Air Zombie Meat
Member
This is why I've been unable to take the ethics argument seriously. All the examples of "corruption" I've seen highlighted just make me shrug my shoulders because of how inconsequential they seem to the bigger picture.
#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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This is why I've been unable to take the ethics argument seriously. All the examples of "corruption" I've seen highlighted just make me shrug my shoulders because of how inconsequential they seem to the bigger picture.
no journalists nor companies were targeted.
ArkkAngel007
Member
You're welcome. Regardless they shouldn't be abusing it to create a closed environment/feedback loop and I hope someone (*ahem* Jason Schrier or Jim Sterling) can highlight it and speak on how their colleagues should not be doing such things on that basis.
But that's another topic of another time it seems and I think the admins are pretty adamant on that they don't give a shit about another Polygon staff taking to Twitter on a power trip.
I've noticed a pattern that the threads on reddit about the topic explode right about the time you'd expect kids to get home from school on the east coast and most of the activity persists until kids have to go to bed on the west coast.
If I was a betting man, I'd say most of the momentum of this 'controversy' come from younger kids who don't have a great perspective on things. Their 'misoginy' probably comes from inexperience. To them a woman sleeping around to control all of the internet is a plausible scenario.
I find a lot of the 'misogyny' is more misunderstanding. It's often people who view criticisms of trends in culture or society as a personal critique. So it's not so much as some men hating women, it's more that some men think feminism is a attack on them. It's kind of weird as well since a lot of the 'men's rights' groups are really a narrow kind of feminism.
They aren't sexists because they are disagreeing with people. Many people are sexists because they are attacking indie women developers and small time women journalists. How can you expect me to believe it is all about just disagreement when people keep pointing their cannons at small fishing boats instead of the big pirate ship people are supposed to be attacking?
The new hashtag is an opportunity to start anew. Talk about actual corruption this time without the weight of the toxic misoginy hanging around people's necks this time when it all started out.
He must be saving them as IMAX resolution BMP screenshots.
The Blue Jihad
Member
Now you're starting to see why the only real move for this whole thing is to not play. You're absolutely right that Anita's videos weren't incendiary. They were very glossy, very superficial, but hardly anything close to incendiary. The reactions were immensely disproportionate. The initial counter-response wasn't terrible but it could have been better and was recklessly irresponsible (they're professionals, so fucking act like it...don't engage in a social media war with and like children). Then the whole problem escalated and escalated and escalated, with incendiary rhetoric continuing to ratchet up until there's truly no worthwhile conversation to be had.
We've seen this pattern before. We don't even need to go back much further than 10 years to see what happens. But people have short memories. They don't think. They don't look at history. Most live in the moment. That ain't good.
http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/2014/...urse-of-the-dinner-directly-from-the-irc-log/
an analysis of the #burgersandfries IRC logs that anons dumped to try and make themselves look better (i guess?) after zoe posted her excerpts
we hunted the mammoth mainly posts about MRA activities so this is right up their alley
an analysis of the #burgersandfries IRC logs that anons dumped to try and make themselves look better (i guess?) after zoe posted her excerpts
we hunted the mammoth mainly posts about MRA activities so this is right up their alley
D
Deleted member 17706
Unconfirmed Member
Jesus.
Simply Sarah
Member
A further demonstration of what I've been saying: This is the real enemy. These are the people that are going to damage gaming. Not indie devs, women, "SJWs", game journalists, or people that just want to enjoy games.
Pretty disgusting but It's been years since I'd have been surprised by such exchanges. The internet, something something, den of evil and villainy.
Neoriceisgood
Member
... Did they seriously release that thinking it'd make them look better?
Flooding someone with information isn't that good a tactic when people have time + ctrl F on their side.
Flooding someone with information isn't that good a tactic when people have time + ctrl F on their side.
SturokBGD
Member
Bingo.
Anita's videos aren't and never were the problem.
I'm not sure what the purpose of all this is. No shit 4chan IRC is frequented by total scumbags. We already know that. The question is what are the proverbial we going to do about it?
I know what I'm doing about it, but it's a lifetime of effort (and believe it or not, compassion) to make the change, not something I can change overnight in a childishly hostile blog post.
robovanburen
Member
Good lord. They provided these logs to make themselves look BETTER?
Then they should've edited out the parts where they literally talk about orchestrating the messages associated with #gamergate and #notyourshield, huh?
"Cherry-picked" LOL
Every person who posted a link to the log, please actually read the documents you present as evidence instead of dumping them on us with no explanation because you hope to drown us in meaningless information.
For those interested, updated ethical guidelines, an editor's note and a publisher's note just went live on the Esc.
Editor's Note
Publisher's Note
The updated guidelines are at the end of the Publisher's note.
Editor's Note
Publisher's Note
The updated guidelines are at the end of the Publisher's note.
Riposte
Member
I'm kind of amused the editor randomly brought up that Dragon Age II review he wrote. It was truly terrible, but I bet the comment section was worse.
SturokBGD
Member
I'm sorry, what are you saying here?
They seem reasonable to me. I agree that their staff should be allowed to fund devs through Patreon but with certain provisos. I know others will disagree though. I also think it's great that they're not allowing staff to attend early-access review events.
MHWilliams
Member
That's a solid set of guidelines.
That's pretty damn good. I'm glad something positive came out of this mess.
That is really disturbing.And it's nice to hear that something good came out of this movement even though it was mostly a giant mess.
Oh. In that case, this makes way more sense. Was at PAX Prime during all of this going down, and only started trying to catch up post PAX; and so I must have come in after the more moderate folks came into the fold (and were in my twitter feed).
Outside indie gaming being small enough that there is probably too much cross-pollination between all of it; and the natural growing pains of a niche field becoming mainstream (and what was primarily enthusiast press now attracting other non-enthusiast press as well as political agendas) - is there that much to talk about?
I'm still genuinely curious as to how modern discourse is evolving with the easy ability of crazies to congregate and hijack damn well near anything due to the rise of social media, but that might be saved for another thread?
Laurie Penny's piece Why Were Winning: Social Justice Warriors and the New Culture War is amazing
Intheflorsh
Banned
I'm guessing that it's kind of funny to be criticizing the post for being hostile given the context of what the post is about.
Only potential (massive) flaw I see is removing duplicates. 40+ websites might mean 70 versions of the same press release; versus any kind of opinion piece, which is probably a single article on a single site.
Also, would be super interested in seeing how 2014 looks compared to 2013. I do think there has been a much bigger rise in overall society about women's issues (makes sense w/r/t rapidly changing economic demographics) in the last year.
Anita alone must have had an impact on those numbers.
SturokBGD
Member
These are a great read, thanks.
I didn't intend for my tone to seem hostile, I don't think it is but I'd rather not argue about nothing.
I would be super careful about declaring victory, alas. There's a really good chance the USA / Canada / Western Europe is about to take a massive conservative swing (in the USA's case, starting with the 2014 elections, and probably going to explode during the 2016 presidential race) in the near future; which will REALLY set off the culture wars that are an inevitable part of such a large (and quick) demographic change.
The culture wars you are seeing as part of entertainment is just the warm-up for the real ones that are coming. Wait till Hilary gets nominated. (I'd be interested in trying to figure out how gaming ended up being one of the first battlegrounds. I suspect it has something to do with the pre-existing biases and beliefs of those involved on the two sides, but that's just a guess)
ArkkAngel007
Member
Good content here on addressing concerns in relation to them without dragging in all the surrounding nonsense.
Those top comments from Facebook though...you can see why it was so easy for people to get manipulated.
No, it really isn't. It's just the opposite extreme mindset, misses why the people she's stooping to their level to in attacking do what they do, and the entire premise is fairly flawed. The only merit to it would be that it does help people understand the anger and frustration women and other targeted individuals feel, which is a merit to highly regard. It doesn't excuse the quality and direction of the writing though.
This is great, thanks.
Moon_frogger
Member
I like how they were trying to raise money to hire someone to doxx Joshua Boggs so they could stalk his wife.
What the fuck is wrong with people?
MHWilliams
Member
Thanks! It was a difficult piece to write and I wasn't sure how it was going to be received.
Maybe a little, but it's not entirely off base. A lot of the stuff I see in the tag reminds me of the way I would passionately argue for/against causes when I was younger.
Whether or not the whole community is implicated in the harassment issue, the end result of the subset of behavior will still be that those serving the community will have active disincentives for continuing to create the content people want, unless something changes. That applies to both game and editorial content.
ArkkAngel007
Member
It's not like voc was throwing all of Reddit under the bus or saying they're all young individuals. As a rather active Redditor/mod, it's not something that would surprise me in correlation with the increase in traffic either and I share the same thoughts as you Orayn while looking back. Maybe not in all my younger years, but definitely at the youngest age of relevance.
This was very powerful, and reappropriating Social Justice Warrior seems like an awesome idea.
I think the goal of putting specific ideas and criticisms into the mainstream is much more important than taking part in a terminology trench-warfare, where people focus their arguments on undermining and taking back the value any particular labels. It's easier to dismiss (or be dismissed) through a label than it is to dismiss a concise premise.
(That author there is thankfully doing both.)
More oil that this fire didn't need.
They are insisting that people take sides based on political grounds.
They renounce the idea that as gaming press they should refrain from going political and leaving that discussion only to the consumers and product makers. (Their own voice is clearly way too important for that!)
This is a "you're either with us or you're against us; there will be no discussion" approach.
It marks them as being more concerned about their political agenda than about their profession.
revisionup
Banned
This article exemplifies the problems I have been having with this whole discussion since it started. I have great concern with her use of the word, "they" repeatedly during the article. Especially since it's clear she is referring to white men from the part which states, "The gamification of misogyny predates the internet, but right now, in this world full of angry, broken, lost young men convinced that women have robbed them of some fundamental win in life, its rampant."
I have always been for the inclusion of EVERYONE in any hobby or discussion (games or other). I understand where articles like these come from, because I understand that women do suffer from misogynistic comments in the games medium. Change is needed in many sectors of culture, games included. I am also a white male, and I am now officially sick and damn tired of being called the villain in all of this.
I had a hard childhood. I was homeless for long periods. I was picked on in school. I have several medical conditions that keep me awake at night. With all of this I still never hated any "groups" because I was always able to look at people as individuals. Individualism is what I believe to be key to humanity. I don't know what every other person is thinking, and just because I have felt anger and hate does not give me the right to swing judgement down on gigantic swaths of human beings.
I still believe no one should be attacked, and I will stand by anyone who believes in equality for EVERYONE. I now, however, officially stop standing by any article which attempts to shut any group of people down. Articles like these don't help the cause, they attempt to rally, to make others aggressive, to call people to arms to attack other human beings. You don't stop hate with more hate, history has all but proven this to be true. Maybe we could rally together under a true umbrella of equality, but it's clear that for now I am wasting my breath and time participating in this discussion. My hat is off to those who wish to remain and continue real discourse, but I think this is the point where I personally bow out.
badcrumble
Member
Great piece.
Eh. Electoral politics are far from being the best or even most important representation of broader cultural trends.
Take sides in what?
That's a good thing. As the piece says, you can't separate games from politics.
No it doesn't. They're talking about their profession. They're explaining their approach and philosophy to their profession. They explicitly say that you're free to disagree with their political beliefs - that they encourage disagreement.
So you don't want journalistic integrity, you want shills.
Also, it's hilarious how you see an article like that as "throwing oil on the fire."
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