Why #gamergate is bullshit

[quote=“clifyt, post:36, topic:41770”]
As thinking towards what this guy originally did, it may be how he communicates with his friends. I don’t know, the more I read the more I don’t want to agree with what he did, but I still understand his sentiment after being hurt in a similar way.
[/quote]Then, frankly, you sound like a child. You form preconceived notions that cannot be altered by reason and facts. You got burned, work through your nonsense and don’t be a jaded creep.

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I was actually interested in Hadees’ definition of the word — I notice you didn’t give one either — and whether it necessarily excluded the possibility of such an article bearing useful or interesting information. Headlines are a genre/trope/whatever that exists to bait clicks, whether they’re mouse-clicks or eyeball clicks. On the face of it, saying that Cracked likes to post clickbait says nothing more than they want their articles read, the same as every blog, forum post, TV channel, magazine or newspaper. It’s an empty remark, unless there is some defining attribute that marks clickbait but which doesn’t mark non-clickbait.

I’ve been thinking, “Like no athlete has ever slept with a sports reporter?”

Also, I question the judgement of anyone who would take the side of Eron Gjoni after having read his post. Reading his own account, he doesn’t sound like a sympathetic character. He sounds scary.

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Two things. One, as GadgetGirl pointed out, by Gjoni’s own admission they were “on a break” when the alleged cheating happened. So it sounds like they both communicated poorly; he thought “on a break” meant that they would both remain celibate until things were finalized, she didn’t, and neither one of them thought to mention it. But poor communication is not the same thing as willful cheating.

Two, even if Quinn is a horrible manipulative cheater, it’s completely irrelevant to the larger issue, which is that one person’s alleged misdeeds are being used to justify a gigantic campaign against any sort of social progress in games and game media. There are people trying to organize boycotts of any review site that ever said chainmail bikinis were dumb, and when asked to justify it they say “Zoe Quinn is a bitch! What, you think cheating is okay?!?” It’s classic derailing.

I don’t think you’re doing it on purpose, but you are playing into their hands by making this a conversation about Quinn instead of about the whole issue. I’d like to politely ask you (and the people responding to you) to drop this angle for now. (And I realize my first paragraph could be seen as hypocritically trying to get the last word in; I hope it’s more helpful than that, though.)

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Indeed. August next year marks the 30th anniversary of the time Crash magazine included a parody of rival Sinclair User which subtly implied they gave review scores based on how much advertising was spent by the publisher.

Software reviews carry a moon rating, the basis of which will be varied
according to how exclusive the program review is, how much money the
software publisher spends on advertising and how much of that money
lines the coffers of UNCLEAR USER, as well as a host of other intangible
variables.

(Crash apologised a few months later, after the lawsuit)

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Oh, I certainly didn’t mean to say that the libido can’t be controlled or anything. It’s a matter of priority. Sometimes people in a monogamous relationship value gratifying their sexual urge over preserving the relationship. Doesn’t mean they aren’t responsible for that. It’s a choice people make, but I don’t think it’s worth slinging mud for.
And in terms of drawing the line: cheating doesn’t put anybody at risk in terms of personal safety. Unless you want to count the remote possibility of introducing life-threatening stds into a relationship through cheating.
Domestic abuse or identity theft is something that puts the other person at risk and may put others at risk in the future.

And don’t think that the Gamergate people haven’t tried to draw that connection to vilify Quinn.

Dear Boing Boing’s esteemed and informed readers,

I’d like to believe the best in humanity. Therefore, I’d like to believe that there isn’t a concerted effort here misrepresent the current state of the conversation, both in the article, and in the comments section. I’m going to give this media outlet the benefit of the doubt as a responsible publication, and that you wouldn’t engage in the kind of underhand behaviour that censors a whole section of society. I’m sure that this publication wouldn’t want to be lumped in with undesirable parties that have pursued mass censorship in the past. I’m going to believe that you haven’t cherry picked what responses you allow to be displayed, in an attempt to “represent” both sides of the argument to be whatever you want it to be.

Given these assumptions, I’m going to post some articles that summarise some people’s problems with how they are being represented in gaming media.

As individuals that take pride in understanding everyone’s motivations, even those that you are directly opposed to, I implore you to read these articles with an open mind. I also request that this comment is not blocked, though I really do hope that my pleas to not be silenced are just me being excessively paranoid.

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Oh, please!
“Don’t censor me” & “keep an open mind” is this year’s " I’m not racist, but".

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Did you read the article? Here’s a good quote.

Imagine, instead, that prominent game journalists embraced Thompson’s core argument –  the one about games normalizing violence. Imagine, furthermore, that they began to rally mobs of activists on social media to pressure other websites into censoring dissenting opinions. Then imagine that the moderators of gaming communities and comment sections declined to allow any critical discussion of Thompson and his work.

I’m sure that having just equated me to a racist, you have some strong supporting reasoning!

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The Techcrunch article manages to avoid mentioning Zoe Quinn altogether, which is an astounding feat of journalistic legerdemain that makes me disinclined to trust anything that writer says on the subject, even if it wasn’t a pretty blatant “both sides!” apologia.

ETA: Meanwhile, the Medium piece reads like the cry of every troll who has been banned from a forum: “I was the only one who was brave enough to disagree! The only one to tell the truth! Everyone else was part of the group-mind!” I’d like to read some of these questions that provoked the strange reactions he described, to see just how the questions were phrased and even what they actually were.

Really, journalists’ job is to talk to people outside their group, try to get to grips with their points of view well enough to report them, not really a job that’s conducive to groupthink, I’d imagine. And that writer should pick up, say, copies of the Guardian and the Telegraph, read their editorial pages and try to come up with a coherent explanation of where the outlooks of the journos at these papers coincide enough to form a groupthink.

Words mean things, and “groupthink” does not just mean lots of people agreeing. And it certainly doesn’t mean a bunch of people disagreeing with each other about almost everything.

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Equating one specious disclaimer with another specious disclaimer <> calling a person the thing from the second specious declaimer the thing from the the second specious disclaimer.

You can run with that though, if that helps fit your “BOTH SIDES BAD” narrative or your martyrdom complex.

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Even Zoe Quinn acknowledges that there are real issues with gaming journalism and the industry as a whole (besides misogyny), and a rational person would agree that gamergate not only goes about it the wrong way but avoids the real issues that have historically plagued gaming journalism (and most journalism today). Basically #gamergate = tea party in their methodology and approach. If anything #gamergate is worse because of the anonymity allowing public vitriol that the tea party was just incapable of achieving.

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Gaming journalism? Mostly an utter joke, but not as big a one as #gamergate.

I remember all the shit Amiga Power got for trying to do it properly. Even to the extent of companies like US Gold and Team 17 refusing to send them review copies of their games, purely because they called the shit ones shit. Stuart Campbell is still awesome.

http://amr.abime.net/review_932

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What I find funny is that gamer gaters actually try to to defend their campaign and keep it going. It’s as if they don’t realize the harassment of Zoe Quinn tainted the brand so thoroughly that the whole exercise has become remarkably self-defeating. The backlash the gaters are suffering is a sign of that. If they truly care about these issues of corruption (yeah, right snort) then they should start over in a more constructive fashion.

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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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