I’m not going to claim that everyone who has ever posted in the defense of feminism or social justice has been universally and unfailingly polite, but I think you’re creating some false equivalence here. To the best of my knowledge, no one has been run out of their homes / threatened with rape & death for supporting GamerGate.
Also, no one, - literally no one - opposes GamerGate’s ostensible goal of better games journalism. The opposition to gamergate is quite specifically because it has become a clearinghouse for personal attacks.
Stalin called himself a communist, but that doesn’t mean that communism is an organization or that it can be held responsible for all the people he killed. Gamergate is an event (the discovery of reputation-destroying bias in gaming journalism) and to a lesser extant an ideology (the belief that there should be less bias in gaming journalism).
A large number of people who are anti-gamergate have been trying to deflect the issue by hiding behind labels. People like Zoe Quinn think that if they call themselves feminists then any attack against them is an attack against feminism, but ideologies don’t work that way. They aren’t organizations.
I really hesitate to enter into this fray because I do not have a horse in this race.
But I have seen a large number of articles on this site which talk about
the bad behaviour of the gamegate people but none that talk about the
equally bad behaviour of the other people (SJWs?).
As an outsider it seems like both sides are saying
“The radicals from our side are just radicals and not representative,
but ALL your side are just like the radicals. Therefore you are ALL
evil.”
Yes. I can also imagine an outsider saying, “Well, the KKK hates African-Americans, but African-Americans hate the KKK. Really both sides are equally bad.”
There’s nothing wrong with being on the outside of a dispute. But you can really humiliate yourself if you come down on one side or the other without even a basic understanding of what the argument is about. In this case I think you’re calling for tolerance of the wrong side.
You have a point there, when things cross into the real world, there is a problem. A big one.
Though I still suspect that things have gotten to this point, in part at least, because the media giving these people some shred of ill-deserved validity.
There was a recent piece that likened their behaviour to that of a toddler. Sometimes ignoring the bad behaviour is the best tactic, but when you do that, you have to be ready for it to escalate before it goes away. In the case of a toddler that might mean trying to do something dangerous or destructive so that you have to respond (play with an electrical outlet, break something). In the case of gamergate, it could mean an escalation of death and rape threats. Actually 100% ignoring would eventually work, but there might be some real damage in the meantime. Also, ignoring bad behaviour can work as a parent when you are the only source of attention, but trying to get everyone on the internet to ignore it… if we could do things like that, why not just get everyone on the internet to stop doing it in the first place?
Yeah, I don’t either. I mean, games journalism vs. death threats… what difference does it make to me?
But seriously, I’ve heard some stories of people who support gamergate getting calls at work and suffering other harassing behaviour. That’s incredibly shitty and anyone who supports it because those people “deserve it” is being rotten. I 100% guarantee you that there are people out there who gather under the banner of nearly any cause you can think of and basically turn into hate groups in exactly the same way as is described in this article.
If I knew someone who was making threats or harassing someone because of their support for gamergate I would tell them that they were being terrible and they shouldn’t do that or associate with people who do it. If there were a #killgamergate tag which became synonymous with these attacks I would say we shouldn’t use that tag.
You are not pointing out any equivalence or hypocrisy.
I would say the quoted text tallies well with my impression of 8chan’s GG board. They’re either hyper defensive, expending a lot of energy whining about how they’re misrepresented, or then it’s about discrediting critics. I doubt it convinces outsiders but it certainly works well at convincing the gaters. For people ostensible worried about corruption they seem far more interested in assuming the martyr’s role. Threads on provable instances of corruption are rare, the only one I saw today (only checked first five pages) was phrased as a means of discrediting Gawker for having unpaid interns, i.e. they would probably not have cared if Gawker hadn’t published articles critical of GG.
One interesting thread asked what they fear would happen if they lost. Looking at what they think will be the outcome is a great window into what makes them tick and the reasons they fight, e.g. hatred of SJW.
Additionally, some of them still can’t let Zoe Quinn go, there’s a thread with screencaps of stuff she wrote in 2008. It’s as if these people are too dense to realize that still piling on Zoe won’t improve people’s impression of GG.
I strongly suspect the movement would quickly fizzle out if they actually wrote only about corruption. What they actually like is the feeling of being part of something bigger, and the martyr’s crown is a great way of forging a sense of unity.
I have not followed this closely, but last night I subjected myself to the entire comment thread under an article on BusinessInsider.
All I have to say is that when your most reasonable defenders sound like grade A, five-alarm nut jobs, you’ve got a problem. If these people really want better gaming journalism, they should fight for that. Right now, they’ve wandered off into deep muck.
Extremely dubious attacks on individuals, and condoning doxxing and vicious rape/death threats (on the grounds that everybody knows a tweeted threat is just a joke, suck it up buttercup) make these people look really nasty and without credibility. Where are the gg supporters who condemn those tactics? Nowhere to be found in that thread (as of around 14 hours ago).
The most articulate of the bunch didn’t hesitate to heap scorn on Zoe Quinn. I don’t know her, maybe she really is an awful person (they do exist), but as far as I can tell any such awfulness is at best tangential to the real issues these people supposedly care about. For the most part, they sound like teenage boys with jealousy issues, leaping to the defence of a bro wronged by an evil slut.
Anyone on the other side who resorts to similar tactics is also an idiot, and should be censured by cooler heads. Whether the threats etc. are meant to be taken seriously or not.
Sadly, I think a lot of people are enjoying the mudslinging and have no real interest in trying to have a civil debate.
You have a good point. And to be honest, I have no clue what a “media” solution would be, much less any solutions in general. I suppose I’m old, with only one foot of my upbringing in the online world, but I’m still shocked and confused at the lack of civility, and utter hostile inanity of some online communities.
This is off the cuff, so please don’t take it as my view; Is even covering the more heinous death and rape threats useful. Being that most of these threats are basically stunts, aren’t we giving them what they want, and even empowering them by making it news? Obviously, take them seriously, go straight to law enforcement and whoever maintains the communications channel used; but is splashing it up everywhere really useful? Knowing the extent of the problem is useful, on the other hand, and I suppose it can be mobilizing for the forces of civility (and a useful talking point for their ideological opposites), but does it do more harm than good?
Where ignoring the tantrum might not work, neither does feeding it…
To be honest, I have no clue. Though, if these kids were rational, they might realize they’re hurting their “cause”. I don’t really care about the underlying topic, and don’t move in social or interest circles where this sort of thing ever would come up… But now I know, and obviously have more sympathy for the opposite party. Which wouldn’t have happend if they weren’t whining like a bunch of vicious barbarian four year olds.
Maybe I am being overly sensitive but your comment seems overtly hostile and it is difficult to carry on a conversation with someone when they attack like you have. Quoting my comment about ignoring the radicals on your own side and then saying it is like I am excusing the KKK is, at least to me, very offensive. More so, it seems like you are trying to be offensive. Maybe next time you could write something like the below instead.
I don’t agree with you and I think you are in danger of excusing reprehensible behaviour. In my opinion “my side” is in the right and the other side is evil. If you don’t come out and damn them then you must clearly be evil too.
Alright I am being facetious, but I was offended by your comment.
Ah, yes, of course: Ignoring harassment and hate and death threats directed at women while pretending you don’t understand the problem (meaning: you don’t care to understand). How nice.
I have seen tweets and articles where GG people have claimed to have received threatening phone calls, rape, violence and death threats. Have had their employers informed that they were employing rapists, and all manor of other minor harassment. I don’t know how much, if any of it is true. But if we are to believe the complaints from the women we see here on BoingBoing are true, which I should add I definitely do, then we should accept at least some of the GG ones are.
But both sides having people become targets is surely bad for everyone. It seems to me that there are at least four sides to this. Two groups of immature / nasty idiots spreading abuse and discord.
Then there are two more groups who make up the majority of people who really should stop fuelling the discord and try listening to each other.
But I am sure I don’t know everything and am probably wrong. I just keep reading posts here and in similar places where there is no ground given. It is all “you are either with us or against us.”
We’re not talking about things that have happened in the distant past, here. If Stalin were alive today and killing people in the name of communism, it would be perfectly natural for people to expect other people promoting communism to condemn what was going on and ostracize the perpetrators.
Saying “He’s not really a communist, and why are you concentrating on him instead of what I say the goals of a communist are?” wouldn’t cut it.
Ugh, I just spent a couple of hours reading links and watching videos and I think my soul has died. As far as I can tell both sides of this debate are full of awful abusive people, and the normal people (from any side) seem to be being shouted down.
Well, you’re not actually required to pick a side - it’s not an election. Feel free to support better journalistic standards, although you probably want to define what that means before you get too invested in it; maybe figuring out who got Jeff Gerstman fired would be a better start than gamergate’s obsession over who slept with whom before not actually writing a positive review.
Personally I consider myself staunchly anti-gamergate, because that label started its life as an attack on Zoe Quinn, and doesn’t really appear to have matured much past that point. If you find that the loudest opposition to gamergate is too vexatious for your tastes, that doesn’t mean that you can’t oppose gamergate yourself- the enemy of your enemy doesn’t have to be your friend. There’s lots of ways to evaluate a thing beyond simply which side has the most obnoxious supporters
I’m pointing out that people like these trollies want attention. It’s why many do this sort of thing.
To the people they harass, I suggest the something like a Baker Act response of trying to get the trolley in a mental health facility for observation (it’s often harder to get out of a mental institution than it is to get out of jail and they might get some help they clearly need). Beyond that, I’d want to see the trollies in jail.
I would also like to see some FBI accountability on the subject. As far as I can tell, the FBI isn’t doing much to curb what are clearly terroristic threats.
EDIT: Is it unreasonable for the general public to ignore the story? You seem to be a crusader for the oppressed here which is awesome. Are you focusing on people who cause the problem or the ones who don’t view it in the correct light.
