I don't agree with Zomba13's tone, it's decidedly negative and doesn't inspire any confidence he's interested in an actual discussion, but I'd love it if someone could address the post he linked or at least what they think is right or wrong with it. Specifically this one:
https://www.neogaf.com/threads/game...pgamergate2014.889097/page-309#post-134839993
Lets see then.
Whilst I'm sure the word "review" was being thrown around, Nathan did
write three articles either about, featuring or spotlighting Quinn and besides the one about the games jam, the other two seem to feature Quinn and mention her game in the top spot for seemingly no reason/utterly his personal choice to do so. They did have a relationship, this is fact, and there is evidence that they were in
informal, friendly contact and
had met before he wrote any of those pieces. Of course it's not conclusive, but then the Grayson - Quinn story was more of a springboard than anything else and Zoe Quinn very quickly became irrelevant.
This seems kind of irrelevant to me because you could chalk this down to a million different reasons, mostly because the women got all of the media attention and therefore so did the people that tweeted at them. Ultimately Gamergate doesn't have a vetting process and anyone can use and direct the hashtag at anyone they want. You'll also notice that through that link, whilst the links are all dead now, it states that Quinn, the apparently most targeted party, the ground zero for GG actually got the less amount of GG related tweets amongst the 3 listed, this shows that, as I previously said, she very quickly became irrelevant.
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Zoe Quinn was and still is today regularly accused of doxxing herself.
[*]Zoe Quinn was and still is today accused of faking death, rape, and other threats.
Yeah, I'm sure she was, by some people. Maybe? Why not? No source cited, so whatever.
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Zoe Quinn doesn't actually sell the game she's accused of sleeping around to get coverage of. It's
a free game about Depression, called Depression Quest, created to help others learn to live and deal with the disease. She does take donations, and
was accused of lying about giving those donations to charity. However, the
charity confirmed the donations were actually received
[*]When accusations of those lies first arose, GamerGate started donating to that charity in her place. After the charity confirmed receiving the donations, GamerGate started harassing the charity and threatening it with legal action because they claim they "didn't disclose publicly" they had received donations from her (even though that is not actuall illegal). This is a charity is made up of volunteers and a part-time paid intern, helping people deal with depression
I kept up with pretty much all of the news going around about these people GG was keeping an eye on and not once did I hear any relevant person involved in GG mention this charity stuff. In fact the link given about her lying leads to a KiA thread with very little participation with most of the people who posted demanding this be fact checked and calling for caution because it was unverified. So I guess that's the damning evidence she was hounded over that, huh. So really some people looked into something because whether she did give the donations was unclear, in fact so much so that even the charity didn't know it was from the game, as
they stated themselves on FB. ...Okay...
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Zoe Quinn is frequently accused of winning an award (instead of Papers Please) for Depression Quest because she slept with someone. In actuality, her game didn't receive an award, but just an honorable mention.
Papers Please did indeed win the award. No evidence backs up the claim she slept with someone to get the....honorable mention.
No actual source for the accusation, so therefore I have no idea how prevalent this apparent accusation actually was. It's quite odd that for the one about the charity at least one link to an actual accusation is actually linked (no matter how weak it is) but for many of these none are.
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Zoe Quinn is frequently accused of being an alien from the planet Zergon Prime 3. This is a lie as she is clearly human
Again, no source given so who knows where this came from, right? Maybe
dLMN8R made it up, maybe some random guy on Twitter once said it, maybe I literally just added it in as a joke and it's not even amongst the points I'm responding to... Who knows?
So the only thing this link actually shows is that TFYC said she didn't doxx them. Otherwise the DDOS is still up in the air and either way you swing it, Quinn's
behaviour was shitty towards them.
Other bullshit about Anita Sarkeesian
Before going into this, I feel like I need to point out why Anita is mentioned in regards to GG at all, though I think at this point in the thread it's sort of clear; GG was about journalism but many gamers also attached the general defence of gaming against critics to it. In many ways Anita is also tied to journalism simply because games journos took her defence and words as gospel so quickly. It was a massive change for gamers, because in the past the journos had always had their back from people like Jack Thompson and video game hating conservatives but as soon as the same message came from a left leaning view, many jouros pivoted and suddenly the gamers needed to question the morality in what they'd been playing for years with the lack of evidence it affected their actions in the real world once championed by those same journos suddenly being thrown to the winds. The idea that Anita has no place in GG is silly.
The link itself literally refutes the point it's making if you read the reponses. The general consensus is that they're real but of little importance, which leads to our next point...
So as far as I'm aware, literally no one as a result of GG was ever physically attacked, harmed or killed and no one was ever prosecuted in the name of GG. This, I'm pretty sure, makes GG the most peaceful "hate group" to ever exist. Even then, barely any of the actual harassment has been tied to GG was shown by the WAM! report already posted in this thread.
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Anita Sarkeesian
needed to cancel an appearance for a talk at a university because of extremely specific and violent threats against her and the students.
Why this is listed really confuses me. So one random guy sent a letter saying that if the event happened he's kill people. This was in no way attached to GG, and
it was considered not credible by police. Really though this just shows the utter lack of backbone from Anita and a unwillingness to present her ideas in the face of it little bit of hardship as many people have received death threats yet considered their message too important to be silenced. I remember back when this happened, TJ Kirk, the Amazing Atheist made
a decent comparison with Marilyn Manson pointing out that he received a slew of death threats for a concert in Denver Colorado and still did it anyway. I suggest people watch the video as it's a really good explanation of why threats like this shouldn't shake anyone and why threats in general on the internet are pretty much hot air.
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Reminder: Anita Sarkeesian is not a journalist. She makes videos about video games, and that's it. Any attack on Anita Sarkeesian masquerading as "a fight for ethics in journalism" is automatically and instantly misplaced.
I opened on this so it's already been addressed.
So the rest of this stuff is sort of the minor points GG pointed out, rather than go through it all I'd prefer to just link
deepfreeze.it which lists a load of shaddy goings on in games journalism. More directly the
GamesJournoPros and "
Gamers Are Dead" entries. Right now it's late and I have to get up early for work tomorrow.
Otherwise after that the rest has pretty much already been addressed here or it's just personal opinion gushing about how bad GG is and how awesome the people it's "attacking" are. maybe I'll come back and look more into it, but I think I've addressed the biggest, most important points already.