The Visual Novel Database ; VNDB.org is a misinformation website

[Somebody]

Outside of Japan, vndb.org seems to be the biggest information source about ADV-style games and Japanese eroge. Over the years several people have contributed to the website building a robust database. But the website founder who goes by Yorhel, is an extreme narcissist and hypocrite. Recently they have been pushing their personal agenda in form of absurd misinformation in quite a vigorous manner. They have no respect for the artists or the artform, and they'll do anything in their power to suppress facts against them. This includes gaslighting, abusing their position to ban and even delete posts on the website.

 

Some of you might've been keeping up with these certain events, and already have an idea as to what I am talking about. But for those who might be clueless, I'll explain everything in as much detail as I can. It will make this post quite long, but it's better to be clear about everything.

 

First I'll have to explain the pseudoscience of "Gender Identity" or "Gender Theory". Most of you probably already know about it, since it's practically everywhere these days; and some of you will even take offense here. But in case someone doesn't understand what I talking about, I'll explain it.

 

The ideology or theory of "Gender Identity" is a new pseudoscience that has been getting popular recently. This pseudoscience claims that the concept of gender is made up, a "Societal Construct" they call it. According to this asinine theory, the concept of man and woman are merely an object of mind with no connection to material reality. In accordance to this theory; at birth a child is "Assigned" a "Gender", and then they are expected to play the role of the "Assigned Gender"; and that's how people end up "Identifying" as "Man" or "Woman".

 

Simply put, this ideology claims that a person's "Gender" isn't defined by his/her gender (his/her body); but instead it's defined by the stereotype one decides to play. This forms the basis for all kinds of insanity. And people who refuse to play along with this insanity, are said to be committing "discrimination" or "hate crime".

 

The founder of vndb.org Yorhel is a strong believer of this pseudoscience. They have been pushing changes to the website to make it more "Gender Inclusive". Yorhel claims that they are completely unbiased on the matter; their justification for these changes been that western games with "Gender Identity" characters are on the rise, and they only want to represent this new genre. That's a hypocritic lie; a simple tag such as "Gender Diverse Characters" or something along those lines would've sufficed to represent this genre. Instead they want this pseudoscience to be represented in vast detail. They have introduced several new tags for both games and characters, like "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Gender Nonconforming Individual". What does that really mean? It means that at least person involved in the act believes themselves to be a different "Gender". So it's the same as saying "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Christian" or "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Flat-earther".

 

When these changes were introduced months ago, I tried to voice my objection. Yorhel wasted no time, instantly taking down my post. And I mean that in literal sense, they reacted a couple of seconds after I had made the post. I then got into a direct conversation with Yorhel, their intention being to intimidate and lecture me. This turned into a long and infuriating argument that went on for almost two days. (It wasn't a real time chat, we seem to be from time zones so we checked each other's messages at our time)

 

Like I said it was a long and heated argument, I for myself losing my cool after dealing with this for a whole day. I can't mention everything that happened, but I'll try to mention all the important details; while also trying my best to not turn this into a complete rant.

 

And here is link to one of my discussion posts that Yorhel hasn't deleted yet; instead they had immediately locked it right after banning me. https://vndb.org/t22172

During my long argument with Yorhel I tried voicing my concerns as this push will lead to misrepresentation and mislabelling of games. Believers of “Gender Theory” would mislabel several tropes found in anime and manga for sake of their agenda. This became one of the central points in the argument. I’ll explain these tropes in case someone is not familiar with it.

Otokonoko (男の娘）, also known as Josou（女装）; outside of Japan this trope has names like “trap", “tomgirl", “femboy", etc. This is a character trope in Japanese media that’s generally about crossdressing boys. Specifically, it refers to boys who have strikingly feminine features, to a point where he looks very much like a girl. It usually involves crossdressing in feminine clothes to further push this concept of “a boy who looks like a girl”. Either the character himself will have a preference for feminine fashion, or he will be forced into crossdressing in comedic scenarios. Since we are discussing this, this character trope has nothing to do with the pseudoscience of “Gender Identity”. The character isn’t crossdressing because he believes himself to be a different “Gender".

Futanari （フタナリ）, also known as “dickgirl" in english. This is a fictional trope about females with male genitals. That is, a fictional woman who has a penis. Usually fictional devices such as magic are employed to explain it, or sometimes the character is said to be naturally like that. This is a trope that defies reality in fiction, similar to how a fantasy author may choose to make the earth flat. It has no connection to, and doesn’t adhere to pseudoscience of “Gender being a made up thing".

Tomboy; is a character trope that is less obscure than the other two I mentioned; and I assume everyone is familiar with it. It refers to young girls who take on a “Boyish" attitude. It’s a character trope that challenges traditional gender norms, but not in the sense of “Identifying as a different gender if you don’t fit in with the stereotypical women”.

During my argument with Yorhel, they kept asserting how they have every right to force their personal beliefs onto these games. They acted exactly how you would expect a narcissist to, pulling all kinds of word tricks and sh!t games. At first they tried to turn the blame on me, telling me to “accept other people’s opinions”. I made myself clear that I don’t care about opinions, especially when they are wrong; and moreover this is about facts. Obviously they followed this with “What facts are you even talking about?”. When I mentioned my concern about works being mislabeled and misrepresented giving the example of Otokonoko, they quickly snapped at me, “As a matter of definition it is". I asked what did they even knew about it, and it turned out they were not at all familiar with the mentioned character trope. I explained the trope in detail, in order to make things clear. But now I get “but there is no consensus on the definition of Otokonoko/trap". It had became clear what motives this person had. But I still tried to reason with them.

Getting frustrated I stated the very obvious, these games and characters have nothing to do with the pseudoscience of “Gender Identity” because that was never the intention of the authors and artists. As for what Yorhel had to say about this, these are exactly their words-

“Does author intention even matter?”
“Shouldn’t it depend on how one interprets it?” (or more specifically how they want to interpret it)

This level of narcissism is sickening. This person is straight up telling me that someone’s work isn’t defined by the artists themselves; instead it should be presented in accordance to this person’s will. As an artist myself I took offense over such absurdity.

That was a summary of what went down during my argument with Yorhel. They want facts to thrown out, and straight up told me that they have every right to misrepresent and mislabel other people’s work in accordance to their agenda. Like all believers of pseudoscience, they simply want to assert validation of their personal beliefs. And even after making such outrageous arguments, they still had the gall to say that they are completely impartial on the matter.

After this I created a new discussion posts, the one I have linked to up above. This is where Yorhel finally banned me with a gaslighting effort. They then quickly locked the post to cut off any further discussion on the topic.

And that wasn’t it, a couple of months later I created an alt account to start a new discussion post. This was one final attempt at negotiating a possible middle ground. This post was about suggestions of certain restrictions that would avoid mislabeling whilst still keeping these new tags. The very second this post was uploaded; and I mean it, the very second it was uploaded it got wiped off the website. This told me that Yorhel is now straight up suppressing any voice against their agenda. 

Yorhel has crossed all lines, proving themselves to be an extreme narcissist who has no respect for artists. Their personal agenda is all that matters to them now. They have already been pushing misinformation, and even suppressing facts.

I know how controversial this could be. But I just wanted to dump out what I knew.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Somebody
spelling corrections

[Zakamutt]

I think Yorhel is in the top 1-2% of people I'd trust to implement both more Western and Japanese ways of looking at the issue as appropriate to the title. As for the argumentation, well, I think a quote from one of the threads you link says it quite well:
 

Quote

For someone to continually claim logic and reason above all else, you react quite emotionally.

I am thoroughly unimpressed by your argumentative performance.

[Clephas]

Sorry but I didn't find your highly politically influenced argument convincing at all.  I suggest you take a step back and recognize that your views are excessively emotional on the matter.  To be blunt, please don't bring America's perverse and dogmatic tribal politics onto the forum.  You have the right to feel the way you do, but please refrain from trying to 'convince' everyone that yours is the only possible logical argument.  

Regardless of what 'views' Yorhel and the others might have (which I don't care about one way or the other), vndb serves its purpose of making people aware of new VNs when they come out and retaining basic information on VNs in general.  I don't demand anything more of it, and I honestly don't care if they fiddle with tags for random reasons.  It's their website and their efforts to maintain it are what have kept it alive for so long.  Without vndb, finding visual novels would be much, much harder and more haphazard, like with anime and manga (which have way too many half-assed database sites with horrible structure that makes it hard to find anything).  'Rival' sites don't last long for a simple reason... those sites never manage to be convenient and relatively easy to search even if you don't know an individual visual novel's name.

Edit: I should also note that vndb is not primarily or even secondarily a social media site.  Ultimately, it is a database where one can (with a sense of moderation and responsibility) post information and reviews for VNs.  Treating it like the poisonous swamps that are Reddit, Facebook, and X does no one any good.  The social element has its issues, but the bare bones nature of the social features shows how little interest there is in that aspect in the first place.  While it is technically a community, it is a community whose focus is on a niche medium of entertainment, not a place for people to rave about political viewpoints. 

[littleshogun]

...

Well at least now I know that the post at least can contain more than 9,000 characters, so thanks to the OP to directly confirm it by posting his incessant rambling.

Edited December 29, 2024 by littleshogun

[Kirashi]

17 hours ago, Zakamutt said:

I think Yorhel is in the top 1-2% of people I'd trust to implement both more Western and Japanese ways of looking at the issue as appropriate to the title.

If by "appropriate" you mean how you acted in this forum in the past I can understand why you trust him so much.

Anyway, since Yorhel seems to make this matter personnal there is nothing anyone can do, under the risk to be trashed or banned. The only good side is since "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Gender Nonconforming Individual" doesn't actually mean anything I assume very few people will use it.

Edited December 29, 2024 by Kirashi

[Clephas]

9 hours ago, Kirashi said:

If by "appropriate" you mean how you acted in this forum in the past I can understand why you trust him so much.

Anyway, since Yorhel seems to make this matter personnal there is nothing anyone can do, under the risk to be trashed or banned. The only good side is since "Engaged in Group Sex of Multiple Males, Females and at least one Gender Nonconforming Individual" doesn't actually mean anything I assume very few people will use it.

It kinda sounds like the thread author was the one decided to make it personal... even though the entire thing isn't worth arguing about in the first place.  If someone has time to nitpick over gender political tags, then they also have time to be doing something more constructive... like reading visual novels or watching anime.

[Kirashi]

5 hours ago, Clephas said:

It kinda sounds like the thread author was the one decided to make it personal... even though the entire thing isn't worth arguing about in the first place.  If someone has time to nitpick over gender political tags, then they also have time to be doing something more constructive... like reading visual novels or watching anime.

From what author said he deleted everything that seemed inconvenient for him without a word at first and banned him at the end, meaning there was no room for discussion in the first place. If that's not taking things personnaly I would like to know your definition on the matter. Also I didn't read the whole vndb thread because it was too long but I am unsure there was any rule break that deserved a ban. 

[Clephas]

3 hours ago, Kirashi said:

From what author said he deleted everything that seemed inconvenient for him without a word at first and banned him at the end, meaning there was no room for discussion in the first place. If that's not taking things personnaly I would like to know your definition on the matter. Also I didn't read the whole vndb thread because it was too long but I am unsure there was any rule break that deserved a ban. 

From vndb's discussion board rules.

1c. Hate speech, racism, discrimination and anti-LGBTQ sentiments are unwelcome here. Of course, considering the nature of this database, it's fine to discuss these topics in the context of visual novels, but VNDB is not the place to relate these topics to the real world. Don't use visual novels as a proxy to voice your opinions about reality.

[Somebody]

Now even the website rules are specifically tailor made in accordance with their agenda.

[Clephas]

14 minutes ago, Somebody said:

Now even the website rules are specifically tailor made in accordance with their agenda.

You're missing the point.  Those rules pre-date your posts on vndb, thus you are the one at fault.  Unlike X, where there are hidden rules (basically anything Elon Musk doesn't like gets pushed down, and anyone who opposes him directly loses their verification), the rules are clearly stated.  You made the choice to ignore them so you could 'make a point'.  There was no conspiracy against you, nor was there a mysterious hidden agenda that you were exposing.  You simply don't like certain viewpoints and decided to go out of your way to make a mess.

[Clephas]

Thread locked because it doesn't look like any kind of constructive conversation is going to come out of it.  Please do not replicate or continue this thread elsewhere.