#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014

Status
Not open for further replies.
Plenty of people re-address articles. It's not a hate crime. Posting on twitter to the faithful seems like small beer to me.

I kind of agree here. Many people will read her article on Time or whatever but not many people will go to her Twitter feed. If she legitimately wants to apologize to the biggest audience it would be to do so on both mediums.

This is a fairly minor point though, and her apology reads like a non-apology anyway. Then again I never cared for an apology and she didn't seem like the type to who would, anyway.

I don't really know what this discussion is about anymore, honestly.
 
I'm not saying these discussion isn't valid, I'm saying that more pressing, shitty matters have surfaced during the discussion. Talk about ethics outside of the gamergate context. Talk about it in a month or two. But right now the nasty stuff is the loudest. As I said in a previous post, the table needs to have all the shit cleared away before people sit back down.

Please, that same 'wait a month or two' shtick was being touted last night in the thread and when push came to shove it was basically confirmed that as long as there's the spectre of misogyny around any comment, there can be never be any room for discussion. The middle east peace process has more chance of reaching an accord versus that line of thinking.
 
If he participated in that nonsense and didn't see fit to inform the public and authorities, then yeah, he fits my definition of a scumbag.

He was already a scumbag for posting the blog. It disturbs me how few people have noted this, at least that I've seen...like Quinn may be a shitty person, I don't know or care, but I DO know that he was screencapping conversations like a fucking stalker and then vindictively posting them on the internet. I don't care how many guys she cheated on you with, that's some sociopath shit.
 
What the fuck? Not a fan of your choice of words there. /:
The word was not chosen without reason. Without context that she was responding to sometime who specifically identified as being non-neurotyoical, the word choice reads like that, using a PC term to mask am ugly sentiment. Obviously, if she is responding to someone who identified themselves that way, it doesn't read ugly at all.

That said, it also doesn't count as any kind of apology to the average gamer who takes offense to her depiction of them.
 
i do enjoy that no matter what happens people can always claim that it's not 4chan doing it so long as the mods keep it from happening directly on their site. all of the peripheral activities (read: stirring up shit about conspiracy theories and false flags) can still carry on while the more explicitly criminal stuff just gets moved off-site somewhere everyone already knows about.

bingo, not 4chan! and even if some or most of the actors involved are found to have posted there, no matter what it's still not representative of the community. 4chan can take all of the credit for the "good" things they do and none of the blame for the bad because it's structured specifically around plausible deniability.
 
1) Issue an apology for their role in this whole thing. Its ok if they stay vague, honestly. Just be sorry that they played a role in this.

An apology without something specific to apologize for is meaningless.

1b) wouldn't hurt if we saw apologies for the whole 'gaming is dead' thing. that sucked

The fact that someone wrote something you disagree with is not grounds for apology. It's grounds for you not visiting their site, if you like. However, on a long enough timeline, every site is going to eventually write something you dislike.

2) Begin to start posting exclusively articles about games, the companies that make them,
and the industry.
2b) avoid posting editorials as content, avoid clickbait, avoid non-gaming related crap.

Dictating their editorial strategy is a serious overreach. I also don't see why editorials should be forbidden. Editorials have existed for decades. You seem to be okay with stating your opinion in your videos. Why is it not okay for someone working in the written medium?

If someone doesn't like a site's content, they don't have to read said site. If they don't like a specific article, they don't have to read it. Websites can't operate under a strategy of "If someone won't like it, we won't post it!" because someone will find something wrong with even the most innocuous news post.

3) begin disclosing when money is exchanging hands and when favors are exchanging hands. This includes 'gifts' like tablets and pcs and free copies of games or whatever else.
3b) fully disclose all connections the author of an article has with so and so. It would be swell if you could simply click on an authors name and see things like "Owns stock in so and so" and "is best friends with so and so".
3c) at the very least when the author has a conflict of interest, to recuse themselves or disclose that information.

I agree that disclosure within an article is important. Many sites already do this, though.
 
The word was not chosen without reason. Without context that she was responding to sometime who specifically identified as being non-neurotyoical, the word choice reads like that, using a PC term to mask am ugly sentiment. Obviously, if she is responding to someone who identified themselves that way, it doesn't read ugly at all.

I think it's an enormous stretch to see it as a deliberate attempt to insult anyone non-neurotypical, half her tweet was this:

i had a lot of challenges re social norms as a child & games were my safe place, too <3

Which clearly implies that A] it's adressing someone B] she identifies with having trouble understanding social norms.

I have a lot of trouble understanding how you could take that tweet to mean something as absolutely negative as you described.

That said, it also doesn't count as any kind of apology to the average gamer who takes offense to her depiction of them.

She apologized for implying not recognising social ques = a bad thing.

She explained quite clearly afterwards that she didn't mean "Everyone who games" so a general apology seems unnecessary beyond the thing she apologized for.

i do enjoy that no matter what happens people can always claim that it's not 4chan doing it so long as the mods keep it from happening directly on their site. all of the peripheral activities (read: stirring up shit about conspiracy theories and false flags) can still carry on while the more explicitly criminal stuff just gets moved off-site somewhere everyone already knows about.

bingo, not 4chan! and even if some or most of the actors involved are found to have posted there, no matter what it's still not representative of the community. 4chan can take all of the credit for the "good" things they do and none of the blame for the bad because it's structured specifically around plausible deniability.

Yep, there's a ton of problematic issues with deniability & credit when it comes to anonymous places like 4chan.
 
Lol, Zoe Quinn being a "SJW rogue" this whole time is pretty fantastic. People should've walked away from the #gamergate movement a long time ago, hope this helps with that (and if you have any legitimate concerns about journalism ethics, please voice them, but maybe not under a banner started by fucking scumbags).
 
She's literally saying "this archetypal person that we often focus on when we discuss 'game culture' is not actually representative of the people who game."
 
Lol, Zoe Quinn being a "SJW rogue" this whole time is pretty fantastic.

Yeah this provided me with a heartfelt laugh

quinnrogue0noh8.png
 
I literally put that in my version.
You included a link, which I didn't click on.

Yeaah it's just unfortunate to shove something that discriminatory into someone's mouth. /: (also be careful using terms like that on GAF, I'm fairly sure it's on the no-no list.)
Agreed. Context is important. Thank you (not sarcastic) for your concern but I chose the word carefully because the quote was very ugly to me presented standalone the way it was. Happy that wasn't the case.
 
She's literally saying "this archetypal person that we often focus on when we discuss 'game culture' is not actually representative of the people who game."

No, we need to talk about this article's rhetoric because my feelings of identifying with an arbitrary label are hurt!

And the implication is that we don't have to talk about/it justifies a denial of/it overshadows the issue of the misogyny in our video game culture going on right now.
 
Yeah this provided me with a heartfelt laugh

quinnrogue0noh8.png

She won a lot of respect from me today. Though she didn't owe anyone an explanation to anything, I always had this nagging fear in my mind that, because a lot of Twitter support towards her was backhandedly acknowledging the claims made against her, that Eron's claims were true. But that she had the foresight and inhibition to wait until she had all the evidence she needed to drop the bombshell, it's eliminated all possible fear in my mind. "Not negotiating", indeed.

I feel like I should be the next rando to drop by her house, but it would be to buy her a beer. In any case, I feel like I've been a fool for not believing in the social justice activism and games crossover, at least a little bit, and I'm going to be more proactive if I can.
 
Zoe posted screengrabs from two IRC channels, #burgersandfries on Rizon and #quinnspiracy on Freenode.

Full logs of #burgersandfries from August 18th have been released. This is the channel with the Youtube and some /v/ people in it. If you wanted to see their discussion in context. You can control+F through the logs to find the spots Zoe posted. Here's the link: https://archive.today/Ler4O It's quite a lot to parse, 14mbs of text, so I wouldn't bother. Most of it reads like a 4chan thread, anyway.

I don't know who frequents #quinnspiracy, as I have never seen that IRC channel before. I connected to it to ask for logs. But. It's empty except for 4 people. A whois reveals all these people connected only today, and very recently. So no point in trying to get logs for this channel. Which sucks, as some of the more outlandish things that she tweeted. Came from this channel.
 
I feel like I should be the next rando to drop by her house, but it would be to buy her a beer. In any case, I feel like I've been a fool for not believing in the social justice activism and games crossover, at least a little bit, and I'm going to be more proactive if I can.

I'm sure this was a joke, but please don't.

But yeah, those IRC logs. Goddamn.
 
I'm responding to a lot of people here so no quotes, however...

You're asking me what the agenda of gamergate is. Well I can't really speak for it because there are tens of thousands of people involved and sure, their needs and desires differ.

I can speak for myself and say that if I had my wish websites like kotaku and polygon and ign would do the following

1) Issue an apology for their role in this whole thing. Its ok if they stay vague, honestly. Just be sorry that they played a role in this.
1b) wouldn't hurt if we saw apologies for the whole 'gaming is dead' thing. that sucked

2) Begin to start posting exclusively articles about games, the companies that make them,
and the industry.
2b) avoid posting editorials as content, avoid clickbait, avoid non-gaming related crap.

3) begin disclosing when money is exchanging hands and when favors are exchanging hands. This includes 'gifts' like tablets and pcs and free copies of games or whatever else.
3b) fully disclose all connections the author of an article has with so and so. It would be swell if you could simply click on an authors name and see things like "Owns stock in so and so" and "is best friends with so and so".
3c) at the very least when the author has a conflict of interest, to recuse themselves or disclose that information.

If we woke up on monday to every one of those sites posting letters claiming this stuff then this 'war' would be over.

Insane people would still enjoy torturing zoe quinn and probably say its because of 'gamergate' though because that's just what crazy people do.

1) I don't think that they should apologise. I think that those articles raised important points that I support.

2) IMO editorials are the best thing about the games media right now. I don't agree that a website that focuses on the games industry needs to only write stories about video games. There is a huge amount written about games every single day.

3) I think that it would be good to disclose gifts. I actually think it would be better to refuse gifts unless they're necessary to do the job, e.g. review copies of games. Obviously conflicts of interests should be disclosed but then the obvious question is: what constitutes a conflict of interests?

I'm not sure it's appropriate to ask that people publicly disclose who they are friends with as a matter of course unless it's especially pertinent to a specific story. I don't think that friendships are really a problem. It could also leas to journalists having to reveal sources when discussing a sensitive issue such as internal problems at a studio.

I think the real problems are games companies advertising with games media (but that seems unavoidable at this point) and the game companies' control over the media's access to games and information (which also seems unavoidable).
 
Guys, I might keep bragging in this thread about my coming journalism degree, but that should just indicate that I have insecurities about my lack of employment. I can't afford the $4000 to see my boyfriend in Tennessee. I'm definitely not spending money just to go to Zoe's house, wherever that may be.
 
No, we need to talk about this article's rhetoric because my feelings of identifying with an arbitrary label are hurt!
If she had just attacked the label it wouldn't have been a problem, but she didn't. She went after one of the internet's favorite groups to hate, the young socially-awkward guy who may be overweight and doesn't dress or groom particularly well. People just love to dogpile on this demographic and it's fucking tired and frankly a little disgusting.

edit: It's great that she apologized. Now if only the rest of the internet would fucking stop already.
 
Holy crap, those IRC logs. In case it wasn't clear to any observers or moderate participants (Boogie, hope you're paying attention) what this has been about all along, there we go.
 
Please, that same 'wait a month or two' shtick was being touted last night in the thread and when push came to shove it was basically confirmed that as long as there's the spectre of misogyny around any comment, there can be never be any room for discussion. The middle east peace process has more chance of reaching an accord versus that line of thinking.

On GAF, not on the Internet. On GAF, moderatorship will nip in the bud any attempt to derail a conversation. There's plenty of examples of threads that are closed by moderators at their judgment.
 
Holy crap, those IRC logs. In case it wasn't clear to any observers or moderate participants (Boogie, hope you're paying attention) what this has been about all along, there we go.

So what do you think about playing into their hands by banning your journalists from privately using Patreon? Totilo and you pretty much send a strong signal to the harassers that their campaign was working and thus you unwittingly enabled or encouraged their behavior.
 
So what do you think about playing into their hands by banning your journalists from privately using Patreon? Totilo and you pretty much send a strong signal to the harassers that their campaign was working and thus you unwittingly enabled or encouraged their behavior.

Totilo already addressed that yesterday.

http://kotaku.com/about-gamergate-1630707501

I've heard an inordinate amount of discussion about Patreon and how the sign of a writer funding a Patreon is enough to assume the worst about their career. This last bit is something that even had me regretting my phrasing of a recent statement I made about Patreon support, simply because something I'd meant as a best practice for regular Kotaku writers (don't fund developers personally on an ongoing basis for non-coverage purposes) was seen as an attack on the Patreon service and/or an excuse to cast aspersions on any reporter who does fund a developer Patreon. I think we can all judge a reporter or critic by the body of their work and use common sense to judge the spirit of their intent. And to clarify and evolve the policy I stated in light of the healthy debate that followed: I believe that Kotaku writers are indeed entitled to pay into a game developer Patreon if that's what they need to do to access a developer's work for coverage purposes. They can even expense it.
 
At least click on the links :( I trawled back through a week and a half of tweets to provide context for you guys
I've read it now. The neurotypical point really could have been in the main post, but thanks for posting it. The context definitely clarifies her language but also kind of disqualifies the tweet as any kind of apology to me, who is not a fan of bigotry, but can relate to the insulting stereotype she denigrated.

No, we need to talk about this article's rhetoric because my feelings of identifying with an arbitrary label are hurt!

And the implication is that we don't have to talk about/it justifies a denial of/it overshadows the issue of the misogyny in our video game culture going on right now.
Please understand that what you are doing is stifling legitimate conversation and criticisms with fallacies. Speaking just for myself, you've done very little to engage me in the conversation you'd like to have and I doubt I'm the only one who would respond better to engagement than being told I shouldn't be talking about other things.

Tell me, what is your solution to this unfortunate plague we have of rude, anonymous Twitter bullies?
 
Holy crap, those IRC logs. In case it wasn't clear to any observers or moderate participants (Boogie, hope you're paying attention) what this has been about all along, there we go.

Well, seeing as the nutjob Baldwin had the first recorded use of the hashtag, it seems insane that anyone needed those logs to see this for what it was. But it's still good to have.

Totilo already addressed that yesterday.

http://kotaku.com/about-gamergate-1630707501

Good on him. I had trouble with the wording on that post from the beginning, and especially the outright ban of Patreon. As I've said before I have no problems with a publication putting in place pretty draconian ethics policies, but that shouldn't mean that other publications should automatically be seen as suspect and possibly corrupt for not doing so. Boogie's suggestion that publications should reveal every relationship a writer have in the industry is completely insane and is literally not done in any field of journalism, not even political journalism (where your friends often are your sources). A lot of the people who have been screaming about "ethics in game journalism" have absolutely no idea how journalism actually works.
 
Well, seeing as the nutjob Alec Baldwin had the first recorded use of the hashtag, it seems insane that anyone needed those logs to see this for what it was. But it's still good to have.

Adam Baldwin not Alec. Also they aren't related.

Also to either side, no one wants to be dictated or told what or how to think. Let's engage with each other. I'm glad this thread has remained civil throughout 30 pages.
 
Holy crap, those IRC logs. In case it wasn't clear to any observers or moderate participants (Boogie, hope you're paying attention) what this has been about all along, there we go.

So what do you think about playing into their hands by banning your journalists from privately using Patreon? Totilo and you pretty much send a strong signal to the harassers that their campaign was working and thus you unwittingly enabled or encouraged their behavior.

No, the actions Kotaku and Totilo took were absolutely correct. While a very subversive element in regards to GamerGate had been exposed, there are a LOT of people with real, legitimate concerns and suspicions. It was those people whom Totilo was addressing on his latest posting on Kotaku, and the banning of Patreon for Kotaku employees was absolutely the right thing to do.

You're being more than a bit ridiculous.
 
So what do you think about playing into their hands by banning your journalists from privately using Patreon? Totilo and you pretty much send a strong signal to the harassers that their campaign was working and thus you unwittingly enabled or encouraged their behavior.

The anti patreon campaign was so obviously a disingenuous response to all the new patreon pledges Zoe got after she was harassed, I was really shocked and disappointed to see "Kotaku" taking it seriously.

I hope in the future Kotaku chooses not to give in to the demands of terrorist bullies.
 
So what do you think about playing into their hands by banning your journalists from privately using Patreon? Totilo and you pretty much send a strong signal to the harassers that their campaign was working and thus you unwittingly enabled or encouraged their behavior.
there is a loooooootttt of people this strung along without Kotaku's help.
 
Adam Baldwin not Alec. Also they aren't related.

Also to either side, no one wants to be dictated or told what or how to think. Let's engage with each other. I'm glad this thread has remained civil throughout 30 pages.

Fuck me, you caught that. I changed that after 5 seconds because I wrote the wrong name.
 
I think the timing of the decision was poor. They could even have made the decision but not announced it publicly until the ##GG campaign had died down. Kotaku's announcement did cause people on #GG to claim that they were 'winning', which gave ammunition to the idea that all of the alleged corruption was real.
Actually, the Patreon thing was on August 26, days before GamerGate started. (http://kotaku.com/a-brief-note-about-the-continued-discussion-about-kotak-1627041269)

We really did make a mistake in not disclosing some personal friendships, so we had to address that. But at this point we are moving on and continuing to take ethics as seriously as we always have.
 
I'm responding to a lot of people here so no quotes, however...

You're asking me what the agenda of gamergate is. Well I can't really speak for it because there are tens of thousands of people involved and sure, their needs and desires differ.

I can speak for myself and say that if I had my wish websites like kotaku and polygon and ign would do the following

1) Issue an apology for their role in this whole thing. Its ok if they stay vague, honestly. Just be sorry that they played a role in this.
1b) wouldn't hurt if we saw apologies for the whole 'gaming is dead' thing. that sucked

2) Begin to start posting exclusively articles about games, the companies that make them,
and the industry.
2b) avoid posting editorials as content, avoid clickbait, avoid non-gaming related crap.

3) begin disclosing when money is exchanging hands and when favors are exchanging hands. This includes 'gifts' like tablets and pcs and free copies of games or whatever else.
3b) fully disclose all connections the author of an article has with so and so. It would be swell if you could simply click on an authors name and see things like "Owns stock in so and so" and "is best friends with so and so".
3c) at the very least when the author has a conflict of interest, to recuse themselves or disclose that information.

If we woke up on monday to every one of those sites posting letters claiming this stuff then this 'war' would be over.

Insane people would still enjoy torturing zoe quinn and probably say its because of 'gamergate' though because that's just what crazy people do.
I'm sorry but every word of this complete junk, and it's sad to read.
 
No, the actions Kotaku and Totilo took were absolutely correct. While a very subversive element in regards to GamerGate had been exposed, there are a LOT of people with real, legitimate concerns and suspicions. It was those people whom Totilo was addressing on his latest posting on Kotaku, and the banning of Patreon for Kotaku employees was absolutely the right thing to do.

You're being more than a bit ridiculous.

Yeah, regardless of how legitimate you think the movement as a whole is, journalism outlets addressing potentially problematic behavior because of it is a good thing.
 
I think the timing of the decision was poor. They could even have made the decision but not announced it publicly until the ##GG campaign had died down. Kotaku's announcement did cause people on #GG to claim that they were 'winning', which gave ammunition to the idea that all of the alleged corruption was real.

I think Totilo realizes that in that quote, and that he didn't expect the unfortunate repercussions that followed. Overzealousness can be tricky.
 
After some review, it just seems like the GamerGate campaign is more of a response to Anita's work and feminist causes than anything else.

There are so many sites and personalities that provide all kinds of takes on video games. There are people that keep it cut and dry, there are comedy spins, there are streamers that focus on a small set, and there are guys like Giant Bomb that just shoot the shit on one end while doing eclectic focus pieces at the same time. There is plenty of variety out there, and games have never been more transparent to the consumer. There are year-round trade shows where any person on the street can get a demo. There are public betas. There are live streams. I don't need Ryan McCaffery to tell me Halo 4 is transcendent or that TitanFall is a guaranteed success. We have networks of friends online that communicate by word of mouth. We can find reviewers whose tastes align with our own so we get burned less.

Traditional "game journalism" could literally just become a purely feminist movement and games and people that love them would do fine. But that's not even close to what's happening here. What's happening here is that people don't like it when the status quo is criticized, especially when they enjoy existing benefit from it, but mostly because people are scared of change, and they are lashing out.

I used to be in the same boat, plugging my ears and shouting an ideology over reality and the genuine experiences of my fellow real human beings. You take comfort in the groupthink and despise the whistleblowers. It took some seriously hurtful personal experiences to shake me and make me want to be a better listener. Feminists have seriously good points and we should listen to them and take them seriously, and games can be an amazing and powerful tool to appeal to human empathy to effectively address their grievances, not just in the indie space, but throughout the craft we love.
 
Boogie's suggestion that publications should reveal every relationship a writer have in the industry is completely insane and is literally not done in any field of journalism, not even political journalism (where your friends often are your sources). A lot of the people who have been screaming about "ethics in game journalism" have absolutely no idea how journalism actually works.
This is as true in gaming as it is in politics. Boogie, if you're still reading this thread, let me know and I would be happy to explain to you why your stance here is so misguided. I believe you are a kind and genuine person, and I also believe you are doing something exceptionally dangerous by standing up for GamerGate and encouraging your readers to support this toxic, vile campaign.
 
Holy crap, those IRC logs. In case it wasn't clear to any observers or moderate participants (Boogie, hope you're paying attention) what this has been about all along, there we go.

I just woke up. But how is an IRC log proof that this is what it's all been about? Doesn't it just prove that there is a group of people using this as an outlet to attack activist/journalist for any kind of criticism of their hobby? Isn't that what we already knew from the beginning?

But the problem is that a lot of people that have joined GG are now joining for a completely different reason? Or did the logs prove something else. Kind of confused.

EDIT: Oh it's shows how GG started. Well yeah, many of us already knew it started out from this group of people. It's nice to see actual proof.
 
I'm sorry but every word of this complete junk, and it's sad to read.

This. It's pretty sad to read about someone who just keeps deflecting the issues here and is only ever concerned about their precious games reviews, it's legit disgusting in lieu of the deeper ingrained problems.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom