Eron Gjoni, unrepentant jerk

boing
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Maybe I wasn’t clear. There are enough provacateurs on both sides of this debate that any attempt at a productive discussion will be dragged into the mud. You can’t discuss feminism in games without getting yelled at and you can’t discuss corruption in games without being told this is irrelevant, regardless of what tag you use.

I think this was a cynical prank played by a bunch of kiddies who decided to see how much of a shitstorm they could raise for the lulz and, of course, here we are feeding the storm. Eron Gjoni is just a tool, not that he deserves any respect for how he conducted himself. I think he just won’t admit that to himself.

Of course there’s serious corruption in the gaming industry and of course there’s a serious problem with how women are treated in the gaming industry. They do not exclude each other. But with the way the trolls have played the two sides off each other, they may as well exclude each other. It would be hilarious if it wasn’t so depressing.

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These are not balanced concerns, not least because no GG has ever been able to clarify what specific corruption they care about. But mostly because the possibility of a website giving favourable coverage to a game isn’t remotely in the same ballpark as women being driven from their homes.

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Then consider these facts. Gamergate claims it’s focused on journalism. I just want to point out that, on twitter, journalism is receiving a lot less attention from gamergate than non-journalists are receiving. Searching on topsy, we can find the number of tweets that occurred over the last 7 days:

#gamergate brianna wu: 3645
#gamergate anita sarkeesian: 2589
#gamergate zoe quinn: 1238

Compare this to Grayson’s mentions:
#gamergate nathan grayson: 113

He gets an order of magnitude fewer mentions than the non-journalists.

How about the authors of those infamous “death of gamers” articles:
#gamergate leigh alexander: 691
#gamergate arthur chu: 97
#gamergate tauriq moosa: 1
#gamergate joseph bernstein: 0
#gamergate callie beusman: 0
#gamergate dan golding: 0
#gamergate casey johnston: 0
#gamergate victoria mcnally: 0
#gamergate anna minard: 0
#gamergate patrick o’rourke: 0
#gamergate chris plante: 0
#gamergate jack smith: 0
#gamergate devin wilson: 0
#gamergate luke plunkett: 0

A female writer (Alexander) tops this list, scoring seven times more mentions than her nearest competitor (Chu), but even she is far behind the non-journalists. One writer (Moosa) gets a single mention, while the remaining 11 writers get zero mentions.

Here are all of the journalists listed on this gamergate boycott list and their mentions:
#gamergate jim sterling: 294
#gamergate matt lees: 211
#gamergate ian cheong: 201
#gamergate ben kuchera: 208
#gamergate phil fish: 130
#gamergate bob chipman: 115
#gamergate john walker: 71
#gamergate stephen totilo: 62
#gamergate adam sessler: 55
#gamergate devin faraci: 48
#gamergate amanda marcotte: 35
#gamergate samantha allen: 32
#gamergate patricia hernandez: 26
#gamergate greg tito: 13
#gamergate jonathan holmes: 1
#gamergate rami ismail: 1
#gamergate simon parkin: 1
#gamergate david bell: 0
#gamergate colin campbell: 0
#gamergate tim colwill: 0
#gamergate mitch dyer: 0
#gamergate cara ellison: 0
#gamergate fruzsina eördögh: 0
#gamergate edwin evans-thirlwell: 0
#gamergate sarah gray: 0
#gamergate tom hatfield: 0
#gamergate britt hayes: 0
#gamergate jon hicks: 0
#gamergate mark hill: 0
#gamergate david hollingworth: 0
#gamergate tadhg kelly: 0
#gamergate jeff klima: 0
#gamergate ross lincoln: 0
#gamergate keza macdonald: 0
#gamergate garrett martin: 0
#gamergate luke mckinney: 0
#gamergate darren nakamura: 0
#gamergate dale north: 0
#gamergate christian nutt: 0
#gamergate mike pearl: 0
#gamergate aja romano: 0
#gamergate jim rossignol: 0
#gamergate samit sarkar: 0
#gamergate dennis scimeca: 0
#gamergate dan seitz: 0
#gamergate joe skrebels: 0
#gamergate zoya street: 0
#gamergate paul tassi: 0
#gamergate kevin vanord: 0
#gamergate aoife wilson: 0
#gamergate josh wirtanen: 0

Once again, the journalists are mentioned far less frequently than the non-journalists.

So how does a real instance of corruption fare:
#gamergate mordor: 164
#gamergate wb: 16
#gamergate warner: 13

Again an order of magnitude lower than the non-journalists.

How about some other cases of alleged journalistic corruption:
#gamergate bethesda: 5
#gamergate mcv: 5
#gamergate ausgamers: 0
#gamergate ea australia: 0
#gamergate game arena: 0
#gamergate gameplanet: 0
#gamergate joab gilroy: 0

They go almost completely unmentioned.

How about another case of alleged journalistic corruption:
#gamergate patricia hernandez: 26
#gamergate anna anthropy: 0

Barely a blip on gamergate’s radar.

Let’s examine whether gamergate is about abuse of the DMCA:
#gamergate dmca: 20
#gamergate takedown: 20

There’s little mention of it.

Let’s look at how insults fare:
#gamergate slut: 438
#gamergate bitch: 371
#gamergate faggot: 193
#gamergate cunt: 131
#gamergate whore: 77
#gamergate fag: 12

Insults easily beat all journalists other than Alexander and they also beat all of the above allegations of corruption.

Let’s test the theory that gamergate is about journalists being corrupted by personal relationships and money, that it’s not about women at all:
#gamergate sjw: 3744

SJW (social justice warrior) beats everything, including Brianna Wu, and I think this shows the overwhelming focus of gamergate is cultural not ethical.

For the sake of completeness I’ve also researched the number of tweets on everything else on that boycott list. I fully expect some gaters to compare the number of Gawker, Kotaku, Polygon, etc. mentions with mentions received by individuals. A couple of responses to that. Firstly, it’s an apples-to-oranges comparison of single individuals to organizations composed of multiple individuals. Secondly, I used the individuals’ full names on those searches. Let’s take a look at what happens when I don’t:
#gamergate wu: 6886
#gamergate anita: 6346
#gamergate brianna: 5021
#gamergate sarkeesian: 3424
#gamergate zoe: 1958
#gamergate quinn: 1583

Now they’re beating entire organization composed of multiple people.

The miscellaneous stuff is below.

Game devs:
#gamergate robin arnott: 9
#gamergate joshua boggs: 0
#gamergate brandon mccartin: 0
#gamergate kyle pulver: 0

Publicist:
#gamergate maya kramer: 3

Cartoonist:
#gamergate tom preston: 27

Organizations, etc.:
#gamergate gawker: 6081
#gamergate kotaku: 3813
#gamergate polygon: 3528
#gamergate 4chan: 1286
#gamergate gamasutra: 762
#gamergate escapist: 742
#gamergate vice: 620
#gamergate igf: 486
#gamergate something awful: 439
#gamergate neogaf: 400
#gamergate pcgamer: 369
#gamergate deadspin: 364
#gamergate buzzfeed: 295
#gamergate ign: 276
#gamergate verge: 235
#gamergate indiecade: 221
#gamergate gamespot: 176
#gamergate digra: 97
#gamergate mic: 89
#gamergate rationalwiki: 86
#gamergate xoxo: 65
#gamergate cracked: 55
#gamergate pax: 44
#gamergate new yorker: 42
#gamergate silverstring media: 42
#gamergate destructoid: 37
#gamergate polytron: 26
#gamergate child’s play: 24
#gamergate ars technica: 22
#gamergate rock paper shotgun: 21
#gamergate wired: 20
#gamergate techcrunch: 21
#gamergate daily dot: 17
#gamergate mary sue: 14
#gamergate valleywag: 11
#gamergate badass digest: 10
#gamergate salon: 10
#gamergate gameranx: 6
#gamergate rebel jam: 3
#gamergate motherboard: 2
#gamergate tvtropes: 2
#gamergate daily beast: 1
#gamergate geek party: 1
#gamergate gizmodo: 1
#gamergate nerdlove: 1
#gamergate raw story: 1
#gamergate xbox 360: 1
#gamergate xojane: 1
#gamergate agency for games: 0
#gamergate border house: 0
#gamergate cink: 0
#gamergate comics alliance: 0
#gamergate concourse: 0
#gamergate critical proximity: 0
#gamergate defamer: 0
#gamergate fullbright: 0
#gamergate game gate news: 0
#gamergate game on net: 0
#gamergate idle thumbs: 0
#gamergate io9: 0
#gamergate jalopnik: 0
#gamergate lifehacker: 0
#gamergate loveshack: 0
#gamergate new media rockstars: 0
#gamergate paste magazine: 0
#gamergate pc authority: 0
#gamergate rllmukforum: 0
#gamergate screamer: 0
#gamergate sploid: 0
#gamergate total xbox: 0
#gamergate truck yeah: 0
#gamergate uproxx: 0

Hat tip

Hopefully people will find this data useful. If you want a more fact-based debate about gamergate, please spread this comment wherever you can. I hereby license this as CC0.

[God damn you, BoingBoing, for forcing me remove my links and thus many of my citations. I was going for intellectual rigor here in contrast to, you know, gamergate.]

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How did this crazy formatting happen? Does Discus, or whatever BoingBoing is using, not like the “#” symbol?

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This runs on Discourse, which uses some flavor of Markdown, which translates # at the beginning of a line to a headline

Example:

#like so

becomes

#like so

also, thanks for those fantastic numbers and analysis. It helps quantify the effect of the planned targetting.

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Ironically, the formatting looks better when viewed as a reply (although still as a headline, but not so many spaces).

Typically, we are suspicious of people who’ve just joined the forums in the past few hours only to post a long screed, because they tend to be both 1) screedy and 2) short on facts.

You’re 0-2, thank you!

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Zoe Quinn fucked five guys in seven months while telling him how honest she was. Three while she was in a relationship with him. One was her married boss. I don’t think any of the mainstream anti-gamer gate publications want to mention these facts from this screed nor take them on. They certainly haven’t disproven them.

So, your argument, as I understand it, is that she was a slut, and that it’s good that sluts should be shamed. Can’t help but think I’ve heard that before.

In case that’s too subtle: no, none of this is any of your damn business.

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Reading these comments is cementing in my mind just how important “ludicrously stupid false equivalence” is to the rhetorical toolbox of the Social Injustice Warrior.

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Aye, there’s the rub.

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Those of us who are older than 16 have enough life experience to know for certain whether or not we would do such a thing.

Hint: no, everyone is not like you.

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Thank you for an excellent, well researched post!

Welcome to the BoingBoing forums. I hope the issues with multiple citations will not be too off-putting. Your intellectual rigor is greatly appreciated.

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So, where is all your concern for, say, IGN and Gamespot giving favorable reviews to games that bought a lot of advertising space? I mean, that’s been happening for at least a decade. Why do I LITERALLY never see that sort of thing mentioned unless I bring it up? Why is it solely about women sleeping with people or Sarkeesian making videos?

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Come to think of it, when I was most concerned about game publishers coopting game reviewers, I considered it a secondary issue. The primary issue for me was lousy games with dumb plots and sexist and reactionary cliches.

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The craziest part about blaming that Game Jam incident on Quinn is that, according to other eyewitness accounts on the set, it was one of the other developers who first blew up at the questions.

In order to put the blame on Quinn, the Gater needs to completely ignore the actual reports about what happened. He also needs to ignore the description of what happened from the other female developer involved, when she describes what was the last straw for her, with absolutely no mention of Quinn’s name.

But no, this isn’t really about Quinn. Right.

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You misquoted. The quoted text is from the user “striking”, not me.

EDIT: Thanks for the correction.

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Oh, sorry! I think I pulled his quote from your post. I didn’t realize it was attributing it to you, my bad!

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It appears PepsiCo has continued doing business with him. I assumed the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra K. Nooyi, would have had him dispatched. Being misogynist must be OK, even with a female CEO, as long is it sells more Mountain Dew. I wonder if my new slogan will get me a six figure salary with PepsiCo: “Dews before shrews.”

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Since the 80s.

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This is fantastic & utterly destroys their sockpuppet campaign.

These sorts of analytical tools can forever prevent a few hundred?, Dozen?, man-babies with a few hundred?, Thousand?, Sockpuppets from ever becoming newsworthy again beyond articles debunking.

Sure, on a post by post, tweet by tweet basis they are apparent, simple, barely capable of fooling teenagers that want to be fooled. Their strength is solely in fake numbers, such that chump PR people at Intel might fall for it, or outsiders looking in might think there is more to it than the threats & misogyny. But this makes it crystal clear that #gamergate is 100% fake, run by fakes.

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Where is this article debunked?

Harassment, Abuse, and Apologism: Sanitizing Abuse in Social Justice Spheres