O_O Big news indeed.
#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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O_O Big news indeed.
BobbyRobby
Member
The message of the people I have discussed tropes with in this thread has been, everything should be open to critique, including pulpy games.
I would take it one step further and say the way things are criticized should be criticized.
You can do it without talking down to the audience and crafting a narrative that people who enjoy said things are 'gamer' neckbeard losers.
You should be open to the possibility that, like pornography, these pulpy video games may act as a healthy outlet for frustrated men.
I don't feel hated because reporters have started talking about these things, but I take issue with the tone and lack of compelling evidence for their claims.
Telling people to 'go to 4chan' is an arrogant stance to take. It assumes that the reporters tackling these issues are infallible in their approach.
The origin of the movement was always suspected to be fabricated as a smoke screen. I absolutely believe that Zoe harassment, the bomb threat of the plane, the DDoSed servers of the PSN/Battle.net etc, the lizardsquad, the Polytron hack, and the #gamergate #notyourshield are all a machination of a few. This is an orchestrated campaign of a few sophisticated malicious trolls. Being or not 4chan members or "gamers" are just incidental circumstances. One note that the sophistication is not so much in the technical aspect of this campaign just in the orchestration part.
It's also sad that it took so much proof for anyone to understand and believe and be convinced that Gamergate was rooted in misogyny. You already saw that women were the targets while Gamergate was well underway, yet people didn't listen. Many figures spoke up and warned that the movement was intended to push out and marginalize women in the games industry, yet people still didn't believe it.
It's disheartening that it took literal proof before supporters of the movement started doubting what they were doing instead of listening to the voices who were targeted and harassed and experienced when it comes to campaigns like this.
It's disheartening that it took literal proof before supporters of the movement started doubting what they were doing instead of listening to the voices who were targeted and harassed and experienced when it comes to campaigns like this.
I think people just don't think through of experiences outside their own. I guess that is part of what privilege is, ain't it? Not having to think of things others routinely experience.
If you need a shorter alternative, Rami Ismail did a succinct job for the people with short attention span:
Boom. There it is in one paragraph.
We had proof that #notyourshield was created by people specifically as a distraction ("jamming op") as they put it, but it was totally passed over, too. Sadly, they were really good at executing this stuff and taking advantage of people's penchant for not researching something fully before signing their names to it.
The damage has been done though. Women have left the gaming scene, gaming sites put insane rules on their employees, and others are terrified what gamergaters can do to them.
That is true. The damage caused from this may never be undone.
But hopefully now the truth about gamergate has been exposed it will start to die now.
ArkkAngel007
Member
Oh come off it, he's saying if you have issues with social issues (SJW /=/ social issues; not anymore if it ever was) being brought up period, not the content or approach of them, then you should go somewhere that couldn't give a shit or is in opposition of it. If you do have an issue on HOW it's being covered and on what claim, then that's under the somethings to discuss to improve their work and communication with their audience.
It has nothing to do with sitting on an infallible position, and personally I find this black and white, us vs them attitude to be the center of the problem and not necessarily one that's in the bed of journalists.
It's like you just took the 'go to 4chan' part out of context to fuel your stance, given that the rest of Jason's post and other posts are fairly in line with your 'not the topic, but the tone' argument.
Delusibeta
Banned
Opinion: I think the whole LizardSquad/DDoSing/bomb threat thing is a separate incident. I also think that the Polytron doxx happened some time before this whole thing blew up. Certainly, the payload was prepared and uploaded before the attack on the website.
timetokill
Banned
I don't think it's that surprising. The stuff that was posted was "underground" stuff. I only heard about the whole thing after it had exploded way beyond 4chan. to that end, it could easily seem like the main issue was all the "anti-gamer" pieces and so on, with the harassment being a slideshow.
Unfortunately (and it's a problem in its own right) harassment of people online, especially women, will always be present regardless of the movement, especially if it involves women as primary players in the argument. To say that a conversation cannot be had about Topic X because some women are being harassed by others would mean Topic X is never discussed.
We don't dismiss feminist arguments about a topic simply because some radfems really do want to subjugate/kill men. We don't dismiss topics about racism in Ferguson simply because some black people hate white people, etc.
Obviously this specific tag has a large contingent dead set on attacking women in gaming, but the next tag will undoubtedly have some of those people who latch on as well. It could be literally #WeWantBetterGameJournalism and you'll still get these people.
What some figures say on either side is noise to a lot of people who have their own concerns. For the many that used #GamerGate in non-hateful interest, that's all that it was. It wasn't simply women targets, it was journalists in general.
I said it before, but this whole thing reminded me of #Occupy in a way that there were hundreds of discussions happening at once, all with the same tag. Not everyone agreed with everyone else. Some wanted to discuss anarchy, some wanted to discuss communism, some wanted to discuss capitalism, some wanted to discuss student loans, some wanted to discuss taxes, etc.
So for many, talking about harassment was simply "some other conversation" that was happening in their periphery, while they were focused on ethics, or publishers controlling scores, or "gamer" as an identity, etc.
The reason it takes proof is because otherwise it's just isolated yelling in a crowd of a million conversations.
:'(
The question then is: Did 'gamers' learn anything from this? Did people on Neogaf even learn anything from this? That maybe they should stop and think about what they are supporting and listen to what other people have to say and what they mean in their articles? Or will everything remain in status quo and next time a thread comes up on Neogaf related to diversity issues, will some 'gamers' deny and defend instead of listening and supporting?
And what about developers? And industry personalities? And publishers? And journalists? All of these different actors with different level of power within this culture - what are they going to take away from this despicable campaign?
Just curious, outline the insane rules for me.
Yup, confirmation bias is too strong on twitter, hell on the internet. Too easy to find people who think similar enough to you where you can tell yourself the opinion is objective. Idea's by committee is the new intellectual discourse.
ArkkAngel007
Member
This would be the first time I've heard of this as well. With proof, if that's not too much to ask for. I don't disbelieve it with how crazy this blow up has been, but it's been crazy partly due to people just saying things with nothing to support them and a large amount of people not caring if it was or wasn't the case.
BobbyRobby
Member
I was looking at the fact he separated talk about journlistic integrity and talk about sexism coverage. He said if you wanna talk about this cool, if you wanna talk about this, go away.
Yeah, but I hope you are right the way you saw it. Then we'd be on the same page.
Holy shit, that ether.
The chronology was: Zoe harassment > Phil Fish going ballistic on twitter defending her > Polytron site hacked > PSN/bnet,etc hacked/bomb threat> #gamergate #notyourshield.
Kotaku banning writers from supporting indie developers through Patreon?
I've been kind of catching up on these events and feel i've got most of the flash points.
I was neutral to start with, and neutral at the end. It has not persuaded me to pick a side or join a campaign or movement. Much the opposite in fact, its made me even more determined not to get involved. I realise my 'inaction' will likely rub some people up the wrong way, but I'm being honest. I've learned a few things, about people in particular and social media, and none of it was nice. None of it makes me want to join a side, because frankly, I'd rather keep all of the people involved at arms length. Too many extremists, too many hashtags and name calling, too many nutjobs and finger pointing.
Fuck. That. Noise.
Oh, I'm not saying that the conversation shouldn't be had. It's about picking the right context and time to be associated with a collective movement. The problem is that the conversation was targeting women and a diversity of voices, so implicitly people were signalboosting something inherently misogynistic.
of course, but that's not what I was saying and this is not what this has been about.
But such a tag won't (hopefully) be associated or originate from a misogynistic purpose and ambition to exclude women from the games industry.
Yes, that was their intention, but that displayed a remarkable lack of understanding of the movement's targets, its origins, and its history. Some people were speaking up and telling them: "no, don't support this campaign, it is targeting women, it is misogynistic, you are hurting not only the games industry and culture, but also your hobby", yet people still kept clamoring for ethics and journalistic integrity when this was never the purpose or its effects.
Were publishers targeted? No. Were publications targeted? No. Were female writers and developers targeted and their ways of receiving funding outside of the games industry system through Patreon? Yes.
The difference is that this movement started out with the purpose of pushing away women from the games industry. Then people jumped on the bus with good intentions because they believed that this was about journalistic integrity and ethics. Meanwhile, all the people who have been targets throughout this whole ordeal have been almost screaming that they were being harassed and targeted were ignored or denied, because the movement was about something else than its original purpose.
Then those people should have either educated themselves about what was going on or listened to the people who were experienced with what was going on, instead of unknowingly hopping on the bigot bus with the rest of the cretins, like Adam Baldwin, Breitbart, Internet Aristocrat, and all the other bigots polluting video game culture.
The difference is that they were people in that crowd yelling that they were being hurt, that they were quitting video games, and that they were targets of harassment from that particular movement. And not many people in that crowd listened, and instead people would rather talk about "not all gamers are bigots", "stop criticizing my hobby", or "a call to journalistic integrity" while women were basically saying "I am hurting. I am being harassed. Please stop this."
And that makes me sad.
Seriously? That's it?
I was hoping for something that was not something most journalists are supposed to do for the most part in the first place.
I have no problem with critical responses to feminist critiques. I do have a problem with people saying things like "keep social justice off game sites" and "why can't we just talk about video games?" and "stop trying to tell developers what to do." These are people who want to stifle discussion -- who want to maintain the status quo and drive away feminist critics like Anita Sarkeesian -- and they are the people Leigh is talking about when she demonizes the word "gamer."
Incidentally, this is also a large part of GamerGate. Today's highly-cited GamerGate article is this piece, which includes this gem:
Of course, "I don't care about gender politics... I just want to play games" is itself a political stance. What it really says is "I am fine with the status quo. I don't want to hear criticism."
Which is fine. Not every gamer is required to care about systemic sexism or problematic portrayals of women in video games. But for someone to then come out and say "hey man, I don't want to hear about this on Kotaku, I just want to play games" is to implicitly defend those issues, and that's a problem.
Why aren't kotaku writers banned from buying other games as well though?
Best thing anyone said all day.
Because it is not the same thing by any goddamn means.
You two are free to do what you want, it's a free country.
But you can't be neutral on a moving train.
"This writer is getting a game and supporting a developer through THIS way"
ok
"This writer is getting a game and supporting a developer through THIS OTHER way"
Whoa, unethical
ArkkAngel007
Member
I think I can see where you're coming from, but I think being actively involved in funding the development of a title and possibly being the position to cover it is a bit different than having the finished product in your hands. Sure, #buyersremorse and all that could affect the score in a review, but with patreon they can be viewed sort of have a horse in the race since they need what they put their money to be successful.
That doesn't mean that is how they would approach it if they were in that position, but personally I feel that's a rather tame than insane/extreme request to curb threats to integrity.
There's a difference between purchasing a product after-the-fact to where funds go wherever and funding something specifically and directly where they are in a position where they can influence the outcome.
Buying a product, be it for review or personal enjoyment' vs 'I am paying someone to support their lifestyle and they may create something'.
I wonder if most mainstream journjalistic channels were just insane for having such guidelines already.
Or joystic, putting down the little man.
Since we are using vague metaphors: you can fall asleep on a moving train if the person behind you isn't poking you in the head. Neither of the fringe elements in this are coming out of it looking even remotely sane. That people are outraged about Kotaku or The Escapist would take measures that should have already been in place is a joke. There seems to be a complete lack of self awareness as to what caused this to blow up into something much larger than the initial controversy. I'm personally losing interest in even discussing it anymore, so this will be my last post in the thread.
I don't disagree (I advised the same myself earlier today in this thread and was called out for spouting nonsense), but anything to dilute/diffuse the #gamergate banner (specifically) has to have some worth I think. I guess the intention behind an immediate alternative hashtag banner is to avoid denying those with well-meaning intent/concern some place on Twitter to give voice now. I suspect 'now' is important for many, and "take a break" will just fall on deaf ears.
The Blue Jihad
Member
The train isn't moving, though. It's tumbling down the side of a cliff after jumping the rail three weeks ago. The engine is gone. Conductor, nowhere to be found. All that's left is a bunch of passenger cars filled with the crazies and those who didn't have the sense to shut up and bail.
IrishNinja
Member
see, it reeked of a red herring when it was posted on here, so no surprises there but where was the proof? i'm in & out of here (because it's a bit depressing) so i might've missed it.
how is the former not the latter
You can if you don't board the train and take the car.
What the fuck? Goddamn this whole thing just got blown open. The claims of conspiracy from the "anti-SJW" types who started this are ironic when they're perpetuating an actual conspiracy.
IrishNinja
Member
or what if you're riding bikes
If you're talking about a set of normalized cultural attitudes, like sexism, then I can appreciate this analogy. If you're talking about discrete things like actual harassment, threats and abuse? No, absolutely not. You'd be overstating an obligation by those who literally have no measure of control over those actions by a tiny subset of the population.
My takeaway was a demonstration of how laughable the conspiracy theories leveled against people like Sarkeesian and Quinn are, in light of actual, deliberate attempts at conspiracy to against them.
Now, obviously nobody is actually saying that any number of bad actors totally poisons a movement, but I want to take the basic idea here head-on because it does seem like it captures something about where a lot of people are coming from - I don't think this is just a silly straw man about how SJWs will say that every attempt to improve games journalism is sexist no matter how overwhelmingly focused it is on just improving games journalism. There's this worry that, basically, people like Leigh Alexander are right. There are a lot of really shitty people in the community of gamers who are going to be very active in anything that looks like a campaign to improve games journalism such that if #gamergate is not the sort of thing decent people should be signing up for then #WeWantBetterGameJournalism in a few months will also end up in exactly the same place.
So, let's say that this is true (I don't think that it is, though) - you can't organize to try to get better games journalism without ending up with a really misogynistic movement. What follows? I feel like a lot of people get to "this standard means that we can never organize to improve games journalism" and conclude that therefore the standard is a bad one. But this is weird. If we take this seriously, the natural conclusion is that we just can't ever organize to improve games journalism. Yeah, improving games journalism is a nice goal, but it's just not as important as avoiding all the harassment we're seeing right now. People feel like it's unfair if they can't pursue this kind of goal because of the presence of a bunch of assholes, but obviously it's even more unfair if they pursue this goal anyway and a whole bunch of women get harassed as collateral damage. If we take this idea seriously, what follows is not that it must be okay to do #gamergate stuff and it just sucks to be a woman in gaming. What follows is that it sucks to care about games journalism because assholes in the community render it impossible for decent people to do anything about games journalism.
Now, really, I think that a movement to improve games journalism is going to be possible. A certain amount of self-policing would help an awful lot - calling out of assholes, etc., and making clear that they're not part of the movement. But the big thing is just to not be essentially co-opting what started as misogynistic garbage. Let this die down, then give it another shot, focusing more clearly on actual issues in games journalism and not on fake sex scandals.
Since you are being snarky about this:
http://thinkinink.wordpress.com/2010/01/29/you-cannot-be-neutral-on-a-moving-train/
Not saying that this is morally equivalent to murder or the gross injustices happening around the world, but that people are being hurt and discriminated against in video game culture. Not only the last couple of days or weeks, but CONSTANTLY. So by saying you don't care about this or that you won't pick a side by refusing to express sympathy for the hurt parties, you unfortunately contribute to a neutral complicity in how the games (sub?)culture is operating.
From what I gather a small number of the 4channers were on that IRC channel whilst most of them were on the threads on /v/. Does setting up a place where you collect information, or plan to collect information, as long as it is legal, to show to people who keep dismissing your concerns count as starting a conspiracy?
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