Gamergate's color scheme is a rape joke

Spock never said emotions are bad.

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And of course you don’t identity with either side. That way you cam pretend to be neutral while defending the abusers.

i am done with this troll. Tl;dr. Wasted your time.

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Once again someone is comparing non violent discussion to violence. This isn’t a cut or funny subject and I honestly don’t appreciate this. I can handle myself. I am a grown as woman . I know you mean well, but this is paternalistic. And I don’t think insinuating that if victims keep speaking out, violence will happen because of that. Think about that. Does that mean more death and threats are our fault? And if someone is actually (physically) harmed, it will be our fault? So we should shut up and,be silent? That’s pretty fucked up.

we aren’t the violent side.

That’s not a logical point, that’s an emotive point. Logic is empty of content. Many Americans were working from the premise that black people were simply less human than white people. If you work from that premise then segregation and limitations on black people are logical. If you work from the premise that black people are the equivalent of apes, then it is logical to treat them like apes.

The point being made is that it isn’t right to treat people as less than other people because of the color of their skin. I think this is objectively true, but showing it to another person is an emotional issue. Getting people to question their premises is rarely the work of logic.

But more than that, I guarantee you that a huge swath of white people felt personally attacked by MLK. They said things to one another like, “Hey, I’m not racist.” How could people living in a racist society that systemically treated black people worse, come to accept that their society is wrong without feeling pains of regret over how they have participated? It was no easy project, and it made a lot of people feel threatened. It made people feel so threatened that the FBI attempted to blackmail him and eventually someone killed him.

And did he somehow avoid creating an us vs. them mentality? Why do people bring up the KKK in these threads whenever they want an example of an odious group? Overt racists are one of the great Others of our culture. Pedophiles and terrorists are in fashion as monstrous non-humans, but for decades now if you want to talk about a group that is widely recognized as “them” it’s people who employ racial violence (these people are often defended but they are defended by saying, “he’s not a racist,” not by saying, “hey, where is your compassion for racists.”

He was right, and progress is still being made on the back of the fact that treating people as people is right. But that progress is being made, a least in part (but I would wager in large part), by a lot of very angry people who are motivated by their anger to act.

It’s weird to me that you would say “no anger is involved” after a few of us have made it abundantly clear that we don’t regard anger as the same distasteful thing that you do. If someone punched you in the face just for a laugh would it make your nose ache less because they weren’t angry? As I said, repeatedly insisting on giving the same advice after it has been explained why people aren’t going to take your advice is fighting, it is aggressive.

I think historically anger has gotten a lot more done to make the world a better place than serenity has. That may sound like a crazy thing to say, but change is pain. You don’t take your hand off a hot stove because it’s the rational thing to do, it’s the reflexes that save you from injury. Serenity is great for keeping yourself well, but if injustice wasn’t emotionally negative then it would just go on and on and on.

Maybe you aren’t angry when you are giving the advice, but how would you feel to just sit with the idea that others have heard you and just plain think that you are wrong, and to walk away with that knowing that your opinion didn’t matter to the conversation or was thought to be foolish or naive? If you have the serenity to think that isn’t the least bit upsetting, then that’s a great thing and it’s time to take that serenity off the shelf. If there is a twinge that being ignored feels bad, that being disagreed with feels bad, or that you are sure that people would agree if only they could understand, then recognize that it is that twinge that is motivating you to keep posting. That might not be anger, but it’s something between emotional self-defense and egotism.

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Imperfect allusions are imperfect, and internet conversations tend to dull or skew intention. Your response, being so wildly different from what I was trying to say probably means I am not communicating well in this thread.

That’s not quite it. Most people do not have any direct source of information, so they simply choose to believe somebody. Of course, they tend to be swayed to believe what confirms their preexisting biases. With no clear way to test information, it becomes a mere reputation game.

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I do think it’s time to stop talking about someone elses sex life with details about when and who. Maybe it’s time to swap that down to “According to the clarifications offered by the original accuser, the review in question was written 3 months before the relationship between the reviewer and game designer began.”

What you said is entirely true, but it does not serve any purpose to keep talking about who did what with who, when… especially as it is invented from whole cloth in the first place.

Otherwise, man, amazing work! Keep Grinding!!

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“Relationship” is far too vague of a term, it can mean many things. If I don’t specify a sexual relationship, I leave myself open to counterclaims involving Grayson’s alleged beta-testing of Depression Quest, to responses like the one I received on TechDirt.

Edit: It’s kind of amazing to me, that the eminently fair-minded, and fact-based, description of gamergate I posted on TechDirt was immediately disputed with anecdotes.

You’re confusing the style of delivery (which is emotional) with the underlying message, the content. The content of that video clip is:

  1. America promises citizens certain rights.
  2. We are Americans.
  3. Therefore give us our rights, or make a lie of your promises.

…which is an argument based on a widely held —by myself included— opinion that promises should be kept if they are to be worth anything and promise keeping makes for a fairer society for all —all couched in a logical construct.

My point was that he addressed America as a society and didn’t directly address oppressive white people at all. Had he said “All you oppressive white people should give us black people the rights we deserve” (which is the real underlying message and he’d have been entirely in the right if he’d said it) he would instantly have created lots of #NotAllWhitePeople :wink: and pushed the scared ones to the KKK in the process. But the KKK were always a minority even when powerful and nothing a black man could ever say can speak to them. So instead he was also addressing the silent majority of people who want to just get on with their lives in peace, and building a bridge that makes it possible for them to align with his vision, whatever their race. That’s excellent conflict avoidance and quality persuasion. Sure, many didn’t listen at the time and felt threatened, but not nearly as many as would have done if he’d drawn the battle lines starkly and purely on racial grounds by attacking the people instead of the problem.

I agree with you about anger. It has its uses —we wouldn’t have it if it didn’t— but only if directed appropriately. It is “the emotion of thwarted purpose or action” and if directed at a person or a group, signals that the angry person may be willing to use violence to achieve their aim. If directed at people, it invites a ‘flight or flight’ reflex and a response in kind. (Ekman, Emotions Revealed). Anger begats anger in return, so it is better used as an internal motivator and only directed outwards at issues, not at people.

So why bother posting? I’m just trying and failing to get my head around this whole #gamergate thing and all I see is lots of unhappy people angrily yelling at other people and inviting more angry yelling and wagon circling in return. :frowning: I am pretty sure it’s not very much about ethics in gaming journalism, though …

Definitely yes. The tech scene would be doomed to descend to the level of tabloids.

That. Double so in the world of instant internet outrages, and triple so when you will be judged by your peers according to which side you take, including taking none.

The same can be said about emotional judgments. If you feel they are apes, you will handle them as such like if you think so. With logic, it is garbage-in garbage-out; but you can test for faulty premises, challenge the hypotheses (because it is illogical to just blindly believe), mercilessly kill those that not survive, elevate survivors to the status of theories. That itself should be enough to mitigate the ape-assumption’s impact. The important part here is to test even the hypotheses you feel good about, whichever side they fall onto.

Not questioning premises is illogical.

Which I consider wrong. If they base their opinions on wrong premise, they are misguided but it does not make them inherently bad people.

Anger is a good motivator but a bad advisor.

Not distasteful. Dangerous and treacherous. And feeling good, especially when it also feels rightful, and that makes it double treacherous.

Would it hurt more, either?

For rather relaxed/vague definition of “aggressive”, perhaps. “Persistent” may be a better word choice.

It also caused a lot of harm, maybe even more than of good. Serenity moves slower but steadier.

Many lab accidents were made way worse by people acting reflexively. The same quick pull-off that saves you from a minor burn can spill t-BuLi all over the hood and possibly yourself.

Serenity does not prevent you from recognizing wrongs. It however definitely helps with not overreacting, and with planning a more successful, more deliberate strategy. If it is your war - but if it is not, you wouldn’t get angered anyway.

Most will indeed do so and I expect it. I am investing the time for the few outliers.

Can’t say that it is entirely non-upsetting, but the level of upset is quite manageable.

Being disagreed with by a group feels bad; that is a built-in psychological mechanism for enforcing group cohesiveness by making conformity more likely. So that is nothing unexpected. Following that feeling is however also treacherous, like it goes with feelings in general, due to possible promotion of groupthink. And we have numerous examples from both war (Vietnam, for example) and industry/corporate world where it can end. The group can be wrong even if it is bigger than you.

One side doesn’t even know what they are for; they just exist.
The other side keeps insisting on confrontations and no dialogue.
I can identify with neither, and my lack of preexisting belonging to either means I feel no peer pressure from either side nor fear of being ejected from the group.

Of course, for some it is who is not with us is against us. Also something I cannot identify with.

Also didn’t say they are good, and mostly did not allow them to take hold of him.

This.

A rare skill that today’s leaders (and wannabe leaders) sorely lack.

Emotional things feel manipulative to me. And, trust me, I am not alone in that. It works for enough people that appeal to emotions is the basic rule of the public relations playbook, and it is what I consider wrong on people. That’s how wars are started, with consent and even cheering of people who heard too many emotional speeches. If it appeals to emotions, the default reaction should be one step back and reevaluation - the message can be either good or bad thing, even if it feels good.

Also, the overuse of appeals to emotions is wearing people down and making them cynical. And, also, compassion fatigue.

You don’t have to agree. I don’t even expect you to. I am talking to those who would agree but are too timid to speak up against the group. To break the groupthink, to show that it is possible to state that anger is treacherous.

The consequences of anger, and also of fear and other strong emotions, can be too far reaching to consider to be the best approach by default. Even if, and especially if, it feels righteous.

A skilled manipulator can use anger to play people like a violin.

They are everything but silenced! Without the threats, who would hear about them, who would care about what they say except relatively small circles? I didn’t know they even exist before all of this noise.

I don’t suggest the threats were fake; there are enough loonies out there to provide them and words, in the age of Twitter, are as cheap as they can go.

Good clip.

We can also not take the few so seriously, whatever side they come from. (The advice goes for both sides. Or, more accurately, all sides.)

If the threat looks credible, identify the source, and reevaluate the credibility. Then take an appropriate action, ranging from ignoring the threat to imprisoning the culprit.

What’s a chance of that? Isn’t the risk actually going way up if we get all noisy about the issue and expose more people (including the small fraction of loonies) to it? Isn’t it giving undeserved power to the threat-flingers?

(I had two in my life, longer stories (not counting those uttered in direct interpersonal communication in heated situations). Judged both to be noncredible. Still alive. Neither was of the vengeful-ex kind, those are a different class with higher inherent credibility.)

Not ignoring the problem can do exactly the same, the loud reactions can embolden the perpetrators as well as the silence could. Assuming most such threats are uttered by angered people (and we’re back to the anger issue), which Twitter makes easier by being immediately available, the probability of the person not cooling down after a while is also pretty low.

I am asking a friend from a university, a cyberbullying specialist, to tell me what are the expert thoughts on Twitter-mediated threats. The reaction that feels good may not be the best, as well as the one that logically seems the best in absence of quality data (see GIGO).

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Well, then, I guess that’s it. When you do finally notice the victims, it’s only to play down what happened. Sure, Alexander was actually driven from the internet, Sarkeesian has fled from talks and from her home, but hey, it’s not silencing if they get publicity from it. Certainly nothing like demanding blood a.k.a getting upset at such assaults.

I would suppose by the same token one wouldn’t oppose book burnings - but then, you never seem to apply the same token, do you? Let’s consider your responses here. This thread has included comments from Quinn and @marilove, one with direct experience of gamergate and the other with similar harassment and threats. To me that would make them, if not experts, definitely a critical perspective to listen to.

But if you even bothered to read what Quinn says, you seem to have wholly ignored it, and for marilove we go a step further and explicitly dismiss her. It seems whether someone is familiar with attacks on women matters less than if they’re dispassionate:

Women who have been attacked aren’t likely to be dispassionate, of course, so this means they shouldn’t expect anyone to listen to them. Let some man 'splain things over them instead. Honestly, some of the gamergate accounts haven’t looked as privilege-blind as this.

That might be enough if that were just how you react to emotion, but it isn’t. You’re telling us the exact opposite in the case of some of the angriest people. We’ve seen a lot of absolutely furious gamergate accounts on these boards, spewing some of the thickest vitriol against these women, saying threats with no body count don’t matter, in one case applauding the silencing of Alexander. We know there are others actually harassing them and sending threats.

But for them, the rhetoric about violence stops; you don’t describe them as crying for blood, you only stress how comparatively little harm their so-called “empty” threats have done. And the important thing, the only thing you’ve advocated, is that we should build bridges and figure out what they want. That we need to listen to them.

To them. Not to Quinn, not to marilove, not to anyone else who might get upset when women come under attack. The raging gamergaters that attack them are the only ones you have advocated anyone listen to.

I really wish this was hyperbole, but I don’t see any other way to interpret what you’ve been saying. Women need to calm down about being attacked. We all need to listen to their attackers. This has been your whole message, based on your position of dispassionate neutrality between the two.

Well, you may not have any skin in gamergate itself, but as has been pointed out it’s one field of a broader struggle. The struggle over how we treat women, whether we consider them equals and listen to what they have to say, or whether we ignore them and through one means or another talk over them. And on that broader question, I’d say you’ve made your position very clear.

You say you’re really playing to people too timid to speak up, and by definition there’s no way to say how that’s going. I can only assure you the speaking character chenille has found out more than enough about whether you have any perspective to teach or inclination to hear, and I too am done.

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I didn’t ask you whether it upset you that we are actively disagreeing with you, I asked you if it would upset you to stop talking and just let the conversation be, knowing you had already made your point to anyone who cared to hear it.

Here is your point:

Anger is dangerous. When people are angry they end up doing more harm than good. The best way to accomplish any end is to approach it calmly and rationally.

Do you think we didn’t already get that? Anything important to add?

Here is why I don’t agree with that anymore (and yes, I did think that in the past):

  1. Reading history as the success of calmness and nonviolence is basically just projecting an idealized view of Ghandi onto everything. In reality, change has come about in large part because of angry people.
  2. Everything - including, and recently especially, logic - can be used as a tool of those who have power to oppress those who do not have power. Insisting that people apply reason over emotion in all cases, regardless of those people’s personal experiences, has the function of excluding many voices from the conversation (and this is not about people being emotional or foolish - thinking of this as “yeah, I guess I should listen to those dumb emotional people” is maybe worse).
  3. If I am ever tempted to think that my way of thinking about things (which is to think about everything logically and emotionlessly, just as you are suggesting) is the best way, I stop and ask myself, “Yeah, but what have I ever done?” It’s not that my life has been a waste, but I’m no MLK either. Whatever way I’m approaching things isn’t exactly changing the world. I spend more time arguing on internet forums than doing anything useful.

I disagree with this interpretation. If that were the argument everyone would have simply nodded and given black people equal rights. Everyone took your (1) as a given. MLK’s conclusion was not (3), it was (2). Once (2) was in place, (3) was inevitable. So the point was to say black Americans were Americans, citizens and, even moreso, humans.

This last year I’ve seen a lot of protests of fast-food server wages. The iconic image of those protests are men holding signs that say, “I am a man.” If we accept that the people who serve us at McDonald’s are humans, we will instinctively rail against the idea that they work all day and then have to apply for food stamps to be able to eat (there are other reasons to be mad about that, too), or that they have to work two jobs to make ends meet and live by a standard much lower than we set for other humans in society. The struggle is to make us see the humanity in one another - after that it is compassion, not logic, that drives us to action.

I feel like calling that argument “logical” is conflating the idea of being logical with the idea of being correct or well thought out.

I imagine a lot of the time when someone expresses anger towards other people they are going for fight or flight, and betting on flight. But there are plenty of ways people respond to anger. In addition to feeling threatened, people can respond to anger with curiosity and actively listen to the angry person to find out why they are angry, or (you see this a lot on internet message boards) with smugness. The idea that anger is a sign of weakness was probably once novel (thanks Buddha) but now it has permeated people’s psyches to the point that a lot of people see another person’s anger and think that means they have won. The idea that anger is a weakness has become an excuse to not listen to other people.

If you get angry all the time and find yourself doing things that you regret, you need to work on remembering that anger can be destructive. If you don’t get angry all the time and find yourself dismissing the views and the successes of people who are angry, you need to work on remembering that anger can be constructive.

Well, actually

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[quote=“shaddack, post:347, topic:44755”]
One side doesn’t even know what they are for; they just exist.

The other side keeps insisting on confrontations and no dialogue.[/quote]

Are you familiar with Mrs. Parkinson’s Law?

Parkinson’s writing is misogynistic by modern standards (especially if you fail to grasp his sense of humor) and it’s admittedly his least known book, but there are some interesting observations in it.

To roughly paraphrase one: If you approach all situations as problems to be solved, you are going to infuriate anyone who feels a need for discussion of a specific situation. Proposals for solutions often kill conversations; and if somebody feels there are issues that need airing, they aren’t going to like it if you say “here’s how to fix that, let’s move on to the next problem!”. It will predispose them to attack either you or your ideas, because you’re (perhaps obliviously) aggressively short-circuiting their discussion of current and past events by using them as a mere prop for consideration of future events.

“Wit us or agin us” is bad strategy… unless you have a lot of ammunition you don’t want to carry around any more, so you’re looking for targets and reasons to shoot.

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That works too. And I’ve really tried not to conflate logical with right or emotion with wrong or vice-versa. They’re both just ways of assessing people, situations and data. Both have biases and can be right or wrong.

But my point is that while MLK had every right to directly denounce all white people for their evil oppressive ways, he didn’t do so. He denounced the evil oppression and appealed to America as a society. The only white people who were attacked were the ones directly oppressing, and even then only by implication and indirectly. The rest were free to choose and in choosing realise for themselves where they stood and what they were doing in the situation.

So why bother banging on on this point? Because the discourse around gamergate has been —whether consciously or unconsciously— all around trying to turn it into a full-scale ‘battle of the sexes’. Once the language used becomes so polarised around gender it’s never going to end, because the sides are potentially evenly matched in numbers and bystanders don’t want to step in and risk getting caught in the crossfire. If it had just been all about the objectively shitty things people are saying about / publishing / doing to other people or the bad things that are happening, then it could all be over by now with far less damage done. :frowning:

When anger is expressed consciously, yes. But anger is an expression of our emotional appraisal system, so it’s experienced reflexively in response to thwarted action or purpose. The choice whether to run with it and use it somehow or squash it down comes after it happens. (If you learn to read subtle and micro-expressions, then it’s possible to see that happening. Emotions can form on faces before the conscious awareness and response. But it’s an entirely useless skill on the internet … :wink: )

Of course you are correct that we have a choice in how to respond to anger in others, but most people are unaware of just how reflexively they and others respond when put under pressure. The reflexive responses roughly split 3 ways: Aggressive-angry and attacking; Spiteful-angry, manipulative, blaming and contemptuous (smug); or else submissive-sad or withdrawing. (Not just my opinion — from surveys of negative behaviours in hospitals and psychotherapy observations). Those are all negative behaviours and tend to trigger reflexive negative responses in others, but which one is the default for an individual varies with personality. So while it is possible to respond with curiosity in response to anger directed at us, that isn’t the way most people behave most of the time. And once the negative responses start, then real communication stops, lines are drawn, wagons circle, the arrows start flying and it escalates as people accidentally find themselves in the crossfire …

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Me.

Pretty sure I learned of both Sarkeesian and Wu here on teh b01ng, and while I knew of Alexander from other gaming venues, I was also happy to see her write here. All before germergoat.

Maybe other people like this website and bbs for different articles and different reasons.

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Today, Blizzard’s CEO said harassment is tarnishing gaming’s reputation

“Over the past couple of months, there’s been a small group of people who have been doing really awful things. They have been making some people’s lives miserable, and they are tarnishing our reputation as gamers. It’s not right,” said Morhaime. “Let’s carry the good vibes from this weekend out into the world all year round. There is another person on the other end of the chatscreen. They’re our friends, our brothers and sisters, our sons and daughters. Let’s take a stand to reject hate and harassment. And let’s redouble our efforts to be kind and respectful to one another. And let’s remind the world what the gaming community is really all about.”

This is the response:

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See, I knew that was going to happen.

Because Morhaime was too weaselly to actually name the GGers as the “small group of people” he left the door open for the GGers to assume he meant the “SJWs” or the “LWs”.

I hate that mealy-mouthed bullshit. Name the fuckers next time Blizzard!

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Really? I never got that feel, except maybe a few (large number) from the GamerGate side who rail against feminists ruining everything, but then it’s hardly “all around”.

From those opposed though, I never got that sense. I mean, as a male, sometimes when feminist gripes come up, I personally feel a little insulted (#notallmales!)… for a moment, until I remember it’s not about me. In this case, the GamerGate debate, no, not even a little, to me, even though one of the seeds is people pointing out some subtly misogynistic tropes and the backlash towards that, the GG debate itself has clearly been about a specific group of douchebags and those who willingly align with them.

Some of the anti-GG-related discussions do diverge into broader feminist topics, as is natural to do once in a while in any topic (there’s still loads of inequality and consequences of past inequality simmering under the surface of our enlightened age, and women are half the population so… yeah, it’s going to come up now and then), and especially natural when there’s a misogynistic seasoning on the douchebags (and you then have people naively but innocently suggesting that you should just ignore them, that the real problem isn’t them but the failure of people bothered by them to reacting properly to it), but I never once have felt that this was trying to be turned into a “battle of the sexes” by both sides, even a bit. (Sometimes I’ve taken a slight amount of offense that the ‘socially awkward’ part is being stigmatized and demonized more than it already is, but again, then I try to remind myself it’s not about me.)

But that’s just me, maybe you feel this is brewing into an epic battle of the sexes. In my experience though, the ones who think most about a situation brewing into a race war are the ones who are the racists. … Wow, I just read that last line back and it looks like I’m totally slamming you and implying you’re a sexist, but honestly, that’s not what I mean. From what I’ve seen on your posts, you seem like a fair-minded and intelligent person (though I disagree and thus I hope you don’t take offense if I say I put you in the ‘innocent-but-naive’ category… not in general, but on this issue)… what I mean by the comparison is merely to point out how ridiculous the “this is turning into a battle of the sexes” idea is. When you have one group (GG) that have a lot of issues in that have a bigoted tinge to them, then, yeah, when people respond to that, to some people it might look like a battle of the sexes, or races, or whatever, and that one group can’t help but do it’s best to spin it that way… but really, it’s still a battle against bigotry itself.

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I think it’s clever. The motivation could be to avoid the risk of alienating some LamerBate people, but I like that in practice it forces partisans to actually think about who is being referenced. People become so easily polarized that that shifting perspective is probably helpful. Also, criticizing the movement without naming them avoids the trap of giving them and their hashtag yet more attention.

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