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[Derekloffin]

I don't know, you're the one asserting that they don't exist so you're the one who has to fucking prove it to me.

You can't prove lack of existence, you can only show that something does exist. So, this demand is totally unreasonable.

 

[Orayn]

EDIT: I'm done engaging with a certain user, this is completely asinine.

 

[Moral Panic]

Sure, there are a finite number of mainstream game journalism outlets. None of them have published anything critical of Sarkeesian's videos. No matter what explanation you come up with for that (editorial censorship, fear of social media bullying, ideological homogeneity are all plausible) the conclusion is the same: the mainstream games media isn't doing a very good job of fostering discussion about the issue of women in games.

I have no idea how you are making these leaps of logic. Fostering discussion != forcing discussion. The websites cannot post about content that does not exist. If there is an abundance of feminist commentary and criticism that they are not posting about then that is up to you to prove.

4. Substantiate your claims. If you claim there's a conspiracy, you better have evidence. And not "Ah, but they all started writing about this at the same time!" circumstantial evidence, but actual evidence of collusion and impropriety.

 

[BlastProcessing]

It's unreasonable to ask someone to prove a negative.

You should listen to this guy:

When there is no space for reasoned criticism the criticisms that emerge will seem unreasonable.

 

[Oersted]

You can't prove lack of existence, you can only show that something does exist. So, this demand is totally unreasonable.

Does that mean we can prove the sexism under the Gamergate hashtag?

 

[Kimawolf]

Their spokepersons are Milo Yiannopoulos, Adam Baldwin. Did we miss someone?

Let me look into it and I'll get back with you. but I am sure there are other well known writers "bloggers" and the like supporting that hashtag.

 

[Oersted]

Let me look into it and I'll get back with you. but I am sure there are other well known writers "bloggers" and the like supporting that hashtag.

Oh cool, thank you. Seriously. Could you ask them how Gamergate attracted such sexist, anti-feminist and racist bloggers and made them to their "stars"? What was it what appealed to Gamergate so much, that writers from the FoxNews corner became acceptable for them? Genuine questions.

 

[Kimawolf]

I have no idea how you are making these leaps of logic. Fostering discussion != forcing discussion. The websites cannot post about content that does not exist. If there is an abundance of feminist commentary and criticism that they are not posting about then that is up to you to prove.

4. Substantiate your claims. If you claim there's a conspiracy, you better have evidence. And not "Ah, but they all started writing about this at the same time!" circumstantial evidence, but actual evidence of collusion and impropriety.

And I' for full disclosure, there was ABSOLUTELY a discussion had where they decided all on a course of action to take. not sure how much more clear can you get. Hell I doubt Tom Brokaw ever called up Dan Rather to talk about what stories to run for the night.

If even wikileaks guy chimes in on the subject then I can't really doubt it while still believing everything else Wikileaks has done can i? I guess I just take people at the words they say.

 

[MHWilliams]

I also don't see any sites talking about the gamergate videos and disagreeing with them, is this because

1. Everyone in the gaming press agrees with those videos, no one can come up with any significant criticism of the conclusions or methodology.

2. Some people in the gaming press disagree with those conclusions or methodology, but:
a) they are instructed by their editors not to make this disagreement public
b) they do not feel comfortable making this disagreement public, for professional or personal reasons

?

Or we just don't feel those videos are worth reporting? Most of the videos forwarded my way have been... not good.

I agree. But let's be frank: this applies to people on the other side of the argument who get plenty of time on gaming websites.

Be clear about who you're talking about when you say "others": the writers and editors at major gaming websites. Isn't this the institutional bias that Gamergate people are railing against, however incoherently?

Outside of Sarkessian, who only really become big because people absolutely hated that she was going to make the videos in the first place... who else gets plenty of time?

Speaking of institutional bias, when I write things like this - which is rare - it's because I'm pointing out a strong bias or status quo within the industry already. And that's moving beyond the existence of other writers who many disagree. Like Colin Moriarty on the Far Cry 4 stuff.

Part of the problem is that we frequently act like Polygon, IGN, Gamespot, Eurogamer, are the only outlets that exist. There's tons more out there. Read that which resonates with you. It sometimes feels less like there's a problem in coverage and more that people want their viewpoint to be the one at the major outlets.

Okay, so we established now that linking to both articles would gain them more clicks. They don't link to the latter, meaning they aren't as interested in clicks as they could be. So they do it because of other reasons. Hmmm....which other reasons might there be?
I mean we clearly established that they can't agree with her on some level, right?

They disagree with those articles? They find them not newsworthy or factually inaccurate? There's any myriad reason, many of which change depending on whihc site you're talking about.

But whatever, I also don't really like Anita's videos. But....what does this have to do with gamergate again? I thought gamergate was against corruption, not against people being more sensitive about stuff than other people would like them to be?

Occasionally the calls of corruption are manifested as complaints of journalists writing about social issues.

I am a old school liberal, I was raised in the school of debate that involves engaging people you disagree with, and either agreeing to disagree, or see some truth in their statements. what I'm seeing is this new school of liberals and feminist who are using old Mccarthy tactics to debate. they are not debating at all, they are demonizing, talking down to, preaching, and insulting people's intelligence.

That's something I can't stand and when I read it I have to say something on it. so when i see posts calling ALL Gamergate people "ISIS" or "engaged in acts of terror" or "all misogynists monsters" and any of the other names I feel like I need to speak up.. As for what they want? I have no clue, but I don't believe "Gamergate" is a movement, as much as its a place gamers are going to vent, as such their "demands" are whatever the individual person posting wants.

The ISIS comment was from an executive at Dell, with another from BadAss Digest's Devin Faraci. Neither is a games journalist.

And that's the problem. You are absolutely right that It's no real movement, because it has no structure and no organization. It is not a "movement" its not like democrats, republicans, feminists etc. It's a shouting board for people to voice their displeasure. NOW there are bad apples, but its bad apples in every group who are loud and like to make noise. and the press should be parsing through the information, seeing why SO MANY GAMERS have a problem with them, and engaging them, not getting on their high horse and whining about how vile their fan base are. It can't work out in the long run if you hate your audience and demonize them, but then expect them to still consume your goods. That will only go on for so long.

Again with the press here. Look, here's Damion Schubert to debunk that.

There’s been a lot of press coverage of Gamergate in the past few weeks. Of particular note:

The Verge (one, two and three)
Breitbart (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine)
Cracked (one, two, three)
TechRaptor (one)
Forbes (one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight)
Slate (one, two, three)
Vice (one)
TechCrunch (one, two)
RealClearPolitics (one)

There’s more, but you get the idea. So that’s actually a pretty wide mix. Cracked and the Verge come hard from the left/anti side, whereas Breitbart comes from the right/pro- side and emphasizes the culture war aspect of the debate. There’s also a wide range of beats: Slate, RCP and Breitbart are politics. Forbes is financial. Cracked is probably the best pop culture criticism on the net, masquerading as a humor magazine. Agree with them or not, there’s a lot of coverage out there. But there’s sure someplace where it’s missing: the Gaming Press.

The games media has largely said nothing. Does not seem to stop people from attributing comment to it, as if we were some large group in lockstep. Why has the games media not commented? Damion has some solid theories.

First off, I believe that they don’t know how. They are, effectively, part of the story because of the corruption angle, and reporting on yourself in an impartial way is tricky as hell, especially when your credibility has already been cast in doubt (wrongly or no). If they had more structures like an ombudsman to help people have faith in their credibility on the topic, they might be able to do so. But as it is, anything they write will be instantly cast in a ‘burn the witch’ light.

The second thing is that they don’t think they need to. Sure, they could solve the above problem, or they could just keep on keeping on. Polygon’s editor proudly tweeted their QuantCast scores yesterday, and the buzz I got from talking to my source on the inside is that Polygon is pleased as punch with how they’re doing right now. It turns out that Polygon’s readers aren’t the ones who are mad at them.

Let’s look at some of the sites swirling around this on Alexa (If anyone knows of better or more accurate data, or thinks I’m reading this wrong, I’m all ears. This is not my area of expertise):

IGN (#328, up from ~#350 or so a year ago)
Gamespot (#943,up minorly from a year ago)
Kotaku (#1060, up from ~#1500 a year ago)
Polygon (#2721, up from #6000 a year ago)
Gamasutra (#7307, about flat for the year, having just rebounded)
RockPaperShotgun (#7389, also flat for the year, rebounding after a trough)
By comparison, here are some more GG friendly sites:

The Escapist (#5505, up from about #6500)

Other common pro- sites, like TechRaptor, GamesReviews, NicheGamer and GoodGamers.us are all still too small or new to have Alexa rankings. The Escapist probably has gained from #Gamergate, but it’s not clear that the other sites have lost much, if anything. It certainly hasn’t been enough for the Escapist to change positions on that list anywhere. The classic gaming sites can still deliver HUGE audiences to publishers looking to sell games. So the main gaming sites are still kicking ass. Why change?

Also We don't acknowledge the eco-terrorists leftists, the Stormfront nutty conservatives, so why acknowledge those people? there have been lots of people's viewpoints in the hundreds of thousands of tweets, and weeding through them would be crazy, but i've seen them. I've seen people raise questions about the nature of previews and reviews for instance.

As for MY problem, it would be why are these so socially conscious video-game journalists now suddenly concerned with inequality in gaming? reading reviews and previews of games not once did I see mention of "while tis is a good game, where the black people? where the women?" So to me it looks real...suspicious that when one of their friends is attacked suddenly everyone rallies around it. it feels fake and superficial and like feminists saw this, latched on it and saw it as an excellent opportunity to begin to push their viewpoints.

Because I'm black and I know many women who play games. I write about things related to my experiences, which color how I interact with games. If that's suspicious, there's nothing I can tell you.

And I' for full disclosure, there was ABSOLUTELY a discussion had where they decided all on a course of action to take. not sure how much more clear can you get. Hell I doubt Tom Brokaw ever called up Dan Rather to talk about what stories to run for the night.

Even if you're hinting at the GameJournoPros, I've pointed out repeatedly that most of the "gamer is dead" articles were either not from games media, or from those who weren't on the Google Group. Again, people are asserting things as the beginning of their anger that aren't true.

And here's David Jaffe with a larger statement, but a single point I want to point out.

The idea that a game journalist (and even more some fringe game blogger like @leighalexander- who I am on record as really, really, really disliking) can affect sales because they don't agree with the politics of a developer is laughable. Again, specific examples please? A whole host of game reviews slamming or praising a game CAN (and perhaps even should) affect sales but 5 or 10 or even 100 game journalists not digging the politics of a game and thus shitting on it won't hurt sales. The public perhaps agreeing with those journalists about the game's politics would- and should- affect the game. But in that case, all those journalists are doing are bringing their views to the fore to be discussed and debated and- quite often- totally ignored by 99% of the buying public.

 

[Derekloffin]

Does that mean we can prove the sexism under the Gamergate hashtag?

Prove it exists, yes. You need only show one example to achieve that, but realize that is pretty useless as that merely proves existence, not that it is common, or overwhelming prevalent. In any large group proving existence of a mind set among it's members does essentially nothing, much like saying there exists someone on the planet who believes they are a rabbit does not mean it is common.

 

[BlastProcessing]

Gamergate isn't my cause. I am speaking my mind on this because of what I'm seeing.

I am a old school liberal, I was raised in the school of debate that involves engaging people you disagree with, and either agreeing to disagree, or see some truth in their statements. what I'm seeing is this new school of liberals and feminist who are using old Mccarthy tactics to debate. they are not debating at all, they are demonizing, talking down to, preaching, and insulting people's intelligence.

That's something I can't stand and when I read it I have to say something on it. so when i see posts calling ALL Gamergate people "ISIS" or "engaged in acts of terror" or "all misogynists monsters" and any of the other names I feel like I need to speak up.. As for what they want? I have no clue, but I don't believe "Gamergate" is a movement, as much as its a place gamers are going to vent, as such their "demands" are whatever the individual person posting wants.

And that's the problem. You are absolutely right that It's no real movement, because it has no structure and no organization. It is not a "movement" its not like democrats, republicans, feminists etc. It's a shouting board for people to voice their displeasure. NOW there are bad apples, but its bad apples in every group who are loud and like to make noise. and the press should be parsing through the information, seeing why SO MANY GAMERS have a problem with them, and engaging them, not getting on their high horse and whining about how vile their fan base are. It can't work out in the long run if you hate your audience and demonize them, but then expect them to still consume your goods. That will only go on for so long.

Also We don't acknowledge the eco-terrorists leftists, the Stormfront nutty conservatives, so why acknowledge those people? there have been lots of people's viewpoints in the hundreds of thousands of tweets, and weeding through them would be crazy, but i've seen them. I've seen people raise questions about the nature of previews and reviews for instance.

As for MY problem, it would be why are these so socially conscious video-game journalists now suddenly concerned with inequality in gaming? reading reviews and previews of games not once did I see mention of "while tis is a good game, where the black people? where the women?" So to me it looks real...suspicious that when one of their friends is attacked suddenly everyone rallies around it. it feels fake and superficial and like feminists saw this, latched on it and saw it as an excellent opportunity to begin to push their viewpoints.

But as with many things, the approach was flawed, the tactics, crass, and ultimately put people on the defensive. You don't win people over to your line of thinking by insulting them or dismissing them as ignorant fools and "evil" or "misogynists who hate women anyway."

You want people to listen, stop preaching and start conversating.

My basic theory on why this is happening now has to do with the general social change that comes from a new generation moving into adulthood and the Changes that have happened to Games media over the last decade. For the social stuff look at how quickly the country is moving forward on Gay rights. There are moments of punctuated equilibrium on social issues when things hit a critical mass. This might be happening here, but I think the larger factor is what has happened to games media.

The whole industry has been thrown into flux. The backbone of games media used to be the magazines. These were people's primary way of getting information about games. The games writers role was to act as a direct conduit between publishers and customers.

Even as the internet made magazines redundant the first wave of games websites where basically just digital magazines. They offered the same type of content. Focusing on directing information from publishers to consumers. These were the days when Gamespot could post jpegs of the next wrestling game and get huge pageviews out of it.

That has fallen apart over the last 5 years. Publishers use Twitter and Youtube to directly talk to consumers. So now games media has to find a new role. This is good. It is a sign that games, as an art form, are growing. We can have a ton of conversations about games. We can have actual honest-to-God critique. We can talk about "ludonarrative dissonance" and skinnerbox style gameplay design and, yes, Feminist critiques.

I think that all of this is way more likely than the idea that a cabal of opportunistic Feminists have latched on to games critique because that's where the real money is.

 

[Riposte]

Oh cool, thank you. Seriously. Could you ask them how Gamergate attracted such sexist, anti-feminist and racist bloggers and made them to their "stars"? What was it what appealed to Gamergate so much, that writers from the FoxNews corner became acceptable for them? Genuine questions.

Don't underestimate the desire of an anonymous mob (who think they are being ignored) to be legitimized by someone famous or recognized in some capacity, no matter who that person is or what they really believe in. Early on, I noticed the theme of trying to recruit as many known people for the cause as possible (god forbid if that backfired), with images that showed an internet war between two sides, decorated with various people, outlets, and such (entities, often very different from each other, being lionized and vilified in equal measure). I think such a mob comes together for various reasons, only united by their "enemies", but one very common aspect, for those with no "podium" to speak from, is the desire to be heard and affect change, which I can imagine quickly evolving into an addiction to being the source of news articles, online controversies, and so on. Be noticed, have people with fame agree. Be a (self-appointed) nobody and create "lulz".

 

[Oersted]

Prove it exists, yes. You need only show one example to achieve that, but realize that is pretty useless as that merely proves existence, not that it is common, or overwhelming prevalent. In any large group proving existence of a mind set among it's members does essentially nothing, much like saying there exists someone on the planet who believes they are a rabbit does not mean it is common.

The question is rather how and why does it still attract sexism which results in rape and death threats? It started as a harassment campaign, sure, but how is sexism still so prevailent?

 

[dLMN8R]

Has anyone from GamerGate explained the cognitive dissonance between claiming this is about "ethics in games journalism", and ever bringing up Anita Sarkeesian?

Anita Sarkeesian is not a journalist. Her entire profession has literally nothing to do with games journalism or whether or not she's "ethical" in her profession.


So if GamerGate is about "ethics in games journalism", why the fuck is Anita Sarkeesian ever included in the topic at all?

 

[Orayn]

Has anyone from GamerGate explained the cognitive dissonance between claiming this is about "ethics in games journalism", and ever bringing up Anita Sarkeesian?

Anita Sarkeesian is not a journalist. Her entire profession has literally nothing to do with games journalism or whether or not she's "ethical" in her profession.


So if GamerGate is about "ethics in games journalism", why the fuck is Anita Sarkeesian ever included in the topic at all?

They try not to mention her any more because their "leadership" realized how ridiculously wrong the initial allegations were. It's hard to sweep it under the rug entirely, however, when plenty of people in the movement still desperately cling to those old conspiracies or new crap that's directly based on them. Oh, and indirect association with her wound up becoming the main reason for their campaigns to destroy several major sites like RPS and Kotaku.

 

[dLMN8R]

They try not to mention her any more because their "leadership" realized how ridiculously wrong the initial allegations were. It's hard to sweep it under the rug entirely, however, when plenty of people in the movement still desperately cling to those old conspiracies or new crap that's directly based on them. Oh, and indirect association with her wound up becoming the main reason for their campaigns to destroy several major sites like RPS and Kotaku.

Then what about the fact that Zoe Quinn is not a journalist?

And that the journalist who Zoe Quinn was accused to have slept with to get favorable coverage (long ago debunked) was never attacked in the same way Zoe Quinn was?

Not that being an unethical journalist deserves harassment - nothing does - but why is Zoe Quinn the focus of this tirade instead of Nathan Grayson? If this is about ethics in games journalism, and Nathan Grayson is accused of being an unethical journalist, shouldn't the focus be on him instead of Zoe?


Even though all of it is bullshit, it's just such obvious transparent misogyny it's sad anyone is taking it seriously.

 

[Orayn]

Then what about the fact that Zoe Quinn is not a journalist?

And that the journalist who Zoe Quinn was accused to have slept with to get favorable coverage (long ago debunked) was never attacked in the same way Zoe Quinn was?

Not that being an unethical journalist deserves harassment - nothing does - but why is Zoe Quinn the focus of this tirade instead of Nathan Grayson? If this is about ethics in games journalism, and Nathan Grayson is accused of being an unethical journalist, shouldn't the focus be on him instead of Zoe?


Even though all of it is bullshit, it's just such obvious transparent misogyny it's sad anyone is taking it seriously.

There's nothing mystifying about it, they became "concerned" about "ethics" because it fit conveniently with their harassment campaign against Quinn. They reached for an accusation, and claiming she was an evil seductress who had influenced and corrupted dozens of games journalists was the most dramatic one they could find that enough people believed at the time.

They've changed tactics and are trying to find more "villains" now that the initial campaign fizzled out. This is what you find on the front page of their main imageboard right now.

They're rebels without a cause, and people are still playing along unfortunately.

 

[More_Badass]

There's nothing mystifying about it, they became "concerned" about "ethics" because it fit conveniently with their harassment campaign against Quinn. They reached for an accusation, and claiming she was an evil seductress who had influenced and corrupted dozens of games journalists was the most dramatic one they could find that enough people believed at the time.

They've changed tactics and are trying to find more "villains" now that the initial campaign fizzled out. This is what you find on the front page of their main imageboard right now.

They're rebels without a cause, and people are still playing along unfortunately.

Not responding to weird accusations = "They DON'T want you to know!", it's all an evil conspiracy!

"Trust me, guys, they're the final boss"

Wow

 

[Messofanego]

Has anyone from GamerGate explained the cognitive dissonance between claiming this is about "ethics in games journalism", and ever bringing up Anita Sarkeesian?

Anita Sarkeesian is not a journalist. Her entire profession has literally nothing to do with games journalism or whether or not she's "ethical" in her profession.


So if GamerGate is about "ethics in games journalism", why the fuck is Anita Sarkeesian ever included in the topic at all?

They shouldn't, but they do.

Since September 11th - October 11th (August 27th was when #gamergate hashtag started by Adam Baldwin):
>10K tweets on #gamergate mentioning Anita.
http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=#gamergate&q2=#gamergate anita&via=Topsy

>6.5K #gamergate tweets on Leigh Alexander.
http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=#gamergate&q2=#gamergate leigh alexander&via=Topsy

Surprisingly, just >6K #gamergate tweets mentioning Zoe (~2K on @TheQuinnspiracy).
http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=#gamergate&q2=#gamergate zoe&via=Topsy

Compare it to Matt Lees (612), Nathan Grayson (357), Jim Sterling (286), Rami Ismail (231) or any more outspoken male games press/journalist, and the numbers go into just the hundreds.

On an actual ethics scandal right now, about Shadow of Mordor, just 798 tweets.
http://topsy.com/analytics?q1=#gamergate&q2=#gamergate shadow of mordor&via=Topsy

 

[komplanen]

Fuck how can some people be this horrible?

EDIT: Also here's what connects it to #GamerGate;

 

[More_Badass]

Jesus Christ. That is so disturbing and disgusting

 

[SwissLion]

Uhh, yeah, that was a bad form post in retrospect made in frustration. Apologies.

Anyway. what are people's thoughts on the Escapist article?

Just reading the Summarised statements was enough to almost Immediately put me off.

Brad Wardell? Who the fuck is he to say that the people unequivocally improving the medium with reasoned feminist critique aren't real gamers. Like what the fuck?

Greg Costikyan seems to have a handle on it mostly but has seemed like kind of a belligerent arse in the past.

"Royale" making super crazy assertions about the sites I choose to read. Interested at what they'd say about Giant Bomb...

Anyway I don't want to go through an itemised list. I can't say I'm surprised that a lot of people just seem to not have done their research and are pandering to the mob, but I am pretty disappointed.

 

[SZips]

Fuck how can some people be this horrible?

EDIT: Also here's what connects it to #GamerGate;

Been watching this take place on Twitter and it's just the absolute worst. I have no idea how anybody could possibly justify that kind of behavior or justify to themselves that they want to continue being a part of the group that has members that do things like this to others.

 

[JackDT]

A single person doing a shitty thing is one thing. It's the much larger group of people saying "she's a known liar, she probably did it to herself so she could publicize her shitty game" that is truly bothersome.

 

[tonysidaway]

Interesting to note that on Twitter today, both Jim Sterling and Jenni Goodchild (@PixieJenni) have clearly grown extremely exasperated with Gamergate apologists.

Jim is increasingly frustrated to have Gaters tell him he must condemn Leigh Alexander (for whom he declares his high regard) while they align with the noisome Breitbart website.

PixieJenni is berating them for the huge amount of harassment that is one of the few concrete achievements of Gamergate. The latest victim of bigotry is Brianna Wu (@SpaceKatGal) of Giant Bomb.

http://www.giantbomb.com/brianna-wu/3040-104873/

Brianna reports that she has spoken to the police and that she and her husband Frank are spending the night away from home. She had been doxxed in 8chan and received a particularly graphic rape threat on Twitter.

 

[outunderthestars]

Jesus Christ. That is so disturbing and disgusting

This is really getting sickening.

 

[Orayn]

There is a chance the threats are coming from someone who's not really with GG, isn't serious, and is just trying to cause as much trouble as possible. Let's hope that's the case simply because it would mean that there's no real threat involved in the end.

What's more telling is the fact that GGers put defending themselves and slinging counter-accusations above the fact that someone is being terrorized if they even believe someone is being threatened at all. They only want to distance themselves from this because it makes them look bad, not because they have any sense of empathy.

 

[komplanen]

The latest victim of bigotry is Brianna Wu (@SpaceKatGal) of Giant Bomb.

http://www.giantbomb.com/brianna-wu/3040-104873/

Other than that entry on Giant Bomb's wiki and maybe an appearance in some interview I don't think she has much to do with Giant Bomb. I've never seen her on the site and I watch daily.

 

[SZips]

Other than that entry on Giant Bomb's wiki and maybe an appearance in some interview I don't think she has much to do with Giant Bomb. I've never seen her on the site and I watch daily.

This is true. I think tonysidaway was just confused since Brianna and tons of other people in the industry have entries in the Giant Bomb database.

 

[TarpitCarnivore]

A single person doing a shitty thing is one thing. It's the much larger group of people saying "she's a known liar, she probably did it to herself so she could publicize her shitty game" that is truly bothersome.

That's exactly what some are doing on the kotakuinaction subreddit

 

[tonysidaway]

Other than that entry on Giant Bomb's wiki and maybe an appearance in some interview I don't think she has much to do with Giant Bomb. I've never seen her on the site and I watch daily.

I had never heard of her. She's the founder of something called Giant Spacekat (an indie game developer?), which I think I must have misread.

 

[komplanen]

I wish this whole #GamerGate crap would just end. It is achieving absolutely nothing but misery to anyone involved.

I had never heard of her. She's the founder of something called Giant Spacekat (an indie game developer?), which I think I must have misread.

Yeah that's an easy mistake to make.

 

[Lime]

Fuck how can some people be this horrible?

EDIT: Also here's what connects it to #GamerGate;

Wow.

 

[VibratingDonkey]

The account is now suspended.

A single person doing a shitty thing is one thing. It's the much larger group of people saying "she's a known liar, she probably did it to herself' that is truly bothersome.

Yeah. Apparently it's more important to "defend" your movement by saying it's a false flag and accuse her of using sock puppets and doing it to herself, finding angles to blame "anti-GG" etc. than to display some god damned empathy, something that seems impossible for some of these people.

https://twitter.com/LetsSailHatan/status/520732730183942144
https://twitter.com/ItsMehWeesnaw/status/520733274277031937
Some examples I found looking at responses to one of the death threat tweets.

If this is your immediate reaction to an event like this, you just might be a terrible person. At least that will be my impression of you. It should be to anyone who comes upon those posts. They should be shunned, but it doesn't look like that's happening. Or well, not by ggaters.

 

[bonercop]

There's nothing mystifying about it, they became "concerned" about "ethics" because it fit conveniently with their harassment campaign against Quinn. They reached for an accusation, and claiming she was an evil seductress who had influenced and corrupted dozens of games journalists was the most dramatic one they could find that enough people believed at the time.

They've changed tactics and are trying to find more "villains" now that the initial campaign fizzled out. This is what you find on the front page of their main imageboard right now.

They're rebels without a cause, and people are still playing along unfortunately.

for those who didn't think it worthwhile to take the effort writing out that pastebin link:

Alright, it is time for an expose on the different connections between various groups in this GamerGate scandal.

The majority of this SJW stuff, at its core, is coming from what is known as "Weird Twitter." (inb4 >KYM http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/weird-twitter) Weird Twitter was initially formed when users of the FYAD subforum on the Something Awful forums decided that the forums were slowly dying (which is true) and took to Twitter to increase their internet presence and be able to interact with more people (largely to harass them). They had created such a hostile environment to newcomers in FYAD that essentially no new blood trickled in, and they literally had to force new people to post there through moderator bullshit, and even then the sole purpose of that was not to get new blood, but for the insular clique who have known each other for more than a decade now, to torment that person. So they needed greener pastures, which they found on Twitter, where they were joined by refugees from Laissez Faire, a FYAD-style subforum which at the end of its lifespan was filled with anime avatar hardline Marxists (think /pol/ but even more extreme, but on the left, and extremely ban-happy. It ultimately fell apart and was resurrected as various offsite forums time and again because they kept falling apart due to drama and users harassing each other).

Anyway this insular group of a few dozen or so people quickly attracted a large following on Twitter by making genuinely amusing Tweets (which had mostly nothing to do with SJW shit), and among that following were many indie creators and related SJW types, mostly because those Tweets had SJW-friendly language (the most glaring examples of this language are infantile-sounding insults like "garbagemen" or "piss baby").

However, besides making amusing Tweets, they had another purpose: Harassing people for their own amusement. The former LF parts of Weird Twitter and their largely SJW indie dev follower (and similar people, you get the picture) crowd merely provided SJW issues as a heuristic to find targets to single out and harass. If this in-group had accumulated a following among a different demographic (which is however a rather unlikely scenario, given the initial LF element among them) they would have looked for people to harass based on whatever that demographic valued, rather than SJW issues. It's important to understand that the SJW issues they supposedly care about are merely meant to raise a Twitter mob outside of their small circle. On FYAD itself, they have no issues with throwing around racist and sexist slurs like they're going out of style. They just know how to keep that shit off Twitter, since the average FYAD post would give a true SJW a heart attack.

And make no mistake, these people have absolutely no issues with harassment up to and including death threats either. FYAD even managed to make a depressed, possibly autistic man kill himself due to their harassment, a fact that if brought up rather than denying, they will gloat and laugh about. Many of these people were active in Helldump, another Something Awful subforum which existed for the sole purpose of doxxing SA users and digging up as much embarrassing information on them as possible, which went as far as users posting nude pictures of an underaged girl, as well as making fun of users with physical disabilities.

One of the superstars of that subforum was also involved with the attempt at bullying a 10 year-old (who they also doxxed and threatened with death). I say attempt because the 10 year-old shrugged it off like a champ. The guy, btw, should be somewhere in his mid-to-late 30s. This whole episode is well-known, and 4chan has torn the parties involved a new one over it.

Zoe Quinn, by her own admission in mid-August (I believe she tweeted it on August 12th or 15th, it should still be there if she hasn't deleted it), is still an active SA forums user and has been since 2002. It is safe to assume that she is part of this in-group which is at the center of this Twitter shitstorm.

How do I know all this? Simple, I used to be part of it. I wasn't part of the FYAD in-group but one of the people who joined later on Twitter (although I had been posting and lurking on the SA forums for years beforehand, I simply didn't interact with FYAD). The 10 year-old harassment episode opened my eyes, and I used what I know to put 2 and 2 together, and here you are reading the results.

So what does this have to do with the larger SJW community?

Simple: This isn't about gamers, gaming or feminism. The SJW shit is simply a smoke-screen which an insular group of people who have known each other for over a decade use to get their truly massive amount of SJW Twitter followers who are not part of that in-group, to join in on harassment, which they get off on. I almost feel bad for legit SJWs who participate in this, they are merely useful idiots. If you are an SJW reading this: You have been tricked, rused, bamboozled. The same people who point you to targets which to attack are the very bullies you proclaim to loathe.

Anyway, how does this tie into games journalism?

When this whole thing broke loose, it got huge overnight, despite constant censorship attempts and fraudulent DMCA takedowns across the internet. Gaming journalists, both directly involved with Zoe and indirectly involved by participating in similarly seedy actions which clearly breach the ethics of journalism needed a way to make this go away or bury the larger issue, and fast. All most of them could do on their end was write articles, but that wouldn't have gotten the needed reaction fast enough.

Luckily, they had connections among this in-group (such as Zoe Quinn possibly being a part of it, as well as other indie devs and related people who follow people from the in-group and are followed back by them) which had, by now, years of experience in raising Twitter lynch mobs and who had the required number of followers among the SJW crowd. Thus, they mobilized them to turn what is a journalistic issue at heart into an SJW issue. And this they gladly did, because it meant getting to harass people.

these people are nuuuuuuuuuutttttssssss.

edit: haha, i basically ended up bolding the entire thing since it's all so crazy.

 

[JackDT]

I had never heard of her. She's the founder of something called Giant Spacekat (an indie game developer?), which I think I must have misread.

She does a gaming podcast called Isometric which is pretty good. For context: I listen to 4 gaming podcast every week: Idle Thumbs, Crate and Crowbar, Giant Bomb, and Isometric.

On her Twitter it might seem like her podcast would be feminism all day long or whatever (I honestly don't follow her because she tweets at too high a volume) but the show isn't really about that, in fact, I think the only time it talked feminism specifically was in the last 2 weeks since gamergate. Maybe too many in-jokes at this point but it's a gaming podcast I'd recommend.

 

[EmCeeGramr]

i never expected that dril and horse_ebooks were fronts for a massive SJW harassment campaign but that evidence is p. iron clad

semper games

 

[Messofanego]

The account is now suspended.

Yeah. Apparently it's more important to "defend" your movement by saying it's a false flag and accuse her of using sock puppets and doing it to herself, finding angles to blame "anti-GG" etc. than to display some god damned empathy, something that seems impossible for some of these people.

https://twitter.com/LetsSailHatan/status/520732730183942144
https://twitter.com/ItsMehWeesnaw/status/520733274277031937
Some examples I found looking at responses to one of the death threat tweets.

If this is your immediate reaction to an event like this, you just might be a terrible person. At least that will be my impression of you. It should be to anyone who comes upon those posts. They should be shunned, but it doesn't look like that's happening. Or well, not by ggaters.

I'm not even surprised at the victim blaming. It's parody levels now, these kind of responses. Like it's all codified from above. False flag until proven otherwise.

 

[Beefy]

Both sides need to grow the fuck up.

 

[Liu Kang Baking A Pie]

Both sides need to grow the fuck up.

What's the growing that the non-GG side has to do?

 

[GamerJM]

for those who didn't think it worthwhile to take the effort writing out that pastebin link:


these people are nuuuuuuuuuutttttssssss.

edit: haha, i basically ended up bolding the entire thing since it's all so crazy.

the fuck did I just read

 

[Silky]

i never expected that dril and horse_ebooks were fronts for a massive SJW harassment campaign but that evidence is p. iron clad

semper games

OH GOD I JUST SAW HIS TWEET

IM DYING,

 

[L Thammy]

I'm having trouble understanding that pastebin post. So this is the true face of the SJW organization?

That's what I'm supposed to glean from this?

 

[JesseEwiak]

And of course the KiA reddit is filled with people screaming false flag.

 

[pslong009]

I'm sorry, I know this is somewhat off-topic, but BlastProcessing's post #9797 got me thinking about Computer Gaming World and how Jeff Green used to write in his editorials about his daughter playing games, which I think was pretty unique (not his daughter playing games, but someone actually writing about being a dad rather a game-playing daughter). I was curious what happened with some of the writers from CGW and found that all of the issues are available online as PDFs. I found an issue from 1999 with a racy cover (which I definitely remember having and hiding from my mom), and was curious what the reaction was in the following issue. I started going through that issue, and found this ad (apologies for pages not lining up, I just did a print screen and put it in MSPaint):

At first I thought it was Intel advertising, which would have been hilarious, but sadly, it was from a company that built computers. But see? Even 15 years ago, gamers were being mocked!

 

[BennyBlanco]

It is truly sickening that someone would sit there and write that stuff to that woman. I don't think it really has anything to do with gamergate though. Crazies gonna crazy.

 

[Silky]

The fact that #GG's using civil rights images as part of their propaganda kind of irks me.

 

[TheBryanJZX90]

It is truly sickening that someone would sit there and write that stuff to that woman. I don't think it really has anything to do with gamergate though. Crazies gonna crazy.

Ok, good to know we can just ignore the problem because this one specific shithead that decided to send death threats to a woman in the gaming industry didn't specifically mention a connection to all of the other shitheads that sent death threats to women in the gaming industry a couple weeks ago. Nothing to see here, we can all go home.

 

[BennyBlanco]

I'm sorry, I know this is somewhat off-topic, but BlastProcessing's post #9797 got me thinking about Computer Gaming World and how Jeff Green used to write in his editorials about his daughter playing games, which I think was pretty unique (not his daughter playing games, but someone actually writing about being a dad rather a game-playing daughter). I was curious what happened with some of the writers from CGW and found that all of the issues are available online as PDFs. I found an issue from 1999 with a racy cover (which I definitely remember having and hiding from my mom), and was curious what the reaction was in the following issue. I started going through that issue, and found this ad (apologies for pages not lining up, I just did a print screen and put it in MSPaint):

At first I thought it was Intel advertising, which would have been hilarious, but sadly, it was from a company that built computers. But see? Even 15 years ago, gamers were being mocked!

I really want to read the specs on that $4000 PC

Ok, good to know we can just ignore the problem because this one specific shithead that decided to send death threats to a woman in the gaming industry didn't specifically mention a connection to all of the other shitheads that sent death threats to women in the gaming industry. Nothing to see here, we can all go home.

The stuff that person said was completely vile. Hopefully it gets them arrested. I don't think it really reflects on GamerGate because she is a female game dev. Just a crazy person doing crazy person stuff.

 

[dLMN8R]

I posted this earlier, but you know, when you wake up and you're suddenly accusing everyone respectable to be in on some conspiracy, it's time to....

step back...

slowly and carefully observe your surroundings...

and think....


Maybe it's me?