I think it's because the people who do that are crazy in a way unrelated to video games. They would probably go on large rants about the woman that gave them a funny look in the coffee shop. Sadly wildly introverted people tend to enjoy video games and also tend to be the ones that go on crazy rants.
#GAMERGATE: The Threadening [Read the OP] -- #StopGamerGate2014
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I think it's because the people who do that are crazy in a way unrelated to video games. They would probably go on large rants about the woman that gave them a funny look in the coffee shop. Sadly wildly introverted people tend to enjoy video games and also tend to be the ones that go on crazy rants.
While that is certainly true, some of these people have hundreds of thousands views for their rants. It's just really concerning to see so many people follow these personalities and even take them seriously, along with the actual people feeling legitimized in literally obsessing with this one woman and what she has to say about fucking video games.
A couple others that come to mind:
-Hotline Miami 2's rape scene, excised by its developers after some calm and reasonable complaints but ZOMG censorship
-The piece about Castlevania LoS2's "rape scene" on USGamer--even though it was a pretty dubious argument IMO, the subsequent level of invective ranged from disingenuous (how could you POSSIBLY interpret vampirism sexually) to personal attacks (the author was a "liar" posting "clickbait")
Going beyond gender issues, the controversies over RE5 and Far Cry 4 show similarly toxic attitudes towards any sort of criticism re: minority representation.
That was intentional. They wanted to grow their mob, and the only way to do that was to trick people like you into backing them by giving the appearance of having a legit agenda.
It's like the KKK coming to town and saying "Hey, join our protest about college tuitions being too high."
MHWilliams
Member
I pointed out to Cifaldi that I had written something about the entire thing, we just tend to slide underneath the radar at USgamer. People just tend to focus on the big ones: Polygon, IGN, GameSpot, Kotaku.
They are the terrorists, after all
More_Badass
Member
I Tweeted this yesterday
GamerGate, please don't ruin gaming for the rest of us
The GG reply I got was:
I didn't even know what he's even trying to say, who the "they" is
Yeah I don't understand why so many people would listen to a lot of these folks. I just wonder if it's that a large vocal percentage of men who game have problems with women or if it's just a large vocal percentage of men period. I understand that we need to expand the content and stories of video games if we want them to be accepted more widely. People are afraid that they will lose their Dragon's Crowns and Senran Kagura's but ignore the fact that transformers and harlequin novels still get made even though movies and books are closer to that diversification that people are wanting. Just because they are going to make more equal games doesn't mean they will stop making the ones you have been playing now.
I don't know it really only takes one psychopath to suddenly make everything much more real and dangerous.
Steve Youngblood
Member
We need to fight for this stuff before it's too late. Remember when all the whining about the Sorceress's cleavage had the negative impact of Dragon's Crown going on to be Vanillaware's biggest commercial success? Remember the impact on poor GTA V after the whining about the lack of a female protagonist? As a result, the game only went on to sell 34 million copies. The message being sent is that the games I like are in grave danger.
This is a really nice read.
Jenn Frank gets into a nice civil talk on twitter about the issue. Both sides give nuance and a sense of sincere humanity. I hope everyone reads this. I hate what they did to her, because her thoughts seem to match my own. A GG-er opens up a bit and says that paranoia took over them and allowed the mob mentality to go after her.
These feelings of distrust created a lot of unnecessary pain for everyone. :\
Jenn Frank gets into a nice civil talk on twitter about the issue. Both sides give nuance and a sense of sincere humanity. I hope everyone reads this. I hate what they did to her, because her thoughts seem to match my own. A GG-er opens up a bit and says that paranoia took over them and allowed the mob mentality to go after her.
These feelings of distrust created a lot of unnecessary pain for everyone. :\
That is the stuff where I think where certain folks on both sides (the sane ones at least) can find common ground.
The mob mentality also makes people stupid. The larger a group is, the dumber it becomes.
That said, there are a number of trolls out there who want lulz not compromise.
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-be-free/
Another good read. One reason I had sympathy for the GG side at first instinct was because of the toxic attitudes described to SJWs in the article. That vanished when the GG folks became just as bad if not worse.
I also noticed the neoliberal (though I outright called them objectivist, which is about the nastiest slur I can give someone) trends among many in the GG movement which disgusted me.
I have a difficult time understanding what agreement they reach. I don't think the guy in the storify is clear on what Frank and Phil are talking about and I think he's reading too much into Frank's tweets. Like he states that,
Like he doesn't understand that when the two people are talking about how the patriarchy is hurting men too (which is what MRA people don't get), which makes him somehow conclude that "invoking patriachy is an inherently sexist, counterproductive tactics."
Similarly, he states that "Much as I'm very much a left-wing liberal myself but think I'd get on rather well with Milo" and that "Nevertheless, I still dispute that the campaign of complaints to the Guardian constituted harassment, and #GG certainly isn't *about* harassment or hate." - two things that should give off huge red warning signs.
I'd love if someone supporting GG were made aware and realized what they have been doing and are perpetuating is wrong. But I don't think this is a case of such a thing, judging from the guy's Storify.
(I can't believe I just spent 10 minutes going into detail over a disjointed Twitter conversation)
What toxic attitudes? As a feminist, I'm interested in your experiences and how I and others may avoid such attitudes to push you away from the goal of striving for equality and justice.
I can't either. I gave up after 30 seconds of reading it.
D
Deleted member 126221
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It looks like mis-understanding and distorting what's being said is a common thing for gamergaters. I sometimes wonder how much of it is deliberate.
alstein posted this on the previous page, but I think it deserves a mention. Katherine Cross at the academic First Person Scholar did a nice commentary on Gamergate with a lot of references and links - Arendt even gets mentioned somehow. Besides the misogyny, this really drives the point of GG home:
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-be-free/
http://www.firstpersonscholar.com/we-will-force-gaming-to-be-free/
From the article I linked in the last post:
For all of GamerGates hatred of SJWs they took no lessons from the threadbare realities that lay behind the SJW stereotype. The phrase social justice warrior was originally coined on Tumblr to describe a dangerous tendency among some leftist activists to aggressively and angrily pursue political goals according to strict ideological codes, often to the detriment of others, with no clear collective gain, but significant personal aggrandizement. It is a tendency that I and many others have been critiquing and thinking about long before GamerGate. Indeed, at the start of this year, queer and feminist writers in the world of gaming specifically talked about this very issue and inspired me to do the same. How long ago that all seems no
I've had this happen more than a few books, and blocked folks a couple of times due to this in the past- all because I didn't agree "enough", or didn't accept every definition they have. Agreeing 90% isn't enough for these folks.
The GG crowd is acting in the same way, in higher numbers now. I despite that even more (probably because my own personal politics are more left than right, and GG has a heavy tinge of objectivism)
This one compares #GamerGate to a conservative movement.
This one compares it to a leftist movement.
Huh.
I'm completely anti-#GamerGate, and in philosophy I'm a feminist, but I'm no big fan of "SJWs" myself. At least, the Tumblr-grade ones.
Most of the SJWs I've encountered are completely unreasonable, and seem incapable of thinking in anything other than black and white. Some of their attitudes are very toxic. For example, as someone who has a teenage daughter, the whole angry SJW notion that "you shouldn't teach girls to defend themselves against rape, just teach men not to rape," is completely repugnant and dangerous. Why not do both? (Because that's not thinking in black and white, that's why.)
But that's an argument for someplace else.
robovanburen
Member
I'm sure that QuantCast will now be incorporated into conspiracy jpegs.
Definitely extreme elements that explicitly insult and harass and threaten others no matter the cause is not acceptable at all. It is super sad to see.
How could you sympathize with GG at first when their concept of being hurt by "SJW" amounts to a stern talking in an article by Leigh Alexander? And what specifically have you experienced or witnessed in the context of video games where someone achieves that particular "SJW" label? I'm just curious.
By the way, did you read the articles which Cross talks about in terms of toxicity with online activism? They are set within a particular discussion. Brice talks about the insulting reaction to Polygon hiring Kuchera, who has a problematic history of his views on political issues, Zoya Street's piece talks about the lack of intersectionality in discussions, and understanding of other people's backgrounds informing their opinion, while Cross addresses hyper vigilantism and the faulty (neoliberal) focus on the individual rather than the structures. All articles are super valuable, appreciated, and really, really great reflections and introspections on how goals of equality and justice can and should be attained through proper discourse (without tone policing!) instead of pushing away people with hyperbolic language like "die in a fire cis-scum" and so on.
Cross is saying that GG completely loathes anything that is just mildly "leftist" (while hilariously proclaiming that they're apolitical themselves), while she also states that their ideological rationalizations of their tactics (harassment, threats, conspiracy-making, etc.) are reminisicent of "corrosive elements of the left" or "lust for revolution", i.e. the consequentialistic "the end justifies the means" - which I would argue isn't particular to the radical left as it is to any other political group or movement.
Define "deliberate". When people distort information to serve their own ends, they typically don't have any intention of acknowledging reality in the first place.
It's funny, because the way the author described the movement sort of reminded me of McCarthyism, which was anything but leftist.
Shit, replace a few words in there, and you have #GamerGate.
tonysidaway
Member
Going back to just about my first comment here I've categorised Gamergate as essentially reactionary. They can see change happening and they don't like it. It's not complicated.
The picking over nuances of the social justice warrior bogeyman is pointless. None of the targets of Gamergate are anything resembling the caricature. They're women actively involved in developing, commenting on or writing about games. People like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and (latterly as those targets have failed to deliver momentum) Leigh Alexander. People with opinions while female. They must have something to do with the demographic changes, so attack.
The picking over nuances of the social justice warrior bogeyman is pointless. None of the targets of Gamergate are anything resembling the caricature. They're women actively involved in developing, commenting on or writing about games. People like Anita Sarkeesian, Zoe Quinn and (latterly as those targets have failed to deliver momentum) Leigh Alexander. People with opinions while female. They must have something to do with the demographic changes, so attack.
Gamespot does not want to be involved in this mess from what I heard so that is why no articles are being created. The same applies to Giant bomb.
mattiewheels
And then the LORD David Bowie saith to his Son, Jonny Depp: 'Go, and spread my image amongst the cosmos. For every living thing is in anguish and only the LIGHT shall give them reprieve.'
It really is crazy trying to think of another industry where response from customers/fans is anything like this. You might just say it's purely an internet thing, that these creatures were born out of the anonymity. But where else do you see stuff like this and just think it's par for the course?
Wait, people still get on folks for not liking booth babes? I'm pretty sure PAX has banned them since its freaking inception 10 years ago.
Think its the right thing to do honestly the irony here is that of all the sites involved, ign, gamespot and gametrailers have stayed the hell out of it.
Pffft, you just accidentally described me. Except I'm not strong at all, nor do I really care to be. When I saw two black female characters in the Last of Us, I was genuinely shocked. Never in a game have I seen, not one, but TWO African American female characters with semi-prominent roles. xP
There's all this talk about tokenism, but that's exactly the stuff we have now. It wouldn't be tokenism if characters were more than a check list of tropes and quotas. I'd like to see games move far beyond those types of characters. What people are advocating is more characters that are diverse and also substantial in subverting weirdly ingrained stereotypes.
(Only if it makes sense though.)
Gamespots Danny O'Dwyer has been critical of GamerGate on twitter over the past week as has Kevin VanOrd. The only person at Giant Bomb who would write anything is Patrick but most have them have said varying things against GamerGate on twitter but only slight allusions to it on the site. The thing with this and Giant Bomb though is they don't like to mention Leigh Alexander because of past issues between her and their community, which was a real instance of GB refusing to comment on something they should have instead they sat back and watched their community harass and send death threats to Leigh and they said nothing. This was before they hired Patrick and I imagine he would have said something.
I have seen other staff members talking about it too on the gamespot forums(mostly making jokes about how much they cared about gamergate), but no articles against or for the movement have been written on the site.I already knew those two were critical of the movementt.
Well, I wrote up a small op-ed on my site also saying to stop supporting GamerGate. I've been fairly vocal against it on Twitter and a few comment replies here and there on my site, but nothing really at length like this was.
It will largely go overlooked, I'm sure, but it personally feels good to have written it up. It's thanks largely to the tweets linked earlier in this thread by Frank Cifaldi and the article from The Verge.
It will largely go overlooked, I'm sure, but it personally feels good to have written it up. It's thanks largely to the tweets linked earlier in this thread by Frank Cifaldi and the article from The Verge.
Just watched Sarkeesians XOXO talk then noticed the 1k likes versus 3k dislikes. The pathological hatred for Sarkeesian blows my mind sometime. This bullshit is why we can't comment on her trope videos. This talk doesn't even contain anything controversial in terms of the ideas presented and yet it's extremely objectionable to thousands of people. Showing the abuse she's received is offensive to these people because they think it's all made up. If that's your first thought when presented with those tweets and conspiracy theories you are a fucking misogynistic douchebag not a freethinking warrior for rationalism.
More_Badass
Member
Retweeted your piece, very well written
Thank you, I sincerely appreciate it.
Szips, could you link your site and article? I also want to say how great that it is to hear. Big compliments and admiration to you!
One salient points I've come across is her lack of intersectionality in her analysis. But it is hard to even have actual room to discuss actual criticism when there's so much ridiculous criticism of her videos, as if she has killed a puppy or voted for Hitler.
Luckily there have been a couple of somewhat decent discussions I think compared to when she first started out here. It's not the best, but it's better than other game-related places for sure.
One salient points I've come across is her lack of intersectionality in her analysis. But it is hard to even have actual room to discuss actual criticism when there's so much ridiculous criticism of her videos, as if she has killed a puppy or voted for Hitler.
Luckily there have been a couple of somewhat decent discussions I think compared to when she first started out here. It's not the best, but it's better than other game-related places for sure.
Yep, staying out of it is the wisest option for a large gaming site. There's way to much broken glass on the floor to consider walking across this particular room. I look in here occasionally to see what's happening and on Reddit to get the other perspective. What's interesting is each side has gated themselves off and even twitter there barely any discussion, it's just people flinging shit like that Verge article. I think it's interesting as a study on behaviours though.
I was referring to her closing down YouTube comments rather than discussing the videos on Gaf. I feel we do get some good discussion here on her videos.
I noticed there is already an hour plus video supposedly debunking this fifteen minute talk. I won't waste my time watching it but the comments prove everything she says. Conspiracies upon conspiracies. Unchallenged anti-semetism (is she even Jewish?). They also tell me she's a money grabbing bitch and a professional victim oh and don't forget what a monster she is for disabling YouTube comments so we can say all this to her directly.
I noticed there is already an hour plus video supposedly debunking this fifteen minute talk. I won't waste my time watching it but the comments prove everything she says. Conspiracies upon conspiracies. Unchallenged anti-semetism (is she even Jewish?). They also tell me she's a money grabbing bitch and a professional victim oh and don't forget what a monster she is for disabling YouTube comments so we can say all this to her directly.
JesseEwiak
Member
The thing is, basic PR would tell them to film better videos or don't all look, sound, or seem like a crazy person talking about contrails, so you can appeal to people beyond your very narrow demographic.
The thing is, by the latest Topsy numbers (again, not perfect), they're down to around 30k for today. I think this is going to happen for a while. Something "big" (ie. Intel/a games press member is mean and so on) happens and the numbers jump big, only for them to come back down to the "normal" circle of ignorance.
Which is, as I've said before, horrible for the various people within in the industry who have to put up with the bullshit, but there's no proof #GG is expanding at all. So, we've got 8 to 10k people who are OK with Tweeting horrible things to people or are involved in conspiracy theories. It's bad, but out of a few million "gamers," it's not the worst thing in the world.
The thing is, by the latest Topsy numbers (again, not perfect), they're down to around 30k for today. I think this is going to happen for a while. Something "big" (ie. Intel/a games press member is mean and so on) happens and the numbers jump big, only for them to come back down to the "normal" circle of ignorance.
Which is, as I've said before, horrible for the various people within in the industry who have to put up with the bullshit, but there's no proof #GG is expanding at all. So, we've got 8 to 10k people who are OK with Tweeting horrible things to people or are involved in conspiracy theories. It's bad, but out of a few million "gamers," it's not the worst thing in the world.
More_Badass
Member
It's funny, because the way the author described the movement sort of reminded me of McCarthyism, which was anything but leftist.
Shit, replace a few words in there, and you have #GamerGate.
Don't get hung up on left/right. The horseshoe theory comes into play and both ends adopt the same behaviours and demonize the people they view as against them.
The Soviet equivalent of McCarthyism were the Stalin Purges and the various trials held accusing people of being capitalists.
Poor guy. =/
He was being attacked by both sides and now he's scared to death. If both sides aren't willing to engage, than there will never be any progress. The harassers will never stop targeting these journalists...so waiting it out doesn't exactly make much sense to me. On the flip side, the harassers won't stop until there is some form of resolution.
I know people here will disagree, but I still thing Disengagement is the best policy toward Gamergate. I don't agree that somehow, engaging the movement and telling people that they're wrong is going to make things better for anyone. Unless someone is suggesting we restrict internet privileges from the Gamergate people, it's never going to stop.
Don't know if this has been talked about yet, and I wouldn't have known it at all if not for a promoted tweet, but the new episode of South Park that aired tonight is titled "The Cissy".
So...yeah...
So...yeah...
I still think it stands for Commonwealth of Independent States.
So do you think "Don't feed the trolls" is the best way to fix the problem? :C
For a lot of these people, they associate people like us as people who want to shame other games. They think we want to shame people out of making violent/sexist games. That's simply not the case...and if it is the case for some people, then I think we need to reevaluate. The purpose of all this is to bring awareness, so that people can make better conscious decisions instead of bad unconscious assumptions. Art is there to explore all of humanity's taboos, that includes new diverse perspectives, as well as profane amounts of gore and misogyny. It's okay to enjoy gratuitous amounts of violence and sexist tropes. It's not okay to deny and attack those who criticize those elements of a game.
This has never been about censorship, and should/has to be about awareness through critical thought.
MHWilliams
Member
It's nice to see that the responses to that Tweet have been rather civil. Well, some of the responses are, at least.
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