Well, I don’t know if this “movement” even has leaders. It seems more like an unruly mob with pockets of organized activity. Somebody thinks threats of violence are a good idea, and then they make those threats. I doubt anybody actually ordered them. The whole thing is uncontrolled and uncontrollable. That’s why I’m not sure whether arresting the perpetrators will be enough to end the harassment.
Not me who said that. GG has a 4chan core group who started the ball rolling, but they don’t really control it. (They probably should be shitting themselves about now, if they have any sense at all - if their identities become public, they’re in for a world of hurt in the civil courts alone.)
Nope, I think that pressing criminal charges against the people actually making the threats might dissuade others who might be tempted to do the same for the lulz. It probably won’t do much for the real nut jobs, and it might not do much with the idiots who think they are much more clever than they are (at least until enough of them find themselves up the river). The former are, mercifully, a bit rarer than the latter.
This guy has a national / international reporting gig, and 33k twitter followers. And uses that platform to insinuate that Ms. Sarkeesian is faking these threats. for attention.
This guy has close to 200k twitter followers, and uses his platform to victim-blame Ms. Wu for not being silent.
These are men, with significant followings, telling their audiences that the threats against these women should not be taken seriously because they are lying or faking.
They absolutely are leading a campaign of contempt and disregard for the lives and livelihood of these women.
Over video games.
8 Likes
Yeah, sorry about that. I wanted to combine two responses into one, and it came out weird.
I guess the point I wanted to make is that Gamergate is too disorganized for individual punishments to effectively stem the tide of treats. Maybe, maybe it’ll scare people into not being assholes, but I am pessimistic enough to think it will only make the assholes more careful.
Yeah, I agree that both of those guys are riling up the mob, but they’re not giving the orders to take action, so I doubt they see themselves as such (or feel responsible for the fallout). Now that ball has started rolling, even if Adam Baldwin (or whoever) has a change of heart and tells people to stop, I’m not sure it will do anything.
Completely with you there. The whole thing is pretty surreal.
3 Likes
@marilove tells you “You really spent a lot of time typing to basically say nothing.”
You decide to interpret this statement as her “[telling] people you disagree with that they shouldn’t bother to speak.” And then say that this is basically the same thing as issuing death threats to shut down a speech.
Communication really isn’t your forte, is it?
8 Likes
I … are you … I can’t respond to this … you can’t be serious, can you? I didn’t say anything remotely like what you’re implying here. I am unable to respond, yet again, because you’ve just topped your “nothing” with a whole lotta made up bullshit. I am, quite honestly, amazed. Either you’re a troll, or really, pathetically quite thick. I don’t quite know which.
2 Likes
[quote=“SamSam, post:137, topic:42965, full:true”]
@marilove tells you “You really spent a lot of time typing to basically say nothing.”
You decide to interpret this statement as her “[telling] people you disagree with that they shouldn’t bother to speak.” [/quote]
I never said that this was the specific statement I was referring to. Marilove explicitly said that to somebody else.
No, I said that the motivation was the same, not the content.
Great, another one who likes to make personal remarks.
WHO are those people that can “do something about it”?! Speaking out against hate and this sort of disgusting behavior is doing something about it! We’ve had people (mostly men) ask what they can do, and you know what the biggest thing is? Speak out against it! Do you really think being silent and ignoring this shit is the way to go or something? That’s ASININE.
When was the last time that drastic change happened by remaining silent? Think about it. REALLLLLLLYYYYY think about it. Long and fucking hard. Do you think that the sexual abuse done to young boys and girls by the Catholic church should to be ignored? What about discrimination against gays? Every hear of Harvey Milk? He certainly didn’t believe in shutting up. What about Martin Luther King, Jr.? What about slavery? Women getting the right to vote? When has ANY drastic change happened by ignoring the wrong or remaining silent?
And again! Who do we report this shit to?
Are you going to tell us the police? 'Cuz I’ll laugh my damn face off, if that’s your suggestion. And if not the police, then WHO?
You are telling us to “tell someone who can do something about it” but you have no god damned idea “WHO” that is, do you?!
4 Likes
So by spreading their voice, we’re following their goals. We’re letting them shape the discussion.
Also, CITATION NEEDED PLEASE. I demand one.
And I am making a new comment just to show you this:
http://www.illdoctrine.com/2012/06/why_you_should_feed_the_trolls.html
I feel like these arguments happen over and over again.
If you think ignoring this stuff is going to actually do something to change what is going on, then I want you to show your work. Show your research. I want to see it. Or are you just assuming? And if you are assuming, what exactly are you basing your assumptions on, anyway? Have you really spent real time thinking about this?
3 Likes
Yep, this.
Over the last year or so, I’ve been moving toward not identifying as a gamer any longer, solely because the community is getting worse and worse.
That’s changed since GG started. Silence is basically complicity in this maelstrom of shit. Fighting back against it is the right thing to do, and it’s the only thing to do.
4 Likes
There was a terrorist threat. The assholes aren’t going to get more careful. They are going to get louder and more drastic and someone is going to die but everyone will once again brush it off and pretend it’s just an isolated incident by some deranged mental patient. Excuses will be made, goal posts will be moved, and people will still pretend it’s not a big deal, and will continue to claim it’s just a few “sad trolls” that need to be ignored.
Never mind. I’m done engaging with you.
Citation? I don’t need one. This is a topic I never would have heard of, I don’t follow the “gamer” community, I avoid it like the plague. But here I am, engaged in this conversation. Would I be if it wasn’t for this blog posting about it constantly? Nope. But here I am. It so happens that I’m sympathetic to the general view here, but I can easily imagine cases were this isn’t the case. Further, they WANT publicity, and what do they get? Publicity. This seems rather empowering, logically, giving them what they want. This is a debate I never would have encountered before, and here I am. Here we all are. Hell, these are the people I used to ignore in MMOs, and now major media, and popular blogs like this are giving them their own title and hashtag. When people feel like they are under attack, they circle the wagons. Its basic sociology there (I know there is a name for it, but its been a long time).
I’m not sure how to cite that, I suppose I could go grab a logic or sociology book from my shelf of old textbooks. Should I cite the last couple of months of media and Boing Boing articles? We’ve gone from trolls to an actual movement of these people.
Your article also makes me feel old, I don’t know what “gay for a day” is, never heard of it. I don’t know who the guy writing it is (or making a video?)… I get it helps mobilize your side… But I have I don’t see it reducing nasty threats, I see it increasing it. And no, I don’t have a source, just reading places like this. I also don’t see how increasing dogmatic militants on either side is a net good for us as a whole.
I don’t want to sound confrontational here. Remember my first post was pure speculation. And I fully admit that there is a decent chance that I am completely wrong. I was mostly pondering if all of this is a double-edged sword. It might help get the word out there there is some vileness lurking out there. But it might also help the idiot minority out there, by giving them a medium of expression that they would not have ever had before. Is the former effect greater than the latter?
1 Like
There are some dense people in this debate. Fucking dense.
3 Likes
I am finding precious little debate here. Nobody has answered any of my questions, or refuted any of my statements. So you go through the trouble again of pointing out that your version of formal reasoning is ad hominem attacks? What purpose do these remarks serve? Are you hoping to influence what people think of my opinions? Or is it some smug in-joke I am not privy to?
What I am reading here seems more like a shouting match by a few outraged people, hoping to shame-wag everybody else here into different camps instead of conducting any actual discussion. This lets you preach to the converted without articulating your views, which is lazy.
I don’t know where or how you learned to debate, but my experience is that this involves calmly discussing a topic. Not the censure of people who don’t side with you when you have presented nothing persuasive. Does that sound unsympathetic to your cause? It isn’t. But I think it is bad practice to try steering an open discussion in favor only of those who you imagine see things your way. This keeps things on a more superficial level.
2 Likes
It’s an ad hominem if, instead of refuting your argument, I attack your character.
I’m calling people fucking dense because they are fucking dense.
There’s a difference.
3 Likes
Nobody chooses to live in terror. When you’re threatened, you either feel it or you don’t. Maybe you’re used to living the way you have and have forgotten what that first threat felt like — you sound like you’ve led a wild life — or perhaps you just don’t feel terror at all, and mistakenly put that down to some superhuman mental power of your own, rather than the genetic lottery giving you a somewhat unusual brain.
In any case, your zen-like detachment is too alien for anyone to take your advice, especially over the internet. Other people care about their lives, and about the lives of others. It is not irrational to take that into account when making decisions, quite the opposite.
6 Likes
You don’t think there’s a difference between accepting the ordinary, everyday personal risk of death or injury through mishap, and accepting the risk of extraordinary, violent death for yourself and others through the actions of a terrorist? A risk that however slight was communicated to you in advance?
Hypothetical: she deems the threat to be merely the work of yet another trolley trying to bully her into silence – and the authorities agree, but also beef up security as a precaution – and goes ahead with the talk. It turns out that no, this was not just another trolley, it was another Marc Lepine. She survives, but 20 do not.
Is she to blame for those 20 deaths? No, no she isn’t, but many will blame her anyway and she may well blame herself for ignoring the threat. Regardless of how blame is apportioned, her life and hundreds of others will be wrecked.
In real life, very few if any people would accept that risk. It’s a much, much easier risk to accept when it’s somebody else’s risk and the person hypothetically taking it on is typing from the comfort of their office chair or couch.
3 Likes
First of all, I think I genuinely misread a lot of what you said. But I find it frustrating to read things like this:
I’m sure that in your life you’ve noticed that people often misunderstand one another and that the same words can be read in different ways. It happens all the time on message boards. Looking back over your posts I can see both the reasons I had that impression and places where I could have picked up on what you really meant.
It sounded like you said that because of the questions you asked (that I answered in that last post). When you asked:
It kind of made it sound like you wouldn’t, despite the fact that there is no description of who is making the threat or how serious it is. Even more broadly, your second question was whether we would second guess ourselves in response to death threats. It seemed to suggest that you thought no one should ever change their behaviour in response to threats.
Here is where this started. @marilove said that a woman had to cancel a speech because she was sent a terrorist threat and you say no she didn’t need to, she chose to, and then talked about how terrorism wasn’t worth taking seriously.
I say, “I need to eat” and someone else could say, “No, you choose to,” but that seems like a willful misinterpretation. By saying “No she chose to”, and denying that she “needed” to, you created the impression that you thought she had not carried out a reasonable assessment of the risk. I understand from what you are saying here that your intention was merely to counter the point that we “have no choice” when it comes to terror because we certainly do.
So while I was going to respond to some of the others things you said, it sounds like we basically agree. The point is to figure out the risk and respond accordingly. I hope we also agree that we aren’t really in a place to judge whether Sarkeesian did this because there is more to the situation than is reported in the media.
But the idea that terrorism isn’t worth taking seriously just seems totally wrong to me. Terrorism is worth taking seriously because of the effect that fear has on people. The entire point of terrorism is to make people afraid, and it works, and then people go and make a bunch of bad decisions (including enacting crazy laws and going to extreme lengths to hunt down terrorists).
9 Likes
I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU
I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU
I’M NOT TOUCHING YOU
whomp
mOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO~M
