Well I see some GamerGate posts in this news that just try to state “please don’t stigmatize all gamers as white misogynist guys”. Seems it was the original intent of the movement, and sounds pretty reasonable to me.
I find it damaging to put everybody in the same basket, even if there is little moderate people left in the movement I don’t think they deserve this “talk to my hand” treatment. Even if it’s pretty funny, it’s still kinda rude (and kind of a trolley by itself).
I see it as a matter of extremists vs moderate. The bot mechanism will be more effective at silencing the few moderate people, the ones you can actually have a conversation with, rather than silencing the extremists.
So yea, i still think it’s not an awful thing, but it’s not as a good idea as it seems to be at a first glance.
And I’m sure you went out of your way to sign up here out of the goodness of your completely independent heart, right?
Ohh look over there, a squirrel!
Please, tel me more.
I had noticed that. We’ve had an amazing number of sign-ups since this particular bit of shit hit the fans. I don’t think any of those sign-ups have done much but make excuses for GG, which is rather droll for an issue that was manufactured as a cover for a smear and harassment campaign.
In which case, you are not paying attention. The original intent, as stated by the creators, is to shit on women.
There is a wast difference between proposing the idea that a bot mechanism in not very effective to silencing the most virulents individuals of a group, and defending the ideas of this group.
Sorry if my remarks let you to think I’m encouraging the despicable acts committed in the name of GamerGate, its not. Sorry I registered on BoingBoing today, does that invalidate all my argument to you?
Thanks for the info. I’m interested if you have a link to an article detailing all this (like who are those creators, do they have a manifesto of some sort? where does the “not all gamers are misogynist” some people seems to associate with gg stand in the picture?). I can’t find anything clear outside angry rants of anti/pro-gamergates, and articles on terrible death threats and abuse.
The despicable acts weren’t committed in the name of GG: GG was committed in the name of those despicable acts. The order makes a big difference as to the significance of the “movement”, also in representing the truth of the matter. A group on 4chan started the ball rolling, complete with an “issue”, “corruption in games journalism”, that allowed them to go after Zoe Quinn (who was not at all guilty of their accusations). It is significant that these gamers never raised an eyebrow about much more egregious examples of pay for coverage (and, to be blunt, it’s a piss-poor excuse for an issue anyway - all areas of trade journalism can provide examples of pay for coverage, not just the games industry.)
No one who takes exception to GG claims that “all gamers are misogynist” - Quinn and Brianna Wu are indie game developers, and that makes them almost by definition gamers. (I don’t think there are too many indies who don’t do it as a labour of love.) Hard to call them misogynist, eh? Most of us are aware of that part of the community. GG has been about keeping that part of the community “outside the gate”.
Thanks, that’s an awesome article. I was sick of all those angry blogpost using “they” or “those events” without detailing anything or giving any reference. That clears-up a lot.
I must admit this GamerGate think, although being a cover for despicable things by despicable being, is very interesting by the mechanism how it keeps spreading. Looks like a lot of people spreading it doesn’t have the full picture. I suspect the “blogging journalism” that just propagate rants with little context or perspective in also partly responsible to burry the interesting info under a lot of noise. If you didn’t got the info the week it was published, you’re done.
I mean just look at this simple post conversation, I have been tagged pro-GamerGate in an instant and accused of being a fraud or something. Even though I didn’t know exactly what GamerGate was I would have defended it just because I was personally pointed.
Bottom line, I guess you can’t fights trolls by being a troll, you just create more trolls.
Also:
We have had many sock puppets from GG here recently; our moderator has… feasted mightily. That’s not driving trollies you received - that’s a community fending off very real invaders with a stick. That’s why we enjoy seeing a bot vex all those sock puppets. It isn’t possible to create more trollies - there is already a shitload of 'em.
If you want to avoid being taken for a trolley or a useful idiot, please, please, look into the situation before pronouncing on it.
“Internet warfare takes a surprising amount of dedication,” he said. Indeed, Gjoni, despite his protestations that he wrote “thezoepost” for ethical reasons unrelated to gaming, seems unable to leave the cause his writing sparked alone. He admitted to regularly advising GamerGate leaders, and seems to take some pride in the power he claims to exert over the movement, as well as over the effect the movement has had on gaming journalism.
What an utter tool.
What a Wretch.
Wasn’t Racter a fraud?
Somebody code up a Google Now front end so I can point this thing at telemarketers and credit card scammers. I’d throw in on a kickstarter for that.
Perhaps. The texts were purportedly made by an AI “with assistance” from a human writer/editor. We will probably never know with certainty.
No: a tool has a use.
Well yes it is. Not a driving trollies of a big magnitude, but driving trollies nonetheless, like casual driving trollies, baby driving trollies. You read idea that are not mine between the words of my statements, debate me other those ideas by strongly implying i’m not a real person, that I perceive feminists as “depicting all gamers as misogynists”, and then deny that your actions have any effect on me. That’s textbook driving trollies. Surely that was not intentional, I guess you are probably a little trigger happy because you already spent hours/days of debating against people with those ideas, but that’s still not some great moves you pulled there.
I mean just look back at the conversation, my crime was to leave too many blank spots in my statements that you filled yourself with the worst ideas possible and pin those on me.
My first post was stating that automating some response to a mob has a bigger effect on the moderate people of this mob than on the extremists, actually it’s regardless of the subject being debated, and you don’t seem to object to this. And yes this was based on the assumption that there are some moderate people in the GamerGate side, and by moderate people I mean people not making death treat and spilling insults all over the place, people you can actually talk with, regardless if they are right or wrong, properly informed or not.
You then replied “I’m not certain that there …”. That’s not a good move, you clearly have some info I hadn’t regarding the core intentions of the GamerGate movement, by using this formulation you made me think you were’t sure about this.
As a result I simply answered with the info I had on my hands, that I saw some reasonable people arguing on the GamerGate side, again meaning people you can talk with, not people who are right or wrong. I event quoted a “don’t stigmatize all gamers as misogynists”, which to me was clearly a message not intended to feminists, but to people looking at all these events from the outside. Because let’s be realists, it’s very easy for mainstream media take this long list of abuses that surfaced the wrong way and stigmatize all video games. It happen before on other subject, and to me that’s an obvious interpretation.
Seems to me you perceive this response as “Look this guy is right, and I embrace his point of view” and “feminists are stigmatizing gamers” which is a completely different tune that I am not happy of be accused of.
At every single step of this argumentation you kept escalading on your own assumptions and bias. Not very nice. Just look at longname answers, those are good ones. Simple, informative, not accusative, that is helpful and make things a little bit better around there.
First, you don’t live in vacuum, and you always going to have people commenting around when having access to a different information than you have. Assuming from the get-go that it’s ill intended or lazy is wrong. And assuming you’re the one with the right information and other aren’t is not glorious either, but on this one you really had the right info so I give you that.
Second, I didn’t pronounced anything. That was you own bias speaking.
Third, don’t assume my level of understanding about the GamerGate was the result of a lack of interest or laziness. It was actually a pretty accurate representation of what GamerGate looks like from the outside.
You wrongly assume the proper, comprehensible information about GamerGate is easily available. Did you try to google GamerGate recently?
First result is the wikipedia page for GamerGate, go check it, in this document GamerGate is not described as being originated as an attack on feminism, and it’s the same tune for the first page. So excuse me of assuming there were some good intended people that where lost in the middle on this movement (again I repeat: good intended/moderate people != people who are right), and implying that bashing these people along the trollies instead of spreading the proper information is not a good thing to do.
Does that make me an Idiot that the useful information is buried deep?
Does that make me an idiot that most articles about the abuses on feminists, female game developpers and journalists only reference GamerTag without giving any context about it, assuming you already know everything?
I hope this whole waste of a debate is just the result of meeting you when you’re not at the top of your game, that you usually don’t read that much into other people statements and don’t systematically perceive them as ill intended.
Otherwise please please please step up your game by being less vindicative and more informative when debating this issue, otherwise we’re good to have this GamerGate crap going for a long time.
Racter’s text were all created by the Racter program. However, the program was just running a set of rules written by a human being, much like Eliza.
So it’s really a matter of definitions and philosophy. If a human creates a set of really complicated rules, and a computer follows them and produces output that the human didn’t expect, did the human create the output or did the computer?
For instance, the recent images created by the Twitter quiltbot and pixelsorter – who or what created them?
