Why #gamergate is bullshit

Strike 1: Equating criticism of mysogynist bullies who run people out of their homes in fear with threats of rape and death on a website maintained by others with “censorship.”

Strike 2: The idea that anyone being run out of their home in fear with threats of rape and death against their friends and family is “an issue with two sides.”

Strike 3: Your second article failed to understand that “death of the gamer” concept is heralding the death of a particular kind of self-declared, insular identity, not the death of an industry, so it knows not of what it speaks.

This isn’t an issue about games journalism (and it never really was), this is an issue about a concentrated campaign of intimidation of one person who did nothing more vile than break up with some guy. You want to talk about the shitty state of affairs in games journalism, get a new hashtag. Reframe attempt failed. You’re out.

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Here’s the thing: If you want to talk about the issues that these douchenozzles used as a smokescreen for their hideous crusade against one woman, then do so. Just don’t do it under anything related to ‘#gamergate’. You can’t ‘reclaim’ it, you can’t ‘make sure it had some value’, or anything like that. Journalistic corruption, in any media, is an important conversation to have. But that is in no way what #gamergate was about. What people trying to ‘show both sides’ are doing is continuing to keep the crusade going, keep Zoe under attack as long as possible. That is the ONLY thing the tag was, ultimately, about. If you got roped into it in good faith, then you are not alone. But that means you apologise for your involvement and take the discussion to a fresh venue.

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If you would like to know the kinds of messages that are getting people silenced, the message that you’re replying to is an example. Dontdoxmebro was banned for that message.

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WTF is wrong with you people on here?

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Why the personal attacks here?

Reason and facts are great, but name calling usually indicates you’ve abandoned both.

Comparing the poster to a jaded creep is really working in your favor. Just invoke Godwin’s Law and get it over with already.

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This is the problem I have with the media on gamergate. The media consistently portrays this being about an angry ex boyfriend – which it isn’t any more really. Yes it started there, but it’s about much more now – kind of like how WWI was about much more than the assassination of Franz Ferdinand. The media is using excuses to avoid serious discussion on the topic.

I feel that making this about the trollies/doxxers/4chans is a huge cop out and underscores the nature of problems raised by the gamergate supporters. There are over a million tweets in #gamergate – this is no fringe issue we are talking about here.

Even?

It’s exactly the new wave of indie game developers and indie game journalists who are trying to break out of the corrupt big media system of game publishing that are being attacked.

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There’s a huge difference between a popular topic, and a topic with content value.
Just because people are talking about something doesn’t mean they’re talking seriously or in a way that will get anything done.

For example, in just the last day, there were 2,968,931 tweets using #belieber.

Try telling me the majority of that had any serious content. Just try.

The topic #gamergate is seriously corrupted as a topic by people like the poster who was on this very thread with personal issues and a need to associate those issues with a different (or every) female. He really didn’t care about journalism at all. Go back and read his posts - they don’t discuss that topic at all. Because #gamergate is unclean, you can’t just say “we have a lot of posts” - a lot of them are like the ones posted here, where a jilted boyfriend wanted to stand up for another jilted boyfriend.

If you want to discuss gaming journalism: I suggest you open a new, clean topic with some good information in it - don’t even mention #gamergate - and direct people there.

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It was always about Zoe Quinn. Gamergate was always intended as a decoy to provide an excuse for misogynist attacks. It’s there in the logs, for goodness’ sake. There’s been no scandal uncovered, despite all the noise, and nothing’s going to change because of Gamergate.

And nothing that could have been uncovered by Gamergate could have approached the seriousness of driving a woman from her home with threats of rape and murder. Get a sense of proportion. What good could come from such a crappy beginning? What would make it worth it? And why do some people keep eliding the actual harm of malicious threats in favour of, at worst, a bit of mutual back-scratching?

It’s not as though it’s an either/or situation; it is perfectly possible to have a campaign for journalistic integrity without the victimisation of women. Try it some time.

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It doesn’t matter how righteous your cause is, we can’t tell the true believers apart from the griefer trolls and the malicious misogynists. There’s more than a little overlap between those groups, and being a true believer doesn’t necessarily mean your arguments are worth squat. Shouting repeatedly and persistently doesn’t make up for the weaknesses in your justifications in attacking Quinn, it just made you extremely annoying to listen to. No wonder admins just hit the nuke button on sight. Ditch the gamer gate tag and start over if you really care about getting your case heard.

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I’m pretty sure that account was suspended because it was a drive-by “imma gonna shit on the rug” style account.
It was not set up for the purpose of discussion or contribution, and the account creator knew it would get them in trouble - hence the “I know this will get me deleted, but …” BS in the post.
The post hasn’t been deleted, so there’s no censorship (not that it matters - Boing Boing can do what they like on their own website), but the mods have decided that they don’t want this person shitting on the rug again.
Mods can correct me if I’m wrong.
(It was a sock puppet, wasn’t it?!? :wink: )

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You claim that the well is poisoned and the tag should die, but what you’re doing here is exactly why it’s not going to. The whole point is the broad strokes of “misogynist” being misused to label any dissenting opinion (or in the above case “shitting on the rug”, whatever the fuck that means… I guess it means anything that you want it to. creating an account to respond to an article? disgraceful!) The point is that the abuse is two way, but only one side is getting press representation.

“corruption” doesn’t just mean abuse of position for good reviews, it means the corruption that allows reasoned discussion to be silenced, because a clique disapproves. You can control the narrative here, but not everywhere.

Enjoy these echos, as you become more and more disassociated from the community around you

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if you’re speaking of the community of people who drove zoe quinn from her home in fear of her life then i will gladly dissassociate myself from them. what surprises me is that you or anyone else would so enthusiastically want to be associated with them.

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I find irony in the similarity of IP addresses associated with the accounts that support dontdoxmebro…

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Eating sock puppets makes me thirsty

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Don’t you drink their bitter tears?

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If you actually care about corruption in gaming media, you need to find another word to talk about it, because “Gamergate” is irretrievably toxic. It was never about actual corruption; the trollies deliberately set out to trick people into thinking it was, to drum up support for their smear campaign. I’m not hypothesizing here, there are chat logs of them discussing this. At this point, using #gamergate to seriously discuss gaming media reform is as good an idea as using #unabomber to discuss the rising cost of college tuition.

If you genuinely care about corruption–and you should–you ought to stop and consider that the gamers worldwide who shrugged their shoulders at case after case of genuine, undeniable, open corruption, year after year, chose this as the unbearable affront that set off the righteous revolution. What does that say about the people you’re aligning yourself with? Is that the message you want others to hear?

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What was done to Zoe Quinn was misogyny, from her ex’s posts to the harassment carried out in Gamergate’s name. If you lie down with misogynists, you will get up covered in misogyny.

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Those tears are salty.

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