Yeah, see that's what a lot of gamer gate people are against. They think women and minorities are complaining about nothing (and/or think they are trying to oppress white male gamers and degrade and demean them) and are actively trying to silence people like Anita Sarkeesian who are criticizing games on that basis.
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#GamerGate thread 2: it's about feminism in games journalism
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DwightSchruting
Member
I feel like a fool but I'm ok with that. Thanks for being kind enough to teach me without calling me a dumbass outright.
Glad to have gotten a clarification. (I did read the wiki article)
Glad to have gotten a clarification. (I did read the wiki article)
I remember in high school, listening to a small group of nerds argue about the most inane shit imaginable like it's the most important thing in the world.
Welcome to the 21st century, where those same nerds can form a global alliance on the internet and try to bring the government into their nerd argument.
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
Sorry but this is great. This is just great. I love it.
Seriously, the wording alone tells you everything you need to know about GG
You know, Neogaf is kinda considered an "anti-GG" board, but I've yet to see posts like this here. Get on it!
#GG is crazy. They talk about it like it's a war. They talk about people who disagree as "NPCs". They talk about themselves being heroes. Leveling up. Grinding.
It's actually kind of scary how detached from reality these people are. It's like the ramblings of a serial killer.
It's actually kind of scary how detached from reality these people are. It's like the ramblings of a serial killer.
But video games totally don't influence us guys!
NoblesseOblige
Banned
I'm not even being hyperbolic when I say many GG's figureheads are potential sociopaths. Take TB for instance who shows no empathy for GamerGate's victims, essentially telling them to 'deal with it', or 'ignore it', while taking the opportunity to boast about himself is almost de facto psychopathy. Then you have Juicebro lawyer who tells people to try and rape others. And Milo who despite belittling gamers is clinging to the cause to boost his own popularity.
Higher bar of entry. They may have already signed up but haven't been approved yet. It's entirely possible that if Gamergate hasn't full died down by the next time they let in a wave of juniors, we may witness some suicides in this thread.
Lalalandia
Member
The living proof that it takes 10 times as long to dispute a falsehood as it does to propagate one. Fair play to you SwissLion I look forward to reading it. This is what so annoys me about conspiracy theorists in general they bang on about 'research stuff yourself' when 5 minutes with google can dismiss their conspiracy but properly marshaling and sourcing proofs takes hours. And is then ignored anyway because sheeple.
Also screw Richard James (Aphex Twin) as he has turned out to be goddam 9/11 truther FFS, what is it with people I respected secretly being utterly daft.
bodyofanamerican
Member
Wasn't there a Churchill quote that could apply here?
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
There have been some "I don't think NeoGaf represents my believes anymore so I want my account to be terminated" posts here some time ago. It was very dramatic.
Don't say that. It's not worth it. Seriously.
William Shatner did it better on SNL:
http://www.myvideo.de/watch/127096/Star_Trek_TOS_William_Shatner_SNL_Get_A_Life
Pretty much all of the socializing these guys do is through a computer screen, so reality is a bit of a mystery to them. The people they connect with all exist in a virtual space.
Going into the really broad main tags in tumblr is like reading youtube comments level of distressing at times, but if you curate a list of (relatively) smart people to follow it can be a pretty great place.
I'm all for tumblr as a safe space where a lot of young women are discovering the concepts of social justice and feminism for the first time and exploring those concepts with many other female voices. Do they sometimes fuck up and take this to almost cartoonish extremes? Sure. Some of them are really young and have never encountered any of these concepts before. Someday maybe we'll evolve to have a culture where people just inherently understand privilege without it having to devolve into some of the ridiculousness you encounter on tumblr, but in the meantime I don't know that it's accurate to compare it to reddit. Any safe spaces there are more centralized and open to invasion from trolls and the implication of moderation makes the gross stuff a lot less palatable.
Tumblr's one of the only places I've seen, for example, where a huge percentage of the community believes in and regularly enforces the use of trigger warnings. (Again, sometimes it's taken to extremes, but if the worst thing that happens is unnecessary tags are added to a post, then I'm fine with that as a "bad" extreme.) As a safe space, it's somewhat invaluable.
But like reddit, each person's tumblr experience is probably hugely dependent on what they're following.
Because a lot of the people obsessively fixating on Leigh's piece seem to relate quite a bit to the negative portrayals she suggests are nothing more than a cartoonish stereotype.
edit: 4chan planned to "infiltrate" tumblr before by "posing as SJWs" to build up a following of hundreds or thousands and then abruptly flood their dashes with triggering material.
I feel like plans to "infiltrate" any social media platform kind of misunderstands how those spaces function on a fundamental level. If getting thousands of of followers happened overnight, people would spend a lot less time trying to be clever on twitter.
I'm all for tumblr as a safe space where a lot of young women are discovering the concepts of social justice and feminism for the first time and exploring those concepts with many other female voices. Do they sometimes fuck up and take this to almost cartoonish extremes? Sure. Some of them are really young and have never encountered any of these concepts before. Someday maybe we'll evolve to have a culture where people just inherently understand privilege without it having to devolve into some of the ridiculousness you encounter on tumblr, but in the meantime I don't know that it's accurate to compare it to reddit. Any safe spaces there are more centralized and open to invasion from trolls and the implication of moderation makes the gross stuff a lot less palatable.
Tumblr's one of the only places I've seen, for example, where a huge percentage of the community believes in and regularly enforces the use of trigger warnings. (Again, sometimes it's taken to extremes, but if the worst thing that happens is unnecessary tags are added to a post, then I'm fine with that as a "bad" extreme.) As a safe space, it's somewhat invaluable.
But like reddit, each person's tumblr experience is probably hugely dependent on what they're following.
Because a lot of the people obsessively fixating on Leigh's piece seem to relate quite a bit to the negative portrayals she suggests are nothing more than a cartoonish stereotype.
edit: 4chan planned to "infiltrate" tumblr before by "posing as SJWs" to build up a following of hundreds or thousands and then abruptly flood their dashes with triggering material.
I feel like plans to "infiltrate" any social media platform kind of misunderstands how those spaces function on a fundamental level. If getting thousands of of followers happened overnight, people would spend a lot less time trying to be clever on twitter.
buy teh haloz
Banned
I've definitely heard pro-GG people use that before.
Neoriceisgood
Member
Stupei's post describes my general feelings towards Tumblr as well.
I actually have thousands of followers on tumblr. :3c It's probably my largest online audience.
I actually have thousands of followers on tumblr. :3c It's probably my largest online audience.
I think Reddit is pretty cool and I wouldn't compare it to 4chan. The awfulness of the bad subreddits doesn't really infect unrelated subreddits, while all / most of 4chan feels a bit like /pol/.
I have a tumblr account with like 2 shared pays. I feel like I never really "got" tumblr.
I have a tumblr account with like 2 shared pays. I feel like I never really "got" tumblr.
Camp Freddie
Member
I read Leigh Alexander's article again.
It's pretty obviously a reaction to what I'll call proto-gamergate. The harrassment of Zoey and Anita, and the people that were already claiming this was an ethics issue or that Zoey/Anita were being attention whores.
So, Leigh is using 'gamers' to refer only to the 'obtuse shit-slingers'
The problem is that many self-identifying gamers were ignorant of all of this background. They'd never heard of Zoey or Anita or any of the harrassment. They just got given a hyperlink to the article with "OMG, what a horrible article" as the link description.
So they saw an article which spends it's opening 3 paragraphs saying that gaming culture is pathetic and that gamers lack even basic social skills.
The rest of the article doesn't make much sense if you don't know about all the harassment and/or if you think that the target of the article is the 'gamer' rather than game devs/pubs/marketers. So people skim read over it and generally assume it's just more of the same because TL;DR and cognitive dissonance (I don't understand this; I'm not stupid; therefore, it must not be important).
So lots of people got the idea that the article really was just an anti-gamer piece rather than a more nuanced argument that this narrow sub-type of of 'gamer' (with scare-quotes) should not be the target audience for games.
I hope this serves as a better version of Death of the Author po-mo analysis than much of the buzzword-coated shit being slung around.
I fought through the po-mo atrocities in 90's culture wars. I wrote hilariously bad essays on Fukuyama and sexual equality so that you can stand here and question me! You can't handle the truth (until you've written 5000 words on whether objective truth can be said to exist in a liberal democratic framework - and got a mediocre grade for it!)
It's pretty obviously a reaction to what I'll call proto-gamergate. The harrassment of Zoey and Anita, and the people that were already claiming this was an ethics issue or that Zoey/Anita were being attention whores.
So, Leigh is using 'gamers' to refer only to the 'obtuse shit-slingers'
The problem is that many self-identifying gamers were ignorant of all of this background. They'd never heard of Zoey or Anita or any of the harrassment. They just got given a hyperlink to the article with "OMG, what a horrible article" as the link description.
So they saw an article which spends it's opening 3 paragraphs saying that gaming culture is pathetic and that gamers lack even basic social skills.
The rest of the article doesn't make much sense if you don't know about all the harassment and/or if you think that the target of the article is the 'gamer' rather than game devs/pubs/marketers. So people skim read over it and generally assume it's just more of the same because TL;DR and cognitive dissonance (I don't understand this; I'm not stupid; therefore, it must not be important).
So lots of people got the idea that the article really was just an anti-gamer piece rather than a more nuanced argument that this narrow sub-type of of 'gamer' (with scare-quotes) should not be the target audience for games.
I hope this serves as a better version of Death of the Author po-mo analysis than much of the buzzword-coated shit being slung around.
I fought through the po-mo atrocities in 90's culture wars. I wrote hilariously bad essays on Fukuyama and sexual equality so that you can stand here and question me! You can't handle the truth (until you've written 5000 words on whether objective truth can be said to exist in a liberal democratic framework - and got a mediocre grade for it!)
I dunno, there's certainly a lot of broad issues with reddit. They had top ban Unpopular Opinion Puffin because it basically turned into complaining about minorities and women all the time(and getting massive upvotes). There are pretty big common threads in even their most popular subs.
Neoriceisgood
Member
I love this part of Tbiscuit's little quirp.
"that people" a.k.a "me" believe it.
I don't understand this. For the complete lack of credit I give the motivations of those pushing GG onward, I still don't understand even fundamentally the end purpose. Who gains here? is it revenge on society? Is it just sweet just desserts for those who are making me the bad guy?
Upset is putting it rather mildly. Though I can't think of a nicer word for insane.
Neoriceisgood
Member
It's an insult to the mentally ill to be equated with gamergate.
Not joking btw, it actually legitimately is.
(Also I find it really funny that your avatar is a random OC design of mine, heheheh.)
Lalalandia
Member
Wow too arrogant to admit he was wrong even on this point, of course this has triggered absolutely zero introspection on his part.
Maybe I mostly frequent less popular subs (3DS, iosgaming, Mexico, Japan, languagelearning, indiegaming, Spanish, etc.) and those are pretty good most of the time. Sometimes /r/worldnews gets idiotic comments that get upvoted or even given gold, though.
Neoriceisgood
Member
"Sarkeesian inserted herself in the conversation"
"It was repeated enough times that people believe it."
Truly a wizard with words, subtle.
"It was repeated enough times that people believe it."
Truly a wizard with words, subtle.
Sorry, you're right. As a person who is mentally ill I should be more sensitive to the topic.
Also, I like your designs.
Neoriceisgood
Member
Also, I like your designs.
Thank you.
/edit
Arthur Chu's making it sound like his interview with Pakman got extremely heated, hoo boy.
What is lol is that both sides are digging into the past of others to discredit them. When gg does it its all bs and people changed. When rational people do it its oh they're all psychopaths don't listen to them.
We can't be this hypocritical. Harassment happens on all sides. Happened to tb a while back. Happened to boogie a while back and we scoffed at it then.
We are in an Internet culture. If you're famous and you share strong beliefs that some weirdos do not you will get harassed. It's not ok, but just like any and every person in the spot light people will get scrutinized and harassed.
Saying deal with it is bs. But you should take it all with a grain of salt.
As for this whole thing... Digging into the past of others is idiotic. Regardless of who they are. Everyone went through rebellious phase. Everyone at some point said something stupid.
Can't judge people. What gg is doing now is stupid. It's always been stupid. They're focusing on things they don't like instead of focusing on things that are harming the industry they 'want' to protect. That's why it will never amount to anything.
We can't be this hypocritical. Harassment happens on all sides. Happened to tb a while back. Happened to boogie a while back and we scoffed at it then.
We are in an Internet culture. If you're famous and you share strong beliefs that some weirdos do not you will get harassed. It's not ok, but just like any and every person in the spot light people will get scrutinized and harassed.
Saying deal with it is bs. But you should take it all with a grain of salt.
As for this whole thing... Digging into the past of others is idiotic. Regardless of who they are. Everyone went through rebellious phase. Everyone at some point said something stupid.
Can't judge people. What gg is doing now is stupid. It's always been stupid. They're focusing on things they don't like instead of focusing on things that are harming the industry they 'want' to protect. That's why it will never amount to anything.
He updated to clarify, but it didn't say that and even if it had alleged it the rest of it was a weird pathetic ramble by a spurned ex. The fact that he didn't even mention it shows that not even TB who states it's important to know the history knows the history.
Oh come the fuck on. Unless by 'to a point' he means 'completely false' he's being ridiculous.
Speculation. He mentioned it with several other indie games and said all of 5 words about it. Nearly no other trade reporting requires that level of disclosure, much less product that doesn't cost money that was mentioned in passing. This is your line in the sand and evidence of corruption TB?
Alright he's flat out being intentionally misleading here. There was literally one article that used the term dead. Of the ten most of them were either referencing or reaction pieces, some with little additional content other than just pointing out. The term was coined by Baldwin the day before those articles, many of which were themselves in reaction to the harassment. Again it's not anti-consumer to point out that there's a diverse group of consumers outside of the most catered to portion. Asking for better representation of the entire consumer base if fundamentally pro-consumer.
Fuck this guy.
Maybe because the mouthpieces of the campaign were the same people harassing her for two years?
Judge them by their actions on 8chan and KiA then. You'll get the same result.
Yeah, who is she to question the motives of people whose movement consistently use anti-Semitic imagery in association with her.
That's as far as I got before I rage quit. I'd like to believe he was trying to be evenhanded but some of that is so ignorant and self-promoting that he's either being willfully dumb or maliciously misleading.
Beelzebufo
Banned
I'm sorry, but who's doing this? I don't see much digging into the past to discredit people, just stuff more along the lines of "this minor internet celebrity posted this incredibly stupid thing an hour ago, let's laugh at how terrible it is".
Unless I'm missing something or misunderstood your post?
I think some of gamergate is all about that, the bulk of them are a certain kind of myopic person who see's their own disadvantages and can't see anyone elses. They see a lot of people acknowledging the disadvantages of women or minorities or LTGB people but no one acknowledges the disadvantages they see in their own life. They then leap to the conclusion that this absence of acknowledgement means everyone else is blaming them for those problems.
So when something like #GG comes along with a message that in fact this is the case and it's not right, they all jump on the band wagon. So instead of understanding the idea of privileged or layered disadvantages they just assume none of that is real and the REAL victim is them, middle class white guys.
I see it on reddit when a KiA post hits /r/all. It's a lot of that sort of person on the band wagon because they feel uncomfortable. Most of them aren't that extremist. They just lack perspective and life experience.
voodoopanda
Member
The TotalBiscuit thing, he just seems really oblivious. It seems like so much is out there, but so many people don't see it or ignore it.
I mean talk about ethics. That InternetAristocrat guy made that Quinnspiracy video, making the claims of Quinn sleeping with folks for good reviews based on pure conjecture & no evidence. In those same videos, he even goes as far as to insinuate that maybe Patrick Klepek of all people also slept with Quinn only because they appeared on a panel together. That's literally the only reason he had to mention it. These are the videos Baldwin linked to when he coined gamergate.
I mean, seriously, take a step back and look at what happened. InternetAristrocrat made a video full of lies and conjecture which people ate up as being true, it went viral, it helped spawn gamergate, and it caused all these people to harass these women. That's seriously unethical. That's huge. People believed it to be true, like TotalBiscuit. Look at everything that has happened since because of it.
Whats the effect of Grayson mentioning Quinn in one article about that GameJam on Kotaku? Some people might've decided to download her free game that they hadn't of heard of before? How does that even compare in the slightest.
It's all so ridiculous.
I mean talk about ethics. That InternetAristocrat guy made that Quinnspiracy video, making the claims of Quinn sleeping with folks for good reviews based on pure conjecture & no evidence. In those same videos, he even goes as far as to insinuate that maybe Patrick Klepek of all people also slept with Quinn only because they appeared on a panel together. That's literally the only reason he had to mention it. These are the videos Baldwin linked to when he coined gamergate.
I mean, seriously, take a step back and look at what happened. InternetAristrocrat made a video full of lies and conjecture which people ate up as being true, it went viral, it helped spawn gamergate, and it caused all these people to harass these women. That's seriously unethical. That's huge. People believed it to be true, like TotalBiscuit. Look at everything that has happened since because of it.
Whats the effect of Grayson mentioning Quinn in one article about that GameJam on Kotaku? Some people might've decided to download her free game that they hadn't of heard of before? How does that even compare in the slightest.
It's all so ridiculous.
Digging back 3 months is pretty ok.
No one here is encouraging vigilante action.
We can judge and comment on actions, ideas, and sum total effects. Often we can judge people too, but ususally only to the end of offering more comments. sometimes the fbi is involved tho.
The core of GG never wanted to protect anything beyond excising feminist commentary.
Is my response to that.
there's a difference between "this dude said something racist/sexist/otherwise openly bigoted last year and never apologized for it or addressed it" and "this dude said a lot of heinous shit in his teenage years and now he is in his thirties and has repeatedly expressed his remorse in the intervening time period"
Fantastapotamus
Wrong about commas, wrong about everything
NOT MY FUCKING PROBLEM
Sorry, but if your movement is leaderless don't blame people associating it with personal experiences they had. Simple as that. Either you establish something official and set some guidelines or you don't and have to live with the results.
Just going around saying "Hey we are leaderless but I still get to decide who represents us and who doesn't" is just mind boggeling
Cynically, TB is taking a neutral stance because #GG adores youtube personalities and he sees a opportunity to gain audience by just not being overly negative about them. There appears to be some overlap between the pcmasterace crowd that are into TB and #GG as well.
Neoriceisgood
Member
It's almost like a lot of misinformation could've been avoided if people didn't immediately report on the "quinnspiracy" story without some massive fact checking.
oh wait. #ethics
oh wait. #ethics
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Of course there would be overlap between a group that adopted a concept of Nazi ideology as part of its identity and GG. And no, that's not saying self-proclaimed members of the 'pcmasterrace' are literal Nazis. Just that it's a bit insensitive and unsympathetic to adopt such terminology into an identity.
Let's try not to get carried away. PC master race is a dumb meme, not a sense of identity.
I guess they've got something about Nick Denton having infiltrated and caused in-fighting among them. Even if he never did it's now pretty much going to be these people who wear the tin foil hats a little too tightly pointing at each other and yelling 'Shill!' now. I mean they were doing that before but now they'll feel justified in it.
NoblesseOblige
Banned
Though Poe's law is in effect, subreddits like /r/pcmasterrace very much treat it as an identity. With that said I was just pointing that there's no surprise that a there's some overlap between a group that resorts to using Nazi concepts to describe itself and one that attacks and harasses.
This is one of the problems with a movement without a leader or a head. Anyone can claim anything in the name of your movement, anyone can denounce those actions.
Ultimately it doesn't matter because the people doing these actions and hte people denouncing these actions are just individuals within the movement and their unique opinions have no weight. So ultimately the press dictates what's important or not important, hence even if Gamergate was about ethics in gaming (they're not) the only thing that will ever be covered is the abuse.
Structurally, gamergate has the same problems as the occupy movement. Everyone wants something, no one knows what it is, and no one will take command of the movement in order unify the masses, so it ultimately becomes whatever the press says it's about because no one will say otherwise.
Which would seem to be obvious to anyone. If you're part of a movement that refuses to have leadership, goals or are able to clearly state what they are about, then others will define those for you.
And yet, here we are.
chaobreaker
Member
We actually had a GGer do an account suicide for 8chan cred in the old thread. Plus we have the occasional juniors do a drive by "I support GG because reasons" and would get banned after arguing in circles with posters here.
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