Well, here.
Technically no, you’re not condoning anything. However, you’re advocating sticking your head in the sand. That might be fine if people are just fighting in Kotaku comments, but they’re not. All of this GG bullshit is having very real world consequences, so saying “ignore them, they’ll go away” is not the right thing to do.
I said it before, but here we go. CALL THE POLICE. they are the ones that can do something. I can’t. I’m reading this, I am very aware of the threats. All I can do is post something saying “Yes, that is henious. Those people suck.”. Which basically amounts to nothing.
It isn’t about hushing it, or the desire to bury my head in the sand… My question was about the trade off of giving these hateful idiots a larger audience, and a forum they don’t deserve. The key word being" question". I wasn’t advocating anything.
If continually reporting on these people (and not just the threats) help, then I’m, obviously, in favor. If it doesn’t, some reevaluation might be needed. If it helps, or hurts, I have no clue. I just think it is a question we should ask, that is all.
Okay, and I don’t think you had malice or anything behind your comments.
But speaking as someone who did/may still identify as being part of the gaming community, this is not new. This bile just happened to have reached critical mass so has emerged from the subculture, so to speak. Anita Sarkeesian has been getting death/rape threats for two years from elements of the gaming community. Female devs/game writers have been doxxed for merely talking about how they prefer to play a game. I’ve personally been in far too many games where female players have been screamed at because they dared to be…well, female. This has been an ongoing malignant growth that’s suddenly erupted out of hiding and the whole world is suddenly seeing the ugliness.
Coming out of that, from of the dozen or so threads about GG over the past fortnight, every one has had people ‘just playing devil’s advocate (for the harrassers)’ or playing down the probability of a death/rape threat turning into reality, which a) isn’t cool and b) gets very, very tiresome after the fifth or sixth time. No, you didn’t do that, but as the timeline of this whole thing goes - years back - suggesting we just don’t feed the trolls starts to sound very much like “peace in our time”.
Please don’t take this as a personal attack, it’s not meant to be. I’ve tried ignoring people doing this shit, but the infinite echo chamber that is the net just leaves them as the only voice left. When shit-slinging starts causing real world pain, the time for closing the browser window stops, if you want anything decent to be there when you open it again.
The more I read the endless discussion about attacks and death threats to females in gaming, and the longer I wait in vain to hear about any action by law enforcement, the more I think what is called for is the “Guido” solution. That’s where you ask your cousin Guido to track the threatening trolls down (by whatever means), take their 15-year-old ass out in the woods and carefully but aggressively explain to them the error of their ways. The discussion would continue until such time as they agree to post a public and abject apology to the persons they had threatened. Following their public apology, they would donate their computer to Planned Parenthood.
All kidding aside, I’m almost convinced that someone could make a real business starting up an “Internet Police Force”, consisting of hackers (to do the tracking) and Guidos (to do the attitude adjustment). Getting death threats from trolls? Hire the IPF to buy you the justice the FBI seems unable to provide.
If you have a problem and no one else can help, and you can find them, maybe you can hire …
But, seriously, that is such a bad idea Cobra! I can see no problems with such a scheme! 
First off, thank you for the civil tone.
I really have no clue. I too am sick of it. Misogyny, homophobia, and general hate is one of the main reasons I stopped playing or buying online games. I stopped reading most news sites (both for their horrible ethics and writing, and their communities). I stopped self-identifying as a “gamer” long ago.
I don’t want to be seen as playing devil’s advocate here. I am not. I fully admit my distaste, and will strongly stand by my feeling that threats of any kind are unwarranted, reprehensible, and should be dealt with as credible “real world” threats. I’m not going to argue on the side of those people, since I have a hard time even understanding where they could be coming from, it is alien to me. That really wasn’t my intention. I really just wanted to highlight the possible double-edged sword of giving them some modicum of validity. People are now listening to them, when before they could just lurk in comments sections spreading their own bile amongst themselves. Obviously they shouldn’t be tolerated… I just think we should think of our approach. I see tons of articles saying “its bad”… But I don’t see that making any difference. I just see these people getting louder, getting more coverage.
I’m not a fan of Anita Sarkeesian work, but I think she has every right to say her piece. And people who try to quash that right through threats of violence should be stopped. I do think that the “gamer” community should be forced to confront the vileness lurking in their communities. I just think that we should spend some time pondering how, and what are the effects of our own actions. Sorry if I came across any other way, that was not the intention at all, especially if I was seen in support of these people…
You have some very good points, thank you. I didn’t really think of this in a historical sense, just in the light of the current situation.
Though I am still dubious as to if pushing it would work. It might still backfire. It might not. I still fear the former though. I hope I am wrong.
I wish there was a real, obvious, solution out there. I’m at a complete loss of what it could be.
I share that fear, I think many people do.
I have a great deal of hope in the long term but the short term is a very scary mess, and you never know exactly what will come next.
A bit of dark humor here for me is that video games are one of the more effective crutches for dealing with my chronic anxiety problems. Best thing for temporarily shutting off the screaming, terrified, malfunctioning bit of my brain when the world gets too mean or scary. (Although my true love is pen and paper gaming.) It is particularly unsettling for the thing that gives me stress relief to be linked to so much toxic weirdness.
It’s the same for me.
I’m finding it disturbing how the abuse from people from gamergate mirrors the abuse i have received in the past, in particular being given death threats and being driven from my home because I dared to speak out, as well as people refusing to believe it happened to me. Games helped keep me alive then, and they still do, but gamergate is taking a coping strategy away from me and offering no replacement.
You’re damn nice to a troll whose whole schtick is being willfully vague, verbose and addressing anything as though it were so far beneath them that they can’t understand the mere mortals. Wish I had your patience.
edit - where’s the button for teh /sincerity tag dammit. this post needs it
I wouldn’t worry about associations… One of the reasons I find the tag “gamer” so odd is that it only applies to games, no other media has such a myth of solidarity. I read books, but don’t feel bad when others read trash or racist screeds in other books. Sure, we love digital games, but what does that mean. I play mostly strategy games on my homebrew PC, where some people only play Madden in dorm rooms on consoles. What do we really have in common?
When people use “gamer”, in in this GG thing, I always get a bit annoyed that someone is trying to pull me into their club.
Indeed. Imagine one self-professed “movie buff” loved slasher films and another thought that those were crass and badly made as a genre. Rape threats would be unlikely to ensue (I could imagine crazy insult matches, but not “I know where you live and I’m coming for you.”).
This is something I keep saying but I guess I shouldn’t expect the people who come here just to post in support of gamergate to listen: Feminists (and other brands of cultural critics) have been critiquing movies and books for decades now, they have often had very bad things to say about big budget movies, and big budget movies with tons of explosions where the guy gets the girl still keep getting made. Don’t worry so much.
This is more like one group of movie buffs saying that you love movies, and thus are as guilty of death threats as those slasher movie kids. You must implicitly support them, since, you too subscribe to Netflix.
In the end, I’m not a gamer. I’m just someone who plays video games occasionally. I’m not defined by where I spend my leisure money.
In the end, there will be problematic stuff always, and it might be popular. Nothing to be done about that, short of actual censorship (a greater evil, IMO) But there is always room for better content. Perhaps its because games are so young… I don’t know.
See my problem is that I am into the culture enough that some of my artwork makes video game, and pen and paper rpg references. Some of my writing features rpg geeks, I’ve got a bunch of short scripts I wrote with some friends about larping that I want to animate now because our original production plans fell though. I like conventions. I sell chainmail dice bags and wire wrap dice jewelry on my etsy site. This whole geek thing has been one of my main things for over 20 years and it involves alot of games, including video games. The stuff makes me comfortable, many of the people make me comfortable, the scary ones seem to be getting more proactive and aggressive though.
I’m almost afraid of my work getting any notice now, as much as I want people to see/ read it. And even if none of my work ever gets out, I’m starting to worry about remaining welcome in places like conventions, game shops, and comic shops.
I feel like I’m probably too old to get picked on in person on at this point. I think most of the guys who would come up to and harass a women for being a “fake geek girl” and such in person are younger. It will probably be fine for me but I know I’m more apprehensive.
I think we’re going through a period of backlash. I’d really had the sense that things were gradually improving, that among fans of games and participants in geek culture, traditionally under-represented voices had been growing more confident, and that, lagging behind them, even big publishers were starting to respond.
I like this
I think he sees it differently, and he thinks Gamergate is being run by a bunch of people who really ARE trying to expose corruption and cronyism (including the Shadow of Mordor story) but they’re being overshadowed by a loud minority.
He didn’t really have a good answer for why they hadn’t tried to distance themselves, actively, from the fact (which he acknowledged) that all this started with a guy trying to slut-shame his ex. He said there’d been talk of splitting the hashtag and the Serious People not using #gamergate anymore but that it hasn’t gone anywhere; he also said that the group lacks focus because it’s leaderless and nobody really WANTS to be a leader for fear of becoming a target – in the same way that vocal people on the other side of the debate have.
We did talk a bit about previous game press scandals (like “Gerstmangate” - God I hate the “-gate” suffix) – and he’s pleased that this line of scandals is getting more coverage than those did. He doesn’t seem to believe that the reason Gamergate has gotten more coverage is precisely BECAUSE it came as part of this misogynistic horror show.
At least, that’s how I understood what he told me. I frankly feel a little bad about repeating my interpretation of it secondhand, even though I’m not using his name. But I feel like I learned something from somebody else’s perspective by talking to him and I think that’s valuable and hope I can pass it on.
See I have trouble taking anyone who is expressing these ideas seriously. Of course the reason it has gotten a lot of coverage is because it became part of a misogynistic horror show. There have been stories about it in major media outlets like the New York Times, the CBC, the Guardian. Is it even remotely possible to imagine a movement about ethics in game journalism getting coverage in mainstream media?
Even if people honestly care greatly about the integrity of gaming journalism, they’d have to be delusional to not realize that it is their pet issue and that the vast swath of humanity doesn’t care about it at all. Without the sensationalism that story got from the threats, only a tiny fraction of people would know what it was. On top of that, pretty much everyone who did know about it would support it.
Before gamergate, I had heard “SJW” used to describe the kind of (for instance) Tumblrite who polices other peoples’ terminology when it’s not offensive or wrong, lack of trigger warnings about things that aren’t triggery, lack of extreme inclusiveness, or “promotion of heteronormativity.” Defenders of people who don’t want to be defended, from things that aren’t actually harmful or offensive.
But now apparently it’s being used in the more literal sense. And I’m buying a Social Justice Wizard t-shirt.
Down Goes Gamer.
Down Goes Gamer.
