media (movies, music….) industries. And maybe it's just me who's not cultured enough ( i will not argue with that) but i'm not familiar with either Brazilian, Mexican or Argentinian culture as such i was not aware of certain cliche (like dictator jokes?).

While it my personal opinion i do think that most french people aren't either knowledgable about those cultures and stereotypes that are harmful to the latins communities.

On the Aypierre situation,his humor and general RP is definitely not everyone cup of tea,it's not exactly mine. i will say that, yes, French people do have a dark sense of humor, this is not debatable, what is , is if those jokes hurts someone then because of some bigot cliche then the cc can check after and apologize if necessary , which Aypierre did after talking with the CC that was concerned. as european we make jokes about the little man with the mustache often i do think that the joke was made without any ill intention.

i would like to know in this situation (especially for Aypierre) :

A poor joke is made

Said joke is actually one that is used usually a bigot tools and hurts a community

The Guy who makes the joke checks with the CC if said person is okay

The CC confirms he is okay

The guy who makes the joke apologize then publicly

In a very genuine way what can the person that makes the joke do more after taking the above step ?

In france there is a saying that "we would rather laugh about it, than cry about it", i think this expression illustrate well the french mindset when it comes to humor, so that when traumatic or sad stuff happens we make jokes about it ( a personal french example would be jokes about the charlie hebdo attack soon after it happened). And i agree that it's a cultural difference that can be hard to understand (which is why QSMP is a great learninn experience for everyone).

Regarding the "adding german" or "stealing the spotlight" comment, i avoid twitter/x like the plague as it doesn't feel like an accurate representation of the QSMP people as it is often the most toxic and loud people that seems to bash or rant and this site. And while those people do not represent the majority of the community imo, there is definitly bad terrible people who are in the community and are absolute pieces of s*** by being racist, sexist, harrassing fans and CCs…..etc

QSMP is still imo a work in progress it is already a great project but with more people joining and more event happening i do believe that the organisation will just get better and better and i still think that the work provided so far by the admins is already amazing.

I'm sorry if this is a bit long, i'm usually a lurker and not used to voicing my opinion online. Your post was very informative and provided and really good insight to me in regards to the latin community experience with minecraft server.

meta talk. i don't quite know how to word this properly, but adding french creators to the qsmp is the riskiest thing quackity studios could've done and it doesn't surprise me that the success to which it was executed was minimal.

adding portuguese speaking creators exclusively from brazil as the first batch outside of the initial english and spanish speakers was the perfect "soft expansion" for the server when you consider the reason for the project's conception - because quackity had experienced poor treatment from white americans as a bilingual latino creator and sought to unite his two communities in an empowering way, further expanding this very noble and personal idea to encapsulate all communities and all languages spanning across the entire world. inviting more latino creators who have likely had the same experiences and would be able to appreciate what the project is trying to achieve is a no-brainer.

it's an uncomfortable thing to touch on (which is why i've never, ever, seen it spoken about on this website), but minecraft projects and communities have always had massive problems with all forms of bigotry, but especially racism. white americans and white europeans have probably not felt the euphoria of seeing their culture celebrated in mainstream global entertainment projects as they already absolutely dominate the entertainment industry on a global scale. as someone who is visibly brown and living in europe, i've always got a lot of grief from classmates and co-workers in the form of ignorant jokes and flat out exclusion - it's an unfortunate cultural norm that bleeds into streaming due to the medium's casual and open nature, unnoticed or unchallenged by white viewers who don't want to have to confront a content creator's bigotry in fears of having to stop watching them. something that cannot be ignored by the people it's actually affecting. there is a reason dsmp and hermitcraft cosplay meet ups are dominated by pale skin.

i love the qsmp because its inclusion of latin american creators and quackity's selectiveness based on personal experience have largely (and i do mean largely, not entirely, but that's a discussion for another day) eliminated that problem.

the most prominent and succinct example i can think of is the photo of quackity's bedroom that was mocked countless times by his english speaking community and his bigoted english speaking friends when he streamed on the dsmp - when that photo was brought to the qsmp, forever, a fellow latino creator, was the first person to gently offer solidarity because he had come from the same impoverished latin american background. to me, and to a lot of minorities, that is what the qsmp is about. yeah, sharing languages in a minecraft server is novel, it's a fun way for americans who did poorly in high school to get back into learning spanish, but it stands for so much more when you're a racial minority. when your pleading in the dsmp fandom was drowned out and ignored for the entire duration of its run. when you're completely unrepresented in minecraft tournaments, and when known bigots are encouraged to participate in said tournaments to boost viewership because numbers are paramount. when you are finally seeing your culture appreciated rather than mocked on streams with tens of thousands of viewers all over the world as part of a massive project with a brilliant, engaging story.

it was obviously necessary to branch out of the americas at some point with what the project is attempting to achieve, but such a task is daunting when the next group you're inviting and their community probably do not have the capacity through personal experience to appreciate what the project stands for at its core in the same way the first batches do. can non americans all relate in discussions of the internet and entertainment industry being america and by extension english speaking centric? yeah, of course. but can white europeans relate when the only representation you have in said media revolves around harmful bigoted stereotypes? can there be a quiet solidarity between a white frenchman and a brown brazilian based on experiences with government, racial profiling, and online mockery? no. and in the landscape of livestreaming stupid jokes for entertainment alongside fast paced gameplay, these nuances are probably not going to be acknowledged.

in complete contrast to the solidarity exhibited between quackity and forever when discussing their poverty growing up in latin america, i have not forgotten and never will forget aypierre excusing his constant racist jokes aimed at the brazilians on his uniquely "french dark humour" that the brazilians, hurt by his comments, could "not understand." this is not an excusable cultural difference, but a symptom of white european privilege, and total ignorance towards what the project is meant to stand for. a smooth integration of all the world's cultures necessitates white european and white american introspection in a way that i haven't seen a lot of streamers capable of. admitting fault to such a degree and the ego of a large online personality do not often mesh well.

i'm always very irritated when people (especially english speakers) complain about them not "adding the germans" sooner despite us seeing applications for german speaking admins many months ago - because it would not be a task of simply throwing out server invites to content creators and cobbling together an animation of a submarine crashing into the island. you cannot downplay the ambition of this project and the mammoth task its trying to accomplish. people take for granted and forget that this is an unprecedented melding of cultures that would never otherwise interact and clash on the rare occasions they do. the french qsmp community being small and the french creators largely being outliers when it comes to the qsmp is not something born out of malice or purposeful exclusion, but simply a symptom of an unspoken lack of solidarity and inability to meaningfully relate based on everything from wildly varying privilege to global placement.

and don't get me wrong - i'm not excusing things like the times at which events are broadcast (i literally live in europe and have to stay up until sunrise to see most events, i think the admins do have to bite the bullet and begin structuring events around a new timezone that isn't the globally inconvenient unsustainable PST), or the exclusion of clips from french content creators at the presidential dinner, but i think attributing those admin choices to the brazilian community being unfairly favoured is downplaying what the qsmp as a project means for minorities, especially when the brazilian community receive the most scorn for infamously being the first to call out bigoted behaviour from qsmp content creators. yeah, it sucks that the french haven't slotted into the qsmp as well as the brazilians and aren't anywhere as numerous, but with all these unspoken contributing factors being taken into account, i can't be surprised.

i wish quackity and his team the best in smoothly integrating more languages and cultures in this amazing project in the future, but for the love of god please understand that the implications of this project and its impact are far larger than any streamer "drama" you might've witnessed in the past. and stop underplaying what this project is trying to achieve in an online landscape saturated in bigotry.

#qsmp #wanted to post a comment but had too much characters T^T

349 notes · View notes